Some Things I Feel Bad About

I feel bad about my hair. I haven’t cut it in over a year. I usually cut it when I desperately need change or when my Mom yells at me, but she’s stopped saying anything about my hair when I visit and I guess I’m done with change.

I feel bad about the things I say about other people in my diary sometimes. I re-read a bunch of old ones from the last couple of years and even though nobody else has read them (except I think a roommate in college flipped through one once and now I carry the most current one around with me everywhere), I still feel bad that I’m always that angry with people.

I feel bad for anyone who had to interact with me throughout 2011 and during the period of January through August of 2015. If you knew me then, sorry.

I feel bad for my own body because I’m terrible with it. I have weird sleeping hours and have worn the same contact lenses for the last week. I’ve had “Call dentist” on my to-do list since October. I feel bad because I’ve lost weight since moving, but only because I keep forgetting to eat.

I feel bad that I have three very, very close friends in my life who I am actively terrible at keeping up with. None of them know each other, so I feel bad that they can’t even bond over how shitty of a friend I am. I feel bad that I am constantly apologizing to them for my behavior and I feel bad that they still haven’t left me over it.

I feel bad that I sometimes resent my female friends who only want to work until they get married. I feel bad that I even care that much. I feel bad that I secretly think I’m better than them because that isn’t what I want.

I feel bad that I feel so lucky that I’m young and that I should be valued because of it.

I feel bad because one time at the Coffee Bean on Weyburn, an old woman tripped over my backpack and spilled hot coffee on herself and I was so stunned that I had caused such a scene that I didn’t help her at all. Now I can’t go back to that Coffee Bean or even really smell the inside of a Coffee Bean without thinking about that old woman scalding herself with hot coffee as I stared at her. There’s a Coffee Bean right by my apartment in New York because it will forever haunt me.

I feel bad about moving 3,000 miles away from home so that I wouldn’t be held responsible for anything that happened there. I feel bad that when I moved back, so much had changed without me. I feel bad that I assumed the world stopped once I left.

I feel bad that I made a Nora Ephron reference in the excerpt of this article and I feel bad that I thought it was clever. Her essay is a lot better.

I feel bad because I have no self-control when it comes to people and eating. They are intrinsically related. I feel bad because I desperately want people to love me and pay attention to me, even if I don’t do either for them. I feel bad because sometimes people need space—and even I need space—but I am incapable of giving that to anyone, while still expecting it for myself. I feel bad because when I feel someone slipping away or feel like they don’t need me, I become a monster, and eat a lot of weird food. I feel bad because then I can never eat that food again because it reminds me of that person. I feel bad because I’ve ruined Cinnamon Toast Crunch for myself and it’s so fucking good.

I feel bad that I’m open about a lot of stuff on the internet, but sort of lie about the stuff I’m being open about. It’s confusing for the people who know me. Or, at least, it’s confusing for the people who know me to start treating me like the person I am on the internet. I feel bad for lying.

I feel bad about how I feel because I know it could be a lot worse. I mean, I’m from Connecticut. Everything, in the grand scheme of things, is probably fine. But I still feel bad.

I feel bad about writing this because it feels whiny and apparently personal essays are dead. I feel bad for thinking that people will read this anyway. But you shouldn’t feel bad for me.