where you can see all the lights from the houses in the distance

content — mentions of s**cidality, very brief mention of ab*se with no details

/

i was sitting in the back of my childhood car. i was sitting on a small hill. but i was alone this time. i erased you.

i was sitting alone in my childhood car, first year of university. i was hopelessly alone, & i didn't know how to talk to anybody back then.

i tried to be a teacher at the age of 18. i needed the money, & i was teaching 17-18-year-olds. the bus stopped running at 10pm, & work ended at 10pm, so i had to just hope a stranger in my training cohort would be willing to drive me the 8 miles home after work, otherwise i'd just be. stuck. there.

i quit that job quickly. i was terrified of other people. i was an awkward 18-year-old teaching scary intimidating 17-18-year-olds whose parents had more money than me. i said me, not mine.

i found a photograph of when he & i used to sit in the grocery store together. i erased all those memories myself from my own mind, even though i was the one who initiated the (heart)break-up. and compared to all the other photographs, that all seemed so filled with love (in a good way), this one was so simple. we used to sit in the grocery store together. it was ordinary (in a good way). i was still in severe pain back then, i was just even less aware of it.

i haven't been happy since. but i'm trying.

i refuse to believe anybody can love me again.

nobody is ever going to love me again.

i am going to die alone. i'm so (not) sure of this (at all).

(i know i won't die alone. i knew that already.)

or, at least, a part of me does.

the part that lives in the future. the part that tells me not to kill myself. 5 years old, 95 years old.

but my life hasn't felt happy or magical since i was 21. when i was 22, my brain started breaking so much that i couldn't even enjoy looking at the ocean or watching a sunset anymore. that was 11 years ago.

very few people can relate to this experience. i've never met anybody else who can. & i say that seriously. i don't know anybody else who lives/lived in a different reality like i did for this long. there are other people who are chronically suicidal every day, believe it or not. i didn't know that until the past year, but now i do. but fewer people are as severely dissociated & severely psychotic as me every day yet still go outside sometimes, do the public-facing work i do, publish my own writing, move around the world, talk to new people constantly, try to escape psych prison, & are able to pretend to be as sane in front of other people as i can.

i haven't been happy since i was 21, & even back then i was sad. i was happy bc i was loved. i was happy bc i trusted somebody. i was happy bc i had family. i was happy bc somebody loved me.

yet it didn't work out. & that still breaks my heart.

i will never get those moments again. & i want them back. i want them so bad. biggest mistake of my life that i beat myself up for for over eleven fucking years. but was it a mistake? was it *my* mistake?

everything bad that happened since then was caused by: lack of supportive family <=> lack of supportive friends <=> lack of supportive community <=> lack of social support <=> lack of support system <=> lack of systemic privileges <=> lack of resources, past trauma, vicious suicidism <=> saneism <=> ableism from my own friends, many people's unfortunate choices to hurt me & sometimes on purpose, new trauma, suicidism <=> saneism <=> ableism <=> capitalism <=> racism <=> misogyny => poverty & homelessness, & so our dehumanizing, cruel system / "'mental '"health"'"care"'"/psychiatric-industrial complex & medical-industrial complex...

so. many. things. that i couldn't control.

i will never get those moments back. & i haven't felt like that with anybody else, since. & i couldn't understand why. i just wanted to find that magic again.

i thought of that word today, & i wanted to write about that today, actually. i wanted to write about magic.

but please don't put me on a pedestal. i'm just an ordinary, boring human being in real life, who makes a lot of mistakes, & hurts other people's feelings (usually, but not always!, accidentally) sometimes, just like everybody else. for the vast majority of my adult life, i've spent the hours of my life laying in bed, unable to move, wanting to die.

i wanted to write about magic.

/

the fairies are talking to me.

on new year's eve 2015, i slept through midnight of the passing of the sun-years for maybe the first time in my life. i accidentally spilled blue ink on my host's bed earlier, & i left her euros for it. (i also accidentally spilled blue hair dye on the carpet of my other host's room during christmas, & i had to pay her pounds for it. i took a train to the coast by myself on december 24th, but i was so crippled by trauma that i could barely move. so i didn't even go (to visit *mum*, the ocean).)

on new year's eve 2015, i fell asleep.

i woke up in the middle of the night, & a voice i used to call God told me that all my worries about love? everything would work out eventually.

"don't worry, everything will work out eventually."

i would find love eventually.

((a part of )me started planning to shoot myself, a few months later.)

but it's amazing how long my life has stretched, & so many of my moments were defined by how much i love him. the way i drove to the ocean alone on november 11th, 2013, & then 2016, 2017. i was looking for something.

i was looking for something i had lost, & couldn't find again.

in 2018, i slept through 11/11 & woke up in the evening, i was *so* depressed. in 2018, i slept through 11/11. i was *so* depressed.

but it's amazing how long my life has stretched, & so many of my moments since were defined — *unconsciously* — by how much i love him — while he forgot about me, he forgot me, the way everybody else does.

people (including other disabled people) always forget about disabled people, forget us. we aren't interesting or exciting or sexy enough, anyway.

but i see life more clearly now than i did when i was 18, 19, 20, 21.

it is grotesque & even worse than i could *ever* imagine.

so that's why i worry. will i ever be able to forget my trauma, or at least suppress it for 2 & ½ years, & love somebody else ever again?

i re-read, 2 summers ago, something i wrote about summer 10 years ago from that summer. he & i used to sit in the car after we already parked, & just talk while staring at the dumpsters. the literal dumpsters.

i haven't had any magical moments like that since i decided not to kill myself on my 26th birthday. it's almost cruelly ironic. no, it's not "almost". it *is*.

who can blame me for wanting to trade a life of being homeless & crippled & poor & abused by abusive men & abandoned by everybody i know, to sit in a car with somebody who loves me again?

i used to steal figs from the bulk bins at w* f*. only two or three at a time. that's literally before a* even bought them out. i had never eaten figs before. they were dried. they were exotic(*a loaded word in other contexts, use with caution) to me.

i haven't been in love since i was 21. i haven't had anybody i love & trust that deeply since i was 21. i haven't had anybody i love & trust that deep as family since i was 21 — & especially not anybody who didn't eventually hurt => traumatize me, anyway. it's a horrifying existence.

i wrote about a day when we went to the water, not the beach, in my suicide note when i was 24. i forgot about those moments. i forgot i wrote that in(to) one of my suicide notes. god, there were only 3 years in-between 21 & 24. & now i'm 33, & there have been over 7 years since i turned 26, & i feel fucking miserable. i have been nothing but miserable since.

i had a dream about you. it was more a nightmare. in the nightmare, you were trying to save me from my father.

you had concocted an elaborate & loving plan. i dreamt that when i laid in bed depressed & unable to move in college, that i dissociated & whispered to you in my sleep what happened, & that's when you started planning your plan to save me. but instead, in real life, i dissociated & whispered to you in a different way, & after i sent that text, i started crying uncontrollably while laying in foetal position with a blanket on the black asphalt in the street outside somebody's house in the eveningtime.

i flew to the east coast a couple weeks after that day back then (2019), & i stayed with friends of a friend of a friend, friends i'd never met before. they were young & so in love in their breaking down elderly(old) apartment with no (working?) heater in the northeasterly winter cold. i told them how seeing them so in love reminded me of "me & my ex". i mentioned you & i felt like millions of tiny needles were stabbing my arms, & i had to take off my jacket even though it was freezing. i think they've broken up since then. sad.

last summer, i drove with somebody new to a park new (to me) in the san gabriel valley. another park on top of a tall hill, where you can see all the lights from the houses in the distance. one i used to drive to alone, & feel lonely & broken down terrified frozen pain & confused. & i bought chinese groceries with that somebody new. they forgot me eventually, too. and/but that's (not) okay. aren't you proud of me?