I am tired. I always feel tired now. Even restful weekends, meant to help rejuvenate and rebuild, leave me feeling knackered. It’s silly, really — being 25 shouldn’t mean I’m forever worn out, forever battling against the tide, but lately, that’s been the case. I try and ignore it, tell myself that everything will be fine in a few months. I tell myself that it’s okay not to be okay.
Creatively, I’m drained. Ideas zip through my skull as I drop off to sleep, as I drive from place to place, but never make it to the page. I never used to be scared of the blank page, but now it seems like a void. Content, content, content. A constant need for content. Watching, reading, tweeting, twitching to ultimately end up cycled out of the dark recesses of the mind and into the mental recycling bin, replaced by the next relevant post the algorithm decides you need to read.
I know that I am loved. It is a comforting thought. But I sometimes wonder whether I am liked. I often know that I have been forgotten. I think that’s why I always wanted to write – I was so desperate to be acknowledged and to be remembered. I wanted my words to be tattoos, quotes scribbled on notebooks, phrases whispered in the dark. I wanted to be a friend, but I’ve never been very good at making friends. I tell myself that I want moments of peace, that I’m good with my own company, but I crave attention at the same time. I want nothing more than to be heard.
My anxiety continues to grow and gnaw at my soul. Like a virus, it courses through my blood and infects my sense of wellbeing, my sense of tranquillity. When anxiety bears down, it is never quiet. I play loud songs to drown out its carrion call, but music is no longer the escape it used to be. It has been around a year since I came down the stairs in tears and told my boyfriend that I had to give up my website, because I no longer felt worthy enough to keep its heartbeat going. Since then, I have felt like a fraud at every show. Even when music was my every breath, I still felt like an interloper in the scene, like I never truly belonged. I sometimes wonder if I will ever belong to something greater, whether I will ever gain a place in history. I hope that I will learn to be content with where I am, but I am ever reaching for the stars, and cursing everything but my own poorly engineered ship for not taking me there.