How Exhausting

‎Dear reader,‎This is a rant.‎I had a lot to say to myself and absolutely no intention of saying it in an organised manner.‎Perhaps that's why this started out in my Notes app. ‎Anyways...‎ •••‎‎I am awake again.‎It is too early, and I am too tired, but somehow i am already thinking about something that happened years ago.‎I don't even remember why I started thinking about it. That's the annoying thing about me. My brain doesn't knock before entering a room. It just throws open the door at two in the morning and goes, Hey, remember that thing you said three years ago?‎No.‎I don't.‎Well, apparently I do now.‎And now we're going to sit here and discuss it.‎I hate this about myself.‎I know when I'm overthinking.‎I know when I've turned a perfectly ordinary interaction into a twelve-part psychological thriller.‎I know when I'm making a decision because I want to make it and when I'm making it because I've spent so long imagining what somebody else might think that I can't tell what I actually want anymore.‎I know.‎I always know.‎That's what makes it so irritating.‎I can be halfway through making the same mistake I've made several times before and there is a tiny, perfectly reasonable voice in my head going, Maq. Babe. We have done this.‎And I will look at her and go, I know.‎And continue.‎What exactly am I supposed to do with all this self-awareness if I refuse to use it?‎Put it on my CV?‎"Excellent at identifying personal patterns. Poor at breaking them."‎Maybe that's the problem.‎I spend so much time trying to understand myself that I forget understanding isn't the same as changing.‎I can explain why I do almost anything.‎I can trace the thought back to the thought before it, and the feeling back to the feeling before that, and suddenly I'm sitting there conducting a full investigation into why I took someone's silence personally when they probably just went to sleep.‎It is exhausting.‎I am exhausting.‎And I know that because I have to live with me.‎There is no escaping the girl who will stay awake at two in the morning thinking about her future, then wake up at six thinking about the same future, except now she is also wondering whether she should have sent that one message yesterday differently.‎There is no escaping the girl who wants to do things simply because she wants to do them, then ruins the fun by imagining an invisible audience.‎Would they think it's silly?‎Would they think I'm trying too hard?‎Would they laugh?‎Would they think I am weird?‎And why do I care?‎I don't know.‎I just do.‎Unfortunately.‎I care about people who aren't thinking about me.‎I care about people who have probably forgotten conversations I have replayed enough times to memorize.‎I care about whether I disappointed someone.‎Whether I hurt them.‎Whether I was unfair.‎Whether I should have stayed.‎Whether I should have left sooner.‎Whether I said too much.‎Whether I didn't say enough.‎Whether I am becoming someone I actually like.‎Whether everyone else likes her too.‎God.‎It never ends.‎And then there are people.‎Oh, the people.‎People are complicated.‎Or maybe I am.‎Or maybe both.‎I can have a room full of people who love me and still find myself wondering who I could actually call at 3 a.m. without rehearsing the conversation first.‎I have lots of friends.‎I do.‎But somehow, if you asked me to name the people who feel like mine, the list gets embarrassingly short.‎And even then, I will probably spend an unnecessary amount of time wondering whether I am actually as important to them as they are to me.‎I don't know why closeness has to come with this little voice in my head that keeps asking for evidence.‎I want people close.‎I just don't want to need them too much.‎I think needing people can take a horrible turn when you know, eventually, they could leave.‎And I hate people leaving.‎I really, really do.‎But somehow I am always prepared for it.‎There is a part of me that is already standing at the door before anyone has even suggested going.‎I don't want them to leave.‎I just want to know that I could survive it.‎Maybe that's why I can be so affectionate and so detached in the same breath.‎I will love you with my whole chest and still have a quiet little plan for what happens if you disappear tomorrow.‎I also have this horrible habit of doing too much too soon.‎I know.‎I know.‎Don't look at me.‎Someone is kind to me and suddenly I am thinking about what they like, what they might need, what I could do for them, what I could make for them, what song I should send them, what little thing they mentioned once that I should remember.‎And then I remember that maybe we have only known each other for five minutes.‎Excellent.‎Slow down, woman.‎But I don't always know how.‎I like people.‎I like making people feel loved.‎I like doing things for myself too, actually. Little things that make life feel like mine.‎I can spend an afternoon deciding I want to make something and then actually make it. I can get excited about an idea and disappear into it. I can decide that today is the day I will change something about my life and believe it with my entire heart.‎For about six hours.‎Then someone makes an offhand comment and suddenly I am questioning the whole thing.‎It is ridiculous how often I let imaginary opinions into decisions that belong entirely to me.‎Sometimes I think I would be so much freer if nobody could ever see me.‎But then...‎ugh‎I want to be seen.‎But then I also want to be seen accurately.‎I don't want to be made into a villain because I made one mistake.‎I am willing to be complicated. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to admit when I have hurt you. But don't reduce me to the worst interpretation of one thing I did.‎Why, after all that's happened, why are you looking at me like I have committed some great moral offence because I got something wrong?‎Why, after all I have done, why is one objectively ugly moment dragged into the sunlight and held up as evidence that everything underneath it must be ugly too.‎Are we not all human? Don't we all get to be wrong sometimes? Don't people get second chances anymore? ‎Why, after all you've put me through, why do you look at me like I am cruel because I don't want to support you?‎Maybe I don't.‎Maybe I can't.‎Maybe I simply don't like what you're doing.‎Maybe I have a life, a boundary, an opinion, or a very good reason that I haven't explained because I don't owe every person a courtroom presentation before I am allowed to say no.‎And why, after all your distance, why are you so offended by the fact that I am a person separate from you?‎I can love you and disagree with you.‎I can care about you and still say no.‎I can think you are wonderful and still not want to be involved in something you want me involved in.‎So why, after all you have taken, why is it never enough for you?‎ughh‎Why am I even thinking about this right now? ‎Its now four a.m. and I have successfully stared at the ceiling, in the dark, for the past two hours thinking about everything and nothing all at once (iykyk). ‎I could have been sleeping.‎I could have been resting.‎I could have been doing literally anything else.‎But no.‎Apparently this was urgent.‎Apparently the girl I was three years ago has requested a meeting.‎And since she has terrible timing and no respect for office hours, here we are.‎The thing is, I don't even know what I want from all this thinking.‎An apology from the past?‎A revised version of events?‎A time machine?‎I am so tired of the little army of what-ifs that goes on in my head.‎What if ‎What if ‎What if‎oh, shut up. ‎Sometimes I genuinely want to grab my own brain by the shoulders.‎Enough!‎Not everything is a clue.‎Not every silence means something.‎Not every change in tone is a warning.‎Not every person who pulls away is secretly angry.‎Not every mistake is a prophecy.‎Not every bad decision is proof that I am incapable of making good ones.‎I know this.‎I KNOW this.‎And yet.‎Here I am.‎Still thinking.‎Still making mental notes.‎Still trying to understand why someone said something the way they did.‎Still wondering whether I should have been softer.‎Still wondering whether I should have been harder.‎Still trying to figure out if I should apologize again. ‎But I'm so tired of apologizing.‎Sorry I cared.‎Sorry I did not care.‎Sorry I said no.‎Sorry I got it wrong.‎Sorry I got too comfortable.‎Sorry I was too much.‎Sorry I wasn't enough.‎Sorry I changed my mind.‎Sorry I needed something.‎Sorry I didn't need the thing you wanted me to need.‎Sorry I am a person and not a perfectly predictable collection of behaviours you can arrange into whatever version of me makes the most sense to you.‎I am not always going to make sense.‎I sometimes wonder what people would think if they met all the different versions of me at once.‎Would they think I was inconsistent?‎Maybe I am.‎Maybe I am not one person so much as a collection of people who have somehow agreed to share a body.‎The sadist.‎The lover.‎The dreamer.‎The creative.‎The anxious girl.‎The sarcastic one.‎The one who wants to be left alone.‎The one who wants someone to notice she has gone quiet.‎(My siblings have suffered in my hand).‎And somehow, they are all me.‎Which is probably why I can contradict myself before breakfast.‎I can say I don't care and mean it.‎Then care so much five minutes later that it becomes embarrassing.‎I can decide I am done with someone and still hope they text me.‎I can want independence desperately and still secretly want someone to make things easier for me.‎I can take responsibility so quickly I barely leave anyone else time to decide whether I actually did anything wrong.‎I can be blunt enough to hurt someone and then spend the rest of the night feeling guilty about it.‎That last one is especially irritating.‎I don't like guilt.‎Guilt remembers things I thought I had already forgiven myself for.‎But regret is worse.‎Regret has excellent memory.‎It knows exactly which sentence to bring back.‎Exactly which moment.‎Exactly what I should have done instead.‎And there is nothing I can do with any of it because the past is so annoyingly committed to remaining in the past.‎It is now five in the morning.‎I am tired.‎My brain is still talking.‎And tomorrow I will probably do something I have already sworn I wouldn't do again.‎I will probably make another mental note.‎I will probably dream about something completely impossible and believe in it for a little while.‎I will probably laugh at something inappropriate.‎I will probably try again.‎And again.‎And again.‎And again.‎Because apparently, despite everything, I have not become tired enough to give up on myself.‎Which is something.‎I suppose.‎Now,‎can I please go back to sleep?

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