Waiting For Happiness...

          Why is it, that we're all just waiting to be happy ?

          

          I'm trying to be better, and trying to get help. I've booked a psychiatrist appointment, which is all the way in January. It's always that long process isn't it, making people feel even more hopeless. Yet I have to start now, I have to start somewhere. I can't wait for happiness anymore. All this waiting is just setting me up for another escape, I don't want to graduate high school feeling like I'm again escaping from a sad, dark chapter of my life. I want to leave this place, knowing that I can come back here, welcomed, loved, and cared. That I'll be safe, if or when I do choose to come back. 

          I've lost a lot of people along the way, and it's always because of my mental health. People give their everything to love, and to care for me. And when it gets rough, I isolate myself, losing the ability to communicate, and to reach out. They're disappointed, and they feel not wanted, and needed, so they leave, they're hurt. Yet, now I'm starting to understand my mother, who has always been struggling with depression, and she's always isolating herself, not letting me help her. I was just as concerned and frustrated. But now, I feel for her, I understand, that sometimes, it's just too difficult.

          The thing is, it's not fair. Depression isn't fair. It's not fair that we're not able to sustain a healthy relationship, that we isolate ourselves, making it so difficult for people to love and care. Yet it's also unfair to say that we deserve to be left alone, to be abandoned again, after we've already abandoned ourselves. People who leave us, who think that we need to first figure ourselves out before deserving their love, care, and attention, own the privilege to protect themselves. They hold the power to block the toxic, the harmful, the difficulties out of their life, choosing a lifestyle that we can't afford. See, this is my life. Having an alcoholic father, a depressed mother and suicidal brother, I am unable to afford such escape, such easy decision to protect myself. When you leave, because it's too hard for you to feel like you'e not helping me enough, that you don't deserve to feel hurt from trying to be there for us, it's a disappointment that's common, from the thought that we need to be fixed. We don't. Of course some people will not think that we're broken, that we need to be fixed. Yet, it's a lack of understanding and having compassion for mental health issues. People who are hurt, who are angry, of us isolating ourselves, of us not being able to feel happy, to feel calm, to communicate, to get better, are not realizing the constant struggle and hurting that we go through daily. They expect that we should be okay with the amount of love and care they have for us, that we should be better, that somehow they have the power to fill in the darkness within us. They don't understand why I still question if I'm loved, they don't understand why I still feel like I can't open up, to trust, to love, to communicate. They just don't get it. Sometimes they never will.

          I can't keep asking people to stay, because it's not fair. It's not fair to me, that I'll have to beg, for people to love, for people to show compassion, and for people to understand. I can no longer surround myself with people who don't care enough, who shows no sensitivity to my identity, who makes me feel unsafe. It's the same with happiness, I can't change people, and I can't wait for people, not anymore.