I'm Not Fine

In my most recent appointment, I broke down a bit and let my self Feel The Feels, and I talked about how exhausted I was trying to feel something different, and he asked me 'what if you didn't try to feel different?' And like I know that's the answer, I know that all my anxiety and my stress come from the strain of trying to feel something other than what I feel, but I explicitly don't want to feel what I feel.

I kinda hate it when people ask me how I'm doing, even just as a matter of conversational protocol, because I can't just say I'm fine. I usually settle for something tired-but-optimistic, like 'I'm making progress,' or 'I'm managing.' For some reason I can't just like, y'know? I can't just say 'I'm all good, thanks for asking.' 

That level of facade takes a bit more energy than I can muster.

So I get into this situation where I can't flat-out lie, but I can't tell the truth, either. I can't just tell people I'm not doing well. For one thing, nobody is doing well right now. We're all in the shit, and we're all trying to figure a way through it, and while that's generally true anyway, it's especially true right now.

Why should I express my difficulty when I could instead hear others' difficulties and provide what condolences I can? My well-being? Fuck that noise. I have no reason to care about myself, no reason to value my own quality of life. That's not to say there aren't reasons or that I don't deserve to, it's just that I've learned nothing that would enable me to. I wasn't taught to give a shit about myself. I wasn't conditioned to give a solitary fuck about my happiness or my satisfaction.

Everything I learned about satisfaction came with a requirement of shame. Eating was all that ever made me feel satisfied, but I would eat so much that I'd make myself sick, and I got really fat really quickly. I never learned the 'proper' way to socialize, and the few times I ever really tried to express my struggles ended up costing me relationships, thereby reinforcing them.

I'm ashamed of what I am, and I'm ashamed of what I've been through, and nobody taught me otherwise. Now I just keep it locked inside my chest so it can way me down and keep me from getting out of this chair. 

I know that if I shared my struggle, people would console me. People would tell me that they like me and they want me around, and they already do to a degree - progress and such. I don't really want them to, though. I don't want people to know, and I don't want people to tell me how much they like me and shine a light on how little I got of that when I needed it most.

The answer to the question of how I'm doing is not great. I hate myself and I want to die, and everything I do is just meant to distract myself from those feelings because I don't know how to process them. I can't ask people for help because I developed an unhealthy sense of attachment. I can't fathom a world where someone could tell me they like me and I'd believe that I deserve it.

And I know none of this is special, right? Most people have to deal with this shit to some degree. People have been through so much worse and turned out to be good and productive human beings, I tell myself. 

Sometimes I try to tell myself that, when I say that I spent every day for the first 14 years of my life in constant terror, I'm exaggerating. I tell myself that I'm lying to myself to justify how little I feel I've done with my life. I know I'm not, but it's much easier to believe that than to realize that it's true.

My father never loved me. My mother never knew how to properly show the love she felt for me. My siblings don't know me because I was brutalized and, barring a brief period where I would express my outrage at how I was treated, I retreated into a hole that it's taken close to 15 years to dig out of. The very few times I ever let myself feel like someone really loved me imploded because they weren't willing to put up with the mess of a person I am.

I know people love me. I know that I'm lovable, and that I deserve to be loved. I just can't feel it. I can't feel it because I decided not to feel anything if I could help it. I can't feel it because I focus all my energy on hiding from my feelings because I'm deathly afraid of them. I'm afraid to feel them, and I'm afraid to tell people how I feel, both because they don't deserve the pain of reading about it and I'm terrified they'll leave me if they do.

'Fortunately,' doing so is the only chance I have to live. It's the only way I can beat this metaphorical cancer that's been eating at me my entire life. So, here. Take this meager expression of how miserable I am. Take this acknowledgement of all the things I try to keep from you.

More will come. I'm sorry it'll be difficult, but thank you so much for reading.