All my plants are dying. And I watch.

  You do not need to keep digging. There is no mystical thing that you are missing that will make you worthy. That will make you deserving. Deserving of what? Of love, of living? 

This part of me that believes I do not deserve to feel pleasure. But more than that - that I do not even deserve to feel the pain I am now feeling. That somehow I am so unworthy of my own emotions I cannot have my pain. As if some voice is saying "you call this pain,? you don't know pain." 

I used to think that to suffer would make me good. Make me worthy of loving. Worthy of being seen and heard. Then I learnt that I was not allowed to be seen to be suffering, so what then? How will I prove my worth if I can't let anyone know ?  

I have drifted in and out of visibility for so long. Never fully at peace in either. When I am at my lowest points I long to dissolve into nothingness. At my highest. I am always waiting for the slap. The guttingness of being told I do not deserve whatever it is that has given me joy, praise, success... love.

I am learning, slowly so slowly how to be delicate with myself in a way I wish other people had thought I needed. The hard crust around myself built as defence against the expectation that I need nothing from anyone. Even though that idea is something I have built myself. I long to be vulnerable. I want to sink to the floor in the presence of someone who knows and loves me for all of my mess. Instead of alone. 

But I hide my mess, sweep it under the bed, place it inside cupboards. Just as I always have.

Today. The anticipation of today even before I knew it would be- today. Has been with me since the first diagnosis. When the world stood still for the first time. When the first slap hit. Unreal, and obliterating. Then the second. I didn’t know how to live. How to do anything other than just keep existing. Existing. 

I haven’t, I can’t still- do anything else. 

But here we all are. Today. And I do what I’ve always done because that’s my role here. Stay quiet. Be acceptable. Don’t cry. Nobody else is crying. Nobody else is emoting. And if they do. 

If they share. It’s between them.

The far awayness that I feel. That I have been feeling. It’s not new. It’s as it’s always been. I have always been far away.