this is me trying

by Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff

As the seasons change, your dopamine fades with the daylight. You find yourself needing to look at your phone approximately 10 hours a day, which hurts your eyes and your head. This time of year, entrenched in the endless employment, you are brought back to your high school commute, trying to appreciate the autumnal beauty instead of succumbing to the gloom. Crunching leaves, holding in your pee until you get home, singing to yourself the song that’s been in your head all day. Trying not to think about the bullshit homework you’ll inevitably halfass in homeroom the next day. Through the years, autumns swirl with depression and comfortable familiarity.

It’s hard to conjure up perseverance. It’s an unending string of Sundays; you’re technically in control of your time but inevitably beholden to obligation. On the long nights stolen from the day, you just want to isolate and think. Thinking is freedom, until the thoughts are taken out of your control too. You’re beholden to the darkness. You have to do whatever you can to elevate your mind so you don’t lose yourself completely.

People in charge are always saying “no excuses” as if they actually have any idea what it’s like to be you. In some ways I’ve never been good enough. I can say society’s sick and everything’s unfair, but the fact is there always seems to be people who are doing fine. Things are easy & natural for them. And I don’t really know why, despite my desperate efforts, I’m not in the same positions as them.

This is me trying: I speak infrequently and then I get mad when people don’t know I’m struggling. I put on a show so well that no one seems to notice the details. It’s so stupid. But it’s the worst thing to not be seen. I’m still mad at my teachers.