I guess some updates
It has been, for all intents and purposes, three years since I have actually updated this journal with anything worth while. I'd make some excuse for that, but eh. A lot has happened over the last year, and my life is in such a weird place, so I thought some writing might help. What better place than the desolate, abandoned landscape of LJ where no one can hear you whinge?
I should warn people who do read this: its heavy stuff. Very heavy stuff. Things are not as bad as I may make them out to be, at least not right now. But for the sake of you all, I am putting it below a cut. Comments will be screened as well.
I'll start in the fall of 2011. Met a really awesome girl. Started a really awesome relationship. My past with relationships is such that I am very guarded and closed off to others. I hide and fret and dont open up to people in a way that is healthy or conducive to building a stable partnership. I've been burned and abandoned enough times that its become an automatic thing. This girl brought me out of that without even trying, and it caught me totally off guard. Needless to say I was happier than I had been in a long time. It wasnt to last though. Through a series of events that included mistakes on both sides, she left me. The manner in which she chose to do so has severe enough that it had some fairly serious repercussions.
In January of 2012 she called it quits with me, but in doing so implemented a scorched earth policy with our sizable number of mutual friends. She used some of them to get to me, some of them bore down on me under the pretext of offering help or advice. I was told by people I trusted that I was a creep, a stalker, a horrible person, that my life experiences didnt matter and I should just "get over" events and actions that have made me who I am. I am fairly good at self-regulation and self-image, but when enough of the people you trust telling you all these awful things about yourself, you tend to believe them. Losing someone who had broken through a barrier I didnt even know I had, then having that same person who so earned my trust turn on me like that broke me.
I fell into the deepest depression I have ever experienced, one that a year and change later I am still recovering from. It wasnt just because of the breakup. Every single perceived failure and flaw from my life caught up to me at once. My pre-existing disdain for myself was magnified exponentially. Old wounds that I never really let heal from as far back as my childhood were laid bare.
And so, on my birthday last year, I attempted to take my own life by overdosing on my medications. I obviously didnt succeed. I remember the lead-up to my decision quite well. It was made while I walked to a meeting for a client. It started as a stray thought, but when the idea of no longer living lingered a little I found that I wasnt scared of it. It didnt register as terrible, or even give that sort of cathartic, self-pitying release of imagining how sad people would be at my passing. The idea, the plan, just felt natural. Like deciding what to eat or that I should sleep. Even with the pills in my hand, even after I swallowed, I wasnt afraid. I wasnt really anything. The word relieved comes to mind in describing my mindset at the time, but even that doesnt seem quite right. I existed, and wished to no longer exist. Nothing more.
So needless to say, I failed. I wont go into details, because they arent really relevant, but I lived. Shortly after, I contacted a therapist I had worked with previous and started seeing her on a weekly basis. For the next six months or so, I alternated between registering nothing and being an emotional wreck. Shortly before Valentine's Day I attempted to take my own life again, but didnt follow through, stopping myself before I did anything. Therapy was a long, slow, tortuous process. In time, I was able to stop viewing myself as the villain in my own life, I could see myself without thinking of what I had been told by friends who were simply engaging in petty sniping. I still blame myself for a lot. Too much. But I am getting better about that as well. My judgement is still not the best, and life is still very much difficult.
Aside from that whole mess, I had to drop out of my graduate program indefinitely. I lost my financial aid due to a mental health leave of absence I took in the spring of 2011, and I cant afford to go back. I work in the mental health field, but in a job that pays poorly, has high demands, and forces me to live in an area that is both expensive and low quality. I'm trying to dig my way out of these issues, but the end is not in sight, and its admittedly daunting.
I have made new friends in the last year, however, and I am pushing to make myself socialize again. I wish I could say I found another person that makes me happy and started a relationship, but my life has never really worked that way. I still feel hollow and numb most of the time, but I have periods where I feel like myself, like I did before I met her. But on this side of things, after this much time has passed, I dont feel like I am the same person I was. I feel like a stranger to myself. Things that gave me pleasure or peaked my interest and passion no longer affect me. I lost my love of science and my drive to investigate.
My biggest fear in all of this is that how I am now is how I will be from now on. Passionless, empty, and largely without a direction. I work on regaining myself every day, and every day I make progress. I have more good days than bad, but that spark still hasnt come back. I think it will someday, or at least I hope it will. But I cant shake this feeling that while I may have survived my attempt at self destruction, an important part of me didnt make it. I may be alive, but parts of me still feel dead.
I should warn people who do read this: its heavy stuff. Very heavy stuff. Things are not as bad as I may make them out to be, at least not right now. But for the sake of you all, I am putting it below a cut. Comments will be screened as well.
I'll start in the fall of 2011. Met a really awesome girl. Started a really awesome relationship. My past with relationships is such that I am very guarded and closed off to others. I hide and fret and dont open up to people in a way that is healthy or conducive to building a stable partnership. I've been burned and abandoned enough times that its become an automatic thing. This girl brought me out of that without even trying, and it caught me totally off guard. Needless to say I was happier than I had been in a long time. It wasnt to last though. Through a series of events that included mistakes on both sides, she left me. The manner in which she chose to do so has severe enough that it had some fairly serious repercussions.
In January of 2012 she called it quits with me, but in doing so implemented a scorched earth policy with our sizable number of mutual friends. She used some of them to get to me, some of them bore down on me under the pretext of offering help or advice. I was told by people I trusted that I was a creep, a stalker, a horrible person, that my life experiences didnt matter and I should just "get over" events and actions that have made me who I am. I am fairly good at self-regulation and self-image, but when enough of the people you trust telling you all these awful things about yourself, you tend to believe them. Losing someone who had broken through a barrier I didnt even know I had, then having that same person who so earned my trust turn on me like that broke me.
I fell into the deepest depression I have ever experienced, one that a year and change later I am still recovering from. It wasnt just because of the breakup. Every single perceived failure and flaw from my life caught up to me at once. My pre-existing disdain for myself was magnified exponentially. Old wounds that I never really let heal from as far back as my childhood were laid bare.
And so, on my birthday last year, I attempted to take my own life by overdosing on my medications. I obviously didnt succeed. I remember the lead-up to my decision quite well. It was made while I walked to a meeting for a client. It started as a stray thought, but when the idea of no longer living lingered a little I found that I wasnt scared of it. It didnt register as terrible, or even give that sort of cathartic, self-pitying release of imagining how sad people would be at my passing. The idea, the plan, just felt natural. Like deciding what to eat or that I should sleep. Even with the pills in my hand, even after I swallowed, I wasnt afraid. I wasnt really anything. The word relieved comes to mind in describing my mindset at the time, but even that doesnt seem quite right. I existed, and wished to no longer exist. Nothing more.
So needless to say, I failed. I wont go into details, because they arent really relevant, but I lived. Shortly after, I contacted a therapist I had worked with previous and started seeing her on a weekly basis. For the next six months or so, I alternated between registering nothing and being an emotional wreck. Shortly before Valentine's Day I attempted to take my own life again, but didnt follow through, stopping myself before I did anything. Therapy was a long, slow, tortuous process. In time, I was able to stop viewing myself as the villain in my own life, I could see myself without thinking of what I had been told by friends who were simply engaging in petty sniping. I still blame myself for a lot. Too much. But I am getting better about that as well. My judgement is still not the best, and life is still very much difficult.
Aside from that whole mess, I had to drop out of my graduate program indefinitely. I lost my financial aid due to a mental health leave of absence I took in the spring of 2011, and I cant afford to go back. I work in the mental health field, but in a job that pays poorly, has high demands, and forces me to live in an area that is both expensive and low quality. I'm trying to dig my way out of these issues, but the end is not in sight, and its admittedly daunting.
I have made new friends in the last year, however, and I am pushing to make myself socialize again. I wish I could say I found another person that makes me happy and started a relationship, but my life has never really worked that way. I still feel hollow and numb most of the time, but I have periods where I feel like myself, like I did before I met her. But on this side of things, after this much time has passed, I dont feel like I am the same person I was. I feel like a stranger to myself. Things that gave me pleasure or peaked my interest and passion no longer affect me. I lost my love of science and my drive to investigate.
My biggest fear in all of this is that how I am now is how I will be from now on. Passionless, empty, and largely without a direction. I work on regaining myself every day, and every day I make progress. I have more good days than bad, but that spark still hasnt come back. I think it will someday, or at least I hope it will. But I cant shake this feeling that while I may have survived my attempt at self destruction, an important part of me didnt make it. I may be alive, but parts of me still feel dead.