four letters.

you try to say it blithely but in your heart you know thats a lie
do i say it aloud? should i keep it in
how true is it? oh how does it rule me

        being, with or without it -
    - regardless nothing will ever be the same

six tricks mix.

This can't possibly be good for me.

One year ago, I fell in love.  Despite the fact that my life was fast unraveling, one year ago, I was happy.  One year ago, I felt as if anything was possible, like I held the world in the palm of my hand.  The possibilities were endless.

Now, one year later, things couldn't be more different.

mine

  strange, off-kilter charisma. heavy silence and dark darting gaze.
     here is a well, fermented emotion. heart. beat. meaning.

            what is beyond truly understanding

               And just like that, the fog lifts, and everything is clear.
         So painfully, heartbreakingly clear.

I just want to be normal.  Is that too much to ask?

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_adult_symptoms.htm

three weeks left.

The dark envelops. Static in the background. The night is long, fitful, sleepless. Heat, weight, solid shift, sinuous glide. Clench, arch, strain. The force is breathtaking. Continuum. You take forever. Words cut short, voice bit back. Taut air tumbles down the throat choking. It takes effort, to keep it basic, to keep instinct uninvolved. A lull, eyes fly open in surprise, and then - gasp - your grip on the world shatters. Black black eyes, still with intent.

Must be more careful.

Email.

I'm sorry for all the tension I've caused. I'm honestly super conflicted right now. I'm 20, but I don't feel like I'm anything close to 20. When I look around and see all these people with so much confidence and self-awareness, it scares me because I'm not in the same mental place. What you said is true. I don't know how to work. I don't know how to endure hardship. I need to learn to learn to work for myself and set goals and withstand the struggles my goals require to be achieved. I won't be able to find myself until I start accomplishing things, so that I may define myself by what I've done. My goal right now is to finish this semester. I've arranged with a friend to fix up my resume, and I've decided to just keep applying to internships until I hit something. Talking to people, there are a few potentials that I can get a reference into.

Even so, I feel like you're upset because I'm still trying to fit in. My flaws aside, is it so bad to want to? If it's affordable, if I'm willing to interchange it with other privileges, is it so bad to compromise with me to allow me to have some social accessory and leave some of the consequences to me? You worry about me getting consumed by it, but instead of trying to control me and cut me off cold turkey, maybe I'd learn more with a little room to find a balance and less judgmental discussion of how to find that balance.

As a child, maybe I was spoiled. I'm not sure how else it could have been done. Maybe I was just born wayward, and I know you guys did what you thought was best by me. But what I remember of my childhood is a vicious cycle of rules, restriction, enforcement, and punishment that spiraled until at one point in junior year of high school, I had absolutely no freedom whatsoever. Maybe I'm seeing this from a privileged and spoiled viewpoint, but my frustration with the restrictions you set consumed me. It still haunts me. I don't know how else to think. I don't remember much from high school, because back then, my anger was all that I was aware of.

Privileges or no, what I really wanted was more control over my own life. I wanted control so bad I stopped eating so that I could change something in my life of my own volition. To this day, if I'm upset with myself, I stop eating. But the way I see it, you didn't give me control, because you thought I hadn't grown up enough to handle it, but by never getting it, I never learned to think for myself. You tried to ensure my path in life, and you always shielded me from consequences, the enormous efforts of which I am extremely thankful for. Thank you for loving me and giving me everything you had.  I love you both. Believe me, I really appreciate all that you've given, because I know you gave up a lot. But if I can be completely honest, what I see is that you created a world in which the boundaries and consequences were invariably linked to you two. As a result, I had almost no experience in how to conduct myself in real life. Maybe it's my fault, but coming into college, I wholly did not understand the meaning of responsibility.

From the very beginning, I've always felt like I'm playing a constant game of catch-up when it comes to socializing, and it's embedded in me a ton of insecurities that I'm still working very hard to get rid of. I know I shouldn't have those insecurities - I'm well aware I should be above caring what other people think - but after being made fun of and judged all throughout grade school, please try to understand where I'm coming from if I say that it's really really hard not to. I'm not you. I never had the strength to just fight them and be content to run my own course; it was always upsetting to me.

Since coming to college, it's only now that I've started being able to socialize without being too self-conscious to speak. Honestly, in high school, when strangers came up and said "Hi, how are you?" I didn't know how to respond normally. Now, I can talk to adults and feel somewhat comfortable in my own skin, even though insecurities pop up and make me stumble from time to time. And in interacting with others, I've learned a lot. If anything, I've learned to be responsible, because in being accountable to others in clubs and other organizations, I learned that to earn their respect, I have to pull my own weight.

I don't think I should be ashamed for having a social life. I know you two work very hard, and I want to learn to work hard, but I don't think I need to kill myself over insuring against the future. Maybe I'm young, but I honestly don't feel like that's really living. I feel like you two have vilified recreation, to the point where my mindset about it was that tantamount to that of an addict. It's not healthy. I know, and I'm trying to fix it. But here, at Berkeley, I see a lot of people who have learned to balance their work and social life decently, if not perfectly. They're not people who are sacrificing their futures to partying, but they still have fun at the same time they get work done. Maybe they dont do the absolute best that they can, but they come out okay and they graduate and get hired. What I'm trying to do is find that balance, to think about things in a healthy, normal manner, because I really don't think I should have to give everything up.

I don't really know what I'm saying anymore. But I think I need to get it out, before my preoccupation with my memories messes me up any more. Maybe I'm thinking the wrong way, maybe I'm lying to myself, maybe I'm running away from the real truth, but I honestly don't think it's entirely my fault that I turned out this way. And I'm not saying it's your fault or that you're responsible - you did what you thought was best - but I think there were just misunderstandings all around, and I really want to clear that up.

Hopefully, by discussion, there can be more understanding, and I can figure out my opinion of myself and what I've done until now so that I can properly move on. I feel like I've been living in a haze until now, and it's only in college that my eyes have started to open and I've started to gain perspective. I feel like in 3 years, I have had to learn to integrate with society, think for myself, and honestly consider who I am and what I want to do. It's not a lot of time, when other people have spent more time doing so.

But before I start moving forward, I think I really need to come to peace with my pre-college years. When I went to the advisor one year ago to withdraw, the one thing he told me over and over was, "You need to work out your misunderstandings with your parents.  It seems to be really eating you up."

Please don't think that I don't appreciate what you've done for me. I love you so much. I've been crying for four hours now, and I think I've said too much, but I don't know how else to say it. Honestly, I haven't really been able to put how I feel into words, until now. Maybe I'm being ungrateful, presumptuous, arrogant, or even mean, but it's how I've been thinking until now, and if it's wrong I guess I need to fix it. But I really can't be entirely wrong, can I? You tell me all the things I need to fix, but looking at others, I honestly don't think that I was entirely wrong, growing up. I don't know. I'm really sorry for all the trouble I've caused. This is horrible timing and its just me talking about me and it causes you a lot of stress, but I feel like a complete trainwreck and I don't know what else to do. I honestly want your guidance and understanding. Thank you, and I'm really sorry.

just breathe.

             I feel, of late, as if I've been walking blindly into fog...
        and that I've only just opened my eyes to realize how utterly lost I really am.

5am.

Curled up, clothes awry, violated, sobbing. The impression, then, of being broken. Thoroughly ruined, past repair.

These wounds

     ...run way, way deeper than I could have ever imagined.  What the fuck just happened