Recently the motivation to write for me has been almost non-existent. I’m writing this now more to try and aid that process of well, processing my feelings. And that is exactly what I have been doing and am still doing so don’t expect this post to be very focused (as if any of them are.) I’m more focused on going “Oh huh is that what I’m feeling right now?” rather than actually writing something worth reading. Sorry about that. So where am I now with this processing my feelings “thing”? Well honestly I feel like I’m very much where I started. Sure, I have come to terms with my situation and I understand that logically most of what’s happened is for the best. I’m not going to go into detail as a lot of these situations are still fresh I know I will get too heated up if I do, but I needed to make a decision that ultimately was for the betterment of my mental health. I was getting better, I really was.. and then I stopped suddenly. I got a lot worse and I’m just now trying to get back into the habit of doing group therapy again after lacking the motivation and courage to do so the past several weeks. My mind has been split in so many directions right now and I was just struggling to try and keep my mind out of this fog. Outside the fog was where things were more serious and demanded my attention and focus which I didn’t have. So I needed to put some things on hold or end them entirely as to try and lessen the amount of stress and just things I had to try and deal with whenever I could manage to get out of that fog.

In fact I’m sure the fog was kind of a defense mechanism, my mind essentially going “Oh you’ve got a relationship you’re split about (more so whether I’m capable of being in one right now not so much about them personally), family was in the hospital and while the situation has gotten better it’s still eating away at me.. I should have been able to do more, and lastly I finally got that emotional response to losing my friend which I got to say.. was really fucking late, and a chronic mental illness that drags me down every time I start to feel ‘okay’ again. This is just too much so I’m just going to feel nothing.” And that’s all I felt for a good while and then finally that fog vanished and that’s when I really started to feel everything that I should have been and it was intense. That’s where this dichotomy kind of comes into play here. I’m realizing more and more that I am capable of understanding and knowing something is the case, but not believe it. I’m in a constant fight internally because of this. Despite all facts, despite even saying out loud or writing here that something was the case, it just never registers where it mattered. And that’s the feeling side, I guess I’ll call it. That’s where I hold my true beliefs, and it sure as shit doesn’t listen to the logical side. I had thought I come to terms with some things because I mean it made sense to me, in my head I figured it out like what it was that was bothering me and why but knowing this did NOT change how I felt about it. This probably will sound fairly obvious to the rest of you all, but it seems like the best way to change how I feel is to just allow myself to feel those things.

Especially when it has to do with feelings that conflict with what I may logically want, or something that I know ultimately something isn’t what I should want. Even if I feel something in the end is “for the best” a certain way, I can allow myself to still feel strongly towards the other way. I can understand why wanting something or feeling a certain way may be self-destructive, or selfish, or whatever it is that has kept me so far on acting upon these feelings, but at the same time it doesn’t make me any worse of a person to admit that those feelings are still there. And conversely, it doesn’t make me any better to ignore, distract myself from, or just pretend all together that I don’t have these feelings. It’s actually relieving to just cut the bullshit, the protecting of my own pride and to just let some feelings wash through me.

There’s been quite a lot of changes lately in my life, some of which are very familiar to me, both the ending of meaningful relationships and the rekindling/repairing of old broken ones as well. You’d think with the amount of times I’ve been through this, I’d be a lot more numb to it or at the very least it wouldn’t feel so devastating. I can’t help but still feel just as torn when I lose someone or something close to me, like I’m losing an actual part of me and in some ways that piece always feels missing for the length of which they are. On the other side of things though, it feels so relieving and euphoric sometimes when that bullshit drama that kept you apart before, something of which seems menial now.. It feels amazing to have that person back and it feeling like they kind of just slipped back perfectly in that place they had in your life before, and everything feels easy getting back into the swing of things. Even with the friendship that I think’s changed the most upon it’s return, is still a delight to have. Our schedules rarely line up but it’s always fun being able to play games and ramble on about a whole lot of nothing with them. I’m always torn between going, “god no I was (or they were) not the greatest friend. Is it even worth it to go back? Will I be just subjecting myself to the same stress and frustration that led us to split in the first place?” and then there’s the side of me going “Who gives a shit about whatever it is we fought about, ________________ means jack shit to me at this point. I’m too busy and life is kicking my ass too much right now for me to worry about anything too serious so as long as they aren’t going out of their way to make my life worse, there really isn’t going to be an issue.” And that’s been exactly the case so far. I don’t have any need to cut off relationships like that anymore, if I’m not in a good relationship it’s alright because it’s not like it is as world ending if I don’t spend as much time with them.

I’d like to spend time with people who actually like spending time with me. I honestly feel like before I was needing to be with people who “needed” to spend time with me, or at least wanted so much that they often asked to. And looking back I don’t think I was spending time with people who enjoyed hanging out, kind of just endured it. Sadly that felt like the case with a lot of my exes, most of them actually. I was either a rebound or a single silk strand in someone’s epic web of lies.. My last one, the one that I’m talking about ending is actually not as much of an ending as any of my past break ups have been. We’re still friends, we still talk just as often. I’ve always told my relationships that we could totally be friends if/when we were to break up and that has rarely been the case. I tried with the one before it too, but you can tell when the person you’re talking to is just doing so to be nice and at that point it felt like “Well, I’m kind of doing the same thing. Sending messages to be nice, to be friendly, so why am I/we still doing this?” So I stopped. This one though, their friendship helped get me through some really difficult times and the relationship sure as hell did too but I really need to be okay on my own. Take a second to breathe, figure out what it is I want out of life. Because I’m going through this therapy to keep outbursts, my obsessive thought processes, and other BPD and Bipolar related symptoms in check but if I get out of this personal hellhole just to be in a job I don’t care about, kind of just drifting by doing whatever it is that I have to do simply because I have to… then what’s the point? If this therapy, new medication which I’m still waiting on actually works, then I want to be healthy in a world that I’m happy living in. Not one I am just able to endure.

I may have backslided in some regards, but I’ve made a lot of progress when it comes to my new endings and new beginnings and more specifically how and why they came to be. And my endings lately haven’t even been real endings or permanent ones.. this is proof that it hasn’t all been for nothing. This, and something that has been eating away at me to do but my realistic/logical side has kept me from even thinking about doing.. well, it shows that change is possible. It’s just a really fucking slow process for me.

-T.