Dear 2020,
How are you? I am currently at Old Vineyard. I hope I will be here for a while... I do not think I will be ready to go home anytime soon, to be honest, and I also think about suicide a lot. I'm thinking I will probably go home earlier than I think I should. Of course, there is Harley's boarding school, but it is still school and it is still stressful. Of course, it is stressful even here. I'm stressed every day, all the time, no matter where I am. And it's depressing, especially when people talk about suicide and self-harm. There's an aura of hopelessness here... But why?

Love Always,
                        Hollin

Dear 2020,

   Yesterday was a good day, a really, really good day. I think this was because of the pain in my arm. I used the razor the day before yesterday. A lot. But still, it was a good day. And it filled me with hope.
   Or maybe my good feeling and twitchiness are just from having to show both my mother and my doctor my arm today, and having to explain to my doctor what happened to my hand. Maybe I am just nervous.
   But Mikasa is having a party on the 19th, and I know I’m excited about that. I will finally get to meet her friends, and I have a feeling that she will tell her friends that she likes me… though perhaps she won’t. I do think that at the party I will not be able to hide both my arm and my hand, though they will be more healed then they are now. But I think it is good that Mikasa should know the truth, especially if she can see it herself, without me coming out and telling her. Maybe she wouldn’t like me anymore. I think that would be almost good, because although I like her a lot, I don’t think I am a stable enough person to be a good partner, though I would not put it past her to try and save me from myself. I just don’t want to hurt her with stress if she does try and fix me.
   I am being ridiculous. No one could care about me that much. Not even myself.
   I had to explain to my mother that I write letters to my future self and post them on my Hello Poetry page because there no one knows who I am, and I like that. She seemed a little thoughtful. I wonder if she will tell me not to do this anymore.

Oh, how I long-
to sit at the banks
of that wide river,

that holds so many
of my memories captive,
in its rushing waters

dip my fingers into
the swirling currents
to check the temperature of my thoughts

Lo, I long for those days to come again,
when I could step easily into
the river I now fear,

To draw out what I desire,
the words, the thoughts, the feelings-
like rocks, like fish, like earth,
And pan out the gold.

Pan out the gold to gift to you,
like I used to

But we understand-
the river is now empty,
and gold sinks beneath sand.

I feel so many emotions that I go numb


Making my skin



match my heart;



They're both in tatters

Dear 2020,


   “I know that this is going to be the last letter. Things have gotten worse, so much worse, and I know that I will disappear like I was never there. I never affected anyone much, really, I just got in the way, and caused people shame. I’ve caused myself shame. I’ve done all the wrong things, and I know that now I am a burden on my family. They have all gotten tenser since I was diagnosed. They have gotten angrier, now they fight more than they ever used to. I am such a burden on them. They don’t need me, all I do is disappear into my room and try to pray for God to **** me in my sleep or something, which obviously isn’t working. I’ve brought everyone's mood down. I’m sorry if I had seemed promising before, I will have never had much of a life at this rate and I know Sean can be”

   I don’t know what else to say. I believe in it all, except for the part about this being the last letter, but if I had written to you last night like I was going to then this is probably what I would have said. I instead used a crisis text line, which helped… for a while.
   I don’t like coming home anymore. I don’t think Connor, and the rest of them could understand, when it’s not abuse or anything, it’s just so unhappy here. Everything is tense, and it doesn’t feel like a home anymore. I am yelled at so much, and cut so little slack.
   I am eating again… way too much. And I’ve… found another razor head. After all that digging in my bathroom, I knew I would. But if I’ll use it… Oh, I know I probably will. Having my body hurt takes my mind off of my heart, which is why I also like P.E. Even know, with my hand wrapped up, I earn so much sympathy at school when Connor is really the only one who knows what really happened to it. Well, Connor, my parents, and you.
   I really don’t think my parents love me anymore. They had loved a tomboy, with long hair, extroverted, with skills at writing and drawing and who didn’t care whether people hated her or loved her. I am feminine, with a boy’s haircut that I don’t like to brush, introverted, with anorexic tendencies and no passion or skills at anything at all. And yet somehow my broken, hurting self-attracts people. Overall of my years in elementary school, three people had confessed their feelings for me. In this year alone, it has been five. What hurts is knowing that even those who I do like back I could never be a worthy partner for. The chance of my dying, lashing out at them, or simply deciding to ignore them as an isolationist technique to be happy is much too high, which is why only two of them like me now.
   I’m so tired. All the time. Even when I take naps (for instance today I fell asleep at Walmart) I am still extremely tired. I think I am just tired of being here. I want to go home. I say this a lot to myself, although I don’t really know where I mean by home. I think I mean this third dimension, one I’ve thought up myself. It’s the place I go when I sleep, or when I’ in my room by myself for a long time doing nothing. Sometimes when I say I want to go home I mean that I want to die, so that I could live in that third dimension forever. I would really like that.
   It’s called the third dimension because if my actual house is the first dimension, and school is the second, then that is the third. The rest of my world (Walmart, the castle, etc.) is just surrounding fabric of the first (and largest) dimension. But when I don’t want to be either at home or school, I want to go to the third dimension. Which is like death, and can be rarely mimicked from one of the other dimension. And even if I am homeschooled next year, I will not be able to escape the first dimension. So I need, and want, the third.


That is all I have to say, really, except that I am thinking of posting these letters on my Hello Poetry page, since I will never read them in 2020, and perhaps someone will find that I am relatable. Or stupid.


Love always,


Hollin

Dear 2020,

   I was planning on writing you a letter that explained in my own words everything that happened this morning, but if you’ll please excuse me, then I won’t. I simply don’t feel like I want to relive such an experience through writing to you about it. I’m sorry.
   All that you really need to take away from this morning to understand where I am now is these things:
I started eating semi-normally again
Dad doesn’t understand/ believe in apps like Calm Harm and Breathe. He instead thinks that forcing me to work when I’m down works instead. He obviously has no idea.
When I’m really down, I check-out. (I will explain this in a moment)
Dad doesn’t really love me. (I know, I know. Obvious, right?)
School is now officially better than home.
I like ants and wish I had been born one.
Lo-fi hip hop is my new jam.
I forgot to take my medicine last night, and nobody cut me any slack. (My mom is supposed to remind me, but did she apologize? NO, she was just angry that I didn’t go to school today)
I didn’t go to school today but wish I had.
When I check-out my self-harm risk level rises dramatically
I don’t need knives or razors to self-harm.
My knuckles are greatly torn and the sidewalk is ******.
I can’t talk much when I check out, and self-harm makes me smile.
If I self-harm enough, I go numb.
I can’t remember clearly what happens when I check out and when I check out I lose track of time.
I think my dad called me an idiot.
I’m pretty sure that Dad likes Sean better than me and probably wishes I was more like him. So do I, lol.
I really don’t have any explanation about my knuckles. I don’t know at all what I will say to people at school, the doctor, or the therapists, or Ginger. My mom asked me why, and I just said, “I’m sorry.” (I was still half checked-out then)
The reason I was outside on the sidewalk at all is that Dad told me to go pull weeds.
After the knuckles, Mom told me to put on her gloves and I think I bled enough to ruin the leather forever.
My knuckles will probably be scared because they bled more than my wrist and that is scarred.
I never want to have a husband. I either want a wife or no spouse at all.
I am kind of scared of my Dad but hate him at the same time.
Dad acts like nothing is wrong.
I think Dad is angry because if it weren’t for me, he’d have a perfect, normal family.
I can never see men the same way again.
“Quit being an idiot. Do you feel better now, eh?”
About an hour after I checked back in, I had the worst and longest chest pain of my life.
I know I just basically told you what happened in the morning, but this way it doesn’t hurt as much to relive. Besides, If you're reading this then you probably already know what happened.



   Anyways, I cleaned my room. And I took down all the posters, art and stuff yesterday. I even turned my books the other way so that I don’t have to see the art on them. Sometimes seeing things with art is like a slap in the face, as if the book itself is saying, “Look what I can do, what you can’t!”
   The app called Calm Harm says that you should record when you self-harm and write what the trigger might have been. The first times it was because my mother was leaving. This time I think I was scared, angry, and suicidal, which are amplified when I check-out. I couldn’t get a grip on reality at all (hence being checked-out) and I guess this way brought (even if only a little bit) back to reality. But really, I don’t like talking about it at all. Especially not in person.
   I told Lauren this yesterday (from the 741741 crisis helpline) I don’t know how I would **** myself, but I know where. I would **** myself in the place that I used to go to be happy. I meant the place underneath the highway, on the neighbor’s property across the highway. Noone is ever there, so the police (when they went looking for me) would find my body, not my mother. And I think it is kind of metaphoric (Lauren called it philosophic), going to the place I used to be happy, so I can be happy one last time as I **** myself. But unless I brought my own rope for hanging, or gun for shooting or something, I could really only drown myself there (since it’s in the creek). And I’ve read about that, read that it is a horrible way to die and that it’s very hard too because your body is fighting against you and that if you fail, you could have serious brain damage. I am very scared of that, failing I mean. I would much rather use something I know would work, like noose or gun than something that has a significant chance of not working, like wrist slitting, drowning, of jumping. I’m sorry. This is a bit morbid, and I know I should write about them. But it is better to write to you about them, and get them out than it is to have them rattling around in my brain until I do them, is it not?
   I believe so.

With as much love as I can muster (which isn’t much),

Love,


Hollin Stewart

Dear 2020,

   I don’t really have anything to talk about. I just felt like typing. And talking to you. I guess there is always something to talk about, really, just ramble on about. Especially when you talk as little as I do sometimes. Honestly, I think I say more to you in a letter than I would in a whole day!
   The thing is, I’m a little bummed about my Dad. I’ve never been a “Daddy’s girl” or as close to my Dad I was to my Mom, but things started to change in fourth grade. I realized, Hey. I don’t love this person. At the time, the thought of the perfect, loving family had been ingrained in me, so I thought I should just try harder.
   It was in fifth grade that I started to actively dislike him, and in sixth grade I had caught myself thinking, God, I hate him! Of course, I was embarrassed that I should think this and told myself that I didn’t hate him, I hated some of the things he did. In seventh grade, I now know that I hate him. And I feel bad. It isn’t really an active hate so much as avoiding him because I don’t like him and don’t want to talk to him.
   But I think today has changed that. I think today has seriously affected the way I see him, think about him. He has convinced me, through the ways that he treats my mother and me, that I never want a husband. I believe I shall look at men a bit differently from this day on. Because today was the worst day I have ever had with him, a day where seeing him triggered more gasping and crying.
    Because until today, it had simply been hate, contempt, whatever you want to call it. Until today, I simply dislike him and strived to be as far unlike him as I could. But today added a new emotion to my dislike. Today he added fear. He now adds to the stress in my life. I now try to limit to a number of words I say in front of him and carefully monitor how much emotion I show. I do not want him to come to my chorus concert tomorrow. I really do not.
    Because my friends have, on a good day, heard me saying that I do not want to go home. This is usually because I do not want to have to deal with my parents (with my father) and I do not want him to ruin the good mood I am currently in. They had asked why I didn’t want to go home, and I simply said that my father was an *******, and didn’t want to say anything more about it. And this is true; everyone who knows him, even his mother, would deem calling him an *******. Because he is. I just wonder what my friends, who have heard me use those lines those few times, heard me actively disliking someone when I dislike no one else, will wonder. I wonder what they will think when I come back after missing school, obviously injured and shaken. I wonder what they will think when they see me, dour and grim, dressed in black beside my father as we enter the school building for the chorus concert and rushing backstage as soon as possible to get away from him. Frowning when he makes fun of my friends, though they may be laughing themselves. I wonder what they will think.
   Perhaps, they will simply wonder if he is abusive. And I assure you, he is not. I simply think that he is just not a very good father. Or, perhaps like the teacher who does not work well with the student, perhaps he is a good father, just not the kind of father I need as a role model. Perhaps if our personalities had fit together better, like his and Sean’s, then things would have been better. Because I have to wonder if the lack of sufficient male role model (first, he stopped being at home, then we fought when he was) and instead overabundance of female role model (I am almost always by my mother’s side) is why I like both females and males, but females more.
   Haha, to think of how if my father read this, he would chuckle and completely disregard my words, unwilling to assume they hold any actual value. He would scoff at how wonderfully the apps that he, this morning, had dismissed as ridiculous were helping me.
   If I died, he wouldn’t blame himself. He wouldn’t think of the myriad ways that he could have been a better, more responsible, more caring father for me. He would blame me, and he would blame depression, saying that if I had simply followed his instructions more carefully, and perhaps not cried so often, that I could have easily been saved. He would blame depression and talk long and loud about how “nonsensical” and “absurd” it makes people. He would blame my mother, who has a line of depression in her family. He would blame everyone, everyone but himself, and mostly he would blame me, and weakness. Me and my inability to cope with the world the way he wanted me to. Instead of riding over the waves, like the apps greatly help me do, he wants me to dive straight through them. And I hate him for it, for I can see that when I check-out, for I know I will when he makes me dive, that I will keep hurting myself.
   I don’t want to talk about him anymore. It’s making me upset.



   Sometimes, I wish I could float away like a cloud on the soft Spring breezes that roll through. Simply glide away, like the dandelion puff that someone has made a wish on.
   In my good moments, I will usually wish on dandelions for things like happiness, or more good times. In my bad moments, which I think are more often, I wish for death.
   Sometimes I wonder if depression can **** you. I don’t mean suicide, I mean, can you simply drop dead from sadness? I think this is a silly thought. But I like believing in it. I don’t want to look up whether you can or not, because I suspect you can’t, but I like to believe that when I’m in line at McDonald's buying my fries and milkshake I will simply keel over and die. Seriously, I really want some McDonalds.
   I am in a pretty good mood, good enough to put little gluttonous plot twists on the ends of my morbid wonderings. I don’t even think dad could ruin my mood at this point, though I am probably sorely mistaken.
   And I’m pretty excited about tonight. There’s nothing new going on, I just really look forward to the time of day when I listen to the late-night lo-fi hip hop and chill in the pitch dark. Most of the time, it's the only thing I have to look forward to.
   Okay, so in The Fault In Our Stars, Hazel talks about how, a lot of times, she’ll get off easy for something because she has cancer. It’s because of pity, and how life-threatening it is, and blah blah blah. Sometimes, and I find this pretty funny (but it doesn’t work with my dad, big surprise there) my Mom will, like, be extra nice or help me out with buying something after a therapy session. Or when I’m having a low moment. I call these Depression Perks because I know my Mom feels super bad about how she cursed me with de-press-ion (dun dun dun) and how I’m like suicidal and all that. Anyway, I guess I’m just greedy, but I kind of like these little Depression Perks, because I really am cursed with de-press-ion and it totally *****. Haha.

Love,



Hoolin Occupation