Step 1 - Realize you are playing a game.
Step 2 - Figure out the rules of the game.
Step 3 - Play the game better than them.
Step 4 - Realize that you can walk away from the game.
Step 5 - Do literally whatever you want instead of playing the game.

In order to walk away from the game, you have to give up on the idea that you will eventually win the game. 

Perhaps even harder, you have to give up the fleeting satisfying moments where you make “progress” in the game.

It feels like I know too much now. 

Like I can predict the end before I even know someone’s name. 

I don’t even know how to get to the point where I would even consider again if trusting someone could be worth it. 

How would I even get to the point where I was asking that question? 

I just want to be left alone. I’m so tired. 

I don’t have the energy to try to prove myself to anyone. 

And I’m not brave. I’m fucking exhausted. 

I am angry at my mother. She should have been the first one to understand. 

And instead she tried to guilt-trip me for writing it down. She needed to believe the worst of me. 

It was easier. Maybe it was an illness.

Whatever it was, it needed to be fixed, and it wasn’t her fault. 

She just couldn’t comprehend that her choice to betray herself didn’t mean I was consenting to the same arrangement. 

I was so lonely. I’m still so lonely. I think I’ll always feel lonely. 

The hallway is dark. I want to say it’s not important.

But it is definitely important. It’s the room. 

She’s in there, alone. 

Light comes through the door cracked open, leaving a streak across the room that she avoids. 

She’s kneeling next to the bed with rocks and trinkets, digging through her collection.

I notice how close to the bed she sits. Isn’t she afraid of what’s under there? 

I was always so scared of something grabbing me from under the bed. 

She never understood why she was given things to like, and then shamed for liking them. 

Like God giving me the forbidden tree, and then kicking me out when I like the fruit. 

What the fuck is the point. 

I didn’t realize that people had relationships with their parents that weren’t constant emotional combat. 

I thought this was some sort of universal human experience. 

I thought we were all born into battle and had to fight our way to the freedom of adulthood. 

I am angry at my mother. She betrayed me in all the same ways she betrayed herself. 

She taught me to survive him the same way that she did- to become as small as possible. 

But I didn’t want to be small. I do think she saw that, but I think she let it scare her.

I feel so stuck inside my own head. My brain never shuts off. I’m always thinking something. 

There are always words there. Why can’t I get them out. 

How is there so much inside of me. 

People assume you like being different, that you must be doing it on purpose (for attention). 

I don’t want attention. I want to be comfortable. 

And all I was taught was to cater to other people’s comfort. 

And I think that I thought that that meant that everyone else would also be looking out for my comfort. 

That everyone else pushed through all of the time, like I did. 

That everyone else was trying their best, and I just needed too much. 

Everything, my whole life, has been a trick. My entire life, people have been manipulating me. 

I was somehow boring and too much all at once. 

I spent a lot of time alone. I learned very, very early to escape. 

I think it did actually mean something. I knew I wasn’t safe at home.

People thought I didn’t know how to not get my way. What was my way?

I feel this constant urge to be writing down all of my thoughts, but they come too fast, and they don’t make any sense outside of me. If I look too directly at any one thought, it vaporizes like a cloud. Sometimes things feel profound at birth but immediately annoying upon observation. I've learned to keep my funt thoughts to myself. They’re only fun to me. And now they can’t escape my brain without passing through a filter, without being analyzed, without being scoured clean. It’s like I have to go into a trance to channel them. The ghosts inside my head. A pool of boiling ghosts. (That’s a funny callback that no one in my life now would understand.)

Has anyone ever truly loved me? Can anyone have loved me if they haven’t truly known me? Have I ever been known? Has anyone ever really seen me? Have I seen me? How can I have if I am not yet fully formed?

I’ve always been accused of being self-centered. It’s been used as a point against me. As proof that I’m bad. But my “self-centeredness” was always out of self-reflection… of curiosity about myself… While everyone else around me was actually centering themselves, their own feelings, their own comforts… I was always willing to be uncomfortable. I’m not even sure I knew what comfortable was. I wonder how early I learned that my needs were a burden. I wonder when I began to desperately erase myself.