a letter to sandra.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

sandra asked me to write her and tell her what i was so afraid of. so here is what i wrote her:

you want to know what it is that i am afraid of. i think i have told you before, that i am afraid that this is not going to work. that i will do all this hard work and nothing will come from it, and i will be right back where i started from, only i will have no other choice but to kill myself, because i will know definitively that nothing will work and that there is no hope for me at all.

i know that you are going to read into that and think that it means that i have even the tiniest bit of hope now. but i don’t. i have never felt more hopeless. i have never felt more disgusting, or ugly, or detestable, or foul, or lost.

i am afraid of unearthing all of my feelings. i am afraid that they will overwhelm me and that once i let them out, they will never stop coming.

there is not one think in my life that i do not regret. not one single thing. and i don’t want to have to rehash or re-think about any of those things. they haunt me. every single thing i have ever done haunts me. if i keep it all behind the wall, then i don’t have to deal with it as much. sure, it leaks out, and there are times when i can’t turn off my head and every regret plays over and over and over again, but for the most part, it’s shoved so far down that it is manageable.

and you are asking me to take it all out and expose it to you and to talk about it all.

and there is so much buried. there is so much of my childhood that i can’t even remember and i don’t know why.

and i cannot stand myself. you don’t seem to understand that. you don’t seem to understand how deep my hatred goes and how disgusted i am by myself. why on earth would i want to spend time talking about myself or thinking about myself when i hate myself so much.

i am afraid of my thoughts. i think about dying constantly. i think about horrible things. i can’t turn off my head. i play out scenarios in my head all the time. earlier today, i couldn’t stop thinking about just taking the animals to the vet and dropping them all off and coming home and killing myself in the garage in my car. running a hose from my exhaust pipe into the car, it would be just like going to sleep. but then i thought about having to say goodbye to them, and how hard that would be. i think about closing all the windows and just turning on the gas. i think about horrible things all the time. dying seems like the best option.

and now, it is time to go back to work, and nothing has changed, and the shame of that. i’m going to have to pretend like everything is fine and that taking a month off was actually beneficial, when, in fact, it did nothing for me. i’m no better off.

i just don’t think you understand the depth of the shame and the hate and the sadness. i don’t think you understand how completely damaged and shattered i am. you seem to think that i am somehow fixable, but i think you are so wrong.

i can’t even think anymore. i don’t even remember what it was you asked me to write about. i guess i am just still writing so i can pretend to feel close to you, cause it’s like i’m talking to you, even though i’m not.

i still don’t understand why you care or what you like about me or what you see in me that is worth saving.