I need to make art. I need to make beautiful art out of my sadness, out of my suffering. Or else, they are just worthless suffering, *real* suffering. And I don’t want real suffering, because then, everyone will know that all I am is just a pathetic and weak excuse for a human. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so confused, so confused, so confused. I don’t know what’s authentic or not, which of my feelings are real, and which of those I’m just projecting upon myself to fit into a particular brand of ‘mentally ill.’ I am not creative, or articulate. Or maybe I was, *was*. Not anymore. The fucking medication, and the stress, and the chemical imbalances are all destroying my brain, shrinking it, turning it into something I don’t recognize anymore, someone I don’t recognize anymore. I am so scared, so confused, so broken. And I don’t fucking know how to let people know. I feel like drowning. Drowning in this pit of mental instability where I start to lose my grasp on reality. I don’t even know what to say. I feel like crying. For the longest time, I’ve enjoyed the notion of being mentally ill. It brings a certain flair to my creativity, my art. But now, I can’t even do that anymore. There are too many unrecognizable emotions running through me that I cannot begin to hope to decipher them, to transform them into a commodifiable form for people to feast on. No, I’m the only one there is to enjoy my suffering, and I’m not even enjoying it.

I was about to write something a few seconds ago, I don’t even remember it now. That’s how my life has felt these past years: thoughts and memories and emotions slipping through my fingers like water, undeniably real and there, but unreachable, uncountable, undecipherable. I am so tired. So tired of trying to understand someone who became biologically wired to be so complicated and unreliable. Complicated, in fact, that there’s even a manual needed to recognize them, to learn them. I don’t know. Does it feel dehumanizing? Or am I just saying this to go with what I think I ought to say? Nothing feels real anymore. Even this, even this, just feels like shallow art.

I re-read this and found joy in its beauty as an art, not as my confession.