Dear rude best friend,

I hate you. I hate you the same way that you made me hate myself. It's not fair. But in the end life's not fair and I get that, but I am just so sick of you. You take almost every day of mine and find a way to twist it into nothing. You take so much from me without my permission and it hurts. You leave burn marks on the backs of my eyes and you take my heart and beat it down into a pile of ash.

But I love you. For unknown circumstances, I need a "reason" to be sad or a "reason" to feel the way that I feel. Or a reason to explain why I'm feeling nothing. I can't stand having you around but dammit I need you. It's not as simple as people make it out to be. They tell me that laughter is the greatest medicine and that nothing can cure sadness like some tea and a good book. But with you, I can't just laugh until you die away. I can't drown you in tea and not even the happiest fictional character can take you down. That's why I need you. I need you so I can explain the involuntary fluctuation of negative energy. "What happened this time?" Oh boy, let me tell you all about my acute depression! That's what everyone wants to hear about, right?

You see you're like the rude best friend everyone had in high school. The one that has been with you for as long as you can remember but you just can't stand anymore. You wait for just the right moment to hit me when I'm vulnerable and I'm done. I want to sleep. I want to avoid doing anything and everything. I want you gone. Out of my life. You don't deserve to be with me. You don't deserve to be a part of who I am, but sadly you're here to stay.

I can make peace with every other demon I've encountered. The physical pain, emotional distress, being drained mentally; all of that I've been able to make ends meet with. But with you trying to make peace is like trying to eat soup with a fork. It doesn't work, it will never work and eventually, you get so fed up with trying all you want to do is take the fork and jab it into the table and take the soup and throw it across the room. Then pull your hair and you end up in an endless storm of emotion. In the moments you are there, I feel nothing. But as soon as I try to deal with you I end up feeling everything at once.

I'm trying to figure out how to explain the "worst" of what you do to me, but there isn't really a "worst." Everything about you is legitimately terrible. You aren't like the "fight or flight" response anxiety is. Where it pops up in circumstances my body feels are threatening so it reacts to the negative stimulus. You aren't like my bipolar where it's a roller coaster, but at least there's some feeling there. You're just all dark.

You give me endless amounts of medicated care and I feel like I need to speak with dozens of doctors to explain what's going on in what I hope ends up in us being able to see eye to eye. It's hard keeping track of all the pills and dosages and appointment dates. It's hard having to check for negative side effects and it's absolutely brutal when I have to keep trying different medications when the first 15 don't work out. And when they don't work you come and go as you please. You're like a switch that turns itself on and off.

I have an analogy for you; I just became very interested in escape rooms. They're exciting and adrenaline inducing and I could keep doing them over and over again. But it didn't long for me to realize that you have similar characteristics and I guess that's one of the reasons why they're so appealing to me. You see I'm locked in an area where I have to solve different puzzles and overcome different obstacles to reach the end to get out of where I am. But with you, it doesn't matter how many word problems I solve or how many different lock combinations I try - you just don't have an exit. The fact that I can get out of an escape room offers me a different experience from you, an experience I've needed for a long time. And I keep asking myself: "Why don't you have an exit? Why can't you offer me solutions?" I'm never going to get my answers to those questions and I realize that. Since I've been able to accept that, it hasn't been as bad with you as it used to be.

You aren't dangerous. People say that you are, but you're not. I thought you were because it was easy to just blame you for all of the things that happened to me. But the truth is by letting you win battle after battle without putting up much of a fight I did most of the bad to myself. The bad ends up teaching my something in the end but I refuse to give you any of the credit. They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but you don't make me stronger. I make myself stronger. You're a bully, and I refuse to play the victim anymore.

You took my self worth and held onto it. You tied me up and taunted my with it by hanging it over my head. It's almost always been out of reach. And while there will be moments where it definitely is out of reach, I'll still know that you do not have all of it. You'll take a piece of me when you come, but when you go I get it back. You can't control me forever and regardless of how hard it becomes I refuse to give up just because it feels like I'm eating soup with a fork.

Sincerely,
Me