The Disconnect

In the past year or so I have becoming increasingly isolated. Friends that I used to call close I can't seem to keep up with anymore. My mind is easily filled with thoughts that my friends find me to be a nuisance or that they're mad at me. 

I have one friend who admitted to me last year that she had distanced herself from me intentionally. I think she meant my anxiety was too much for her. Since she told me that I feel awkward reaching out to her. I read into her response or lack of response on Facebook to comments I post. I'm not sure if she's genuine when she agrees that we should get together. I'm not surprised that none of those plans have worked out. I saw her the other day and it was awkward. I was awkward. I'm getting more and more uncomfortable in my own skin. So many negative thoughts flood my head. I know that all of my friends can't feel as negatively as my mind tells me right now. I feel trapped by my anxiety. It's taking away my friends. I don't know how to be myself anymore. 

Hey.

It's been a while. I would like to say it's because I've been super busy, but I haven't. Still no job. Lots of interviews. Everyone loves me. Tells me I was a top contender. Then offers job to other candidate. Very frustrating. Very wearing. Not feeling super good about myself currently. Also, you know how there's no extensions on unemployment? Yeah, that sucks too. Not sure what I'm going to do if someone doesn't hire me soon.

I've been noticing about myself lately that there is a serious edge of paranoia to my anxiety. I easily go from sending my friend a text to a minute later thinking that I probably offended them and they aren't answering me right away because I was so inconsiderate and that they are probably tired of me and my depressed ways and they've been distancing themselves from me anyways....

Yeah.  That's depressing. And exhausting. I'm exhausting to ME. But I seriously have been thinking that at least three or four of my friends didn't answer that ONE text message or like some joke I made on their Facebook page because they don't like me anymore. And I have two friends I can think of off the top of my head I'm scared to call because of that. Mind you, I'm not usually that girl. The one that people burn out on. I tend to isolate myself before anyone gets too burned out on my depression. But it could still happen right? That's probably what happened...


And this is how my brain occupies all this downtime.

And Some More Despair

Today I'm feeling pretty despair-y. Things just keep getting worse. In my saner moments, I can see that somehow I'm still standing, and I think that maybe this is a path I need to take that is hard but something I can survive and be stronger and happier for. And junk. But I am also tired. And I have moments where my heart cries out "how much more?"  Could I please have some peace and calm and rightness in my life?

Right now the miracle is probably that I am surviving. And I know I should be grateful. And many moments I am. But other moments, I just feel like the crazy is going to suck me in. And I feel scared. Because I don't know how much longer I can stand.

Anger and Despair

Anger and Despair,
Anger and Despair,
Do dodo dooo
Anger and Despair.

I thought maybe if I made up a cute little song about my crazy, it would be kind of cute and fun. Maybe whimsical. Not so much.

I'm having one of my really angry cranky weeks. I'm feeling some anger toward pretty much anyone who crosses my path. Holy crazy. My sweet, well intentioned man came over last night with the intention of cheering me up. I had to work very hard at not biting his head off. He does not have the experience with depression to understand that the plan of "cheering up" a depressed person does not necessarily work. He did make me feel loved and warm for a minute. But then I think it might have backfired somehow, because we ended the evening with him annoyed with me. I'm not even totally clear on what it was that he was upset about. I'm not saying he was upset for no reason... but I have no idea what I did. I was trying very hard not to be irritable and angry with him. I don't know if he felt like I was being cold because I was holding back... I'm not really sure.

I hate how my depression seems to cripple my relationships. Bleh.

Stupidity

I made a huge mistake. And continue to make it. It's interesting what loneliness and isolation can drive you to. Even in this anonymous space, I can't admit what I did. It's too big, and too ugly, and yet to most of you would not be as big and ugly as it is for me. But it is big and ugly to me. And I hate that even a few trusted friends even know. I feel like this road of depression has lead me to be a person that I never meant to be. I never wanted to be this. But I can't seem to be who I want to be, even when I try with all my might. Is it just me, or is the world getting uglier? I feel like the whole world is slowly going crazy. Or maybe that's just me.

Thievery

I am fully convinced now that Depression steals from people. I have had whole parts of my identity stolen from me. That's not to say I can't get them back. But it is trying to take things from me. It is greedy, and it grabs at things, and holds onto them tight, and hopes that I will forget I once owned those things.

Like what? For one, my interests. I like to cook. But it has been so long since I've truly been able to remember the pleasurable parts of cooking that I have lost a lot of my cooking skills. People who I would characterize as good friends, and people who hardly know me, all think that I don't know how to cook, and that I don't really enjoy it. It surprises me and irritates me when I discover this attitude and belief in people. It is frustrating when my friends give me the same look my mom used to give me when I said I wanted to sew a quilt (she's seen me with a sewing machine--straight lines are harder than you think!) when I say I like cooking. I do like to cook. But even now, as the meds are returning me to a place of balance where I have interest in DOING things again, I struggle to make that true again. Because I've forgotten how somehow. And I can't think what to do. I have vague intentions of doing it again, and more often. But I feel deeply rooted in the rut in which I have entrenched myself.

It also has stolen my happiness. And I don't just mean the ability to feel it from day to day. I mean, while I've been so deeply immersed in a dark and dreary existence, I missed LIFE. I didn't choose things that maybe would have put me in better places. I seem to have lost some of the bonds with friends and loved ones that kept us bound to each others' daily lives. I'm alone. Other people around me seem to have managed to end up happy and WITH people, and DOING things. I do things, but alone.

I can't quite fully articulate what depression has stolen. People who have never felt it will often say, or privately think, that we are responsible for the loss we experience when we allow things to happen TO us. I don't dispute that. I have let a lot of things happen to me. I have been in those deep dark places where I don't care, because of a crazy chemical imbalance. It is all my fault my life is not different. And at the same time, it is NOT my fault. I have control over where I am, but I don't have control. I feel both ways. In my healthy moments, I can see what I should have done. But in those unhealthy moments, I didn't see it. 

So many times, from so many people, I've heard the viewpoint expressed that the dark ugly points in our lives make our lives richer, and deeper, and more the person we are meant to be. And on my sunny days, I agree with this concept, and sometimes even embrace it. But on my dark, desperate, miserable days, I despise this theory. I find it deplorable. What doesn't kill us might make us stronger. Or it might debilitate us and suspend us in our anguish.

When the Loneliness Gets Real

When someone you love tells you that loving you isn't enough--that they need to move on--the pain is deafening. It's numbing. Life gets unreal. It all feels like a sick joke. And this is ON the meds. I am so, so alone. Friends can't fill his place. Nothing they, or you, or anyone says can make it better. And I don't want to hear anything anyone has to say on this. I don't want to tell my friends, because I don't want to hear them say he's not good enough, or that they knew it, or that there's someone better, or why they think we don't work. I don't want them to agree with me when I say that he's a jerk. I don't want to hear the cold hard facts. I'm not stupid. I know everything they could tell me. But this has thrown me back into a place where I feel so incredibly, horribly isolated in a final, permanent, desperate sort of way. No amount of pep talks will help. In fact, they would just fill me with rage. So I won't tell anyone right now. And I will vent here. And I will turn off the comments, because I don't want to be commiserated with, or talked to at all about this. Not even from you. And I don't want to do this ever, ever again. Unless I can have him back. And I don't think I need to worry about it because no one will be there for me to try with. And I don't want to see him, or talk to him, or smell him. And I want to see him, and talk to him, and smell him. And if I had the chance to see him, and talk to him, and smell him, I would sabatoge it and say something full of venom and push him far away, and be that icy woman he has accused me of. And it would all be because I opened my heart and trusted him and showed him really vulnerable parts of myself, because he said I could trust him, when he didn't really mean that I could trust him, unless things were easy and fun and he was satisfied. Those are the terms to his love. And maybe if I weren't me, I would be enough for him. And maybe if I weren't me, it would be worth it to him to work through the hard stuff, because maybe the thought of not having me in his life would mean something to him.

Fleeting Moment

I had a brief moment of honest connection with a friend today. She has been so wrapped up in her own life, and of course assumes there is nothing to know about mine. Today I had a moment of letting her see the raw despair I feel. She asked if I was ok. I am not really sure what I said. I don't even know how I deflected, but I think I did pretty quickly after that. There's a part of me that thinks that this is sad. There's another part of me that knows that honesty about where I'm at will not get me the soothing support that I wish for. She would tell me how I need to do things differently. How I need to try harder at counseling. That it will get better. That I need to stop holding onto negative crap. In other words, she will miss the point, and the honesty, of the moment. I don't need her to tell me how she sees me, my life, or life in general. What is the point of that? I mean, don't get me wrong. I would like to have her tell me all the amazing truths she sees about me. I would love it if she saw amazing truths in me. All she has shown me lately is ugly truth she sees in me. And how she has no faith in me. She loves me, but I'm so immensely flawed and in her mind I just need to embrace how horribly flawed I am and pretend it's beautiful. She doesn't even think my flaws are beautiful anymore.

I miss that friendship. I hate the restricted little box she has placed our friendship in. She doesn't even see how she is strangling our friendship. She doesn't get what friendship can be. How nourishing it can be. Any real connection is too much for her, at least for more than brief beautiful moments. And I have no power at this point. I feel like I'm just a bystander, witnessing as the life is choked out of any good part of our relationship.

I wish I were stronger. I wish she were stronger. I wish I were brave enough for a little honesty right now. I wish that bravery would not equal stupidity. I hate that this passive, awful place I'm in is what people like my counselor and my boss think is prudent and wise. Stupid. What is the point of being this person. I think I may have lost the things I love most about myself.

Writing.

Sometimes I think about writing. I think about coming home from work and spending the whole night writing, and how I will love it, and it will soothe my soul and I will feel all creative and have an outlet and not think about the crap at work, and the crap in my personal life, and it will be magical. And then I go and catch up on Facebook. And then there is pinterest....

So, clearly I am leading a rich life recreation-wise. I'm totally rejuvenated each morning and just RARING to go back to work, as you can imagine. Which, as you may guess, means I hate everyone's stinking guts, and was telling people to bite me as I wrote back the stupid diplomatic, cooperative emails. So, yeah. Happy, happy.

We won't get into the reasons I dread work and feel incredibly isolated, alone, and helpless every day now. I'm hoping this feeling passes soon. This morning, however, I had an anxiety attack larger than I have had in a while, and was convinced as I drove into work that my boss and the HR guy would be sitting in my office, and they would fire me. Don't ask me why. I am not aware of any (more) ways I have screwed up. But I'm still terrified  I've tried to talk to my boss about the impact some of the ways she manages me cause me to panic and despond. But, um, yeah. She takes it personally (as she in teh same breath tells me I need to learn how to not take things personally), and doesn't understand why I don't trust her. And yet, tells me that if I get fired, I will bring it on myself. Um, thanks for putting those positive thoughts out there? So, now? Don't really trust her. Because she doesn't seem to believe in me. And I want to tell her to bite me.

But, seriously, I used to love writing, and swore I would be a writer forever. I'm now failing. Haven't really written since college, in any kind of meaningful way. Sooooo... I really should start writing instead of pinning stuff on my boards on pinterest....

Tomorrow.

Sleep used to be more magical...

I slept most of the day today. I didn't need to. I woke up at 7 or 8 this morning and felt wide awake and like I could get out of bed and have energy. But I didn't want to, so I willed myself back to sleep. And managed to keep falling back asleep each time I woke up for the majority of the day. Now it is dark out, and I am finally awake. I don't really want to, but I don't think i can sustain sleep anymore, and I would definitely be awake all night if I tried. I may be awake all night anyways. Although, at this moment, i feel like I could manage a nap.

This is not healthy behavior, I'm pretty sure. And the frustrating thing to me is, I used to be able to sleep away feelings better. My problems would seem smaller, and the next week things would get better. Now, my feelings are very real and there and not going away. Being an adult is stupid. And I don't really feel better. I just feel alone and isolated. And things are not going resolve all easy on their own. The ex is still my ex (although the text saying he loved me and the brief kiss were not helping in solidifying that), work is still a mess, and my finances are still a mess. And no one is fixing those things for me. And none of these things seem smaller after sleep.

I know I have loving, supportive friends. Several of them have been checking with me on this and listening as much as I need. But I'm so lonely. Everyone has these busy lives. I need company. I'm alone in this stupid apartment, and I don't know how to ask anyone to interrupt their life to spend time with me.

Misery

Today I feel pretty miserable. My friend got engaged. She texted my other friend to tell her, but not me. I found out in a really off-hand way. It was not a great start to my day. I need to learn to let these tings go. I feel so wounded. And sad. I love her, but she doesn't seem to feel that I am very important. She's always doing this. She told me a while ago she was reprioritizing, and led me to believe she had realized she needed to value me more. Now I'm thinking maybe not. Or maybe it was just a day. I don't know.

ALONE

You know what's interesting is that I can go through an entire weekend and just fall of the map and not leave my apartment and no one misses me or wonders what's going on or worries about me. Except perhaps my parents. Bless their hearts. But as far as having like a grown up life with people in it... not so much.

What makes it even more... odd, is that I have a window into what people are doing on facebook. My friends spend a lot of time with their other friends. I'm just not one of those friends that people spend time with. I don't understand it. I really don't. I'm the friend that people love and check in on but don't embrace as part of their actual life. What is that? It's funny that I have always believed that I am a very good friend. I work very hard at being a very good friend. But I have the affect on friends of being the friend you don't quite ever make plans with. I think I've failed and I didn't even notice....

And don't tell me it's my friends, because it's not. They are great. And I don't need new ones. The ones I have are amazing. It's me. There's something really toxic about me.

Sleeeep

For the love. Just when I thought my sleep was almost kind of healthy (ie, I woke up in the morning at about the same time, and often earlier, which, while annoying, felt closer to healthy than previous sleep patterns), and I have a night of no sleep. I was awake until 4am this morning. I tried to fall asleep throughout the night and was just sooo wide awake that I gave up a few times and sat up and did a few things online to try to bring on the drowsiness through some activity. Nope. Didn't work. I finally started feeling like I could find sleep at about 4 and I was able to fall asleep finally. And then of course I slept through church completely. I loved my bed today. When I woke up today my bed was so, so comfortable, and I was so content. That is much better than waking up to anxiety like I was doing earlier this year. I didn't want to get out of bed but I had dinner at my parents. Before that I was enjoying a supremely lazy day in my jammies. Which sounds nice except for the immense guilt of missing church. Again. 

I hope that I can sleep tonight. I wish that I could just stay up all night and sleep in my bed all cozy tomorrow though. I don't want to go to work. I don't want to be reminded of the life I have that seems to be going nowhere, and that seems to be so much about how alone I am. 

alone

I am so tired of being alone. I am so alone. I hate how alone I am. I hate that when I am feeling lonely my way of reaching out for human contact is over instant message. I hate that I don't feel like I can call my friends. Hanging out is out of the question. They are busy with their lives. They have things to do. They have all suggested that I should find some people to hang out with. What the hell are they, if I can't hang out with them. In their minds, we're friends, but I need OTHER friends to hang out with. What is that? What makes them think other people will want to spend that much time with me if they don't want to.

One of my friends did not look well when she left work today. I was really worried about her, and checked in with her to make sure she got home ok. And it made me think, I want to be checked in on. I'm not ok. No one is checking in on me. I want someone to worry. I could die in this apartment and I'm not sure how long it would take someone to come check on me.

So Sad

Not okay with losing friends. Especially when I have to see said friend every day. And especially when said friend acts like it's no big deal. Not okay with fake friendship.

How Can I Disappoint YOU Today?

So the theme of my life this week/month/year is disappointment. Not my own feelings of disappointment, although I seem to succeed in being disappointed in everything and everybody lately, what with my whole glass mostly empty view on life. No. The disappointment I speak of is the gazillion ways that I can disappoint the people I work with, the people I love, the people who love me, and the people I serve. I have blown it in some big ways lately with people.

I've stood friends up for dinner frequently (mostly unintentionally because I have turned into the biggest airhead in the world). They have been patient but I can feel them resigning themselves to my inconsiderateness, which means the socialness I have been working so hard to engage in will be that much more difficult to achieve, since no one will want to set dates with me.

I screwed up in a major way at work, and the effect of what I messed up on has caused ripples that keep rebounding off things and lapping back over me, extending the moments of disappointment and magnifying my feelings of ineffectiveness and perpetual failure. So, yeah. The career is looking great.

I'm failing at church. Failing to go, failing to follow through on service I have committed to. Failing to engage in the spiritual rites and practices I know would soothe me. Even now, writing about how I could be soothed, I feel so anxious and guilty that even though somewhere in my heart I feel my religion could help heal me, most of my heart seems to be saying that I am too far gone and that there is no point. In my heart of hearts I think I must be greatly disappointing God.

I've been working forever, it seems, to learn how to cope with my depression. i thought that I had grown in my depression and that the deep wounds have made me wise and that I had weathered hard times and it had smoothed some of my rough edges. And then this last year or so happened. I feel as though with all the tumult, my edges should be smooth like a rounded pebble on the beach. They should be. But when I examine myself, I feel like a jagged rock that has just been shattered and has more edges than the ocean could ever smooth. My flaws are more glaring and my barriers to being a whole person loom larger than ever before. People I trust and love tell me that I am so unhealthy,so odd, so not normal, that they must go over here and be happy together, away from my toxicity. They tell me the truth as they feel bound to say it, and move away before they are infected. And I don't blame them. I envy them. It must be nice to know how to Be. To give and receive love and feel the glow of being a light in the lives of the ones you love.

I used to feel like that. I used to be able to draw myself out of the space I'm in now and feel that there was hope. That I had friends I gave light to. That my soul was not as ugly and dark and decrepit as it felt in my low moments. I have fleeting moments of that feeling now, but I seem to stumble upon it. I can't intentionally elicit it, and I half hold my breath when I am feeling it, because at any moment an ugly thought or sudden realization of what feels like the horrible truth of my condition  could emerge and take my brain hostage again.

My therapist says I am doing better. She says I am dealing with ugly thought patterns better and that I should not be so hard on myself and celebrate my successes. My friends who have told me how hard it is to be around me have remarked that I have been doing better. But they are still over there. And I need them over here. All of this isolation might possibly drive me mad.

There is a woman who is mentally ill who uses services in the building I work at. Often, in the afternoon, things get to be too much for her. When the internal stimuli that is taunting her gets to be too much, she lets loose with blood curdling, heart rending screams. Over and over and over. For as long as 30-45 minutes. One day, after one of these episodes, she remarked to me, "I want to apologize. I don't know why it happens. It just gets to be too much." I wanted to tell her, I know how you feel. I want to join you. Those screams sound just like the ones in my head. My heart answers every scream torn from her lips. I want to join her. If I did, maybe I could just stop trying.Give into the crazy in my head. They would commit me somewhere, put me on nice soothing medication that soften all the hard feelings. And in the moments the medication was not working, I could purge my soul and get it all out. I could scream until it was drained out of me.

I think it might be time to talk to the doc about upping my meds....

Moving Towards Not Caring

I think the direction I am moving in is either healthy, or really not healthy. I really should figure out which one. I've  been having a really rough time with a friend, and wanting their attention, and stressing about the relationship, and not liking her interactions with other friends, and feeling left out. Fixating is one word that comes to mind. It's an ugly word, and I don't like it, but my mind was not letting go of my yucky feelings. So I've decided that I need to stop fixating. This was a great epiphany for me. And harder than it sounds, which you might understand if you have ever had a friend seemingly start growing away from you. Your urge (or at least mine) is to try to pull them nearer, and fix it. I've tried that. It wasn't working. she gets all independent and wants space and all that crap. I totally don't get that because I tend to let my friends draw me near when they need me. But for my own self-preservation I'm not engaging as much with her or the people around us socially. I can feel myself doing that whole guarding my heart thing a little. This is something I have not done in the past with this friend, because I am all about trust and openness with my friends. But that was not working. Continual pain tells me that something about the way that I am handling this friendship is not working. So, I do the whole putting up walls thing. I don't like to do this with friends. But it feels like the most healthy thing I can do right now.

She knows something is up. She knows I have things on my mind, and she knows I am all stressed out. She's the whole, whatever, you don't have to talk to me, I'll give you space, kind of friend. Which is nice of her. I wish it was a little more important to her to know what was going on with me and be all supportive, but that's not her style, and this is not about getting her attention. And she has asked me what's going on several times. She's shown genuine concern. I think she believes she knows a lot of what is going on in my head. She maybe knows 50%. It's more complicated than just being about this friendship. I really can't talk about it with her. I don't know what I would say. I don't think talking to her about it would help me. I still wish I could. I want to be able to tell her. I want someone close to me, supporting me. But this is one of those stupid, work through it yourself, kind of things. I'm tired of doing things on my own.

One odd side effect. Several times the last few weeks I've gotten so sick to my stomach over the stress of it all that I've wanted to puke. And so I have. I made myself puke tonight. My tummy feels so much better now. I think this is not healthy. I think I will not be telling anyone about this. I really should stop doing that.

It should bother her that I"m putting up walls. I don't think she's noticed yet. Ugh. It sounds like I'm doing this to get her attention. I'm not. But I'm not going to lie, I wish it would get her attention nonetheless. At least a little.

Worn Down with Worry and Yuckiness

You know that icky, anxious, worrying feeling you can have when something is really not going right in your life? I have that right now. It started with my PMS. I sunk down into an icky place, and I allowed myself to isolate and basically hide in my room the majority of the three day weekend. I did still go to church for a few minutes, and I had dinner with my parents one night, so I give myself points for that. 

The annoying thing is that this bout of anxiousness is not exactly about something specific in my life I feel like I can fix. It's not really about a situation, it's more just about who I am. It's accompanied by a large dose of self-loathing, too, which is fun. Maybe it kind of goes back to my feelings about the fallout from setting boundaries with Red. It was his birthday this week. I haven't talked to him since October last year, when he told me repeatedly via text to F off. That was the last I heard from him. That hostility was his reaction to a letter I wrote saying that I couldn't allow him to treat me the way he had been treating me anymore, and telling me what I needed. It was much more firm than I've ever been. But it was necessary. And he could not forgive me for it. 

So this week was his birthday. And if there is one thing I know about myself, it's that I define being a good friend by the things I do to show support and loyalty, and showing love in many ways, including on their birthday, because they are important and I remember those dates. And I did not text, call, email, or message him on his birthday. I don't know where he is, or what he is doing. I'm pretty sure he's still alive. Intellectually I know this is the healthier choice for me--to not reach out to him. If we were still in contact he would still guilt me, do things to offend and degrade me in passive aggressive ways, and make me cry. Also if I knew the things that he was allowing to go badly in his life I would want to fix it all for him. This is not healthy for me. Our relationship would not be healthy at all. I know this. But I feel, at a very deep place in my heart, like a horrible friend. And like I don't know the point of me. 

I've cut the friends out of my life who I really felt like needed me. The ones I have now don't really need me. Sometimes they are in need, and i can help fill a need. But they don't really need me. They can go weeks without really talking to me or seeing me and be fine. They have stuff going on in their lives. They have partners and kids and hobbies and social circles all outside of me. And I have nothing. 

I do have friends. And I have family. I have people I care about who care about me. I have opportunities for beautiful moments. When I feel like making effort, I have people to make plans with, and things to fill my time with. But I feel like I have no world. I come home to an apartment with no one waiting for me. I don't have a home base with people who love me where I can go whenever I need to just be in a happy little cocoon of love. I mean, I do have places I am welcome. But not all the time. Because they have their lives too, and their home bases are already filled with the people who belong there. 

So I feel like I have no place and no purpose. And I don't understand why I can't have that place and purpose with the people that I love. I feel like they are not allowing that place for me in their lives. 

And this is where the self loathing comes in. I don't feel like my insides are very pretty right now. I feel as awkward and skittish as certain people have observed I seem lately. I annoy myself as much with my anxiousness as I seem to be annoying those who have to be around me daily. I don't want to be around me either. Gifts and talents I thought I had I'm not so certain I have now. No one else seems to see them in me, so maybe if I ever had them I don't now. I have the revolving thought, "what is the point of me?"  Now, I am a religious woman. I have always believed that we are all God's children, that we are special, that we all have gifts and talents and special things about us, and that we have a purpose in life and things we are meant to do and all that stuff. I still do believe that about other people. I look at my friends and see them fulfilling their purpose in so many ways, and I see them flourishing and progressing and touching others for good. While in some ways I can still convince myself that I am touching others for good in at least some ways, I am feeling very much like the great impact I thought I could strive for in life is a joke. The people I thought I could touch for good seem to not need or want my touch. The things I am doing to try to make myself better just seem so pointless when, after all that effort, I spend a whole week in this horrible sucking void of happiness. If I can't even keep perspective and find my happy place in times of despair, how can I progress into a place where I'm a decent person. My friends look at me all sad and try to encourage me to seek relationships to fill my life, but they don't want to spend time with me. They say I am so nice and so sweet and if I just put myself out there I will find someone to love me. I'm at a loss as to why they think this is possible. 

See? Ugly thoughts. I have not really expressed too much of them to my usual confidantes. Coolgirl would tell me I need to get counseling or some other practical thing. Shorty would as well. BFF would just feel really bad and wish she knew how to help me, and then I would feel bad for bringing her down. She would also be mystified and not understand why or how I could be in that place, which would only remind me how much of a mutant I feel like. I know that talking to a counselor is the practical solution that many would suggest for this. Hey, if I were the sounding board to something like this, it would be my suggestion. But I don't feel like sharing these ugly thoughts is going to make them go away, and I don't feel like it's going to fix anything or help lead me out of this dark place. I do think that this is partially a chemical imbalance. It's worse around my menstrual cycle, and exercise helps lift my mood. 

What I think I need to do is exercise fairly religiously, possibly multiple times a day. Darn apathy is not helping me break into that habit. I also think I need to look at the things I'm doing medically. I have already contacted my doctor, and we've discussed some things that I can start doing right away. One of them is birth control, which is thought to help regulate things like cramps and mood if you have PMDD. (Awesome that I can start finding new disorders to label myself with, right?) So we will be trying that. In a very, very small place I feel a spark of hope that there may be a light at the end of this dark tunnel. But I don't want to get my hopes up, and I am also fairly fearful that I'm stuck with this crazy brain for the rest of my life and there's nothing I can do about it. 

When I was a teenager there was a lady at church who would sit out on the couch in the lobby during services and cry. I would walk by her sometimes when I was avoiding being in Sunday School. Often there would be another woman comforting her, listening to her, or just being there for her. I always felt bad for her. Somehow, someone told me or mentioned in front of me that she was depressed. I didn't really understand that then. I didn't get that it was a disorder. I wondered what in her life had happened that had made her so sad. I remember thinking that she looked like she was in a lot of pain. I've been thinking recently that I might have turned into that woman. Mind you, I'm much more solitary in my suffering, and I try not to be the woman making a spectacle in the lobby. This might not be the best thing, since she had women trying to help lift her up and I run home from church and hide so that they don't see what a mess I am before I start crying. I have let a few individuals in, and they have been a comfort to me. But I don't want to be the poor woman they feel they need to do their christian duty by. I know they say you need to allow people to serve you, so they can reap the blessings and be God's hands and all that. But I don't know how to do that. I suck at asking for it, and the friends that I want it from don't seem to have the time or capacity. But I need some love. Can't they just read my mind? 

Self-Loathing

This is a fun one. This is one that I have not talked about very much to... anyone. Not my counselor, not my friends, not my journal... not even you. But it's been on my mind a lot this week. In this whole process I've been going through in the last year, where I lost the Roomie and I lost Red, and then things got rocky with Coolgirl (something I have not alluded to on here, partly because I stopped writing), and I started to question my ability to have friends, who, you know, wanted to be around me. I'm still not feeling very confident about that one. Coolgirl and I are fine. I got my meds changed, and got less crazy, and stopped doing crazy things like bursting into tears in the middle of the work day. And I've had a lot of "ah ha" moments and insights into my own lovely craziness. I do take things really personally. I do get really emotional and irrational and worry that my friend hates me when they get a little irritated or distracted or busy with having their own life. Off meds, those crazy moments were amplified, which was fun for all involved. Now I'm regaining some sanity and perspective and seeing that I don't have to get emotional about someone else's bad day. Not that I can always convince my emotional self of that. Because regardless of how my reasonable side sees things, sometimes the urge to be sad and crawl under the table and curl into the fetal position is a wee bit stronger than it should be a healthy adult. And this is why I'm having a hard time not hating myself right now. I mean, I'm driving myself crazy. I'm always freaking out and getting mad and sad and anxious about EVERYTHING. I am TIRED of it. I try to find my happy place but sometimes i don't think I have one. Why WOULD anyone want to have a close friendship with THAT. I want to just isolate like crazy. I want to spare everyone of sharing in my crazy moments. And I can see why they are irritated with me. I'm empathizing with them. but I can't take breaks like they can. And if I isolate, it's ALL me, ALL the time. There are not distractions. That gets old quick.

So I really kind of hate myself a lot of the time now. And I want someone who has been dealing with my crap and losing patience with me to tell me I have redeeming qualities. But apparently that is a needy thing to request. Or I don't know how to ask it. Or I'm not supposed to care? Specifically, I would like for Coolgirl to tell me my redeeming qualities, since she has had such a hard time going through all my crazy with me, and has seen all the ugly and barely made it through. She's all "you shouldn't worry about what other people think about you, and it shouldn't matter what I think." But, um, I need to know that a non-crazy person sees redeeming things in me. Because I am not trusting my own judgement right now. And I feel really ugly on the inside. I feel crippled. And I am feeling like, what's the point?

Shame on ME

I guess the fact that I haven't blogged in here for over 20 days is a good sign, since I'm generally drawn to blog on here when I've having a tough time and am trying to process feelings. Trying to do the whole self care thing. Feel like doody tonight.

One thing I have realized about myself is that although I've been really good about talking about my feelings and looking for honest feedback about how I'm dealing with said feelings, there is a little hiccup. Once I've discovered that something I am feeling is a little wack-a-doodle, meaning that it's not the healthy response and not "normal," after a while I try to hide the fact that I am having said feeling from those same close trusted friends who helped me determine I'm over-reacting. Because I know how sad and insecure I really do look, and that the fact that I am insecure is evident to people. For example, Coolgirl got a new employee that will meet some needs I've been helping meet in the workplace. I helped hire her. I loved her in the interview, and I still do. But now that she's started, I'm having a knee-jerk panic-y reaction, because she is (and will continue to be) taking up her time, and therefore I am feeling like I have been replaced because I don't serve a function for her, and if she doesn't need me she's going to leave. As much as I can now identify that this is a central issue for me, I still continue to panic. I can't seem to help myself. I do calm myself down in what I suppose is a relatively short amount of time, since I can identify what the feeling is. But meanwhile I get all cranky and spastic and throw up walls and alienate Coolgirl, who has no idea what my damage is.

Normally Coolgirl would get out of me what I am freaking out about, but this week she's been so busy that it's been pretty easy to a) hide some of my freaking outedness, and b) avoid getting called on it, because we have not spent time alone, and she doesn't make time for me outside of work anymore, so calling me after work to check in doesn't even occur to her. She puts me out of her head as part of work when she leaves the office now. Which is the other part of my freak-out. That I don't factor into her personal life. That's not to say that we don't have a personal relationship, or that I don't believe and trust that she loves me like a close friend. It's just I'm in the work compartment of her life. She's too enamored with her not-so-new love interest to consider making me part of her outside of work life, because said Love Interest calls the shots on the agenda.

So I'm hiding these five-year-old gut reaction feelings; squirreling them away from view with an underlying feeling of shame. Shame for being so insecure. Insecure is not attractive. People don't like an insecure friend. That leads to clingy. Which leads to people running far, far away. And in this state of shame and insecurity, I don't see any way out. Talking about it would be stupid. She's not doing anything wrong, and she can't say anything she hasn't said the last 20 times we've had this conversation about my abandonment issues. And telling other people just makes me look stupid in their eyes, and they don't know what to tell me either, except that my expectations are too high, and my feelings shouldn't be hurt given the amount of time we spend together. These things I know. My rational part totally gets it. So I just want to keep hiding it and hoping nobody notices. It feels like the dream I have about showing up to High School naked. Except worse. Because it's like showing up to work naked. For reals. And not knowing how to fix it, and so hiding under my desk all day. That's how it feels.