A House of Paper —a memoir.

In my mind’s eye, there’s a world where I sit in a house made of paper.
There’s only one window, and through it, I watch everything else go by.

It’s like seeing my life from a stranger’s eyes through some 80’s television set in unintelligible static grey. It’s the ‘implacable otherness’ of it all that gets me, as if everything and everyone is alien, including myself.

Sometimes, you don’t know how to articulate how bad you feel.
People can try to help, but sometimes nobody seems to understand.

So you sit there, suffocated by this inexplicable darkness. And you’re just crying, not understanding how anybody walks around or functions when there’s just so much hurt in the world.

You watch the paint peel painfully off the walls.
You feel crushed by the heaviness of the burdens you carry and will carry.
You try, but cannot construct the possibility of a happy future.

I remember not being okay.
I wasn’t for a long time.

One day, I woke up, and that particular morning, it felt as if the veil had suddenly been lifted. It is my honest story, and I don’t know what was special about that morning, or how or why it came about. Only that I could feel it, that something had changed.

Slowly but surely, color started seeping into the world, and I could actually hear people’s laughter and touch the world and not feel so other —

I could just suddenly breathe…
I don’t know why or how it just happened to me, just that I’m thankful.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:
If you feel terrible, please seek the help of a medical professional or licensed practitioner. There are also free mental health resources and anonymous crisis lines out there, which personally helped me a lot too!

Even after years of feeling okay, I’ve never forgotten what that long darkness was like.

Actually, I don’t think I will ever be able to forget how that felt. To be trapped and tortured in one’s own mind. Sometimes, I feel guilty being okay, even thriving, when I know so many people may be stuck in that darkness still. To me, it’s like knowing that other people are being eaten alive while you’re living your life.

It’s why I ask myself often whether I’m contributing anything to the world, whether I’m working hard enough to make the most of my life or adding any good back to humanity.

I remind myself how lucky I am to not be drowning anymore and sometimes, I worry about how anything might change in a moment if I’m not trying my best. It’s the fear that one day I’ll realize that everything I’ve built is that house of paper — its flimsy foundations to collapse with some fickle gust of wind.

Before that happens, one of my main goals in life is to build places of refuge. Where people who don’t belong can just ‘be’ for a moment. I don’t want anyone to drown anymore. And before I dissipate back into dust, I just want to bring a lifeboat to someone else.

When I grow up, I hope I become someone that the me in the paper house is proud of. I hope to work toward a world that’s just a little gentler, a little kinder, and a little more patient by trying everyday to be that. And for everyone else still in that long darkness, I hope you make it out alright. After you get out, I hope we can cook something warm and watch some stupid movies, laugh at everything we went through, and just be alright.