[MOONDUST] I put myself in the shoes of a deeply troubled girl and as I wrote down her plight, I could feel her sadness. Can you?

A deep breath and a forceful exhale – I hoped this would get rid of this heavy, toxic feeling in the middle of my chest – making it hard for me to breathe. The ground started to shake beneath my feet, nerves straining on the temples of my forehead – what was it that I was trying to remember – a happy feeling, perhaps?

When she – my mother – got sad and all those repressed feelings manifested themselves in the shape of a disease, I blamed myself. When the very air inside my own home seemed to turn foul at the very touch of my existence, I resented myself. And now that everyone is obviously happy without me, I despise myself.

Why is my family’s unhappiness almost ALWAYS tied with me?

Breaths start coming in shorter and shorter as I mentally will myself to move – run away from this toxic place that is my room, this house, the people in it. 

I – Kaya – am a troubled soul. I am she who wakes up at 3 in the morning with misty eyes and a heavy heart. 

I am she who spends night after night being envious of the stars just because they are so comfortably far away from here.

My house is a beautiful place full of beautiful things. I have so many pretty dresses, you know? More than you could ever dream of. I have food. I have books. I have shoes. I have money. So – 

“What do I have to be depressed about?” everyone asks me, with a mock in their tone and tease in their eyes.

Yes. I have everything – everything except someone to understand me. 

I want acceptance, not judgement.
I want love, not resentment.
I want you – my dear family – to stop hating me ”out of concern.”

Get me this one last thing and I will be happy, I promise. 

I – who am neither an adult, nor a teenager – want to be understood; I – who am still in the process of figuring myself out – need you to be cooperative with me.

You are my family. I trust you. I fight for you. I love you. Unconditionally. Then why is it that when something goes wrong with ME – personally – all of your faith in me vanishes, all of your hopes and dreams of me come crashing down and I am reduced to A MERE FAILURE?

It’s already a very harsh world and I hope I am not asking for something extravagant in wishing that – when life blows me down – you will become my soft landing – not a bed of thorns – constantly reminding me with EVERY SINGLE PRICK where I fucked it all up! 

Today this 21 year old has everything – everything except mental peace. She is fatigued. She is tired. She is weary of soul – not because of the world and the disappointments of life – but because her own turned their backs against her in the moment she needs help the most.

Believe me – your silent stares of judgement don’t go unseen. Your disappointed sighs don’t go unheard. I can taste it all in the very air and it’s suffocating me.

I might just run away and come back all renewed – morphed into the version of myself that you most want to see.

But before I can do that – I want you to see the REAL ME – with all my faults. And I want you to KNOW that every reaction is an answer, not a question – the questions were all yours. When you turned me away silently – you asked me (without words) some very basic questions:

“What even is your worth in this family? What is your importance?”

And my answer came out in every single retaliation, in every single shout, and in every single night I spent crying in my bedroom. 

You have got me thinking of myself as a culmination of all the bad luck in the world – but of course, you do it all because you are “concerned”, aren’t you? Well – how can I argue with that! 

I will be waiting, then – for another one of your verbal thrashing.