Typically, I wouldn’t be public about the detailed aspects of the downturns for my mental health. While I open myself up and whittle away at the vast and complex state of my being under the current state of the world and my own unique health experiences. I’m turning 22 this year, and this is a cry for help.

Tomorrow, according to the publishing date, is my birthday. I’ll be officially older than my mother was when she had me. The fact that she was around my age when I came into being makes this entire experience, all things considered, even worse.

I’m sick. I continue to be sick. I am writing this partially because I took off of work today because I cannot tomorrow. I shouldn’t have taken the day off. I’m barely going to make my rent, I had to ask for help with my internet bill. Once I pay my bills, I will have almost no money in my bank account. At this point in my life, I am dependent on my diminishing scholarships and student loans to pay for my basic living expenses, the generosity of my retired father when he can afford to loan me a couple of hundred bucks. Every time I see my bank account balance drop, I feel like vomiting. Picking up medication, going to the store, feeding myself every day, asking for more needles for my HRT because I’m never given enough, begging for coverage because my heart is beating in my chest so hard my bedroom starts spinning and not getting an answer.

I keep asking myself what the point of this is.

I am filled with so much fucking love.

I’m in a time in my life where some of the most vital relationships I’ve ever had are the ones I hold now. Overwhelming love for my lover and the friends who have shaped my life in irreplaceable ways. Like hands that morph and shape wet clay. It is through these means of connection and love for the sheer volume of humanity I feel that I feel compelled to stay, to hold on, to let myself change and be changed.

I cannot ignore however the ever present violent throbbing in my chest. I break out in a sweat at the suggestion of movement. I rely on the likes of my mask and other sensory equipment in public to hide my discomfort and suffering. My constant, obsessive fear for at least the past few months that I will crack my head against the floor or counters in my apartment, and the only concern from the people who see me in real life is whether I’ll be showing up for my shift and turning my homework in. If I died, it would take until I didn’t pay the bills for anyone except the people miles away from me to notice. I am perpetually fearful of either letting myself slip away or losing control of my health and losing myself and the people I love in it.

I was supposed to graduate this year. I feel an eternal pressure to have things together, not because of the state cultural expectations on work and the typical adult life, but because of the sheer instability I’ve lived in all my life. One thing goes wrong, the balance shifts, and an entire system can collapse. I’ve seen collapses. I’m writing about collapses. I have borne witness to so many physical collapses on a personal scale. I have felt the shattering of everything I knew so distinctly in a moment of utter despair and especially medical collapse. I am 22 years old and my terror of dying is so exceptional I do not think I have looked towards the grander thrills of life in quite some time, outside the exceptional fantasy.

I want to live old. One of the few things I’m proud of, convincing my father to stop one of his last damaging vices with cigarettes. The woman who raised me died of a heart attack in 2017 after ignoring the signs of symptoms for several weeks, and I was one of the last people to spend personal time with her alive. I can barely remember the trip that we took, which initially showed the signs of her illness. I cannot remember her voice.

I am consistently pained by the state of the world. I am an angry person. I desperately hope to see better days. I am working with people and communities to support my own life, to make things better for not only myself, but the people I know and don’t know.

When I began writing this I was feeling an intense despair, I was tasked with seeking out my support systems in between finishing this now. I am fighting to change things. I will fight to make things better. I am turning 22, and I will keep living. I dream of a long life. I dream of a life free from the horrors of capital and the mechanisms of suffering we are all put through.

I love you.