Good Morning, Midnight!

I've never been much of a concert-goer. I went to one concert in 6th grade with my cousin and our parents, and I really went more for the music than for the concert experience. I have been to a Christian youth conference called Acquire The Fire, and that was something of a concert experience.

On Thursday, I had another concert experience. A few people from my youth group went to a Stellar Kart concert not too far from here. Stellar Kart was good, yes, but what I really enjoyed was the more local opening band, Good Morning Midnight. I loved them before I heard them, just because I loved their name. But I also loved their music. It was lovely, as far as rock goes, and so easy to relate to.

But I am getting ahead of myself. There is a girl in our youth group called Kind. She is tall, thin, and blonde. She's quiet and nice. And she is good friends, of late, with Han. This occurred while I was out of attending youth group. When we got there, he started talking to Kind. This wouldn't normally bother me so much, but for two things: The first is that I'm extremely sensitive lately, more so than before, to his interaction with girls. The second is that his back was rather turned to me, and if it wasn't, they are both so tall that they talk to each other right over me. Then when we were on the bus, he wouldn't let me sit by him. He sat in the two seats in the back, and Kind sat in front of his seats. I sat in front of him and to the side, as there were no back row behind me. I was upset that he'd somewhat ignored me, and also that he wouldn't let me sit by him, and that Kind was closer to him than I was. So I wasn't overly responsive to his little attempts to speak to me. In fact, I faced the window and tried to keep from crying.

Let us pause to examine this need to restrain tears. I've seen my psychologist a couple of times now and the 'diagnosis' is Major Depressive Disorder, which I in no way doubt. Depression or not, though, I'm incredibly sensitive and he knows it. I hate to say this, because it sounds so overdramatic, but this is all considerably due to my feeling completely worthless and inept. And part of that feeling came from the entire Cheer situation. Actually, a lot of it did. That, and his associated hate for any sign of upset from myself. Which was something I couldn't help. Believe me, I tried. I don't think I've every tried harder at anything my entire life. I literally could not keep myself cheerful for any significant length of time, and thusly, I could not keep him happy with me for any significant length of time. Which made me feel like crap, let me tell you.

And that feeling of crap comes up at any time when I feel ignored or unimportant. Which Han doesn't seem to understand. So my moodiness only proved to further agitate him. Which only made me feel increasingly worthless. I didn't even hide it after a while. He reminded me that I was making him look bad and ruining the night, which I hadn't done yet. But since he was going to be upset about me doing something, I figured I might as well do it, so I cried and didn't hide it. Eventually, I forced myself to calm down somewhat. But for some reason, half-way through the concert, I couldn't any more, so I left the concert and went to a back hallway and sat in a window to cry. I didn't think anyone would be there while the concert was going on. One man did walk through, though. An adult man wearing a name landyard walked through and asked if I was okay. My answer was of course an affirmative. Even though of course it shouldn't have been. He asked if he could do anything (a negative) and if i was sure (an affirmative). He told me that if I needed to talk, to let him know. I said okay, even though I had no idea where I'd find him.

And that got me to thinking. My parents are always upset at me when I am unhappy about something they want me to do. Han is always upset at me when I cry for any reason, especially related to him. Everyone is upset at me when I am upset. And this one man that I don't even know is the only one so far who has kindly offered to help without any kind of condemnation. I have only two theories for this:

1. Everyone has their pre-determined ideas of what I should be and what I am capable of. They don't seem to comprehend at all the lack of control I have on my emotions, and maybe they should. And the man who offered to help didn't have those standards already set. He didn't have before and after photos to look at. He didn't see a selfish attention-hungry brat, and he didn't see a pitiful oversensitive nuisance. He just saw a scared and hurting little girl sitting in the corner of the window. It is probably the most obvious thing to see, but no one else seems to look at it that way.

2. Everyone who gets upset at me for my feelings knows how ridiculous they are and how wrong I am for having the feelings I get. They know I'm wrong and messed up and oversensitive and the man that offered to help didn't know me well enough to know that the feelings I had were wrong.

The man left me with those thoughts. And I remember also thinking that Han wouldn't look for me, much less find me, and that he might not even notice if I had left. I didn't really want him to find me at this point, because I knew how upset he would be if he found me crying. But I wanted him to at least look for me.

He did find me. He found me and he hugged me and tried to get me to stop crying and told me he wasn't mad and he was sorry for earlier. All I did was cry more and tell him that I was sorry for ruining the night and that he should go and enjoy the rest of the concert. He did go back to the concert, but made me go with him.

The rest of the concert was good, until the ride home. Everyone had said they wanted to go to McDonalds except our youth pastor, who wanted to go to Burger King. Kind was going to McDonalds. I didn't want to be around Kind. Not then. So I said, "Hey, we should go to Burger King to keep our pastor company." So we went into Burger King, and when the youth pastor came in, guess who was with him? Kind. She had talked the whole night about wanting McDonalds, but as soon as Han and I went to Burger King, what did she suddenly want? This did only bad things to my mood.

Han and I sat by each other on the ride home. He talked to me a little, but he talked to the pastor and to Kind more. The radio was on, and I sang a little, but only to myself. I had my head on his shoulder, and I looked at him a lot, hoping he'd feel my eyes and look back and smile. He didn't really. But it's silly to think he'd know to do that.

I cried when I took him home, I think. I can't remember why. All I remember is him going inside and telling me that he couldn't handle much more of me crying, that he just couldn't. That didn't make it any better.

So, along with at Good Morning Midnight shirt and cd, I was left with this:

Would you tell someone with cancer to just get better? Then why would you tell someone with depression to just cheer up? Do you think I enjoy this? I don't. If it were that easy to just 'be happy,' then believe me, I would be. You don't have to tell me.

I love Han to pieces. I do. But I've become more fragile and he's become less gentle. I don't know what to do anymore.

I've always believed that if I had an incurable disease, I would cut off ties with people I knew and cared about. Because I didn't want to upset them when everything fell to pieces. But for some reason, I now have depression, something I can't get rid of, and I can't bring myself to get rid of my friendships. I feel like I have to. I have to stop making everyone miserable with my misery. But I can't. I want to run off without any warning or explanation and leave them alone, because they'd certainly be better off without me. But I can't. I care too much about them, especially about Han, and I also don't have enough money.

I did run away, though. Last night I dropped Han off at his house a little early and went to the park. Where I cried. This was in part because I didn't want to cry around him. But once I got there, it was largely because I wanted someone to come and find me. No, here's what it really was (to me) :

There was a princess suffering a great tribulation. She was all by herself. She had tried many times to end her suffering and her situation, but she couldn't do it by herself. Her only hope anymore was for someone to do it for her. But no one wanted to rescue her. She was the princess who wasn't worth rescuing.

So eventually I got off the swingset and walked back to my car. I started to heat it up and I kept crying. And lo and behold, a car pulled up. Yeah... it was a cop car. Telling me that no one was supposed to be in the park past 11 p.m. The only person willing to get me out of the park was someone who has to because they are paid to.

But, it is late. Good night, everyone. And good morning, midnight.

<3 o.

You Know There's Something Wrong When...

1. You miss school Thursday and Friday, have a Snow Day on Monday, and return to school Tuesday to discover that the outline for a research paper (for which the topic you have yet to choose) is due on Wednesday. You have a powerpoint presentation to finish over Vienna, Austria that you also need to have done by Wednesday. First hour Wednesday, you have an Econ test and you didn't bring your Econ book home to study.

2. You cry a lot for stupid reasons. Reasons like you have a big nose or that you'll probably never be able to write a book. And what sort of reason is that? If you want to write a book, then write a book. You can hardly cry because you'll never be able to write a book unless you're terminally ill or completely incapable of writing. Otherwise, what are you crying for? Nonetheless, you cry about it. Not because you want to, or you choose to. But thinking about these things makes you cry, and you just can't stop thinking about them. You really don't have a choice.

3. You cry a lot for no reason. You're just sitting there reading or working on a paper and all of a sudden you become conscious of the fact that you are crying. Upon further investigation, you can find no trigger for this phenomenon. No pain, no irritant (emotional or otherwise), no reason at all. And yet, you are completely incapable of stopping yourself - and then the fact that you can't stop yourself from crying for no reason at all seems to you a very good reason to be very upset, and that only makes you cry more.

4. You yell at your reflection in one mirror, and cry to the one in the other. As if they were people. As if they were different people, with different personalities. As if one reflection were to blame for whatever is upsetting you, and as if the other reflection is able to make you feel better. And then you apologize to them - for being insensitive and a burden. As if they care!

5. You don't enjoy anything. Your favorite past-times go unfinished if and when you call forth the energy to start them - which isn't very often, because it takes nearly all of your energy just to drag yourself out of bed in the morning. This is even worse if you have a reputation of being an energetic person. Five hours of sleep? Eight hours? Fourteen? Regardless, you wake with the same feeling: Complete and utter, unshakeable exhaustion. Apathy. Carelessness. The feelings drag on through things you are usually so dedicated to; art, sports, school, friends, church, music, whatever. All of a sudden, none of those things seem to matter very much. Or, if they do, you simply don't have the will to deal with them, because they aren't really enjoyable, they are a burden now.

6. Your way of coping with these difficulties is mostly thinking of self-mutilation. Attempts to find a way to hurt yourself without any physical damage, outside sign of self-inflicted pain, or hurt to your friends. You don't want to do any real, physical damage. You don't want to end up in a hospital, because you don't want this to be public. You don't want your friends to know, because you don't want them to have any feelings of confusion or guilt. Self-inflicted emotional abuse? Does that exist? You could take your migraine painkiller every day -- that might fix the problem all together. The doctor gave you a pretty high dosage; the medicine makes you pretty loopy. But, no, that's illegal.

7. No one believes you. According to everyone you take the time or energy to confess this to, you are a drama queen, you are over-reacting, you are crazy -- but you're fine, and nothing is wrong with you! You just need to cheer up and get over it -- and if you don't, then these people (whom, you decided after much internal mental conflict, you trusted) are going to have to leave or stop talking or walk away if you don't -- because they can't handle it. Because your emotional fits are too much for them to handle. Yes, your tears, your fits, your stress, and your all-around madness is too much for these outsiders to handle, but you -- the person coping with having all of it running around inside your skull -- are expected to "cheer up" and "get over it." As if you have a choice. As if you choose to cry compulsively. As if that's something you take pride in. As if screaming at your mirror is enjoyable. As if it's comforting that the only that comforts you is the idea of hurting yourself. Yeah. I bet you totally love it. I bet that you choose that, and I bet you wouldn't change it if you could.

<3 o.

p.s. : My mother doesn't know much, if any of this, but I've told her that I need "help," and we are in the process of finding me a psychologist.