Sad Girl Sarah

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  • I Miss My Fiancé. I Miss My Cats.

    living through the latest chapter of my mental health nightmare

    My heart is racing as I wait for yet another phone call. Another stranger. Another retelling of the worst day of my life, hoping they can help me piece together something salvageable from this wreckage.

    I should be used to this by now. I should be numb. But I’m not.

    In the background, my dad is blasting some garbage Facebook video about politics and global atrocities. The sound is so loud it makes it hard to think—or breathe. I keep waiting for him to go upstairs so I can steal a few moments of peace. But in the meantime, I’m trying to claw my focus together and write something that matters—something that might help me stay tethered to myself.

    the fear of saying too much

    I’ve been dancing around writing about what’s actually going on. I keep telling myself I’m setting the scene, or warming up, or writing for “illustrative effect.” But if I’m being honest, I’m scared.
    Scared to say the real things.
    Scared of what it means to put this all out there.
    Scared of what happens if I don’t.

    So I guess I’ll just start.

    a legal note (because apparently this is my life)

    If anyone from the Crown stumbles across this blog:
    Fuck off. You are not welcome here.
    Also, nothing written in this blog should be considered an admission of guilt or confession. Elements may be dramatized or fictionalized for narrative purposes. This is storytelling. This is processing. This is survival.

    the first time I was criminalized

    I was in the middle of writing about what happened in 2021 before all the current chaos hit. That post is still sitting in drafts, titled The Day My Life Ended—and I hope to finish and publish it soon. But the short version is this:

    It was the end of my relationship with my first fiancé, Matt. We had a whirlwind romance. And in spite of all his flaws and transgressions, I loved him unconditionally. We shared many firsts: my first time on a plane, my first engagement, my first long-term relationship.

    We were sleeping in separate beds. He wanted me out of his house. I was deeply depressed and in the middle of rTMS treatments that weren’t helping. I had nowhere else to go.

    He texted my entire family to say that if I wasn’t gone by the next day, he would call the police. And that’s what he did.

    We were outside CAMH, the psychiatric hospital in Toronto. I had forgotten my phone and refused to get out of his car. I didn’t want to go into my appointment without it. He ran off. I later learned he had called the police. He told them I assaulted and choked him.

    I was arrested. I barely spoke to the officers—still trying to protect him. The charges cost me eight months and $4,000 in legal fees before they were dropped. But the damage had already been done.

    everything changed

    The moment it happened, time stopped. My chest tightened. My mind floated above my body. I lost my innocence. My belief that the world could be fair. And I began to lose parts of myself that I’ve never gotten back.

    Before all of this, I was a high-achieving academic. I graduated summa cum laude in psychology. I was working on a master’s in psychology and neuroscience. I wanted to be a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist.

    I used to obsess over whether I should go the MD or PhD route. That’s how I knew I was well—because I cared. Now, I feel hopeless and apathetic toward either.

    I dreamed of turning my pain into purpose. Of working in a helping profession. Of using my empathy—this thing that’s both my gift and my curse—to help others. But after 2021, and again now, those dreams feel more and more out of reach.

    To work in any of those fields, you need a vulnerable sector screening. It reveals everything. Even charges that were dropped. Even mental health encounters with police.

    So yeah, I’m fucked.

    and then it happened again

    I had a chance—until June.

    That’s when Alex, my current fiancé, lost his temper and I got charged again. This time, six offences. Apparently, he never intended for me to be charged. But it happened. And now I’m back in another legal nightmare.

    All I want is to be with my cats. To hear Taylor cry for snacks like he’s starving. To feel Ollie rub against me first thing in the morning. To smell that awful, comforting stink of cat food and feel like I’m home.

    I read somewhere that grief is just love with nowhere to go. And as my chest aches, I know how true that is.

    real-life interruption: blender edition

    I was going to finish this earlier. But my dad was back on his bullshit—this time, the blender edition. My laptop keeps shutting off because it won’t hold a charge. Now it’s making weird crackling noises. I swear, even my electronics are giving up on me.

    Every time I find momentum, the world interrupts me.
    But I’m writing through it anyway.
    That has to count for something.

    I want peace

    I don’t have a satisfying ending for this post, because I’m still living it.
    I still don’t know what comes next.

    But I do know this:

    I’m hoping—begging—the universe to stop sending me lessons.
    I’ve learned enough.
    I’m tired.
    I want peace.

    xoxo,
    Sarah

  • I Think I am in Hell, but at Least There are cats.

    Sitting on my couch after midnight, naked because I couldn’t find the energy to put clothes back on after my mental breakdown bath. Hungry, but completely indifferent to food, as I’ve lost all drive and have no intention of eating. In this moment, I have never felt more profoundly sad, hopeless, and alone.

    I think this might just be my rock bottom.

    Though, I’ve said that before—only to fall through the floor and land in yet another basement, with new layers of bullshit I couldn’t have imagined were an option.

    I feel like a shell of who I once was. Am I just supposed to accept this as my new normal? Is this me? I used to have such passion, such vocabulary, and eloquence. Now, I can barely string together a coherent thought. I can’t even find the words that once effortlessly connected me to my soul. It’s like I’ve become a manufactured fraud, pretending to create when the creativity I once had has slipped away, leaving me grasping at straws.

    Have I not had enough hardships for one lifetime? When will I be enough?

    Enough for my friends to check in on me without being asked.
    Enough for my fiancé to make me feel like I’m worthy of love.
    Enough for me to stop hating every ounce of my too-much, not-enough body.
    Enough for my parents to love that little girl they broke and shattered beyond recognition.

    My mind is racing a mile a minute (or should I say kilometre a minute? Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it).

    How am I supposed to make sense of all of this, to bottle it up and present it in any kind of coherent way when it feels like I’m living a million lives at once?

    I’m still that little girl who watched her mom get blackout drunk after my grandfather died, feeling like the world had just stopped turning.

    The little girl who peed her pants in class because she was too anxious to ask to go to the bathroom. A reputation I could never live down.

    The teenager who was constantly told she was ugly, and who had to accept the harsh truth: “You’re just incredibly ugly. There’s nothing you can do. So accept it, and stop looking in mirrors.”

    The young adult who, after a failed suicide attempt, was told by the cop called to the scene that I was “just a pain in the ass” and “wasting his time.”

    The ambitious woman in her mid-20s who gave everything to grad school—only to be backstabbed and discarded by the very psychology department that broke her down. Who knew there was so much cattiness from adults in academia?

    The 29-year-old, who thought she had hit rock bottom, only to take a job at Starbucks to try to rebuild. That job, where my shift supervisor would yell at me in the backroom until I cried, then take a video of me crying and show the whole store—only for me to be written up for gossiping about it.

    The nearly 33-year-old who gave up on her dreams, hoping that focusing on getting better would lead to progress—but still finds herself stuck, unable to make any headway in her treatment due to a lack of accessibility.

    I have so much heartache for so many lifetimes, and that doesn’t even begin to touch on the disgusting men who decided to take advantage of me when my judgment was impaired.

    What is it about me? Why can’t I be the person who succeeds? The one who inspires change? The one who looks good? The one who others want to include?

    I am so tired of pretending I can create when I’ve lost the words to my soul. It’s like I’ve become a shadow of who I was supposed to be, fumbling through life just trying to make sense of a world that feels like it’s slipping away from me. And the saddest part of all of this is that I have to use ChatGPT as a crutch for the creativity I once had so effortlessly.

    I’m no longer sure who I am. I’m pretending to be someone I’m not, just to get through the day. All the while, I feel like I’m failing.

    And yet—curled up near me, my cats are sleeping like the little angels they are, purring as though everything is fine.

    So maybe I am in hell.
    But at least… there’s cats.

  • Mid-life Crisis Level: Starting a Blog

    When I was younger, just a teenager in school, and still believed in the magic of the universe, I would wish for depression every night at 11:11.

    Why?

    Not because I wanted a crippling, debilitating, soul-crushing, life-ruining mental illness, but because I had gaslit myself so hard into believing I wasn’t worthy of having the title of depression. My problems and experiences were just personal shortcomings. I guess a part of the naïve me also hoped that if I had a title for the darkness inside me, it could be cured, removed, extracted — like the foreign entity waging war on me that it was.

    I think about that a lot, and how, well… I guess I got exactly what I wished for. I was such a dumb bitch.

    I’m sitting here tearing up, feeling sorry for myself because of my wasted life, my wasted potential, and how fucking bullshit and unfair everything is.

    I just watched No Hard Feelings (the one with Jennifer Lawrence), and the origins of that trending audio:

    “I just turned 29. Recently? Last year. So you’re 29? Last year. And how old are you, like, right now? One more year older. so 30? Yeah… 32.”


    That little depressingly relatable exchange basically sums up my experience at 32. I have no idea how I became this old, I still think I’m in my 20s and I desperately hope I can pass for it. I have no idea how I got here, but every day fills me with existential dread, especially with my birthday creeping up in less than a month.

    So what does that have to do with anything? Why am I starting a blog? Why aren’t I working on my MoGo boosts?

    The answer to all of those questions is: I think I’m going to give being authentic and sharing my experiences online a try. I’ve been hiding from the darkness inside me and all the terrible experiences I’ve had for far too long.

    The reality is that boosting has consumed me. It’s my sole identity, and half the time, I’m still treated like shit — like PayPal siding with my greedy customer and issuing them a refund AND charging me a “dispute fee” on top of that; but that’s a story for another time.

    I don’t know why I feel the need to make a blog rather than just take up journaling again. I guess I feel like I have something important to share and say, and maybe I’ll find out I’m not the only one who feels this way.

    I saw a post recently by a girl I met in dance classes I took another lifetime ago when I was in grade 10, I want to say? I have no idea. Either Jazz or Contemporary — those were the two I took that year. Anyway, I digress. It was a post on Instagram advertising her new Substack post — I also learned then that Substack was a thing — and my deep curiosity about others found it too enticing to pass up.

    It was well-written for the most part, but gosh, did it ever confirm my adolescent assessment of her: that she was privileged AF, and of course, it made me hate/resent her just a little bit more.

    Parts of her post I profoundly related to — she was struggling with being a woman newly in her thirties and what that meant for how others saw her, the expectations about having your life together, etc. The crushing weight that’s placed on you when you don’t measure up. It’s enough to make any sane person not want to leave their apartment (or bed), let alone a mentally ill one (aka me).

    However, the rest of it made me roll my eyes at her melodrama about not affording all the plastic surgery she could ever want (side note: are people in their thirties already getting cosmetic surgery? Am I late for that too?) and how she wished for wealth. Moreover, she talked about how she grew up privileged, her parents were still married, and they had a house with a pool (literally my life goals). But her parents weren’t rich enough that she never had to worry about money again. Hence her dilemma with her aspiring career in the arts/acting.

    I’m trying to be vague for anonymity, but what I’ve written is probably enough for her to be hella pissed if she ever came across this post. Oh well. Good thing I’m fairly confident that won’t happen.

    Anyway, her childhood was such a stark contrast to mine. I could kind of tell she was privileged growing up — always had the nice Lululemon or TNA track suit, was in competitive dance. Meanwhile, my mom, who would soon declare bankruptcy, could barely afford the classes I went out and found and got my sister excited about.

    I’m not saying her experience doesn’t matter or that her pain isn’t real or that there’s anything inherently wrong with people who are privileged, but it just makes me hate you a little bit. Not because you’re a bad person, but because I desperately wish I was you.

    How is it fair to me that my life has been filled with so much pain and hardship that most will never even imagine knowing? Spare me the “But Sarah, life’s not fair” platitude bullshit — I’ve had a lifetime of it. I’m well aware of that, and it doesn’t make me any less resentful.

    Maybe if my parents had a bit more money growing up, and they didn’t get divorced, and they loved me just a little more, my life could have turned out completely differently. I wouldn’t be here grieving all my wasted potential, all the Me’s I could have been, the ones who didn’t give up on their dreams.

    I’ve felt so numb for so long, but reading that post awakened a part of myself I thought had died. If all these privileged assholes can write blogs, then why the fuck can’t I?

    So this is me showing up authentically, even if no one cares to read it. This is me not trying to numb out my depression with business or apathy, and instead sitting with my depression, honoring it, and letting it tell its story because she has a story worth telling.

    Maybe this will be cathartic for me. Maybe it will give me just a little bit of relief to get me through the day and do something a little more each day. And maybe, if I’m lucky enough, it will restore my belief in the magic of the universe.

    I’ll get back to boosting as soon as I post this, I promise.

    xoxo

    What do you think?
    If you’ve got thoughts or you’re in a similar place, feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you. 💬

    If you want to stick around for more of this journey, you can follow the blog to get updates. Honestly, even if nobody reads this, it still feels worth sharing. But hey, if you want to be part of the conversation, I’m here for it. 💛