I'm the happiest I've ever been for an extended period of time.

It's not great.

It doesn't feel amazing.

It doesn't feel like I'm complete.

Maybe it's the part of me that relied so heavily on my mental illness, maybe it's the part of me that leaned into my mental illnesses, maybe it's the part of me that saw the mental illnesses as part of me, maybe it's the part of me that trauma bonded with people, maybe it's the part that's just so fucking done with this.

I'm getting happier, and I feel like part of me is missing because of it. Funny, huh?

I spent my entire life wanting to be happy. I spent every waking moment praying, wishing, screaming to a god that never answered me, asking for happiness, for some kind of relief.

And yet I've found my only relief is in the agony.

I don't hate being happy, but it doesn't feel like happiness. I know it is. I smile. I laugh. It feels overwhelming, sometimes. So much emotion, trapped inside my body. It's like an overwhelming amount of light has come to smother my darkness. But my darkness is still there. It's always fucking there.

And then the happiness fades, even for a split second, the darkness weeds it's way in. It puts me in this horrible position between light and dark, between happiness and the agony. It feels like someone stole my darkness, and left me with nothing.

Stealing darkness doesn't let in the light, it just leaves you empty.

Maybe I'm still the part of me that relies on my mental illness, maybe I'm still the part that leans into it, maybe I'm still the part of me that sees it as part of me. I've been mentally unwell for so long, I'm scared of the person that hides underneath.

I don't know who that person is. I don't know who the person is that hides underneath my mental illnesses. I don't know who they are and I don't know if I want to know.

Are they me? Are they scared? Are they hurting? Do they want to be happy? Do they want to live?

Are they the child I grieve?

Are they the child that never got to be?

Are they the child-version of the adult I'll never be?

The person that died before they got to live?

The person that withered away and stopped living and just survived to cope?

Or is that me?

Is it all me?

Am I them? Are they me?

I grieve the person I could have been. I grieve the child that never got to live. I grieve the parents I never got to have. I grieve the life I could have had. And yet, underneath it all, I know. I know. That person cannot be grieved. They never existed. But I suppose it's like grieving a fictional character in a book or movie.

That person doesn't really exist.

And yet we grieve.

Why can't I grieve the child that never was?

I think I'm in one of those headspaces where I'm out to try and push myself into bad headspaces. Purposefully or not.

I've lost so many people. Friends, family. Heh. Ironic, isn't it.

My family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, repeatedly told me that "You can't get rid of family". That I had to forgive all that had hurt me because they were family. And the second I don't want to, when I told them I'm not going to embrace her with open arms, that she has to earn that, if she ever can, they shut me out.

Disowned me completely. And they have the nerve to reach out, months later, to ask to talk.

Fuck that. Fuck them. I don't need them. I survived long enough while suffering, I can survive without them. I don't need them. I never needed them. I made it this far, why the fuck would I need them now, of all times?

They don't even know me. I thought they'd disown me for my identity before they disowned me for this. I didn't even get to tell them. I never got to hear them shout that I don't know my own name. That my name is my deadname and not my new one.

Is it fair to miss times that never came?

I guess I can substitute their words with the words others have spat at me.

"Trans people don't exist."
"Your name isn't that."
"You aren't a son."

Kinda stings, even if I tell myself I don't care about what they think. Even if I lie to myself and say their opinions don't hurt. That they don't leave my chest with an empty ache where love, support and acceptance should have been.

I miss my friends. I have friends, I do, I have some amazing people in my life. But I still find myself missing my old ones. The worlds in my heart that were specifically for them. The words that have died, become apocalyptic, or have grown so empty that it hurts to try and fill them.

I love too hard, I've realized. When I love, I love. I give people my everything. I give them every spark and kindle. And if they thrust the fire back at me, burn me with my own love, I engulf us both in flames and leave us both hurting.

Loving me is a loss either way, I guess.

Ex-friends have posted vents about me on multiple sites, on multiple apps. Most are just angry. Hurt, angry, blistered with the heat of my agony and my fury.

I have a safety net. I have my safety net. Do they have one? Why do I care? They turned my love around on me. Why do I care if they fell and had someone to catch them?

I guess I care for the same reason I go back and read their vents. I screenshotted some that I knew would get deleted, or if I was leaving the app. Why did I do that? Was it some twisted form of self-punishment? "You can run but you can't hide"?

I know why I read the vents. Because I miss them, and the vents are the last thing I have of them talking to me or about me. It's like a kick in the teeth.

"This is why you lost them".

I did something to deserve the flames being thrown at me, didn't I? I must have. I read to remind myself why I lost them, why I left, why the flames of our pain burned us to nothing. I read to re-demonize them in my head.

"Don't miss them. You don't deserve to miss them".
Or.
"Don't miss them. They don't deserve to be missed".

Some people, if I saw them again, I think I would fight. Them, myself, my urges, I don't know. But I would fight. Anger so consuming, I wouldn't know what to do with it, and I frequently don't. Gods, I am such an angry individual.

Some people, I think I would breakdown sobbing if I saw them again. Sometimes I do. I think I see them, or I do see them, and I sob. I fall, I crumble, my body stops working, and it's like my mind has become a prison, locked in a cage where my only ability is to cry, and cry, and cry, and sometimes scream.

Some people, I think.. I think I would like to see again. If only to see if we could work out differences. Is that bad of me? Where we were so badly hurt, but I'm prepared to talk again just to end things peacefully?

I sound pathetic. I know I do.

I'm not expecting responses or anyone to really read this. I just had to vent. Have a good day.