Loopy, Lonely and Lost

Not so much, anymore.

One minute, I’m sat with my parents, watching tv, feeling pretty good.

The next thing I know, they’re asking me questions. Repeating, over and over again, asking me what grade I’m going to get, how well I’m going to do, what I’m going to do with my life.

They always say it doesn’t matter, but how can it not, if they’re always asking?

All they want is a daughter who will make them proud, and I can’t even be that.

Moments later, I’ve locked myself in the bathroom and I’m perched on the edge of the bath, crying silently, digging fingernails into flesh and furiously whispering “shut up, Laura. Stop fucking crying”.

I go upstairs and try to be calm, try to recapture some of my hope, but then my mum’s coming upstairs and saying, “why are you being like this? Why are you upset? Your eyes are all red, stop being miserable” and it makes everything indescribably worse.

I can’t feel anything without feeling guilty. When I’m here, it’s all I hear: don’t be sad, don’t be angry, don’t be annoyed, don’t be silly (‘silly’ means happy, or cheerful, or enthusastic). And every time anything forces its way through my mask to become a visible emotion, they comment on it and all I can feel is overwhelming guilt and shame because look, I’ve failed again. Letting my emotions get the better of me.

All I can think about now is dying. I don’t know why this is my automatic response, but every time I feel a little bit uncomfortable or sad or whatever, all I can think is “okay then, I’d better kill myself”, and I try not to think about it. I hold my breath and bite my lip and count to ten and tell myself in a very stern internal voice not to be so fucking stupid, but still, all those thoughts are there, and all I can think is that I have to die before graduation, because nothing is as humiliating as being surrounded by people who are successful, and knowing that you’re a failure, and having to watch you parents come to terms with that.

I can’t fucking do it.