Random Thoughts – July 8

I really gotta start thinking of a name for these kinds of posts. Having the repeated “Random Thoughts” and then the date is getting kind of boring at this point already. However, the alternative is having to think of a relevant title and having these posts actually have a centralized theme or message but these past couple of posts have just been the unintelligible ramblings of someone who’s just trying to make sense of what they’re feeling amidst this garbled mix of conflicting emotions. Lately I’ve definitely needed to figure some shit out. Can’t say I’ve fully gotten there, figuring everything out, and I know that this moment of “clarity” and slight bliss is likely only temporary. These feelings usually are. No matter how often I tell myself over and over that “this is how thing’s are always going to be” that’s never true, at least not entirely. With every phase of intense, hopeless depression comes an equally intense and just as worry-inducing phase of mania. And I feel fucking great, like things are finally clearing up but who’s to say how much of that is from what I’ve come to terms with recently or what’s just this surplus of energy coming from the manic period. And does that make these feelings any less mine?

The idea that my happiness never felt like it was earned or really my happiness at all, always terrified me. Still does a little but I’ve come to accept that I simply can’t control how I’ll feel every day.. some days I’m going to wake up feeling like I want to die and the next I’ll feel like I can take on the world. It’s more about preparing myself for dealing with the coming shift and hopefully dulling out these extremes in time with a mixture of therapy, new medication, and with just life experiences I guess. This past depressive phase, I nearly ruined what little relationships I still have.. nearly lost my job due to a lack of focus. It’s hard to pay attention to all my job’s responsibilities when your main concern becomes how do I stop thinking about wanting to die. Well, simply for therapeutic reasons but troubling nonetheless. The hardest part of this has been trying to get the people in my life to understand. How can you have someone accept who you are when you yourself is also constantly invalidating your own feelings?

And I have a lot of people in my life who simply don’t and likely won’t ever truly understand what it is that I’m going through. This confusing influx of shifting feelings and emotional states are going to be chalked off as what they’ve dismissed it before as; I’m not drinking enough water, I’m not getting enough sleep, I’m just a little shy… whatever bullshit reason they first think of to easily make sense of it. I get it. It’s much easier than trying to genuinely understand, it took me years to get to the minimum level of understanding I have now and that’s only because I had no other choice. I’m kind of stuck with me… unfortunately.

Thankfully, there are people in my life who do understand. Maybe more than even I do sometimes and that was my one saving grace through all of this bullshit I’ve been putting myself through recently. Nearly fucking pushed away one of those people in the process.. Was told that I think more about someone who isn’t even in my life anymore, someone that wasn’t going to ever be back in my life, more than I thought of them. I felt it was really unfair at the time considering how much I was really trying to get passed this, how much I kept them in the loop for the sake of honesty and being upfront about what’s going on with me, but it was true.. I got upset even though I knew right as they said that that it was true. I need to stop looking backwards, I don’t know if I’ll ever learn how to stop doing that.. but I have worked wonders in making it hurt a lot less each time I do. And I have this person to thank for that. Well, her and my therapist who’ve both been kind of kicking my ass over this.. Drilling me about a lot of my stuck cyclical thought patterns that kept getting me into these messes. Most importantly, they gave me some validation that what I was feeling, how angry and hurt I was about stuff that’s going on in my life, just how I’m feeling on a day to day basis.. they made sure I knew it was real. That it was justified and I had to stop dismissing them.

I don’t know what I’d do without them. I’m really glad I didn’t push anybody away when I definitely wanted to. I came close, but I really love them. Some part of me still feels like I don’t deserve any of this help, any of this love, any good feelings. Being in friendships and relationships that just made me feel shitty every day is what I had gotten used to. It became comfortable after a while, like that’s all I knew.. some part of me even thought of reconnecting with some of these people just to feel some god damn sense of familiarity. Like I’d take the hurt again just to feel something I KNEW how to feel. This all feels new and terrifying. But it doesn’t hurt. And I don’t want to hurt anymore.. it’s nearly broken me as you can see. So I have to stop holding on to whatever it was that was holding me back. I wasn’t holding tightly, but I was still holding. I have to hold on to what I have because if I lose what I have, if I don’t hold on tight (though not too tight obviously) to those I love now I’m going to lose them. And if I lose what I have now.. again. That’s it for me.