25 down

I haven’t been myself lately. Although the way I’ve been feeling is all too familiar. Sad and hopeless. God, I sound like a commercial for anti depressants.


I will be turning 25 in just under a month. I’m not going to lie and say it’s not a big deal to me. It is. I am experiencing a lot of mixed feelings about this. I feel as if this is a wake up call that I’m in the real world now. I’m a real live adult now. Not only that, but also, the first quarter of a century of my life is coming to a close. 25 years are almost lived, gone, done. No second chances, no turning back, and what do I have to show for it?


Like I said, I have a lot of mixed feelings. I should be focusing on the next 25 years instead of wallowing in the sorrow of my impending aging. I got my first wrinkle the week I moved. This was about a month ago. I tried to brush it off because most of my friends are older and well versed in the life of wrinkles and gray hairs. They looked at my pathetic wrinkle and laughed and me! But, the truth is, most of the time when I look in the mirror that’s all I can see. Now it’s really hitting me that time doesn’t turn back, slow down or stop. It only goes in one direction and there’s nothing you can do about it.


There have been so many things running through my head this last week that I can’t even put them into a sensical thought process or sentence. Today, my life and me are the compilation of all of my choices and experiences. If anyone felt the way I feel right now, they would not see that as a good thing. What am I doing here? Is what I have what I really want? If not, why am I wasting my precious life? My daughter’s precious life?


I’ll be 25 in just about a month and I’ve been thinking about the last five years of my life and where I’m at now. I don’t know. I just don’t feel happy. I don’t like this part of me but I can’t help it. I’ve been trying to snap out of it but I just can’t find my way out.


Five years ago I was pregnant and single. I felt lower than dirt. Depression would have been an understatement. I wanted to die. I remember being pregnant and wishing I wasn’t all alone when I felt fat and ugly or when I had a 3am charlie horse. I remember giving birth and looking into Nevaeh’s eyes and feeling remorseful that there was only one set of adoring, unconditionally loving eyes on her when she entered the world when I knew she deserved two. That I was only looking for my own features in her and no one else’s. And every first after that, when sometimes all I wanted was someone to share the proud moments of parenthood with, and I knew I wouldn’t have it with Nevaeh.


Aside from Nevaeh there was another light of hope that helped me through all those difficult emotions that year, 5 years ago. I was still so young and I knew I would have a second chance to do it right. I wouldn’t have to go the rest of my life not knowing what it felt like to share a child with someone and have a family. To not have to do it all alone. I put all my hurt into that idea and I had confidence in it. I took comfort from it.


I feel like my mid-mid life crisis is leading me down a path of discovering that what I’ve allowed my life to become may be a huge disappointment and a direct contradiction to what I thought I wanted for myself. I’m finding that the thing I held on to so tightly for comfort in the past doesn’t have a place in my reality or my future if I continue down this road. Another child doesn’t make any sense for my situation, in fact, it’s a laughing stock. Trying to accept that makes me feel like my heart has dropped into my stomach and I’m about to retch it out all over the place. Like my insides are just being twisted and turned into mush. And in this sea of negative emotions and physical pain about my past and my current situation, there is an undeniable over cast of self-loathing. I don’t know how else to describe this feeling except that I want to crawl in a hole and die.


I guess I feel like I’ve been through some shit in my near 25 years of life. I’ve seen some shit and dealt with some hard truths and hard people. I’ve had to do some very emotionally difficult things. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite the way I do right now and that scares me. I feel like someone died. I feel like I’m mourning for something. I just wish I knew what to do to stop it. And I wish I didn’t feel so lonely. I wish at least one person on this earth could tell me they understood me.


My wake up call to the real world has uncovered some truths about my reality that I’d much rather have left buried. Now I need to find the coping skills necessary to rebuild this comfort I gave myself 5 years ago that’s been crumbling down around me the last few days. Hopefully I won’t make the mistake of hoping for something else that may or may not ever come to pass.