Mom and I

had a long serious talk

About that summer job I'm not going to find

And those careers that I'm not going to like

And the IELTS test I'll bomb

And the scholarship I'm not going to get.

We talked

About my weight

About my eating habit

My goals

The unexisting to-do lists

The list goes on into an indefinite spiral

Of meaningless words

That supposed to become my future.

I cried every time she asked:

"What do you want to be?"

I kept on crying and crying.

I am ashamed

Because the only answer I could give her is:

"I don't know."

I don't know what I want to be.

I don't know if I'm going to die at twenty from a stroke or suffer obesity till I'm eighty

I don't know if I'll have a job at all

Or if I'll graduate from University.

I don't know anything about my future.

I don't know what to do with my life.

What do you want to be? What do you want to be?

I don't know, I don't know, Mom

Stop asking.

I don't know.

-------------------------

I get emotional lately.

Cry a lot. Cry every night. Cry until my eyes bleed dry.

Cry in my sleep. Cry until I flail back to reality.

Cry

Because

I'm becoming worse

I'm becoming more confusing

I'm stressing out and driving myself crazy

I'm failing epically in every single thing I used to champion.

Cry because

It had reached a point where

I'm not sure whether to turn

Going straight

Or back off.

But sometimes, I cry not because I'm angry at myself.

Sometimes, I cry because

Not even Mom noticed

I cried.

-------------------------  

I told Mom

I got diagnosed with Depression

I hoped she would freak out and press me to tell more

I wanted her to do so

I spent the night organize my thought

Thinking how to properly tell her my story

Tell her I'm thinking of committing suicide,

Pressing the pencil tip to my wrist, wondering if I pierce hard enough

Will anguish came rushing out of my arteries?

Tell her I want to feel regret draining warmth off my fingertips,

swirling down the sink

Tell her I can't handle the failures this year have been.

But she did nothing.

Mom nodded, laughed, carried on

Like everything is normal and happy.

You've always like that, a bubble of ignorant.

I didn't mention that

I'm depressed and suicidal to anybody

Again.

Funny,

I hate you for being ignorant.

But in the end,

We both turn a blind eye to be imperfect, crippled version of life

And pretend to be the opposite.

------------------------- 

I like to describe myself

"Self-assured" "confidence" "resourceful" "talented" "smart".

Those words, though,

No longer me.

They have become a shell I'm trying hard to fit in.

They changed

From skin to armour

From natural to forceful.

I used to know much about myself

Now I don't.

I don't know where did the hard-working me go

I don't know why I'm getting emotional

I don't know why I need to keep up a reputation

I don't know why I'm setting too many tolls on myself

I don't know what I'm trying to prove by pleasing everyone.

Sometimes I talk to myself

Talk to the silence

As if it is an animate, breathing object

As if it somehow holds the answer to all my questions

As if it contains the recipe to the perfect me.

As if.

"Self-assured" "confidence" "resourceful" "talented" "smart"

In the morning, when drowning in the silence of the birds,

I realize the shell is only getting thicker, tighter around me

It's impossible to distinguish

where the real me begins and the trying-too-hard-to-be-perfect-that-it's-pathetic me ends.