productive/sad dissonance24.sep.25 
Dear Diary,
I feel really sad right now. Really, I don't even know why. I forced myself to sleep the night. I remember three dreams, one about picking a college out of these pretty pink neon cottages, another about giving a speech about the state of our economy and the breakdown of what an economy even is to a bunch of 5th graders (I don't know if they were actually 5th graders, I made that up), but I stuffed the double paged notes into a drawer and picked up the wrong one, so I had to run across a highway to retrieve the actual notes, but the crowd dispersed when I returned, and the third dream was about my dead grandmother (dad's side), she bought these ultraman slushies for me and I was in the car with her and my little cousin brother, and I was jokingly whining about how I hated ultraman and it was a drink with chocolate icing and strawberry filling.
So I woke up at 6a.m., and now it's 1.32p.m., and I feel like I'm wasting today again, though yesterday I did productive things. I'm almost finished with all the topical past year questions for trigonometry add math, I brushed up on the forex market for economics, but it's not enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not enough. I can be enough, I will be enough, but why can't it be now? I'm not afraid of hard work, but why am I still here? I need to do more. Now, now, now. It's yelling at me constantly. I hate how so many people now know I want to go to MIT. It's on my list of "things I would never want to tell anyone", and now it's out, and it was all forced out of me. My cs teacher knows because how else should I answer, "what's your dream college?" With a lie? How else can I control my mom telling people where I wish to go? I'm not even capable yet, and that's killng me even before I kill myself. I just want to be enough. I want to make it. I want to smile. Why am I so dramatic?
I did a quick 15min arm workout. I feel so sluggish. I finished reading that Mitch Albom book that's meant to be a tribute to his mom, "For One More Day". I feel so empty. I'm listening to this playlist I made for when I feel like absolute shit which only consists of three songs: "not your fault - yaeow", "Candle - Cavetown", "Dou Yi Yang - Xiao Zhan". On that third song right now. "Candle" really did calm me down earlier. For some reason everything just felt too loud. Well, disproportionately, because everything was extremely quiet. But my grandfather was blasting music from downstairs as usual and I could hear it from my room (it's still on, so I'm wearing headphones right now), my mom's footsteps from downstairs, the way she says "I'm going out now" (like shut the FUCK up and honestly I don't even know why I'm so angry about her saying something so simple), the way she still stays in her room and scrolls on her phone like a fucking degenerate instead of going out like she says, the way she comes back upstairs to her room like 10x in a day instead of fucking working. Yeah, that book meant to be a tribute to moms did jackshit on me. I hate my mom.
And I don't know why. Everything was so fucking annoying. Everything was so fucking loud. I just wanted to fucking die. Obviously, I shut my ears. Obviously, I cried. Honestly speaking, I highly doubt it's connected to my menstrual cycle now that I'm at this point. The past few years, I've always felt mildly low during luteal, but now it's just low. I'm just sad. I'm just empty. It's just nothing. It's nothing. Nothing's happened. I can't even pinpoint why I was angry, I can't even understand why I feel angry and empty and sad at the same time. Is that even possible?
Here's the sentence that made me cry from that book: "Why do you want to die?" How original, right? I rated that book 4/5 stars.
Hey, I didn't go for my economics class yesterday because I was asleep. What a lame reason for an overachiever! But I couldn't help it, or maybe that's what I'm telling myself for some semblance of meaningless consolation. My sleep schedule was completely flipped, I wasn't sleeping at night and was crashing midday at around 12-1p.m., but at least I forced myself to sleep tonight right? No. I woke up at least three times in the night. I was scared each time, because my room was dark. I'm scared of the dark, so why close the lights right? But I can't sleep with the lights on. But I can't sleep when I'm scared of the dark! Holy shit.
I just remembered something my mom used to say about diaries, that they're notebooks that people only write in when they're feeling negative emotions. That's untrue, I thought. I've always tried to prove that sentiment wrong ever since. Writing endless gratitudes, positive experiences, smiley faces, laughing emotes, drawing cute hearts and faces. I don't think I lie about being happy, but I exaggerate it, even to myself. I exaggerate feelings. Am I even sad now? Do I even feel empty now? Is this guilt? Is this fear? "There's so much life out here in space, it's crazy that we're even here at all", that's from "Candle", meaning to insinuate that human life is a miracle, but just now, it only made me think, "well then why the fuck am I here?".
I've created meaning, purpose for myself, that's why I have to stay alive, which brings me back to the poem I wrote 3 months earlier, "Wings", particularly this line: "Free, free fall, falling // I'm free falling, and there's not even an exit.", which is to say I'm plummeting to my own demise without ever being able to meet that demise yet, because I must stay alive, I must live to see my purpose fulfilled. I'm drowning, but not in the classical sense of burning water-filled lungs, I'm drowning in nothing. The sky is bright, and I'm falling in it. But I'm flying, I'm constantly excelling, people praise me for one thing or another, my looks, my intelligence, my breadth, my depth, my personality, and others scorn me for it, I'm ostracised, I'm admired, I'm hated, I'm lost, I'm lost. What do I do?
I hope no one reads this. In part because I think this is one of most honest entries I've ever written, now that I think about it.