When I exhale, I breathe myself out.

Glancing over past entries, I realized how good I had "then." When I thought things were falling apart. They weren't. When I thought my parents might split up. They didn't. When I thought I could not make it through the semester. I did.

Things are different now. I long for even the worst moments of last year. All of my problems seem so simple in retrospect. As I feel myself slipping away.

I am changing before my eyes. I do not recognize myself. If I had written this last year, I would have wanted these words to be arranged perfectly. To sound beautiful. But there is nothing beautiful about this. Nothing beautiful about watching my father so sick, thinking he's dying, possibly not just thinking but knowing. And it's so fucking hard to stay positive. So hard to stay motivated. So hard. I don't know who I am now and I am forgetting who I was. I know only what I want in this moment: comfort, love, peace, friendship, resolve.

But these things are fleeting. It is not my friends' fault, because they do not know quite what is going through my head. I am on edge. I am vulnerable. I feel burdensome and unwanted. I so hate feeling this way, not just feeling but knowing. I know it when I enter a room. Eyes on me. Willing me away. When I knock on a friend's door seeking comfort, somehow I know they know it's me before I even open the door. They know and are wishing I would go away.

They are angry at me, almost as angry as I am at myself.

Oh, where has my strength gone.