I’m likely getting my Xanax prescription filled later. That’s the kind of day/week/year/life I’m having. Cool shit.

I’ve been working on yearbooks for three years now. When I was in high school, it was a real solace for me. I loved design and getting to stalk people’s pictures and so on and so forth. In college, it’s hell. I get paid almost $500 a year for it (whereas I normally do it for free), and it’s still hell. We get no photos, no assistance, nobody responds to e-mails, and our deadlines are ridiculous. I had three pages due finals week, and the editor-in-chief didn’t answer my e-mails to her and later acknowledged there was no way I could have gotten them in in time due to a lack of photos and help. Nevertheless, my pay got cut.

The fuck.

I also have no idea what’s going on in my relationship right now. I can barely determine how I feel about my shoes today, let alone my nearly-half-a-year relationship. I am not used to dealing with things on this level, and it scares the fuck out of me.

Plus, he loves me, and I don’t love him. And the guilt from that is overwhelming sometimes. I just can’t feel it, though. I don’t feel it. I don’t love anyone or anything, honestly, including myself. The closest I ever got to loving was my mild addiction to a fat blue cat. And I had to kill said cat via lethal injection. Love is not my thing.

My fear of dependence is astounding. To the point, ironically, that I probably become dependent.

The gods like to fuck with my brain, apparently.

I’ve been going back and reading old posts, and I ended up deleting about 150 of them. This blog was approaching 500 posts. It’s now at 300 and something. Most of the deleted ones were stupid shit, projects I never pulled through on, mindless complaining. But I will admit I deleted some of the intense ones. I just didn’t want them there; they were not worthy of existence.

I’m also considering removing comments entirely from the blog. I probably won’t do it, but it’s floating in my brain. Sometimes I feel like all I get is nothing, complaints, or spam. And to be brutally honest, at this point in my life and blog, I don’t care what anyone has to say. If you want to have a conversation with me and talk to me, that’s awesome, but you may have to do it via e-mail now.

I don’t know. I just feel detached from the universe. Nothing is what it was.

I often feel like I have no friendships. I often feel like I don’t really feel. The only things I feel are anger and disappointment and stress. I’ve lost my appetite; I haven’t eaten since yesterday evening and it’s now 1 o’clock. I’ve even lost my sex drive, which means you know shit is bad.

I am desireless. I desire nothing. I want to lie in my bed and cry for an hour and then fall asleep and not wake up until March. That’s reasonable, right?

No. It’s not. I have no reason. I have no reason to be this unhappy. I am one of the most privileged people in the world, quite literally, and I am not happy. That is pathetic.

I get angry at the drop of a hat. I’m angry all the time. I don’t know why. I hate anger. I don’t know why. I don’t know.

Sometimes it feels like my soul has just died inside of me. At times, it seems I no longer have a conscience, no longer have any grasp on or care for the emotions of other people. I am some sort of demon. I have destroyed or am destroying my relationship with everyone. All I do is go to class, attempt to function, go back to my room. The old in-out no longer means fucking.

I am not living right now. I am existing. Floating.

Things will turn up. I know that. Years of going through this shit have taught me that. But right now, they are turned down, and that is just the fact of the matter.

Reblogged from Cat the Beatnik:

I’ve always been a believer in self-analysis. When you’re a narcissist, you tend to promote the popularity of doing nothing but thinking about yourself. We all must admit: you lose a bit of culpability if everyone else is doing it too. And today, as I was greedily and guiltily consuming my third Krispy Kreme donut (No, I would not like to know the Nutrition Facts, thanks), I came to a conclusion about myself. So here goes. I am an easy person to like and an impossible person to love. Explanation: First …

I wrote this while waiting for Astronomy class to start.

I think today was the first day I thoroughly felt like a college student – with each movement feeling natural or, really, ingrained. Routine.

I realized there’s a significant difference between being something and feeling like something. You can feel like a success even if you weren’t. Just look at most presidents. Likewise, you can feel like a failure even if you didn’t fail. Just look at most perfectionists. And although I have been a college student for nearly half a year, it didn’t feel real until today.

Today I realized just how much of a little automated college machine I have become: achingly perfectionistic [sic, I know], horribly detached. A history-psychology-astronomy robot. I am not fully interested in anything – or anyone – else. I am empty of everything that makes one human. When I cry, it’s like an oil leak, and I find myself unable to experience full or fuller emotions. I am never truly happy; I am incapable of love.

These words are too ugly and empty for this loopy handwriting of mine. Or, really, for anything at all.

-Cat

After what felt like eons of deliberation, this post is now public. Trigger warning for self-mutilation. You can tell it’s a fun one just from that.

The thing is, I said I’d be open, I said depression is nothing to be ashamed of, and if I hide the post that talks about how I hurt myself, I’m going against everything I stand for. So despite the fact that it’s slightly embarrassing to me and despite the fact that it’s hard to read, you can now all read the post about how I cut up my thigh. There you go.

Another big step I have decided to take is that I will probably give my boyfriend the URL to my blog. This horrifies me. But I feel like he’s earned it, as fucked up as that sounds. He essentially already knows everything that’s on here; he just hasn’t read the specifics. And he’s seen me in a state that no one else has, including my parents. I cried all snotty and gross and lame, and instead of flipping a shit, he just held me. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. It was a scene straight from some sort of romantic, these-guys-don’t-exist-in-real-life-haha-lol movie. That is a terrible adjective phrase, but you get it: he’s surreal to me. I’m not one for sap, but it really is astounding to find someone who likes you for you. Certainly not an overrated experience.

And if it can happen for me, it can happen for you. Even if Allen up and dumps my ass tomorrow, at least for that one night, he held me while I died inside. And if someone can like me in that state, someone can like you. The people who will hold you exist in this world; sometimes they’re just 355 miles away for a while.

Sometimes this world can be so beautiful. Even with its ugliness, its loneliness, the fact that I cried at all over nothing. Maybe the shift of things is something beautiful. Maybe the fact that people change and die and melt into the earth – maybe there’s a weird beauty to all of that.

Or maybe not.

I guess the thing is: I’m going to die one day. And I don’t want to die having etched into people’s minds, if only temporarily, that the world is a horrible place. And I don’t want that to be the only perspective I’ve experienced. And I don’t want to have spoken about openness and acceptance, only to lock away parts of myself to anyone. I fuck up. A lot. And maybe that’s the beauty of things: they are unexpected and messy and random and wonderful. Wonderful.

-Cat

This blog tires me sometimes. I think, really, I need to stop thinking of it as some sort of a project, something to market. I’ve gotten so wrapped up in Internet culture that I feel like everything I do and create on the Internet has to be impressive. I forget sometimes that I decided a long time ago that this blog would be for me, it would be as depressing as I am, it would be real. I also realized a long time ago that somehow people still read it, regardless of if I wrote it for them, for me, or for Osiris. That mesmerizes me.

Despite the fact that I feel like I say the same thing all the time and none of it matters, people still check this blog every day. Words cannot express accurately how reassuring that is to me. It’s supremely flattering. But sometimes it worries me in that I wonder if people read my depressing shit because it’s relatable, because they’re depressed too. I don’t know. It’s all the same.

Tediousness has become such a major part of my life; it’s like a god. Tedeity. Of course, school picks up again this Tuesday, but soon enough, that, too, will become complete routine. Soon the substance and newness will pour out of it, and that aspect, too, will be empty.

I quit my work study job because I hated it. I’ve realized I cannot do a typical office job. So I’d better stay in school, as empty as it is, because otherwise I’m fucked.

And what a horrifying Westernized realization: if you don’t follow the societally designated path, you’re fucked.

I guess I could always be a freegan though. My parents would be thrilled.

Lately, I spend most of my time awake at night on the Internet, usually Tumbling. Tumblr is the greatest thing ever, I swear. I find the best shit there. For instance, this:

I interviewed a woman who was terminally ill. ‘So,’ I tried to delicately ask, ‘What is it like to wake up every morning and know that you are dying?’

‘Well,’ she responded. “What is it like to wake up every morning and pretend that you are not?’

Cheers (kind of?),
Cat

Seriously: being 355 miles away from your boyfriend is shit. Especially since that’s our situation for a month, and neither of us has any way of getting to the other. There’s a reason I don’t do long distance: it sucks. Some people have the capacity for that. I, however, do not. I am selfish and impatient; distance is bad.

It’s nice, though, to have lots of alone time since I literally get absolutely none in college. Maybe an hour or two here and there. I’m literally never by myself in a room. It’s horrible. Unnatural, I think. It’s unnatural – for me, at least – to never be alone. I don’t trust people who never want to be alone.

Is college better than high school? Honestly, I don’t know. Socially, it’s worse. I have less friends, and I’m not as close to them as I was to my high school friends. Maybe it’ll take time and some more branching out, but like I said, I’m impatient. Academically, it’s about the same. Next semester I have a math course and a science course (Astronomy). That worries me. But this semester was pretty good.

I realize now that I glorified college. Yes, the freedom is great, but in a lot of ways, I am completely bound. Financially for sure. And then in the sense that I have nowhere to go to be alone. I’m trapped like a rat in a maze in my dorm. Because high school was so shitty, I put college on a pedestal. So did everyone around me. They didn’t exactly help.

“Cat, you’re a college type of person. You’ll really flourish in college.”

I don’t think I’m flourishing. I feel more like I’m floundering.

It’s just hard. It’s so much change. I’m not used to living this way, having this much time and this much responsibility. I’m failing in a lot of ways, and it’s difficult not to focus on those.

I am getting tired of this. Of always saying the same thing. Of feeling stuck and childish and alone, desperately alone, regardless of any social situation. I am tired of this blog, of my thoughts, of my writing, of myself.

I want to write something incredible. I want to write something worth other people’s time.

This is not it.

This, all of this, this life, this can’t be it.

P.S. I have changed the e-mail I check for this blog to catthebeatnik @ hotmail. Please send e-mails there or contact me on Tumblr if you need to/want to. Thanks, guys! Love hearing from you all.

I have high hopes for my future.

This blog doesn’t exactly show that. If anything, this blog only highlights with every Sharpie highlighter in existence just how much of an ungrateful and disturbed individual I can be.

I always say the same shit. Excuses, really. The words come more easily when I’m down! True, but still not a sufficient reason for never writing when happy. When I’m down is when I need an outlet! Also true. Also not sufficient. In other words, it’s an easy necessity to fill page upon page with crap. It’s much harder to be realistic, and it produces a lot more shame to admit that I have everything in the world at my fingertips and am not happy.

Yesterday, I drove 6 hours back home in a nice working car with enough money for gas. Now I’m in a rich suburb, living rent-free and work-free for a month with my mother who loves me. I’m home for Christmas, where I will receive way too many presents. My mother and step-father even took me shopping and bought stuff for my boyfriend as well.

And it’s not even that life goes well for me when I do nothing. It’s going well in what I work for as well. I’m waiting on one more grade, but this is what it looks like for now:

The B is in a class worth .25 of a credit. In all my major classes, I’ve receive an A, and I expect an A or B on the one that hasn’t been posted yet.

Things are looking good. I don’t know why they don’t feel that way.

I’ve been neglecting simple things, which may be why. For instance, today I got bitched out by my dentist for not taking care of my teeth. For some reason, it’s so hard for dentist to fathom oral hygiene not being a top priority in everyone’s life. I also keep forgetting to take my meds or to change clothes or to respond to texts. Miniscule actions – that’s always where it starts, though. That crazy, dramatic depression of locking yourself in a room for days is something that takes time. It starts with the little things.

I have to cut things off here, at the root. As usual, I have to turn shit around. I’m always turning things around.

I have to focus on what I have. Which shouldn’t be hard, since I have a lot.

But after my first semester at college, I can’t say focusing will be easy. I can never say anything will be easy. Isn’t there a phrase, though, that nothing worth doing is easy? That might be wrong. Fuck. Oh well. Point being: I will do what it takes. What’s my alternative? Not doing what it takes? Not doing anything? I would not live with myself if I had the door to opportunity open in front of me, even held open by a nice little butler or something, and I just turned around and walked away from it.

So I will do what it takes.

Because it does.

And it was no accident.

I carved it there on 13 April 2011 using a pair of scissors.

What I remember of the occasion is a bit of a blur.

Essentially, my future slipped from my grasp. Things spun out of control. If you go back in the archives to around that month, you’ll realize it was when I was still in, “WHERE THE FUCK AM I GOING TO COLLEGE?!” mode. It was starting to look like money would dictate where I would receive an education, and because of that, I would not receive the education I really wanted, and because of that, or so my insane mind decided, I would not receive the future I really wanted. The slippery slope logical fallacies were in abundance. If I can’t get A, I can’t get B or C or D or Z. I jumped from one month to one decade and decided my life would never be what I wanted it to be.

And for some reason, I decided a good way of coping with that would be to carve an obscenity into my leg.

It didn’t hurt, no. In fact, it felt good. It felt like orgasming continually. My leg would shake. It almost came in layers: this good dangerous feeling and beneath that, a hint of pain, a hint of how it’s supposed to feel to scrape scissors against your skin.

Scissors are rather blunt. They’re not razor blades; they don’t slice right through neatly and evenly. You have to hack a bit, go over your lines several times. The curves were particularly hard; scissors don’t like making curves.

My mother spotted it several months later when we were shopping for clothes.

“What’s that?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Did you do that?”
“Yeah.”

And that was roughly the extent of it. Later I got a text saying I needed to go back to therapy.

My boyfriend, of course, knows of it. He finds it fascinating. He finds my whole mental state fascinating because it’s completely incomprehensible to him. He is never judgmental, but sometimes it’s hard feeling how distanced he is. I guess it’s better than him pretending he understands, but as usual, I feel alone.

Alone with my scar.

I didn’t think it would scar. Had I known I would carry the word “FUCK” on my leg for months on end, I probably would not have done it. Although that may not be accurate. I wasn’t thinking about months into the future. I was only thinking about then, and about how then, pain bubbled beneath the surface and maybe if I cut a little open, it would pour out of me. Maybe if I could see it, if I could make it something real, then… I don’t know. What then? I don’t know.

There is no logic in insanity; that’s why it’s insane.

I am ashamed of the scar though. I was supposed to be better by 13 April 2011. I was not supposed to be crazy like that anymore, but I was. I carry the evidence with me.

As usual, this sickness is so deeply a part of me that it is ingrained in my very skin. It is only a familiar metaphor made concrete, I suppose. Here is your illness haunting you; look down if you need a reminder. It’s right there. Always.

It’s always there.

I read that a few weeks ago. It’s beautiful. I don’t know who wrote it, and I can’t find it.

Not that it matters.

Things like that, feelings like that, terrify me. Love? What the fuck? It’s as bad as whales.

Horrifying.

And you know, it never came up, this fear of love and seriousness, because it was never a threat. I was never in a relationship that reached any sort of serious level, and now I’m in college and have been with the same guy, officially, Facebook officially even, for three months, and I think people expect us to be more than we are.

My mom always asks me an outrageous amount of questions about us because, in her words, “I’m just fascinated by a healthy teenage relationship.” We’re like a damn conundrum. Like liger parents or some shit.

Especially here in Arkansas where it’s the norm to get engaged at 19 or 20, if not married. A lot of people don’t go to or finish college here, and where my parents come from, it’s extremely similar. “Taking thing slow” equates to “dear God, you fucking hate each other!” Which is not true. I like my boyfriend a lot.

But I just like him.

And it’s going to take a long, long time for that to change.

We’re not like most couples, and most days we don’t care. But sometimes it gets under my skin because it’s a reminder of the fact that I am different. Different gets old after awhile. And I don’t want to flatter myself by thinking I’m some sort of strange being, some sort of untouchable eccentric unique thing, because in a lot of ways I’m not, and my eccentricity has done little to make me “cool” and a lot to make me “lonely.”

I just do what I always do and take it a minute at a time or an hour or a minute or a second.