The game

I lost The Game.

Well, I had to get you back somehow for all of my suffering. That's pretty much the extent of my revenge, though. I almost feel sorry for all my readers who are going to lose The Game just because of this silly post. Then again, this sort of thing is truly unexpected on this sort of blog, so do I earn brownie points for that?

This lightheartedness is really wearing me down but, again, I'll deal with that in a few days. This isn't a game to me, but I'll go ahead and have my fun for now. It's better than dwelling on how helpless I am.

Who is there

I'm there for other people. I'm telling them not to commit suicide. I'm urging them to talk to people. I relate to them that depression is hard to overcome, and there is no one perfect way to recover from it. I prompt them to accept their feelings, like I've accepted mine, but to not use them as motivation to kill themselves.

Other people are there for me. They also give me reasons not to die. They offer to talk to me if I ever need to discuss my feelings and situation with them. A lot of them say to stay strong, not really knowing that I'm already weak and intend to stay weak, but I know they mean well. Most of them only know how depression works on the surface, and I almost don't want them to understand how it works deep inside.

I keep lying to myself and saying that you're there. Honestly, you abandoned me. You know better than to do that; you stayed with me at first, and you've stayed with others to support them. But I scared you out of your wits, and the situation seems to most like it has passed the point of recovery. I still have hope to fix this all. You'll be there in less than a week. I hope what I say sinks past your fear and into your heart.

What's ours is mine

I told one of our mutual friends that I think about you in many of the things I do. He said to make those things my own. I think I've begun to do that. When I watch our favorite YouTubers, I watch them because they make me happy. When I take pictures of my family like you'd often be forced to do, I remind myself that they are my family. When I watch TV series and movies, I keep in mind that I am enjoying the show. Anime was always more my passion than yours, so watching anime is easily my thing, no emphasis required.

On the flip side, I'm not going to lie and say that they are only mine. I do occasionally remember how we used to do these things together, and I wish we were still doing it together. But that isn't the primary thought in my mind, at least not while I'm actually doing those things. While I'm enjoying myself, those thoughts of us being together aren't regretful but hopeful. We'll do this again someday. It'll all be fine, and we'll be best friends again. And you still won't want to watch anime with me, but I'll just do that on my own.

While I'm making our things mine, I'll play Final Fantasy VII all the way through. You aren't holding me back in Midgar anymore with your plea, "Don't play any further than I have!" No matter how much you roleplay FFVII, that game and its lore are going to be my experience. The flip side to this? I'm looking forward to roleplaying it with you again... you'll like that, too.

Blogging

A new friend of mine told me that she'd like to blog as well. I think, similar to this blog, it'd be a vent. She's posted some well-woven words on her G+ profile. She asked me to impart blogging knowledge to her (which I didn't really consider myself having) so this post will be a reflection on what I do on this blog.

Subject

Tell Her Before I Die is about a person whose struggle with depression is alleviated by communicating to a particular woman, though that woman refuses to respond. The posts, thus, have to do with that struggle or with that woman.

Fictionality

This blog is nonfictional. Nothing that is posted here will ever be fictional.

Presentation

I present my blog as a digital collection of unsent or open letters. You may notice that the gadget that connects to my G+ profile is identified with "Yours truly," as if it were my signature on these letters. I do recognize the letters as part of a blog, though.

Addressal

The second person, or the reader, in my posts is assumed to be the woman that the person wants to communicate with. The person is referred to in the first person as the author. Except for celebrities, other people are addressed by their relation to the person and the woman rather than by name. These rules don't apply to other elements of my blog, though. For example, the Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention box is addressed to the internet at large.

Language

My blog is written in American English. The mood of the language used ranges from casual to romantic.

Patterns

• I update the blog twice daily.
• A post title's only capitalized letter is the first letter. The titles follow proper grammar rules for capitalization. The titles lack ending punctuation (periods, exclamation marks, question marks).
• In terms of HTML, I adhere to HTML5 standards. I place my content in an article element. That element's ID starts with the letter a followed by the date and daily post number, in the format of aDD-MM-YY-#.

Tendencies

• I often end my posts with a closing thought, normally only a sentence long.
• My posts usually consist of some paragraphs of prose in mostly-plain text, with some italics for emphasis. This post and my Valentine post are examples of deviations from that.
• The post titles are usually a phrase or sentence that summarizes the post.

Someone wanting to blog should consider what their blog's subject, fictionality, presentation, addressal, language, patterns, and tendencies will be. Those are the essence of a blog, as far as I can tell. I wonder if you would want to run a blog?

Light-hearted approach

You know, I never got to share my wide variety of music loves with you. You usually want to listen just to the music you already have. So I have no idea whether you'd enjoy this electro playlist I have on. For all I know, maybe an ulterior motive to this restraining order business is so you don't have to listen to music with me? Last time we listened to music together, I was crying and whimpering about so many of them. If you were listening to my music, maybe you'd be crying and whimpering to let your ears stop bleeding! X3

By the way, couldn't you have picked a different court date? I have to postpone my dental appointment due to your inconsideration, jeez. I rather fancy my dentist, you know. I'm not sure you would, given how insecure you are about your teeth... how do you treat your dentist, anyway? o.O

Okay, there is one thing very serious that I need to ask you about. Your sister stopped talking to me. I really need her to talk to me again, because I'm gonna die if I don't get more episodes of Game of Thrones. Gotta get the goods from her! Gotta see more of my favorite characters die I guess ;~; it's addicting.

Welp, hope your night is going well! And I hope you get BBC America over in New York, because Doctor Who is starting back up in Autumn~ Talk to ya sometime!

It isn't quite going back

For a while now, I've been going back through the Liked videos on my YouTube account and listening to the music. It's 3,248 videos long right now, and I'm on video 3,110. I can relate to some songs in ways I didn't understand before. Other songs help to distract me. The songs at this point are ones I knew long before I knew you.

I hope that listening to these songs can help me pretend that I never met you. Of course meeting you was a good thing. It was the best thing in our lives; I did put you together with her, after all. But right now it is not a good thing for me. The days when I didn't know you were the days when I could live without you, so I'll pretend that I'm in those times. Or, I'll pretend that nothing has changed since those times.

Music is truly my escape now, it seems.

Skip

The best thing I could think of happening to me right now is becoming unconscious until you speak to me. Hand me a poison apple or spinning wheel, please. Just let me sleep until you come to me. I don't want to go through this suffering. I don't want to die, either, because then I couldn't speak to you. I would lay limp and unthinking for years if it meant I could wake up to you. I would waste all of my life to avoid my suffering until you speak to me.

But there's no way that can happen. Most likely, I'm going to suffer. I can't decide whether I'm scared to suffer. Maybe I'm afraid of losing hope. Right now I want to live, but I'm afraid of losing that desire. So I'd rather be unconscious, so it'd be impossible for me to contemplate suicide. I'm scared of the possibility that I'll think it best to die again.

Hump day

Wednesday is Hump Day! Smack in the middle of the work week, it's the day that the ire of school students and full-time employees peak. After that, they start looking forward to the upcoming weekend. So, if you were to graph the ire, the graph would look like a hump.

I've decided to start celebrating Hump Day on my G+ profile. How to do that? One way is to post camels, the patron creature of humps! Besides Quasimodo, that is. The other way is to consider humping, or pelvic thrusting, and post something sexy. I'm doing more of the latter, particularly in defiance of the recognition of Sexual Sunday. I did get two camels in there, though. It may surprise you to know that one of those camels also fit in that second category of posts. Oh, furries~

You never actively look for NSFW images; you're the text type, reading fanfic galore. But you always appreciated those images with me when I came across them. I bet you'd like the eyecandy that's on my profile today. I'll add Quasimodo in a bit.

I hope you've had a good week. Look forward to the weekend!

I reveal so much

I said that I'd start lying to myself, but I have been having trouble starting to do so again. In my room, I don't bother to chase away thoughts of you. With my family, it's hard not to show how frustrated and downtrodden I am. In public, I can only give a courtesy smile for some seconds. Whenever I talk to our friends, I can't help but fawn over you. I admit to them, "I need her to reach back out to me." And they're put in such an awkward position, knowing how much I need you but not wanting to take a particular side. There shouldn't be sides to begin with, but of course they've developed.

I think I actually care about breaking further. I don't want to shatter by lying to myself. I'm so selfish that I'd rather bring everyone else down. Well, at least I haven't overwhelmed them like I did to you. Then again, I couldn't possibly open up to them like I did to you. On top of that, I won't ever allow myself to let my emotions all torrent out, unfettered and unrestrained, again. Nobody should have to deal with that.

I never would have thought that the solution would be to tell the world, to be honest. I always thought that these deep afflictions are something to be shared with a trusted and loved few. I know now that this thinking is wrong. I'll talk to many people and tell them just enough. When I can care again, I'll be so grateful that they have been there for me.

And what about them

I want this to be just about you and me. But, to begin with, she is involved. That's not as much of a problem as I made it out to be when I broke up with you. Next, your family is involved. They like me, but they're as scared of this situation as I am. Our friends are involved; I'm glad that they care about us equally and want the best for both of us. Finally, there's those strangers who tell you to stay far away...

I've always known that it isn't only you and me. Obviously, that's why I let you be with her. I'm never going to delude myself into thinking that I can be everything for you. But, just in the matter of speaking to each other... that should be between between you and me. I know you still want to talk. So, let's talk as soon as possible. Please don't let me suffer for so long.

You would like those things

When I'm doing all these things to distract myself, I keep thinking about how much you'd enjoy them. Listening to a piano and violin cover of a Mass Effect 3 song. Watching Sauron's mace being forged. Hell, even celebrating my grandmother's birthday, I thought you'd have fun spending time with us. Not sure if the cake would have been too spongy for you.

The moment those thoughts turn into regret, I lie to myself again. I make myself enjoy it. I convince myself that we'll be doing these things together again, even though I have no idea. Everyone else is happy as long as I've got this grin on my face and laughs coming from my throat. If you were talking to me, I'm sure you'd be happy that I'm enjoying myself. But, if you were talking to me, I probably wouldn't have to be lying in the first place.

I'm just so happy when we do things together. I can hardly wait to do that again. Literally.

Lying again

I'm going to lie to myself again for the next week and a half. There's nothing I can do here without you, so I might as well pretend that there's nothing wrong. I'll drown out my thoughts with fibs and distractions. It doesn't matter if that makes me crack more. You'll help to fix me.

I'll keep posting honestly here. I'm sure that I'll have even more to say as I chip away. More than that, I don't want to die before I can talk to you. Posting here convinces me stay. These lies are only to get me through my days without bringing everyone around me down. They really don't deserve that, when they can't even do anything to help me up.

What can be said

In less than two weeks, I'll be talking with you. In front of a judge, yes. Still talking with you, more than doing this blog is. I don't intend to act. I'm just going to be what I am. And I do expect the whole room to be filled with the vibration of my emptiness.

I keep thinking, hoping, and dreading. What am I going to say? I want the judge not to grant the restraining order. And I want you to reach back out to me and talk to me. What will I say to make that happen? On top of that, I have no idea what you're going to say. I have no idea if I'm going to cry. I don't even want to think about if you keep me away from you. I can't bear to think about that. If that happens, I'll have to burden so many people to stay where I am.

And, if you do reach back out to me? What will I say to convince you to hold my hand? I can't even begin to think about that. If I plan for that and it turns out that you won't reach out in the first place, I'll be even more crushed. Not going to push that far into the future.

When I speak, I hope everyone listens.

I honestly forget

Sometimes I realize that there is a certain thing that I want to say to you. But I put off posting it here. I start listening to music, reading G+ posts, and watching videos. In the process of all that, I forget what I was wanting to say.

I've said to you, "If you don't remember it then it mustn't have been so important." I'm not sure that's true. Being able to put my feelings into words is very important, both for my wellbeing and your understanding. I think it may be the fact that I don't care about myself anymore. The concepts and words I found slip away because I've discredited myself. I'm not important, so these things I want to say about myself aren't important, and they disappear.

Forgetting what I want to say isn't even forgetting about you. So, even if forgetting about you is a good thing, forgetting my words is no progression. When everything is quiet, the helplessness of being unable to express myself punches in. The emptiness of a person with no words sinks in. The desperation to escape...

Please, never forget about me. Come back. I need your help.

Are we having fun yet

Why not follow up my previous song-referencing post with another one? Yeah, yeah, do you get this reference? Heheh.

Today, Markiplier streamed for a depression & bipolar disorder charity. I heard about that yesterday, through a video he titled A Rough Day. He played Super Mario World for a few hours. Unfortunately, he was very ill, so he ended the stream after only three hours... but the fundraising goal was nicely surpassed. I came into the stream about halfway through, but regardless I loved watching what hilarity and intensity I caught. My mom watched a few minutes with me. I told a certain friend about it and he caught less than half of it. I asked him to tell you about the stream.

Did you catch it? Did you enjoy it? If things were all right, I could have told you myself, and I would know how much you enjoyed it. We probably would have watched it together. You like Markiplier more than I do, so I'm sure you watched if you could. Of course, you liking him more isn't why I thought of telling you about the stream; you're just always on my mind.

You want to feel okay. I know that. I want you to feel okay. I always hope that you're enjoying yourself and what you have. For myself, I just want to stay around. Feeling okay by watching that stream, watching videos, listening to music, and talking to people helps me. Yes, there are moments that I can't ignore my emptiness. But having fun is a good way to prepare myself for those moments.

Surely we'll have fun together again.

My bestest friend ever

Throughout my life, I never had that best friend some people have. I never really stuck close to one friend. For 17 years, I couldn't name a favorite friend.

From the moment we met, I liked you so much. When you started at my school, we clicked instantly. In a matter of days, I fell in love with you. You fell right back in love with me. Throughout the years of our relationship, I told you that you were more to me than just my girlfriend. My affection for you is all-encompassing: I loved you as a sibling, woman, friend, parent, child... everything.

The one thing I failed to recognize was that you are my best friend. Because I never understood what a best friend was, I didn't even consider it. You asked me during our last weekend seeing each other whether I had ever had a best friend, and I told you that I hadn't. You said that's why I couldn't understand why you wouldn't cut her off. Now that I recognize that you are my best friend, I do completely understand. I cannot cut you off. You came into my life, and you will always be a part of it. And I know that I'm a part of your life, too.

Since we're here in each others' lives... I will do my best to make this presence a good thing. For my best friend.

I was wrong and just can't live without you

Yes, that title is a reference. The full song really is something you don't get from the Swiffer commercials. I've been tempted to throw away money to distract myself, like the first lines of the song suggest, but I haven't. There's a lot of free ways to do that which weren't available in the late 70s. Big thank-you to the internet right there.

I just wanted to make one thing clear: how I was wrong. I forced you to choose between me and your best friend. I wasn't even genuinely saking, I only wanted to test your loyalty. I thought I could teach you a lesson about loyalty by breaking up with you. I was arrogant, thinking that I needed to give you that lesson, that I was strong enough to teach it. You know, I didn't really think about how this would end. I figured we could continue to be friends, but I was under the illusion that I never wanted to be with you again. The biggest sign that I was lying to myself should have been that I completely stopped listening to music. You know how much I love music. I was not being myself; I was trying to be strong.

So many songs have said, "I'll die without you." I never took them as seriously as I do now, having thought that over and over. So keep me in your heart, so that I don't die.

Keep being

Depression saps our motivation to do what we love. Part of it is that we can't enjoy those lovely things to the same extent, nor for as long. Another part is, why bother trying to be happy? We know that we're sad, so why try to fight it? But not doing anything will worsen things as much as trying to do everything. We need to keep doing something; when we have an urge to do something positive or inconsequential, we should give it a shot.

Every day, I have to tell myself not to just stay in bed. I will do all of these things today because I'm responsible for it all. I want to be responsible because fulfilling my responsibilities gets me through the day. I want to get through the day because each day passed is a day closer to seeing you again. Seeing and speaking to you again is what I'm living for.

So all we can do right now is keep being. Taking action is part of being, but our actions should reflect who we really are. We can't let other people control us, but we should think critically about their suggestions and how following them will affect lives. That goes for people whether they're depressed or not. But, for the depressed people who want to become nothing, being what we are is especially important.

In time

We don't necessarily move through time. Time moves past us, its current pushing events toward and away from us. People are moving through time when they move with the current and dwell on the past, or when they move against the current and contemplate the future. When people think in the present, taking it day by day, they're staying still while time flows by. It's easy to slip into the past, a challenge to stay in the present, and difficult to run toward the future.

I've said that I'm not going to be strong anymore. Being strong and rushing into the future ruined me, and it'll continue to destroy me if I'm impatient. I float around from past to present, staying weak. Maybe another person can handle gambling into the future, but I'll limit my risks. In time, the future will come, and this present will have long passed. I shouldn't push for a future where we're able to talk; I need to stay put and let that come to us.

Late at night

I usually post my second message of the day quite late at night. Sometimes I'm right up against midnight, posting in the last seconds of the day. If I were sending you these messages personally, you wouldn't be reading them until morning because you try to be in bed by 10. You have one of your recorded shows droning on while you've fallen fast asleep to it. The fan rattles as it circulates air around your room. You're resting soundlessly underneath the blanket I lent you. Your cat is probably at the foot of your bed.

If we were together right now, I'd be staying up and waiting for you to fall into deep sleep. I've taken to watching Orion's League of Legends videos, so you'd be listening to that instead of to your TV. I'd finish watching a video, turn off the fan, shut down the computer, and carefully slip into bed with you. You'd probably sort of wake up, because I can never get into your tiny, worn bed without disturbing you. Even more likely if you aren't sleeping next to the wall; I have to carefully crawl over your body, shimmy between you and the wall, and maneuver underneath the covers. But you'd be too lazy and half-asleep to want to have everything turned back on. You'd fall asleep again in a matter of minutes, and in the morning you wouldn't even remember that you were disturbed.

I hope every night that you're sleeping soundly. I pray every night for your peace. And I remember every night how much I love you.