It’s the eighteenth chapter of The Host, the book I’m currently reading. I haven’t made much progress considering I started reading October of last year and am barely a third of the way in, at the time of writing this.

It’s also the way I’ve been feeling lately. I haven’t had many spoons to work with. I feel shitty, so I haven’t been interested in gracing with my presence the people who make me feel worse. An introvert, I’ve found more solace in spending time alone, in the quiet of my room, sometimes even listening to symphonic pieces through headphones. I binge Netflix here and there, and found the entirety of Reba on Hulu, but the winter months is often when my brain is interested in reading again, so I read.

Yet it’s still not enough. I’m so zen thanks to medication. I like this feeling, but I’m now operating on a frequency further from that of my family, who likes to always have something going. Extroverts, they are. I yearn to have conversations with people more frequently, none of which revolve around what my future plans are. I’m not the kind of person to decide where I’m gonna be or what I’m gonna be doing until that actually arises; I go with the flow. Now, I go with the flow even more and am content with it.

I keep having these thoughts regarded my antidepressants and anxiety-blocker meds: All they’re doing is making me feel as appeased as I do when I’ve the house to myself and don’t have to answer to anyone/worry about pleasing anyone. It’s like the way I “should” feel all the time, it’s just that my family is so domineering. My stress levels (a major problem before) are down to the same comparison as well. So…what if it’s truly not me that is the problem? That means it truly isn’t, that it’s not me but the people who take issue with me and get upset because they cannot normalize me.

Which, really, is the case.

It’s so boring. It’s not even funny anymore. I’m not even surprised when it happens. At first, I thought it was the fiction I’ve consumed that’s caused me to see the world so differently from those around me, but now I’ve stopped seeing myself as the problem, and without me as the problem? It means it’s not me, but them. It means I’ve been gaslit again.

It means I’m still blinded by the guise of concern and love.

It means I’m still susceptible to abuse.

It means the cycle is still fucking repeating.