You may not ever understand, and you may not ever care to try to understand, what we go through. You may not ever want to understand. You may label us as "needy," or "crazy," or "fucked up in the head." You may reject us, and you may avoid us like the plague. You may think we're just looking for attention. You may accuse us of lying to get our way. You may never truly get what we endure on a daily basis, and we don't expect you to - we just want you to hear us out.
We don't mean to have seventy-three mood swings in the span of twenty-four hours. We don't mean the harmful things we say when we lash out at you, and we know you usually don't deserve it when we do. We don't mean to scare you when our smiles turn into facial daggers that are shot in your direction. We don't want to hurt you. We never want to hurt you.
We don't want to change our majors every semester. We don't want to have a drastic shift in our career goals by the end of the month. We don't strive to flip every aspect of our lives around all the time because we're searching for our true selves.
We don't mean to hurt ourselves when things get too hard to cope with. We don't mean to frighten you when we say we don't want to live anymore. We don't mean to burden you when we require hospital stay after hospital stay just to stability our mental state. We don't mean to use too much bleach to rid our favorite sweatshirts of the remnants of our scars. We don't mean to damage ourselves and we certainly don't mean to make you feel like you're at fault.
We don't mean to act on impulse. We don't mean to acquire addictions like they're the newest collectible items and we don't mean to spend half of our paychecks on said addictions. We don't mean to be so risky; we don't mean to make you worry when we're not sober every time you come to check up on us.
We don't mean to push you away. We don't mean to love you one minute and then turn into a paranoid asshole when we come up with illogical, irrational scenarios in our heads about how you might abandon us or how you might not love us like you say you do. We don't mean to push you away by the things we say because we want nothing more than to keep you as close as possible because we need you, even when you think we don't.
We don't mean to be so clingy. We don't mean to make you feel obligated to stay. We don't plan the whirlwind that goes on in our minds when the fear that you'll suddenly leave hits. We don't expect the disastrous aftermath of our desperate attempts to get you to stay, even if you had no intention of leaving in the first place.
We don't want to feel like we've lost touch with reality. We don't mean to drift out of our own heads and we don't mean to feel like we're not in our own bodies. We don't want to freak you out. We don't want to freak anyone out.
We don't expect you to understand. You probably won't ever understand.
We want your guidance. We want your support. We want you to tell us when we're acting out too much. We want you to help us through our episodes. We want your reassurance that you're, in fact, not going anywhere. We want you to stay. We want you to know we're not seeking attention, and that we're not crazy. We want you to accept that we're different, and be there for us amidst those differences, and to know that we aren't our illness. We want you to know we aren't borderline personality disorder. We want you to know that we're still us, just with a few more obstacles added to our course.
