No.

 For real, no, I don't want to continue, I can't bring myself to. I still walk and I am alive but I am a husk. I am entirely void of life on the inside and all I care about is that I'm on leave on Friday. I can't even bring myself to care about doing my job correctly anymore. I'm sleeping awfully thanks cycle and summer. 

The conversations that don't include me in the office just feel like noise to my ears and I just want to roar at them to shut up, that they should go elsewhere. The only moment I feel somewhat alive is when I talk to Passiflora or Esme, or when there's a bit of laughter with Capella. Also when I'm finally home, and I get to write, whether my novel or this, and pour out all that I hold inside. All the heaviness. All the weight that nobody likes. 

No one likes Hi'iaka's baggage except Hi'iaka. And it's not that I like it. I just know it like it's mine, because it is. That alone is enough to understand it and not judge it, or at least try not to be too hard on it.

Cepheus is on leave and I'm too tired to go upstairs today. I want to go one last time before I go on leave, but not today, definitely not today. 

***

This morning, I got an email from my advisor. Yesterday, Sunday evening, I made an application to a job at the air force base. It requires similar skills, but it's in a domain I have not yet touched, which is chancery. I've actually been interested in it for a bit and the advertisement actually says you'll be trained by tutoring, which I would definitely like. Learning something new like chancery, which I've been eyeing for a while and looks tedious but interesting AF, would be definitely more stimulating than repeating the same tasks over and over.

I did not send my application, but instead transmitted it to my advisor. The reply I got just made me feel... done. 

"Hello Miss Hi'iaka,

Regarding the job vacancies on [public service job application website], you can apply directly. No need to contact [other contact at the organism she's part of].

Please note that the recruiter is looking for proven experience in a chancellery.

You might also want to look at local government roles, where you will find more administrative positions suited to your profile.

I will use the latest version of your CV to update your file.

I hope you have a good day"

...I don't really want to contact her anymore. I have to see her on Thursday and I just don't want to and I'm probably going to be closed-off, but it feels like ever since I told her about the failure at my exam and the amount of pain I expressed, she's got much... less warmer.

She used to sometimes add a little ":)" every now and then, and it would add a nicer touch to an otherwise former email. I still did in my email, and now I'm just met with your regular formality.

I feel like once again, I was let down once the real, raw Hi'iaka came out.

Perhaps I truly am that dangerous, or unacceptable to look at.

***

I can't imagine how Cepheus and Cassiopeia could treat me once they are aware of the honestly terrible confession I have to make. If it ever reaches Hopoe's ears, how scared she might become of me, even as I will never outwardly mention her role in it as not to blame her or put her on the spot.

The one that I nearly killed myself in November.

***

Caught myself looking at the gas pipes in the archives room. The gas mix is for protecting against fires I believe, it's nitrogen and argon, and it's apparently not dangerous for people in case they get stuck there. Still I thought it would be nice to trigger the system. But nah, I'm too terrified of suffocating. If I'm ever found suffocated somehow, that probably means I've been murdered.

I prefer blood spilling out, or impacts, or slipping away with substances and not being discovered until a while later.

***

It feels like everything is nonsense. The star nonsense. The whole nonsense I'm building, here. I just wonder why I'm still doing it when obviously nobody would hold me as a star in their own sky, or as a mythological figure in their own legend. 

It feels like my direction is nonsense. That I'm just treading in the dark, but that deep down, I'll always have to settle. Eh, that's life. You're told you can be anything you want, but the reality is that you're determined from birth in ninety-nine percent of cases. 

You can't escape who you are. You can't escape being a proper piece of garbage when you are one.

It feels like my job is nonsense. That I'm only going there because I want to keep my room, but that I'm checking out, and I may be already far away, inside. 

If Hera offers to prolong it, I will take it. For my room. For my own place. It doesn't matter that it's sucking the life out of me. 

It's not even the admin field, or the military setting. It's being forced to sit from 8am to 11:30pm and from 1:30pm to 5:30pm (8 to 12 on Fridays) in an office with five other people. 

It's being forced to perform that I'm not this fucking close to imploding most of the time. That I'm not dying. That I'm most likely already dead inside and that I'm just waiting for a cue, the courage, and the definite will to finally end this circus that my existence is.

A circus. My future is one. Hokulea's dance group, reconciling with Hopoe...

...at the same time, one of the only things that still feel unmoveably real is exactly that, the bond with Hopoe. It's fucking insane. I must be fucking insane. But I try to think of it as just a vast projection, or a joke, or simply something that I made up, and I cannot. 

I definitely can't. It is just as real as the fact I have a body in the first place. That's the strange thing about it all.

***

I just... I don't know. I'm just losing all bits of hope I have in the idea that I will ever get supported by others in a meaningful way, for a sufficient duration that I can get back on my feet, for real, like it's actually supposed to happen. It's all about being redirected to "mental health professionals", as if there's any truth about something as nebulous as "mental health", and said professionals don't really care about you. They perform care. They throw medication at you hoping it will cure you from whatever's breaking you. 

Those didn't exist in the old times. For sure, stuff like schizophrenia is a thing and a very real brain disorder, but mental health as we consider it today is just a massive cloud of fumes. As I said, it shifts depending on what times we live in. 

When you need truth, presence, and something real, there is just no way that some paid "support" will help. And I will repeat it again, what a goddamn heresy to pay for something as basic and human as support. My mom holding me when I cried during an insomnia episode did way more for me than any therapist's words or "homework".

***

People tell you to "go see a therapist". "There are professionals designed to help you". "That really helps!". They slap the label of "person with problems" on you. 

"Problem". What a word. It's like "resilience", "coping", "moving on", "moving forward", or "professionals", or concepts like self-love: I'm starting to hate this word. 

I don't have problems. There's no problem here. I have no "problems" to speak of. 

Problem, Merriam-Webster definition:

1. a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution
2. a proposition in mathematics or physics stating something to be done
3. an intricate unsettled question
4. a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation
5.difficulty in understanding or accepting

That's not what is wrong with me. I have nothing to solve. 

There is no murky enigma to solve here, and who said that there's always a solution?

Who said there always MUST be a solution anyway?

There's no solution with me because there is just no problem.

I am utterly broken, I'm dying at 26 and will probably not be buried until I'm 96, and yet I have no problems.

It's paradoxical. 

***

I bet that if you're reading this, you might think I'm going totally off the rails, but I just... I can't imagine I have a "problem", and I've been told so many times in my life, and had it implied so many times against my own perception, that somehow other people knew me better than I did, and that I "had issues", that there's just no way I'll allow myself to be gaslit into thinking I'm sick ever again.

What I have is that I'm exhausted. That I'm carrying it all because I have no choice. That I'm always bracing for the moment others are going to just stop caring about me. For the moment I am let down, betrayed, or worse, for good reason, and my advisor proved it yet again and I fucking hate that despite that, next time I meet someone who feels safe, the instinct to open up will be stronger than any of my mental barriers. Effectively putting me on the line.

There's always that sense of "what if it could be different", and I can't imagine this is an insane idea. Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over expecting different results, but when it's with people, everyone is different, and there's always a chance you do hit something different this time.

I guess this is why I'm still here.

It's always been why. 

Curiosity.

***

I wish I could turn it off, but it's impossible.

I wish I had the will to kill myself and finally put an end to a show that should have stopped as soon as I turned twelve or thirteen. 

But fuuuck.

It's like trying to crank a lever that's been welded and thus cannot move.

God dammit.

I feel like Grandpa Marsh.