Re: Happiness and Heartbreak
I know there are a lot of people out there much worse off than I am, but there’s one major difference between me and them. We have the resources to solve their problems. People starving? There’s food out there. People dying of curable diseases? The cures are out there. Those people just need help from the right people and everything will be alright for them. What about my problems? We don’t have the resources to solve them. Is someone going to come along with some magical machine that’s going to cure Jack and bring Mum back from the dead? As much as I wish it, I know it’s never going to happen. Those people starving and dying in Africa still have hope. There are solutions to their problems. There are no solutions to mine.
People in Africa stick together too. Families work together to get through their troubles. There’s nobody like me there, suffering in silence for nine years when my dad still lives in the same building as me. His bedroom is less than ten metres from mine, we share the same bathroom, kitchen, living room and everything else and he never says a word to me! Oh yeah, a lot of those African countries are Christian too, so that helps them. It gets them through life. There’s no way you can persuade me their religion is a bad thing.
A lot of the charities trying to help people in Africa are Christian too, so another way in which Christianity is a good thing. If it wasn’t for charities like that, nothing would ever get done, because it’s not like the government are ever going to do anything to help them. I hate this country. As far as our government is concerned, those countries owe them money, and they want it back. Never mind that they’ll never be able to afford to pay it back, or the interest they’re charging them that they can never keep up with, or the suffering it’s causing. It’s never going to change. Our government loves taking money from people. If it weren’t for the ridiculous amount of tax they add on, we’d have the cheapest fuel prices in Europe. The government take money from people in every aspect of their daily lives and they still apparently can’t afford to help people who really need it. No, they’d rather spend their time and money trying to claim back expenses for furniture for their second homes, because they don’t earn enough to be able to afford it for themselves.
Maybe making friends isn’t difficult for other people, but it is for me. Like I said, two friends in nine years, and Damien doesn’t count any more, so one friend. One friend, who’s going to die by the end of the year. I’d almost be afraid to make any more friends after this for fear of what might happen to them! You can imagine what the events of my life have done for my self-esteem. I find it impossible to talk to people I don’t know. What do you say? 'My mum died when I was nine, my old boyfriend cheated on me with two other girls and my current boyfriend is slowly dying, so that’s why I’ve spent most of my life depressed. Be my friend! I’m great fun to be with!' Yeah, right. The only way I‘m going to meet someone with a similar personality to me would be to find someone who’s life has been as messed up as mine, and the ruin that is my life has set the benchmark for that unbelievably high.
Anyway, where am I supposed to meet people? None of the options you said will work for me. Jack is my only existing friend, and he doesn’t have any other friends to introduce me to. Clubs and social events would be great if I had money and a way to get there (I have thought about maybe getting a part-time job, but I don’t want to waste what time I’ve got left with Jack working. Every second is precious now). I hate going to pubs and nightclubs on my own because they’re always full of drunken idiots, and if I go there with Jack there’s no way I’ll want to spend time with anyone else while he’s there. That’s the problem, it’s a catch-22. When Jack’s gone, I won’t have anyone to go places with, the resources to do it (Jack drives us around to all sorts of places, but once he’s gone, I can’t drive. I can’t even afford to get the bus), and chances are pretty good that I’ll be too upset to do it anyway. So, it looks like the other option is to do it while Jack’s still here, but I’m just not interested in other people while Jack’s here. I certainly have enough reason to make other friends, but not really the will or the channels to do it through. Next to Jack, everyone else means nothing. Nobody else can compare.
As for clubs and social events, I used to do things with the church sometimes. Church was the only place I could go and feel like I fit in, even if most of the people there were much older than me. I don’t feel like I fit in there any more though, so thanks for ruining that for me. Now it’s strictly a Sunday morning thing, and the only reason I still go is because I go with Jack. Once Jack’s gone, I won’t have any reason to leave the house. I don’t even go food shopping any more. I order it online so I don’t waste time shopping I could be spending with Jack. I can’t see myself taking up the habit of actually going to the supermarket again, even after Jack’s gone. The world could end outside my room and I probably wouldn’t care. Probably wouldn’t even notice. Jack having cancer is like someone’s put a timer on how much longer my life’s going to be worth living. I love every second I spend with Jack, but every second that passes brings me one second closer to the end.
Okay, I’m all for organ donation, and I can see the benefits of using organs for research too, but I’m going to try to forget everything else you suggested. That’s disgusting! Just the thought of it makes me sick.
So doing what just seems right is a problem now? Whatever happened to ‘follow your heart’?
I fail to see how I can be anything but distraught at the fact that my boyfriend, the one person in the world I care about and the only person who cares about me, is slowly dying from an incurable illness. I’m going to be alone again and I can’t bear it. I’ve spent far too much of my life alone and I hate it. Just the thought of it makes me want to cry. The thought of being alone in the world and knowing nobody cares. To be so completely without hope…
I dream of the day my long term memories will have the emotional edge taken off of them. I have far too many memories that have been burned into my mind in perfect detail, emotions and all. The night Mum died, Mum’s funeral, the night I found out Damien had been cheating on me (although that one’s been a lot easier to deal with since I’ve had Jack). The emotions all just so strong that I couldn’t possibly forget them, no matter how much I want to. All those things I remember as if they are short-term memories. Maybe that’s why I feel like my mind’s been destroyed several times over.
This week has been so difficult for me. It’s much harder for me to enjoy myself with Jack than it used to be, since it takes that much more effort for me to forget everything but the here and now. Just being with Jack is a constant reminder of what’s going to happen. I try to hide from Jack how much I’m hurting inside but it’s not working. Jack scares me with how easily he can tell what I’m thinking. He told me this week that I don’t smile as much as I used to around him, so after that I really made the effort, but now he says I’m trying too hard. He wants me to just be me, but this is me. I used to really enjoy myself with Jack, and I still do, but it feels like it’s tainted now. He complains that I never want to go anywhere too. It’s not that I don’t want to go anywhere with him, it’s just that I don’t care where I am as long as I’m with him, so what’s the point of going out when I can just be with him at home? He spends so much money taking me places trying to make me happy, and when I tell him off about it he just shrugs and tells me that money’s not going to be much use to him when he’s dead. He talks about him dying like he could be talking about how it’s going to rain tomorrow. I can’t even think about it without falling to pieces but he talks about it like it’s nothing.
Me and Jack hardly ever spend any time apart now. It’s even got to the point where we end up sleeping together now too. It’s usually that we go to Jack’s house and I end up falling asleep on his bed and he doesn’t want to wake me up so just sleeps next to me. When I do manage to stay awake, he walks me home and I make him come in with me and we end up falling asleep on my bed. It’s become a joke with Jack now. ‘Who’s house are we sleeping at tonight?’. Jack’s mum has started making breakfast for four every morning now too. It’s like the family I never had. I feel like Emily’s as much my little sister as she is Jack’s. Jack wants to know if I want him to make space in his wardrobe for my pyjamas. He’s joking, but it could end up actually happening at this rate. I practically live at his house anyway.
Now that I think about it, right now is the longest I’ve been away from Jack in quite a few days. He sent me home about an hour ago to ‘get ready’. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be getting ready for, because he won’t tell me. He just told me to wear something nice and he’ll phone me when he’s ready. I can only guess what he’s got planned. He’s so spontaneous, it could be anything.
No, I don’t know exactly what mine or Jack’s souls have got in mind, but I have a pretty good idea. I’ve got until the end of the year with Jack, if I’m lucky, then I’m hoping my soul will have had enough of grieving and being lonely and depressed and find some quick and painless way of doing away with me. I doubt it’ll happen though. My soul will let me suffer for a while, let me meet someone, wait until I get attached to them then put an end to it, breaking my heart in the process. My soul’s getting quite good at that now. It’s had enough practice, I suppose. My soul must be loving this. I can hear my soul now: ‘Hey, Poppy seems to be really attaching to you. Would you mind dying or otherwise leaving her so it can ruin her life again? kthxbye.’ My soul is laughing at me, and it’s been in on it with the souls of everyone else I’ve ever cared for. Mum dying was a tragic accident. Damien cheating on me could have just been bad luck on my part, but now Jack dying too? That’s a conspiracy. So, my soul probably intends to torture me some more, and I know what Jack’s soul has in mind. It’s leaving. Never mind me.
How does this experience relate to who I am? Well, who I am is an 18 year old girl who’s depressed, scared of being alone and spends a lot of time grieving for the loss of people she loves. Yeah, this experience fits in with that quite nicely. Damn, I hate my soul.
Camael, it’s been nine years. You’d have thought if that was true I’d have realised it by now. If it was that easy, I’d have done it long ago. Not a day goes by where I don’t wish I felt differently about things. No offence, but you’re not exactly the best person to be giving me advice on how not to be depressed. How do you know it’s possible for people to change their feelings? You obviously have no experience in that area.
You could be right though. Perhaps people can change the way they feel, but I must be an exception or something. I’ve tried to stop hurting and I can’t. I’ve had nine years to get over Mum’s death, amongst other things, and it hasn’t got better with time the way things do for pretty much everyone else in the world. The only way my feelings ever change is for the worse.
I know there are paths that might lead to me being happy, but they all have heartbreak at the end. I’d put money on that. No, I’d rather just stay on the path I’m on. Don’t get involved with anyone else and they can’t hurt you later on.
Don’t feel too bad. My soul hates me too. I bet when I was conceived all the other souls saw what an emotional screw-up I was going to be and left. Then my soul came along and saw me, rubbed its hands together and thought ‘Yes! I can work with this!’
Maybe our souls are competing for the title of ‘worst life ever’. Your soul’s an idiot and mine’s a genius. If your soul was half as smart as mine, it’d know to raise your hopes and happiness as high as it possibly could before crushing you. It gives the heartbreak that extra edge that just makes it that much worse. If me and Jack had just been friends, I’d still be upset, but no. My soul decides to get me involved with Jack to the point where I can’t live without him, then decides to test to see if I actually can live without him.
My soul’s getting creative with its torture methods now too. Not satisfied with just ripping away the people I love, it’s dragging it out over several months this time. Probably wants to see how much happiness and heartbreak I can have at the same time before my heart explodes. What’s it going to come up with next?
Want to swap souls for a bit? You might realise you’re not so worse off after all. My soul would probably follow its usual method, get you to become so attached to someone you can’t breathe without them, then just as it’s about to get rid of them say ‘Bugger! Angels can’t die like humans can! I have no way of getting rid of this person now!’ and you’d live happily ever after with that other angel. Your soul would probably do me a favour too. If it had me die, it would make all the pain go away.
If I could lock Jack in my room, I would. I’d never let go of him. I’d keep him in my arms forever. Shame it wouldn’t stop him dying though.
-Poppy
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