As intelligent words appear to fail me...
... I'll resort to the pedestrian:
Screw you, 2010. My Great Year of Loss.
Alanis Morrisette wrote a song called "Thank U", where she thanked all the set backs in her life. She thanked the universe for her challenges, for her pain, for her suffering. She spoke from a place of tremendous poise, gracious reflection and humble acceptance.
I'm trying to take that same evolved perspective... but I'm faltering. There's the struggle between wanting to hold one's head high and know that loss opens one up to receive something greater (or so I've read), and wanting to crawl into a hole and not come out.
Perhaps that's what this online journal is for... spewing out this emotional venom so it doesn't have to circulate through me.
Should I even list the emotional equivalent of wrist slashes? Would doing so only give them even more power? I don't know anymore. I guess I need to pour them out. Aside from my last entry over SIX MONTHS ago on this site, I've written only a few paragraphs, which are as-yet unseen.
The passion to connect, to create, to LIVE... it's just been...
lost.
To everyone who poured their feedback into the last journal entry replies, I promise I haven't forgotten you, or that I didn't appreciate your contributions. Your input fuels a passion that sustained me more than you know. It just so happened that the last entry was made right before...
... well, right before everything turned upside-down during the middle of April.
I assume anyone who may be reading this is cut from a similar cloth. One tends to be more introspective if one has an online journal here. Many of us who are connected are also drawn to Very Dark and Scary Images... and characters. Perhaps because they distract us from our own darknesses.
Or perhaps because they look so damned familiar that it's a comfort and reassurance that your perversions are not unique.
Clinical depression runs on both sides of my family. I'm not talking about the kind that bored girls think would be fashionable to exhibit, some misunderstood exclusion that imbues someone with a dark mystique. I'm talking ugly, hell-bent on suicide, locked-up-in-an-institution depression. Maybe some of you know what that's like. You know what it's like to be on the receiving end of the pitying/reprimanding remarks of well-intentioned friends who don't have a fucking clue what a challenge it is not to take a box of sleeping pills at the end of a bad day. Perhaps you know how a misplaced set of keys can be the proverbial straw that snaps your facade of collectedness, and makes you go on a "what-the-hell-I-don't-want-to-live-another-year-anyway" spending spree that maxes out your credit card.
Some of my friends "know" of my depression. They know as much as I allow them to see. Some know more than others, but no one really knows how ugly it is. How empty and soul-crushing and excruciating the loneliness is. How when they were three years old, playing with their Raggedy Ann dolls, I was making mental lists of the ways that I could imagine dying.
I've always carried on, though. Put on a smile, swallowed the pain, and carried on like I had it all under control. I've had to, because I don't have the luxury of being able to let it all collapse. in my family, I was always the odd-one out. Always had to stand up for myself, because no one else was going to, that was for damned sure. But I did it. It hurt like hell always to be the solitary one, but I did it.
I watched as years passed me by, losing out on opportunities. Losing out on happiness. Losing out on connections.
I could handle the pain, I reasoned. It took a strong person to endure when cognizance of loss was always as sharp as a razor, when the reminders of all you DIDN'T have was held up to your face. Every hour of every day. Without fail.
I took it. I watched as parts of my life chipped away. My health. My happiness. My freedom. Yet I forged forward.
Only this year... somehow, the loss finally became too great. I don't know that it was a singular event. Perhaps it was the synchronicity of loss. Somehow, the loss that hit me hardest was my own sense of a baseline activity of self-preservation.
It's like being a functioning alcoholic: the person who completely loses their control in the evening, but can still pull themselves together for the meeting the next morning, catch their plane and hold it together for the sake of keeping up appearances. That was what I've done. For all the depression and thoughts of self-harm, there was always the flicker of self-preservation that kept me going. Year after year, somehow, the instinct was always below the surface.
It was the instinct that told me when to shut up at work about what I *really* did at home the night before; the instinct that tells me to lie to everyone about just how much pain I'm in.
You know... because just in case you don't put a Sig Sauer in your mouth tonight, you want to be able to come to come to work the next day and carry on without a hiccup. Keep up appearances, maintain the facade of collectedness, because, you know, maybe one day you'll actually beat this monster inside you, and it would be a hell of a lot easier to move forward with your life if you haven't made a fuck-all of it today.
Keep going, keep pretending to care, and maybe one day you WILL care enough to start taking care of yourself. That's aways been rooted somewhere deep inside me.
Only around mid-April of this year, the instinctive undercurrent of self-preservation just... stilled.
I came across something... well, someONE, who gave me such hope. Hope that maybe I didn't have to be the solitary one, the one who nods understandingly as others pour out their self-perpetuated, inflated dramas with their significant others; hope that maybe I could... just ONCE... know that there could be someone physically present in my life, close enough to touch... and not a figment of my imagination.
Then, there came a second.
Two people? Could it be possible? Surely this was too good to be true, I reasoned. Two flesh-and-blood people who could possibly be IN my life, instead of a remote digital connection? I decided to embrace the possibility.
And then came the crash.
It was big. And I felt it one thousand miles from where it happened.
Fate intervened. One disappeared. Then, the next one disappeared.
As quickly as they materialized in my life, it was as though they evaporated. Yanked right back out of my life as quickly as they came into it, carrying on with theirs, not knowing the impact they had on me, or the gaping hole that was left. I don't attach to people easily. I'm cautious and guarded, and certainly never could afford the luxury of falling in love.
But maybe, it could happen, I reasoned. The connections were so strong. So tangible. So deep.
Maybe so, but neither was meant to be. They were meant to be just long enough for my reserve to shatter. Thanks for that one, universe.
I suppose this happened right around the time when the rumor started where I work. The whisperings. The gossip. The embellished hypothesis of someone who genuinely enjoys twisting a pin into the underbelly of a tiny animal, just to watch it writhe in pain and to hear it scream helplessly.
Perhaps that was when the great emptiness set in. The Loss.
Loss of self-preservation. Loss of dignity. Loss of interest in anything. Loss of connection to everything.
I couldn't read.
I couldn't watch television.
I couldn't focus.
I stopped caring.
Stopped making calls.
Stopped sending texts.
Stopped caring.
Stopping balancing the checkbook.
Stopped paying bills.
Stopped living at home when the water was shut off by the city.
Stopped writing.
Stopped writing.
Lost my will to write. My passion.
I LOST MY PASSION.
I just... couldn't do it. Couldn't write. Couldn't create.
Couldn't even imagine.
Lost a friend.
Had another one drive a knife in my back after 28 years of friendship. Twenty-eight years. 28. Jesus, that one hurt. Completely blind-sided me.
Lost another friend.
Changed jobs.
Lost all private time.
A promise was broken to me. One of the two that was keeping me moving forward.
Then, the other promise shattered.
Loss. I'm sick of it.
Losing my health. Every day there is physical pain I hide from people I work with.
Did I mention the fact that I'm actually losing my hair, too, because I'm so sick? In clumps. When a hair-dresser says, "Oh. My. GOD." as she takes out a chunk from your scalp as she's brushing your hair, it's not a good thing.
So, there's that delightful loss of feminine identity. Loss of wanting to do anything that doesn't involve hiding.
Found a new friend, and just as quickly lost that one as well.
A dear, sweet friend (love you, LAURALOT!!) reached out to me, and right when I thought I was climbing out of the hole, right when I thought I could spark happiness again with a new little pet...
...the baby died in my hands.
The baby died IN MY HANDS.
in my god-damned hands. It screamed. It suffered. It contorted in a seizure, and it died in my hands. My heart was ripped out. God, I've never cried so hard in my life. On the whole, I despise humanity en masse. There are some stellar individuals, but on the whole, we're scum. I love animals so dearly instead of people... that is, what I can manage to piece together in a feeling that I assume must be love. Seeing any animal suffer rips my heart out.
And this one died as I held her.
And I had the privilege of having to go to work immediately and put in a 13-hour day, smiling for the vendors. Smiling for the executives, putting on the front that everything was perfect. I needed desperately to grieve... perhaps for all the years I didn't grieve, and stuffed the feelings down. I'm exceptionally skilled at keeping people at arm's length, just far enough to keep myself safe. I don't allow myself to feel, not even when I need to.
Keep going, girl, I tell myself. Keep up the front. I have to. Falling apart just isn't a luxury I have. I support myself. No family. No significant other. No trust fund. Just me.
Just me.
So I got another baby a few days later.
And it died, too. I held it, I comforted it, and it was so listless. This little baby was just so weak, needing so desperately to be held.
I held it, and the baby died anyway.
I wonder if one of the last parts of me that was capable of feeling died along with it.
The loss just feels so heavy.
So here I am. I'm trying to keep things in perspective. I'm trying to stay positive. A high school classmate of mine died four days ago. He suffered and fought valiantly against a brain tumor that ravaged him. It chipped away at his life, insidiously, for ten years. He suffered, watching his identity slip away, watching as his freedom erode, watching as his children questioned why he was withering and weakening. I'm not that bad off. Thank God, I don't know that kind of suffering. It's a reminder that I need to look for the positive, because things can always be so much, much worse.
But is that really the point form which I want to draw my motivation? Not from the point of passion, of wanting to create something better, but of the fear of slipping into something so frightening that a mediocre grasp at the status quo seems the safe and reasonable thing to do?
Maybe none of these ramblings make any sense.
I just had to get them out, though.
I just balanced my checkbook for the first time in God-knows how many months. So I decided that I was going to continue to stand on my feet, swinging my fists while I could on this day. I'm feel a flicker of a fight in me. It's been a while since I've felt this.
I just wrote something. Right here, just now. Maybe it's trash. Perhaps it's the most self-pitying tripe I've ever come up with.
But you know what, 2010?
I wrote something. You've taken a lot from me, and the loss has left its mark. Maybe you're not done with me yet. I hope you are, but I know better than to think that everything will be smooth-sailing from here.
Here's a thought for you, 2010:
I'm not done with YOU, either. I'm not defeated.
Not yet. I'm still standing. I'm wobbly, and I'm bruised.
But I'm here. So if you were trying to knock me out for the count by the beginning of fall (which seemed to be your agenda)...
...I've got news for you:
YOU lost.
Screw you, 2010. My Great Year of Loss.
Alanis Morrisette wrote a song called "Thank U", where she thanked all the set backs in her life. She thanked the universe for her challenges, for her pain, for her suffering. She spoke from a place of tremendous poise, gracious reflection and humble acceptance.
I'm trying to take that same evolved perspective... but I'm faltering. There's the struggle between wanting to hold one's head high and know that loss opens one up to receive something greater (or so I've read), and wanting to crawl into a hole and not come out.
Perhaps that's what this online journal is for... spewing out this emotional venom so it doesn't have to circulate through me.
Should I even list the emotional equivalent of wrist slashes? Would doing so only give them even more power? I don't know anymore. I guess I need to pour them out. Aside from my last entry over SIX MONTHS ago on this site, I've written only a few paragraphs, which are as-yet unseen.
The passion to connect, to create, to LIVE... it's just been...
lost.
To everyone who poured their feedback into the last journal entry replies, I promise I haven't forgotten you, or that I didn't appreciate your contributions. Your input fuels a passion that sustained me more than you know. It just so happened that the last entry was made right before...
... well, right before everything turned upside-down during the middle of April.
I assume anyone who may be reading this is cut from a similar cloth. One tends to be more introspective if one has an online journal here. Many of us who are connected are also drawn to Very Dark and Scary Images... and characters. Perhaps because they distract us from our own darknesses.
Or perhaps because they look so damned familiar that it's a comfort and reassurance that your perversions are not unique.
Clinical depression runs on both sides of my family. I'm not talking about the kind that bored girls think would be fashionable to exhibit, some misunderstood exclusion that imbues someone with a dark mystique. I'm talking ugly, hell-bent on suicide, locked-up-in-an-institution depression. Maybe some of you know what that's like. You know what it's like to be on the receiving end of the pitying/reprimanding remarks of well-intentioned friends who don't have a fucking clue what a challenge it is not to take a box of sleeping pills at the end of a bad day. Perhaps you know how a misplaced set of keys can be the proverbial straw that snaps your facade of collectedness, and makes you go on a "what-the-hell-I-don't-want-to-live-another-year-anyway" spending spree that maxes out your credit card.
Some of my friends "know" of my depression. They know as much as I allow them to see. Some know more than others, but no one really knows how ugly it is. How empty and soul-crushing and excruciating the loneliness is. How when they were three years old, playing with their Raggedy Ann dolls, I was making mental lists of the ways that I could imagine dying.
I've always carried on, though. Put on a smile, swallowed the pain, and carried on like I had it all under control. I've had to, because I don't have the luxury of being able to let it all collapse. in my family, I was always the odd-one out. Always had to stand up for myself, because no one else was going to, that was for damned sure. But I did it. It hurt like hell always to be the solitary one, but I did it.
I watched as years passed me by, losing out on opportunities. Losing out on happiness. Losing out on connections.
I could handle the pain, I reasoned. It took a strong person to endure when cognizance of loss was always as sharp as a razor, when the reminders of all you DIDN'T have was held up to your face. Every hour of every day. Without fail.
I took it. I watched as parts of my life chipped away. My health. My happiness. My freedom. Yet I forged forward.
Only this year... somehow, the loss finally became too great. I don't know that it was a singular event. Perhaps it was the synchronicity of loss. Somehow, the loss that hit me hardest was my own sense of a baseline activity of self-preservation.
It's like being a functioning alcoholic: the person who completely loses their control in the evening, but can still pull themselves together for the meeting the next morning, catch their plane and hold it together for the sake of keeping up appearances. That was what I've done. For all the depression and thoughts of self-harm, there was always the flicker of self-preservation that kept me going. Year after year, somehow, the instinct was always below the surface.
It was the instinct that told me when to shut up at work about what I *really* did at home the night before; the instinct that tells me to lie to everyone about just how much pain I'm in.
You know... because just in case you don't put a Sig Sauer in your mouth tonight, you want to be able to come to come to work the next day and carry on without a hiccup. Keep up appearances, maintain the facade of collectedness, because, you know, maybe one day you'll actually beat this monster inside you, and it would be a hell of a lot easier to move forward with your life if you haven't made a fuck-all of it today.
Keep going, keep pretending to care, and maybe one day you WILL care enough to start taking care of yourself. That's aways been rooted somewhere deep inside me.
Only around mid-April of this year, the instinctive undercurrent of self-preservation just... stilled.
I came across something... well, someONE, who gave me such hope. Hope that maybe I didn't have to be the solitary one, the one who nods understandingly as others pour out their self-perpetuated, inflated dramas with their significant others; hope that maybe I could... just ONCE... know that there could be someone physically present in my life, close enough to touch... and not a figment of my imagination.
Then, there came a second.
Two people? Could it be possible? Surely this was too good to be true, I reasoned. Two flesh-and-blood people who could possibly be IN my life, instead of a remote digital connection? I decided to embrace the possibility.
And then came the crash.
It was big. And I felt it one thousand miles from where it happened.
Fate intervened. One disappeared. Then, the next one disappeared.
As quickly as they materialized in my life, it was as though they evaporated. Yanked right back out of my life as quickly as they came into it, carrying on with theirs, not knowing the impact they had on me, or the gaping hole that was left. I don't attach to people easily. I'm cautious and guarded, and certainly never could afford the luxury of falling in love.
But maybe, it could happen, I reasoned. The connections were so strong. So tangible. So deep.
Maybe so, but neither was meant to be. They were meant to be just long enough for my reserve to shatter. Thanks for that one, universe.
I suppose this happened right around the time when the rumor started where I work. The whisperings. The gossip. The embellished hypothesis of someone who genuinely enjoys twisting a pin into the underbelly of a tiny animal, just to watch it writhe in pain and to hear it scream helplessly.
Perhaps that was when the great emptiness set in. The Loss.
Loss of self-preservation. Loss of dignity. Loss of interest in anything. Loss of connection to everything.
I couldn't read.
I couldn't watch television.
I couldn't focus.
I stopped caring.
Stopped making calls.
Stopped sending texts.
Stopped caring.
Stopping balancing the checkbook.
Stopped paying bills.
Stopped living at home when the water was shut off by the city.
Stopped writing.
Stopped writing.
Lost my will to write. My passion.
I LOST MY PASSION.
I just... couldn't do it. Couldn't write. Couldn't create.
Couldn't even imagine.
Lost a friend.
Had another one drive a knife in my back after 28 years of friendship. Twenty-eight years. 28. Jesus, that one hurt. Completely blind-sided me.
Lost another friend.
Changed jobs.
Lost all private time.
A promise was broken to me. One of the two that was keeping me moving forward.
Then, the other promise shattered.
Loss. I'm sick of it.
Losing my health. Every day there is physical pain I hide from people I work with.
Did I mention the fact that I'm actually losing my hair, too, because I'm so sick? In clumps. When a hair-dresser says, "Oh. My. GOD." as she takes out a chunk from your scalp as she's brushing your hair, it's not a good thing.
So, there's that delightful loss of feminine identity. Loss of wanting to do anything that doesn't involve hiding.
Found a new friend, and just as quickly lost that one as well.
A dear, sweet friend (love you, LAURALOT!!) reached out to me, and right when I thought I was climbing out of the hole, right when I thought I could spark happiness again with a new little pet...
...the baby died in my hands.
The baby died IN MY HANDS.
in my god-damned hands. It screamed. It suffered. It contorted in a seizure, and it died in my hands. My heart was ripped out. God, I've never cried so hard in my life. On the whole, I despise humanity en masse. There are some stellar individuals, but on the whole, we're scum. I love animals so dearly instead of people... that is, what I can manage to piece together in a feeling that I assume must be love. Seeing any animal suffer rips my heart out.
And this one died as I held her.
And I had the privilege of having to go to work immediately and put in a 13-hour day, smiling for the vendors. Smiling for the executives, putting on the front that everything was perfect. I needed desperately to grieve... perhaps for all the years I didn't grieve, and stuffed the feelings down. I'm exceptionally skilled at keeping people at arm's length, just far enough to keep myself safe. I don't allow myself to feel, not even when I need to.
Keep going, girl, I tell myself. Keep up the front. I have to. Falling apart just isn't a luxury I have. I support myself. No family. No significant other. No trust fund. Just me.
Just me.
So I got another baby a few days later.
And it died, too. I held it, I comforted it, and it was so listless. This little baby was just so weak, needing so desperately to be held.
I held it, and the baby died anyway.
I wonder if one of the last parts of me that was capable of feeling died along with it.
The loss just feels so heavy.
So here I am. I'm trying to keep things in perspective. I'm trying to stay positive. A high school classmate of mine died four days ago. He suffered and fought valiantly against a brain tumor that ravaged him. It chipped away at his life, insidiously, for ten years. He suffered, watching his identity slip away, watching as his freedom erode, watching as his children questioned why he was withering and weakening. I'm not that bad off. Thank God, I don't know that kind of suffering. It's a reminder that I need to look for the positive, because things can always be so much, much worse.
But is that really the point form which I want to draw my motivation? Not from the point of passion, of wanting to create something better, but of the fear of slipping into something so frightening that a mediocre grasp at the status quo seems the safe and reasonable thing to do?
Maybe none of these ramblings make any sense.
I just had to get them out, though.
I just balanced my checkbook for the first time in God-knows how many months. So I decided that I was going to continue to stand on my feet, swinging my fists while I could on this day. I'm feel a flicker of a fight in me. It's been a while since I've felt this.
I just wrote something. Right here, just now. Maybe it's trash. Perhaps it's the most self-pitying tripe I've ever come up with.
But you know what, 2010?
I wrote something. You've taken a lot from me, and the loss has left its mark. Maybe you're not done with me yet. I hope you are, but I know better than to think that everything will be smooth-sailing from here.
Here's a thought for you, 2010:
I'm not done with YOU, either. I'm not defeated.
Not yet. I'm still standing. I'm wobbly, and I'm bruised.
But I'm here. So if you were trying to knock me out for the count by the beginning of fall (which seemed to be your agenda)...
...I've got news for you:
YOU lost.