Day to Day
It's difficult to know when I can or can't talk about what I'm feeling. I try very hard not to talk about it, and when I do, it's usually with very few people, and then it just feels like I'm constantly bitching about things which can ultimately make me feel worse. It makes me feel like a bad friend, like a burden.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to talk openly about the things that I feel, but I'm afraid that doing so will open myself up to the judgment that I'm so desperately terrified of. People will say I'm just looking for attention, or they'll tell me that all my problems are easy to solve and that I'm just lazy, or one of another hundred or so bullshit things I tell myself to convince myself to remain isolated.
At the same time, it's important to be open about it. In this world, there needs to be open dialogue about mental illness, and if I'm an expert in anything, it's being mentally ill. People need to see the effects of child abuse, and how a society can indirectly conspire to perpetuate and exacerbate those disorders that result from trauma.
The problem is that I can tell you how I feel, and I can tell you what I could do differently to try and make myself feel better, but what I can't give you is any sense of how likely I am do make those changes.
And there's the rub, right? If I tell you how I feel, I want to be able to tell you that I'll be okay, that I know how to fix it, and that I will. But I'm not always able to do that. Sometimes I don't have a lot of hope.
And that's what I feel right now. I feel hopeless. Today, I want to die, and there's some part of me that wants to scream that at the world, a part that gets smothered by the other parts of me that are convinced that people will shit on me and call me a drama queen or a whiny little bitch or some other degrading thing because that's what happens when you invalidate the feelings of an abused child - you teach them to invalidate themselves.
That's the thing that makes this so hard. If I had done this to myself, if I had made some choice that resulted in me feeling this level of emotional anguish, I might have some hope that I could then choose some other path out of it, y'know? There would be some sense that, if I got myself into this mess, I could get myself out of it, but that's not that case. This is very much the result of the actions of others - this is something that was done to me - and it has so completely dominated my life that I honestly don't know any other way to be. All I have is theoretical shit that might work, but every time I try and fail I end up right back here, contemplating suicide.
I don't know that I can express how frustrating that is. It's like this essence of despair has completely suffused my psyche, enveloping all corners of my mind so that there can be no reprieve. It's this constant desire to not be alive any more that I can only ever distract myself from for a little while. It negates all sense of joy or pride, it renders pointless all my creative work, and it inexorably snuffs out every bit of light I've ever managed to conjure up. It's a ceaseless emotional entropy, and even on my good days, I can't help but feel like it's only a matter of time until it wins.
And then every little thing anyone has ever said to me about how 'strong' I am, about how 'brave,' or 'brilliant,' or any of the other thousands of compliments I've received all become invalid because I'll have proven to not be strong, brave, or brilliant enough to find a way to escape this bullshit.
Here, then, is the truth: I am not strong, brave, or brilliant enough to survive... on my own.
And there it is, right? That's the crux of the whole issue. I convince myself that I have to do this alone, that if I'm not victorious by my own doing, then I've proven all that invalidation correct - I'm just looking for attention, and what I was feeling was never real and was all an act to receive praise.
And that's why I have to talk about it. That's why I have to tell you that I often feel like dying, and it really hurts. I know that I am not alone in feeling that, and I hope I can get myself to see that I'm not alone in general, that I can and should talk about this and that those people who told me those things about seeking attention were wrong.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to talk openly about the things that I feel, but I'm afraid that doing so will open myself up to the judgment that I'm so desperately terrified of. People will say I'm just looking for attention, or they'll tell me that all my problems are easy to solve and that I'm just lazy, or one of another hundred or so bullshit things I tell myself to convince myself to remain isolated.
At the same time, it's important to be open about it. In this world, there needs to be open dialogue about mental illness, and if I'm an expert in anything, it's being mentally ill. People need to see the effects of child abuse, and how a society can indirectly conspire to perpetuate and exacerbate those disorders that result from trauma.
The problem is that I can tell you how I feel, and I can tell you what I could do differently to try and make myself feel better, but what I can't give you is any sense of how likely I am do make those changes.
And there's the rub, right? If I tell you how I feel, I want to be able to tell you that I'll be okay, that I know how to fix it, and that I will. But I'm not always able to do that. Sometimes I don't have a lot of hope.
And that's what I feel right now. I feel hopeless. Today, I want to die, and there's some part of me that wants to scream that at the world, a part that gets smothered by the other parts of me that are convinced that people will shit on me and call me a drama queen or a whiny little bitch or some other degrading thing because that's what happens when you invalidate the feelings of an abused child - you teach them to invalidate themselves.
That's the thing that makes this so hard. If I had done this to myself, if I had made some choice that resulted in me feeling this level of emotional anguish, I might have some hope that I could then choose some other path out of it, y'know? There would be some sense that, if I got myself into this mess, I could get myself out of it, but that's not that case. This is very much the result of the actions of others - this is something that was done to me - and it has so completely dominated my life that I honestly don't know any other way to be. All I have is theoretical shit that might work, but every time I try and fail I end up right back here, contemplating suicide.
I don't know that I can express how frustrating that is. It's like this essence of despair has completely suffused my psyche, enveloping all corners of my mind so that there can be no reprieve. It's this constant desire to not be alive any more that I can only ever distract myself from for a little while. It negates all sense of joy or pride, it renders pointless all my creative work, and it inexorably snuffs out every bit of light I've ever managed to conjure up. It's a ceaseless emotional entropy, and even on my good days, I can't help but feel like it's only a matter of time until it wins.
And then every little thing anyone has ever said to me about how 'strong' I am, about how 'brave,' or 'brilliant,' or any of the other thousands of compliments I've received all become invalid because I'll have proven to not be strong, brave, or brilliant enough to find a way to escape this bullshit.
Here, then, is the truth: I am not strong, brave, or brilliant enough to survive... on my own.
And there it is, right? That's the crux of the whole issue. I convince myself that I have to do this alone, that if I'm not victorious by my own doing, then I've proven all that invalidation correct - I'm just looking for attention, and what I was feeling was never real and was all an act to receive praise.
And that's why I have to talk about it. That's why I have to tell you that I often feel like dying, and it really hurts. I know that I am not alone in feeling that, and I hope I can get myself to see that I'm not alone in general, that I can and should talk about this and that those people who told me those things about seeking attention were wrong.
I'm sorry if it hurts you to hear these things about me. I want you to know that it's not because you don't do enough for me or anything like that. I don't even allow for that to be a possibility because I keep it hidden for the most part.
I'm gonna try to do better going forward, to tell you how I'm feeling and to ask for help when I need it. Because I don't want to feel like this. This isn't how I want to go, and for all my exhaustion, it hasn't won yet.
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