famous as the one who smiled back.

 I had the expressly un-unique experience of going to work yesterday and feeling utterly invisible. I missed a dose of my medication, so that obviously played a part. It's like now that I'm not near death's door or in a wheelchair and learning how to walk again I'm not interesting anymore. I've faded into the background and don't exist to the people around me. 

I say that, neglecting to include the brief hour that I spent last week chatting and talking and being told I was missed. There's a part of me that just won't believe that. Am I worth missing?

T Cin says I should re-frame how I speak to myself... Instead of saying I hate who I am, which it sure feels like I do, I should say "I hate what has happened to me." Horrible things have happened. It's not a word I often use to describe my experiences, because I'm constantly trying to downplay them to make them more digestable.  I tell myself it's because I want to soften the truth for the people I interact with, but is it for them or for me? If I face the sharpness of my reality will I survive it?

Part of me thinks I'm being dramatic, and I see things from the conservative side. "Push through it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you've done it before why can't you do it again?" But then I remind myself of all the years I've spent studying mental health, if only to understand myself, and I know that thought is not (fully) rational. can something be half rational? is that a thing?

I know that mental health struggles are real, and can be incapacitating. I struggle to admit to myself that that is where I a, even as I proclaim it to the world. Somehow talking about how I'm not okay still seems like a mask. How is that possible? Aren't masks supposed to be the shields we put on to push through the monstrocities of every day life? I wear so many different masks I don't think I know who I am anymore without them. The voices and people in my head have different masks attached. I don't know that I can see that each mask symbolizes a voice, or a thought which I guess would make more sense? They aren't voices per se, but they are distinct parts of my mind that I name and talk to. Dissasociation is a real thing. And if it helps me cope and none of the other mask wearers, personalities, thoughts, whatever, are telling me to do foolish things then I'm okay. The addict hasn't come out, not really. I want cigarettes, but that's about it. And I found some herbal CBD ones that I thoroughly enjoy (I've been told they smell like cloves and are a bit... pungent.) but I'm thinking that out of all the choices I've made and possible things I could be addicted to, stinky CBD cigarettes are the least lethal choice. I could be drunk all the time, which past versions of myself would absolutely cope that way. But I don't want to be that version of myself anymore. I like the quiet, awkward little stoner I am deep down inside. The one that loves 19th century authors and poetry. And weird or obscure movies that no one else watches. The quiet little English major that wrote stories about far away places and people she wished to be. The shy  girl with the oversized hoodie and notebooks upon notebooks full of scribbles and song lyrics and random quotes that she pieced together into a glorious work of other people's voices merged together to create her own. The young one who read constantly, even if they were trashy romance novels in the high school cafeteria. I miss that version of me.

The only problem with that version of me (well, one of a few if I'm being honest...) is that version doesn't know how to talk to people or interact without being awkward and saying weird shit and always evoking the same responses. "Why are you so weird", "you're so sensitive", "you're too much", "stop taking things so literally, it was just a joke". The girl so starved for attention she took it in anyway she got it, even if that meant accepting men treating her like an object. The girl who hit puberty first and drew the attention of those who would exploit her innocent beliefs. The kid who other people's parents wouldn't let them play with.

But even then, I miss her. I miss her innocence and thirst for knowledge and gentleness. To be somewhere quiet and left alone to build castles in the air. 

How can I so desperately want attention and want to be left alone all at the same time?

I want to be famous to shuffling men   
who smile while crossing streets,   
sticky children in grocery lines,   
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   
but because it never forgot what it could do.

courtesy; naomi shihab nye