Life is good and life is great but also difficult. That's a given I know. I'm just annoyed because I know I'm not doing anything bad or weird or too terribly awkward, I'm attractive, I have social skills, I'm funny, interesting, etc. yet most days I wake up with this ache in my gut and chest filling me with shame and regret and guilt. I can't quite quantify it, but I feel like it happens every time I have any sort of social interaction. I don't dwell on dumb things I said like I used to. I rationalize with myself about how people are too focused on themselves anyway to worry about something I may or may not have said or acted like. Yet this feeling still persists. I think this is depression but I keep going. I can't let it engulf me again because it's a lot easier (but not less painful necessarily) to fight and keep your head above water than to succumb to it - it's a lot more painful to make that journey back out from my experience.
I keep listening to the Rilo Kiley song called Better Daughter/Son. This line gets me "and sometimes when you're on, you're really f***ing on, and your friends they sing along and they love you, but the lows are so extreme that the good seems f***ing cheap, and it teases you for weeks in its absence. But you'll fight, and you'll make it through you'll fake it if you have to and you'll show up for work with a smile
You'll be better you'll be smarterAnd more grown up and a better daughter
Or son and a real good friend
You'll be awake and you'll be alert
You'll be positive though it hurts
And you'll laugh and embrace all your friends
You'll be a real good listener
You'll be honest, you'll be brave
You'll be handsome, you'll be beautiful
You'll be happy
Your ship may be coming in
You're weak but not giving in
To the cries and the wails of the valley below
Your ship may be coming in
You're weak but not giving in
And you'll fight it you'll go out fighting all of them...
I love lyrical prose. Words are lovely. Alas, words are also just that. People talk and talk but what they do speaks volumes. This cliche we are all intimately acquainted with. I have found myself in the most interesting predicament as of late. I have always struggled against my so called Mormon culture while still maintaining my faith. I guess over the last year is when things really tipped toward losing my faith more than anything else. The culture of the world became so much more attractive, yet my belief was always still there gnawing at me, beckoning, even begging at times. I've really only entertained certain notions in my mind, but oh how the pull has become stronger to act in different ways. And then of course there has to be a boy. Attractive and worldly wise, whispering wistful notions in my head. It's really not him though. I just get really excited to be able to connect with someone and crave that feeling of being fully accepted. But like every blessing I receive, 'not him, not yet, patience my child' there are still things I struggle with, probably always will, but one thing I cannot deny is that of my faith in the fundamental principles of the gospel; God as our father and Jesus Christ our Savior.
So this is me trying to cling to my faith still and trust that I will find a way to move forward in the way that I'm supposed to.
Can I get paid every time a guy tells me that I'm not worth dating because I don't believe in my worth? It sounds stupid when I say it like that, and maybe it is, but this time didn't even bother me; well, it bothered me but I started laughing and thought "wow my life is a joke." I know I'm supposed to find validation within but it's really hard when this keeps happening.
Update: I realized it doesn't matter anymore because I can't base how I feel based on someone else's perception even if it's true. It is just exhausting. I know the difference between people who drain me and people who make me light up and get excited about life. I'm still in the midst of big questions and doing stupid things but I'm figuring it out.
I sink down into the chair, a futile search for comfort. Closed eyes manifest a layering of sounds: sports announcers, a call for drinks, slot machines, and drunken yells.
"what's wrong?"
I search for the words as my brain floods with the usual criticisms. ... 'Stop acting so immature,' I think to myself.
"nothing... " I mumble then add, "I'm just in a bad mood."
I'm still learning how to take care of myself.
No man is an island, I tell myself. I'm told I have style and that I'm gorgeous. I'm told a lot of things. Validation. I try to hold onto this, but it leaks through my fingers like wet sand. Ocean waves crash in my head; I try to drown out the words of worthlessness.
Heart accompanies body sinking into chair. The island in my head dark and lonely, water eroding shore. Back and forth, the tide takes no thought for its actions. So why can't I, like the waves of the sea, accept what is and just be?
I dont know if I will be back in the day when I was in the hospital haha I will probably transfer to a new job haha the gym and the gym is so crowded sometimes the room is a very nice and clean up the good news is that the world is ending. ..... I just clicked the top row of prediction words on my keyboard. It's actually rather telling. This is your subconscious dissociative nightmare.
paradoxically trapped between ignorant numbness and apathetic bliss. It's like walking in a dream, but not a pleasant one. This is a dream where you can see yourself in the distance, drifting along dusty desert landscapes made interesting only by the lengthening shadows of the encroaching twilight. Only once in a while a snake or something of the sort, or perhaps just a shadow, hijacks your amygdala. Panic rises and falls again. Then resume wandering. Listless. Lethargic. Amnesiac.
There are people there but you don't really see them or remember them. Like trying to read a page on the verge of sleep. Eyes can't focus. Disconnected. I'M THE THE PERSON WHO IS A GREAT FRIEND AND SERVES OTHERS TO KNOW ABOUT THE SWINE FLU LIKE THAT AND THE OTHER HAND I AM MOVING FROM THE SINGLES WARD THIS WEEK AGAIN. it's your subconscious screaming at you from the void.
The doctors told you that you were your mind but I disagree. Your mind is a machine evolved to connect words. To connect anything. It wants to prove itself, but it's a paradox. A thinking box. Building blocks.
An elastic snaps against your wrist. A friend offers to smack you in the face. You laugh and joke and cry but those are merely bodily reflexes at this point, akin to a cough or sneeze.
The mind is a paradox. It talks and it talks.
..... Rough draft. Just toying with new style about what I've been feeling lately.
The stigma of mental illness is still very real and common. Comments on forums expressing hatred towards those with a particular illness abound. But I can't say I blame them considering the vampiristic (yes I am saying that is a word) way in which they can drain a person. My idealist self sees this and thinks of the movie Warm Bodies - if we just treat them with love, treat them like a real person, then they would start acting like one. Right? Well, it's not that simple. Partly, probably because they will just push you away when you do that.
A wife may lovingly reach her hand out to her husband when he is having a difficult time, only to have her hand slapped away with a threat to never do that again. And then he will probably hate himself even more because he feels like he can't control himself, his emotions. It's everybody else's fault. She shouldn't have done that. How could she attack him like that? Everything feels like an attack.
He craves validation to fill the black hole of despair that occupies his being. He doesn't understand why everything keeps happening to him, why it hurts so much, why everyone is always attacking him. The slightest amount of criticism can completely derail him. He thinks he is reaching out to others in a positive way but the void he carries inside obscures his vision to what is really happening and only perpetuates his abandonment issues when people exit his life time and time again.
They say it's like having no skin. There have been studies showing that intense emotions last up to 20% longer in someone with BPD. They don't just burn bridges; they line them with C4 and then blow them up. A common phrase is "I hate you, don't leave me"
She thinks she is a good friend, but can't see objectively what she is really doing, even though deep down she really knows. Armed with all of the ammunition of spiteful words spewed in her direction over the years, she shoots it all at her next victim with rapid force. After a particularly volatile explosion, only now does she begin to see the pattern of destruction following her wake. To her very core she wants to change. But she is still afraid.
This is my current favorite song.
I'm going to be honest. I am kind of stuck right now. So many things keep happening to remind me that I know nothing; nothing about relationships particularly. Or grammar because I doubt I am using semicolons properly or if I ever will really know how to, but I digress.
You know in science when you learn how gases fill the volume of the container they occupy, or something like that? I've been thinking about how (actually I just thought of this) my personality or identity has a similar quality. I don't know if everyone is like this, or if I am more particularly due to the way I was raised.
It's usually a form of criticism that I will let upset my entire opinion of my existence. I don't want it to be that way, but it happens. Then I can only see the negative. I'm realizing I have everything I need, all the tools to help me, but I just need to overcome my fear and realize that everyone else struggles too and that it's okay to mess up.
My dad told me recently that he is like a volcano and needs to erupt in order to feel better and basically that I just need to be okay with it. At the time, and still many other times to come I'm sure, I was not okay with it. I was really upset because nothing gets resolved, and I'm just supposed to be okay with getting hot lava spewed all over me unpredictably. But that's life right?
I saw a picture of my friend's hand on Instagram after she got burned by oil when she was making coconut shrimp. It looked so painful I could only imagine how bad it hurt. It reminded me of when I was making some korean food and frying it in oil. It started exploding right when I leaned down to turn off the pot. It exploded all over my face and right into my eyes. It was pretty traumatic; my cousins were there and I ran into the bathroom with one of my cousin's fiancee and she helped me rinse it out of my eyes. I could hear screaming in the other room and exploding sounds as the oil kept reacting to the thawing rice cakes. (We R Smrt) I went to the doctor later to check and make sure my eyes weren't messed up or anything and he was shocked by my outlandish tale and the fact that I had absolutely no sign of that incident occuring except for the fact that my sweater was covered in oil. It truly was a miracle and in my opinion God's way of telling me that He has my back and is always there for me, even when I do dumb things. I never really thought of it this way before but I feel like hopefully the metaphor can be extended to the metaphor of my volcanic dad. I know I have baggage and scars, but I also know that God is looking out for me, and protecting me, and for all of us. I don't like hurting, but I don't want to dwell on it any more than I have to, since all that does is magnify the problems.
Now I'm beginning a new fight, a fight to live. To be okay with who I am.
