I feel like putting on a sad playlist and not moving for days. Like, completely unmotivated to do anything remotely productive. I just keep finding myself months deep in my thoughts, and theres nothing really pulling me back anymore. I miss biking to campus. I miss walking to class. I miss lying in the sun under the campanile, climbing the three flights to Lauren’s apartment. I miss when Clara would reply to my messages. Whatever world I lived in six weeks ago is just gone now, and it’s really breaking me.

I hate admitting it, I hate feeling it, I hate the places my brain goes and how I can’t function like everyone else can function because sometimes I feel like I’m already dead. I know everyone is really suffering right now, which is why I shouldn’t feel jealous or anxious whenever anyone else is happy, like I shouldn’t feel that way ever when anyone is happy during normal circumstances, and I should be able to exist fully in the world without worrying about other people, but it’s kinda all I do.

I just really like the feeling of things working out. And I had that before this, kinda. I had my normal anxieties and fears and whatever but this is like, sometimes I want to put myself into a coma until this state of the world can be over. And I’m hyper anxious, and hyper paranoid, and I feel chest pain simply by looking at other people’s social media, or by a message being ignored, and I want everything to feel like it did six weeks ago when I didn’t cry every time I imagined other people existing without me.

I don’t know why I feel like this or what’s wrong with me and sometimes I just want to curl up in a ball under my comforter and fall asleep for a really, really long time. I am trying not to text people, because I know it will hurt me when they don’t text back. I want nothing more than to spend every waking second with the person I was seeing before all this happened, but it’s not happening and so instead I’m trying to hold myself alone and sort out why my stomach sinks and my heart pinches every time her name pops up on my screen.

Maybe it’s the distance, or old anxiety, or just the way I am— constantly afraid other people do not have the capacity to love me in the way I can love them. But on top of living completely alone in a world that feels like sandpaper, I can’t be trying to figure out how I fit into someone else’s life. So I know I made the right choice, that I’m giving us a better chance by waiting, but it feels so fucking awful. Like, every time I think about it I want to cry, and I kinda always want to cry anyway, and I know things aren’t perfect for her but I know she’s in a better place than I am and that makes me feel sick, which is dumb because I have to stop feeling like every emotion felt by anyone else on earth has to do with me. She can be happy and miss me as much as I miss her, she can feel okay and care as much as I do, she can keep her distance and want to abandon it all the same. And all of that could be wrong but regardless, I need to stop worrying about it, & stop thinking about it. I need to find a way to let someone in without whittling them down.

I feel like I cry every day now. It’s like this game I play with myself. How long can I keep it together before I fall apart, usually over dinner, around 7 or 8pm. But I called my parents sobbing and my dad was trying to tell me what a beautiful thing it is to feel as much as I do. And sometimes I think he’s right, when he says “it’s the stuff of great works of art, your emotions” but sometimes I’d also rather never feel it again. I could keep growing, and thinking, and changing, and watching the world revolve around me and accepting and accepting and accepting over and over again that maybe things will never be what they were but that’s so exhausting and sometimes I just want to wrap my happiest memories around me like a safety blanket, and I want to pretend 300 miles can’t change how she feels, that somehow even if I don’t see her for a year she’ll still want me, that time won’t erode our feelings like time always erodes everything I think will last.

And beyond that, there’s the fear that the way I imagine it before isn’t even how it is. She said she worries that I don’t know she really misses me too. And that’s true. I feel like I’m so used to pouring myself into relationships and receiving nothing in return that I interpret every action as a sign. I’m hyperaware of how much more I send, how much more I make, how much more I worry, and talk, and mail as if the tangible objects between us are an accurate measure of our feelings. And I know they’re not, and that everyone shows love in different ways. But I’ve always been the kind of person who shares everything with the people I love. Because I never want anyone to doubt how much they mean to me. Just like when I’m angry, when I feel hurt, when I’m broken— I show that in silence. But now I’m trying to be silent without the bad feelings. Because unfortunately now just isn’t our time. Right now I need to figure out how to get through this semester, and the summer, and maybe the rest of the year without anything that grounds me.

Clara told me she started just disconnecting. Letting time pass her by and that she stopped comparing now to then, and she just let herself fall into it. I’m so bad at that. All I want to do is hold on as tight as I possibly can to what it felt like in early March— how alive, how exciting, how colorful in every sense of the word and I know I’ll hurt less if I just let it go and accept that maybe things will be like that again, and maybe they won’t, and regardless time keeps moving. So I’m going to try to surrender to the not knowing. Accept, for the first time in years, being in a situation in which I am not the happiest, and force myself to stop trying to change it or obsess over what was.

The sun is coming out and it’s supposed to be nice the next few days. I might try to see the ocean this weekend. I just need to get through a few more weeks and then I’ll start a new routine. Maybe I’ll send her something later, even though I’m afraid. Maybe today I’ll get over it. Maybe someday soon I’ll get to see her again.