I always write things and never finish them. Maybe this will be different. Hopefully this can be something I’m proud of. Sometimes I really hate myself. Sometimes I just don’t want to put the work in, I just want to be someone and something but I don’t know how to get there or just don’t want to go. 

Jen, I’m lost.  If you are out there, if you have accomplished something in this crazy world, give me a sign, please.  I’m feeling hopeless.  My nose is starting to burn and my sight is starting to blur and I fight back the urge to release my frustrations in liquid ribbons down my face.  Maybe it’s because I haven’t taken my pills in a few days.  I need to remember that.  I need to remember lots of things, but I rarely do. 

Are the pills helping? I don’t know.  Jen, will you ever be able to rely on yourself? On your own body, your very own body that isn’t really yours, it’s a fusion of others’ parts and pieces but does that make it mine?  Sometimes I feel that I’m unique.  Sometimes I don’t feel like anything.

Jen, have you figured out who you are?  Am I doing the right things?  Am I taking the right paths?  What even is right and wrong, what have you discovered?  I don’t know what to do.  I feel like a different person every single day.  Why are half of the sentences that I have written so far questions?  I should be sure of myself.  I should only be writing declarative sentences.  There’s one thing I’ve learned in school, look. Perhaps it’s worth it!  I’ve also learned that I haven’t really found a true friend.  I’ve also learned that some moments can feel perfect and the very next moment absolutely terrible.

I don’t care if this is a good story or a bad story.  It’s my story.  And that makes it neither.  Jen, I need help.  Jen, where are you?  Jen, I’ve been looking for you.  Jen.  I think I’ve lost you.  Do you ever say a word so many times that it starts to sound foreign in your own ears?  Do you ever feel like you’re in this alone? 

Jen, I don’t know what to do.  I started a blog, and I wrote one article.  I was, dare I say it, proud of myself for once.  I enjoyed my life for a short time.  Then that time ended.  But I was too afraid to show anyone what I had written.  My blog sits lonely in cyberspace, yearning for appreciation from someone besides myself because I can’t trust my own opinion because I need validation from others but I wish I didn’t.  I’ve taken guitar and piano lessons and I’ve quit piano and I blamed it on school and I told myself I enjoyed music.  I think I do, but I’m not sure.  I’m not really sure of anything.  Quizzes and surveys and tests online that teachers thrust upon you in order to show you the way never help me. 

I sewed a little.  I’m in the process of making a dress.  Does that make me cool?  Does that make me interesting?  Colleges need me to be interesting.  They need me to be well-rounded.  Colleges want me to be valedictorian and record-holding track star and student government president and captain of the debate team.  Jen, I used to think I could be that person.  Now my grades are slipping along with the state of my mind because obviously the two are intertwined and I’m about to cry again and I hope this essay has hidden meanings and symbols because will it be considered good art if it doesn’t and I just want to leave something behind and what better thing to leave behind than art and maybe this whole essay should be a run-on sentence is that radical enough for the world? Have I broken enough boundaries?  Torn down enough walls? Have I made a difference? Jen, answer me please.  Do I still have time left?

I record the passage of time by counting the number of scars that aren’t there on my arm.  I think I’m in so deep Jen, but I’m merely “mild.”  Yet another label.  Jen, is this label true?  Are any labels true?  Jen, do you have any answers for me, any answers at all?  I’m begging you to send me a sign to pull down the sun from the heavens and place it in my open arms as I sleep and maybe a smile will grace my face.  I used to smile so much.  I used to see the sun all the time.  Jen, why is always cloudy?  Always overcast, rarely sunny.  I haven’t had a bad storm since the pills.  He said the pills were nothing.  He said everyone takes them.  He said fifty percent of the population suffers from depression.  Jen, is there something wrong with humanity?  Why do I think I’m special, I’m not, I’m just a number, a number that wants and needs and yearns and breathes, but at the end of the day I’ll be a statistic, a percentage, something for people to boast of and brag about.  But will anyone be bragging about me, Jen?

I’m reading back over what I’ve written and I feel nothing.  No pride, no sadness.  Will someone feel something?  I certainly hope so.  But it’s just ramblings.  It probably doesn’t even matter.

Goodbye, Jen.  Maybe I’ll see you for the first time, sometime.