I am sitting on the sink counter. My hair is already crisp from the one box of bleach, but am I going in for second box? Hell yeah.
As of lately, I have been in my head quite too much. I’ve been through two break-ups and a couple of back-togethers (no, I’m not with him and yes, it is okay), and have tried to be independent from my parents. My mind is a thing of its own, and I know there are people out there that understand what I mean.
I have confessed things to my parents that have broken their hearts and broken my relationship with them. And when I get the question “Well, why would you do that?” or “Are you crazy? You are NEVER supposed to tell them those things!”, I come back to my mind. I come back to my guilt. My guilt is winning.
For the past two years, I have been living a life of fun that my parents had no idea about. I lived a pretty normal “secret” life that everyone but the adults in my life knew about. The drinking, the sex, the weed, the vaping, the everything. And, up until this point, my heart and mind were fine with the lying, the hiding, the biting my tongue that came with it.
But, abruptly, that stopped. It started with my relationship and went from “Woah, I had a dream about my ex” to “Woah, I think I’m still in love with him and I am thinking about him even though I don’t want to be.” Then, as my relationship disappeared, the guilt only transferred. It changed from not being able to control my thoughts to not being able to control my tongue.
And so, everything came out. But, no matter how much I confessed, no matter how much came out, more would come flooding in. I confessed it all and then decided to live on my own. Make my own mistakes and not have to confess them.
The funny thing about guilt, though, is that it only transfers. It’s adaptable like that.
I went back into my relationship and I confessed and confessed and confessed until I gave up. I called it quits. My brain won. Then my brain won again when I confessed my weekend with him to my parents by text on the car ride back. My brain is winning now as I cannot stop thinking about how my parents are not going to like my new hair and how I used their Walgreens points to get money off to buy the second box of bleach and not your mothers blonde shampoo.
Now, as I sit here on this sink counter and write my heart out, waiting for my hair to dry, I’m left to wonder: will this be forever? I am left to wonder if the user I have become of monetary things and how the world has so grabbed my being if I can ever be released. If I can ever go back to being kind without having to think about it. If I can ever get to drink and party and tell my parents because I want to not because my guilt says I have to. If I can live a life of my own.
For those of you out there that might be experiencing or have experienced or will experience what I am going through, you are not crazy. You are not alone. And for the love of carbs, “Don’t use permanent words for temporary conditions.” (It;s a quote from the TV show, A Million Little Things—my mom quoted it to me at the start of this, and it’s stuck around; therefore, I shall pass it along.)
Signing off,
Lo