Let me just start out by saying that I HAVE MISSED MY BLOG! I miss writing...along with being sad for not achieving a goal that I had set, better late than never. (Also let me add that I'm supposed to be working & my boss is probably gonna kill me!) - She's a reader for sure, even if she wasn't I'm in the habit - a GOOD habit contrary to popular belief in one of the subcultures to which I belong - of telling on myself.
Anyways....so what brought me out of this funk? I know you're DYING to know about what specifically I just could NOT stand to not share. What made me put my foot down? I stumbled across this on a blog & wanted to re-share it. The reason is because I have never before had my feelings & emotions about my depression, drug addiction, 'acting out' behavior, struggle with relationships, etc defined SO clearly! I hear it in 'the rooms' a lot, I know people who know the hell that I know, maybe everyone knows the hell I know... Never though have I read something.
The reading is written as a teenager writing a letter to his/her parents. The original blogpost I saw this on is located
here. Just FYI, the cutting doesn't apply to my situation particularly. I want to encourage ANYONE who knows someone who is struggling in their life, whether it be drugs, alcohol, depression, thoughts of ending it, or violence, to share this letter with them as mentioned in the blogpost. There is nothing more important than helping that person not feel so alone. (I've bolded parts that I specifically would have included if I were to re-write this for myself). I'd say enjoy but....I bet it won't be any more pleasant for you than it is for me.
“Given all the things I’m doing that have disappointed you, I’m hoping you won’t just see this as another excuse or a way of manipulating you, both of which I’m very capable of doing and during other times have even been a master at.
In fact I’ve been so good at doing both of those, I’m afraid to tell you what I’m about to and have you think I’m just being dramatic and only trying to get attention or get out of taking responsibility for my actions and paying the consequences for them.
Today, I have a little bigger fish to fry.
I’m losing it. I’m losing my mind, my sense of who I am, of where I belong, and I’m spending more and more time wondering if life is worth living.
I know I don’t have any reason to feel like ending it, I know that so many people have it worse than me, I even know that I have all the reasons to live. I just don’t feel any of them.
I have felt alone for some time now. It hasn’t been a few days or even a few weeks. It’s been at least months.
Also the intensity of rage that I feel not only chills you — which I know is why you back off when it gets really ugly between us — it chills me.
I hate hating you more than I hate you. When I hate you at the level I’m capable of hating you I feel like destroying things. That has escalated and finally shifted to thinking of just destroying me.
But in reality, I don’t want to destroy anything, I just want to destroy the pain I feel and make it go away. But it won’t go away and I can’t make it.
The reasons I drink, do drugs and cut on myself — all of which scare the shit out of you — are because they all relieve me. When I’m stone cold sober and drug free and the pain and the craziness intensifies, all I can think about is numbing myself. I don’t do alcohol and drugs to get high, I do them to get by. And when I cut on myself, which terrorizes you, I feel like I’m cutting out the pain or at the very least that I’m feeling something. And that gives me relief from the pain of feeling nothing.
Assuming you won’t rub my face in this — which might actually wake me up or push me over the edge, but I don’t think you want to play Russian roulette with me — you’ll probably ask me what you can do to help.
And I wish I had an answer to tell you.
Actually the answer I’d like to tell you, I am telling you by telling you this message and hoping you’ll “just listen.”
I think the hole in my being and the missingness at my core needs warmth from you mom — occasional kindness from pathetic, rational, lecturing, clueless dad is not the same — which I either think you can’t get to because all of us — including dad — fight you or because you no longer have any warmth, either because you didn’t get it from grandma or because it got worn out by all of us.
Dad, you’re not off the hook in this. I think you run interference between mom and me and try to keep the peace and then I think you find your home away from home when you get away to go to work or travel for work or play sports with your buddies.
Maybe a start would be if I saw each of you making the effort to understand me especially when you have no chance of really achieving it.
There is a good chance that neither of you will be able to understand me because I am as different from you as you are from each other, but it might help if I saw you continuing to try and continuing to ask or say things to me like:
‘Tell me what’s happening and how you feel in another way, because I see that I’m not getting it and I want to get it. And then tell me at its worst, what that’s like.’
And if I push you away, you might do well to stand firm and say, ‘We can’t go away because as your parents we can’t allow you to feel so alone in hell and we’ve got to do whatever we can to get you out. Sorry to tick you off, it’s in the parents rule book which you’ll figure out when you become one.’ One of my friend’s parents actually sleeps outside her room on the floor which my friend both resents and feels safer with.
More importantly I think it might help if I saw you not getting so frustrated and throwing your hands up, because I keep pushing back and won’t agree to what you think should make me feel better. Going along with it to get you off my back hasn’t worked and actually makes me feel worse.
I think I can live with the pain, I just can’t live with suffering. I think the suffering happens when I feel alone in my pain for a long period of time and it doesn’t let up.
I think if I could feel less alone from the inside out, I could listen to what you and the world are telling me from the outside it.
Feeling alone is feeling that I am unpaired with what everyone seems to have.
Being unpaired with a future worth living causes me to feel hopeless; being unpaired with any help that I or others can provide causes me to feel helpless; being unpaired with a reason to go on causes me to feel that everything is both pointless and meaningless; and being unpaired with doing or accomplishing all the things I’m supposedly capable of causes me to feel worthless.
And feeling unpaired with all of those things cause me to feel des-pair.
I feel like I am trapped in a deep dark cold mine shaft, have run out of food and water and am running out of oxygen and time.
I keep hearing people digging to find me. I hear them thinking they have found me and are all excited. But what I know that they don’t know is that they’re digging in the wrong direction because one of them got a glimpse of a doll in a different mine shaft that I left there many years ago and everyone thinks it’s me.”
This came on the heels of me just telling my Aunt yesterday on FB that I appreciate her checking in with me (and remembering me in her prayers) because it can sometimes feel so lonely & that is truly unbearable. I'm so grateful to have that love in my life, to know that I don't have to endure that!
Today, I'm so happy to just know that at least I'm able to express these things. At least I have a way, people who love me enough to listen, that I haven't fried my brain to the point that I can't use it to communicate anymore, etc. Awareness is a big deal in my life - now & always. I hope I'm able to use this awareness for something to create great change in my own life & to be able to bless the lives of others.
P.S. I dislike it when people treat me as if I am 'their problem', please don't take this as me trying to play the victim or make me 'your problem'. All I'm saying is that I'm willing to admit that I have problems, whether or not I can manage them on my own is yet to be determined. Honesty is not just the best policy but it typically needs to be the first policy when one is implementing change!
