To All the People I’ve Let Down Before

I’m sorry.

A few days back, the days I passed with emptiness. I feel that no matter how good or how much I try to please and help/work for others, I will always be wrong and lacking. It’s purely my fault, I admit that. I feel useless, unproductive, incompetent, making decisions that are always wrong, making people angry, disappointed, losing confidence. Very, very many things happened. A series of bad luck happened to me, ranging from repeated illnesses, the loss of a friend’s life, parents’ illness and family blamed me instead, then I disappointed many people, unimportant accidents, and others. It feels like I have no more energy for all of this.

It was very difficult to concentrate and also difficult to decide what was very easy for other ‘normal’ people. Even just deciding what I want to eat and leaving at what time; it could take almost an hour to every decision. So that I am often late on various occasions. Uniquely, I can also not eat all day, but eat very much the other day. I also experienced sleep problems, between not being able to sleep at all or prolonged sleep abnormally (can reach 18 hours a day!). I also often avoid the crowd, or cancel appointments suddenly, or even impulsively go somewhere, or even do not want to answer anyone. I also constantly experience physical pain, from fever, coughing, flu, diarrhea, itchy red spots all over my skin, and headaches to near vertigo. All of these things if examined by the doctor, there will be no results. It’s annoying, everyone I think calls me ‘drama’ because of this, behind me.

The things I experienced were not just this once I experienced. Maybe it’s been years, which I realized felt the impact since 2015, the year I started looking for my own money. My family experienced a financial collapse, and I am still in college. At that time, I had a problem with my college. My thesis title was rejected and I had peer pressure because all my friends already had a supervisor for their thesis. Finally, I’m realistic, I have to help myself – at least to do a thesis, I have to have money. I have done everything to support myself at that time. Starting from doing the work that anyone can do, to the ‘confidential’ jobs which I will never write in the curriculum vitae. Be complacent, I even left my college for 2 years and that period was the one that gave me a lot of mental impact.

I am often sued and sue myself to be perfect in everything, know all things, learn all things, try all things, sometimes to things that are not commonly sought out by others. In the years of the crisis, I started to love the things that smelled ‘leftist’, began to be sure not to embrace any beliefs and doubt my ‘inheritance’, I began reading books on existentialism philosophy and instead got stuck falling in love with Nietzsche’s thoughts, somehow. I began to like the idea that nothingness should be the beginning and end for all entities. At that time also, I knew about suicide planning, tried it and was always caught, until now I was tired of trying and let me be killed by the universe. Although sometimes, the thought often arises, especially at a time like this.

However, that does not mean that everything I got in the crisis years was bad, I really learned anything, even finally I was able to take pictures professionally, had the opportunity to take part in short film projects, write scripts, to be able to take classes writing scripts with a well-known screenwriter, I also have a very good chance in other fields of art, being able to publish my work, and my life has improved a bit even though the ‘dark’ tendency does not leave me. I often use this negative energy and then sublimate it to positive energy – I channel it into works.

Finally, people just see what I can do. But they might forget, there are many things that I can’t. And now, it all mastered me. I ran out of energy to regain control of myself and be a good sublime like last time. Now all that is left is me, and the feeling that I am useless and failed, disappointing everyone, does not deserve to be trusted, even I am constantly experiencing burnout, art blocks, or whatever they called. I don’t even enjoy entertainment anymore. There are only a few things that can cheer me up: music (gigs), photography, cats, food, and love. Even now, I sort of have no trust in myself and began to be skeptical of several things. And I’m still trying not to sink; almost though. Because I realized, right now my chest feels so tight that it wants to explode and I hope that a stray bullet shot me so that I died accidentally.

For the people I let down before, this article is for you. Not that you have to understand me and all my problems, because I know you also have your problems. But this is a form of recognition, that I am weak now, as fragile as dust. I cannot please anyone, even myself. Forgive me.

Warm regards,

Puti Cinintya Arie Safitri