MELISSA BRODER, ‘SO SAD TODAY’
I fear others will discover that I am not only imperfect; I’m not even okay. I fear that I truly am not okay. But most people who meet me never know the I am struggling. On the outside I am smiling. I am juggling all the balls of okayness: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, existential. Underneath, I am suffocating.
It seems weird to me that here we are, alive, not knowing why we are alive, and just going about our business, sort of ignoring that fact. How are we all not looking at each other all the time just like, Yo, what the fuck?
The world was already not enough, and I, of course, was not enough either.
When you’re lonely and blacking out in strange places, you let other lonely people do what they want to you. You call it free love.
Just because you have beautiful eyes doesn’t mean you are deep: a love story.
When you said you just wanted it to be a one-night thing, I kinda hoped you meant one night over and over and over until we die: a love story.
It takes so little, really. How well do we see someone who we know only for a brief while? How well do we ever see anyone at all? I know too much and I know nothing at all.
I didn’t want to talk about anything cultural, anything tethered to society. I only wanted to talk about feelings, life in its most primal and essential form.
The grass is so sad everywhere, but at least we can kiss?
Perhaps it is that I am of the stars and he is of the earth.
Like I just want to be okay in this world. I don’t trust myself to find that okayness alone. I guess I don’t really trust the universe to give it to me, either. I want to know exactly where my next piece of mind is coming from. And it feels good to know that something has me back, even if it takes my life really small and might kill me.
Like, how much mental illness is ‘acceptable’ and how much is going to be ‘too much’? Someone DMs me, “We convince ourselves that we can own the identity of the anxious or depressed person. Then it sneaks up again. “It’s like, I got this. Then the mental illness is like, No, I’ve got you.
I’m always scared that every feeling is going to be permanent.
What if I want to sleep forever and can’t stop sleeping?
Okay, so then you sleep the rest of your life. You’ve done a lot already in your life. You’ve probably done enough.
The longing is hope. It keeps me alive.
Sometimes we don’t want to give up our idea of a person, because it provides us with a beautiful place to go in our heads — even when that beauty is painful.