miss mess

midlife implosions
2020-05-18 15:16:07 (UTC)

seeing your own pain in anothers eyes

when you feel things that others around you don't understand...there is extreme loneliness. when you make an attempt to make them understand, but they still don't...or even worse...dismiss your feelings because CAN'T understand them themselves, that loneliness becomes even MORE extreme. extreme loneliness can lead to being in alot of dangerous places, both inside yourself...and in your outside actions. that was the recipe that created the entity that became cam and i.

have you ever watched a tv show or movie, where you could FEEL the charachters loneliness, even before the depth of it is revealed in the storyline? you can see something in their eyes...a distance from those around them, that those around them don't detect at all. as if they are inside a bubble...and that bubble keeps them from touching others or from being touched themselves. they don't reach out either because they've tried and been misunderstood or dismissed OR because whatever they feel is something they believe keeps them in a place of being judged for something they can't help feeling.

depression wrecks havoc on the person who suffers it. it wrecks havoc on those around that person too, but since this is MY journal, and it's about ME, i'm not gonna go much into how others are affected. i'm going to express My side. for me personally, it was being drug downward into dark depths by strong tentacles that cling onto you, despite your fight in the beginning. at first...you don't even realize you are IN a fight, so you don't know to take precautions...or defend yourself. but then...you KNOW. you know something is wrong. you know you are in a bad place. you FEEL yourself being pulled downward, and by that time, the tentacles of depression (like a giant octopus) have a firm grip...and you are going under. i fought for a bit when i realized it, because i'd been there before. but this last time...was the worst. and my fight was only half hearted, because some part of me just WANTED to check out, in order to stop feeling all the things i was feeling. so, i tired easily...and gave in. i let myself be drug under.

and once i was within the grip of this beast, the darkness and numbness that wrapped around me like a blanket...was comforting. the disconnect was comforting. the numb was comforting. but it's in this place that others around you FINALLY start to clue in, because the disconnect is so obvious, and questions and judgements start coming at you..."what is wrong with you?" "why aren't you happy?" "you have so much good in your life...and you can't feel grateful for it?" "just snap out of it" "it's mind over matter...just get over it"....blah, blah, blah...etc...

and all of it just makes it all the more clear how alone you are. one of my first thoughts when my family started coming at me with these kinds of thoughts, was "where were you all when i "tried" to tell you what i was feeling?" "where were you then? i could have been saved from this darkness if anyone would have just CLUED IN to what i was trying to tell you all!!" but no one wanted to understand because it made them uncomfortable. they assumed i'd just "get over it". the only thing i got over was trying to be understood, or seen. i closed in on myself and let myself be drug down into the comfort of the numb, because at least that way, i didn't feel so hurt and betrayed. yes...betrayed, because they couldn't SEE me.

i don't like feeling sad. who the hell does? but when you are a person who suffers from depression, it can come at you without any seemingly good reasons. no matter how good things are around you. and when you have all these mitigating factors circling around you in a constant fury of uncontrollable instances, it's like you are caught in a tornado, no longer able to even "reach" for anything. you try to hang on for dear life. but how long can you hang on when the winds don't stop? eventually i was torn from whatever "reality" i was trying to cling to, and those wonderfully, comforting tentacles wrapped me in their hug of numb. no one goes to this place by choice. and you can NOT control the ride on the way there, no matter how others think you can. ANYONE who thinks you can control it...has simply never suffered it.

in the midst of the darkness, you still feel guilt for how those around you are affected. you see the looks in their eyes...either pity cause you can't help yourself, or disappointment cause you are letting them down, or disgust because you are so "seemingly" ungrateful for all that you have. the guilt...just allows you to let go even more, and be pulled under further....further....further...because you are hoping to get deep enough to NOT feel anything that hurts, INCLUDING that damn guilt.

it's crazy tho, cause for the "most" part...you are still living your life. wait..."living" is the wrong word, cause the last thing you feel is alive. its more that you are still exisiting and performing all your roles as expected of you. the disconnect from everyone personally, did not stop me from being a good little robot. the robot i was just existed inside that bubble where the things i saw around me, could not be felt BY ME. joy, celebrations, holidays, love, any kind of happy moment. i was there...but i was not there. none of those positive emotions could reach to the depths i existed in. but i still functioned. my depression did not send me to bed, unable to get up and do anything. i literally just pulled the plug on any emotional connections, and ran on batteries instead. batteries don't have a forever life...so you can only do that for so long before you MUST find a source you can plug back into.

that source for me was cam.

i can so clearly remember sitting in the place that we all sat together, having drinks and listening to music. during this time of extreme darkness, alcohol was a BIG thing for me. another numbing agent, as many know. going out to listen to music and socialize and even dance...had nothing to do with THOSE things for me. for me...i went for the booze. but on this particular nite, my husband had gotten up to use the restroom, and cam (who had been our friend for four years already, and often came to this place to enjoy time with us), looked me dead in the eye and out of the blue, said, "if you ever need to talk, i am here". for a flash of a second, i felt revealed. i mean fully revealed....like being caught standing bare ass naked and being seen for all that i am. but...then the flash was gone, and i asked him, "what do you mean?" and his answer was the beginning glimmers of sunlight shining way up above the dark surfaces of where i'd been drug down to...

he said..."call it friendship, or call it seeing something that i feel myself, every time we make eye contact, but i see alot of pain that you are covering up constantly. maybe it takes a pained person to see a pained person, but i see it. and if you don't want to talk, that's fine too, but i'm here...if you need a friend".

a glimmer of sunlight. someone saw into me. and he did it without disgust or frustration or any of the other things i saw in anyone else's eyes when they looked at me. and when i didn't have words, because i was so in awe of the fact that i was being seen at all...i just stared back into his own eyes, and in that gazed lock for the seconds that we had it before my husband returned to the table, i saw his pain too. i KNEW he understood, even tho NOTHING had been shared. i knew without a doubt that we were somehow kindred spirits...right or wrong. and so began a journey to the surface.

with true understanding, and ACCEPTANCE, i was given a place to feel felt. a place i could be everything that all my regular people couldn't accept because they didn't like it..it didn't work for them. depression is ugly. cam understood the ugly, and he accepted mine. and in accepting it...it slowly began to fade away, without its power to take over like before. bits of beauty began to seep into me thru his acceptance and eventual love, and every time those bits of beauty seeped in, i rose closer to the surface, and further from the depths of darkness...the tentacles losing their grip, because being understood and seen, can give you the strength to fight.

for all that he saw in me and understood and accepted, it was because he too...lived in those dark places more often than he wanted to admit. he understood the tentacles. he understood the judgement from others because you feel things they can't comprehend. he suffered too. you'd think one broken person can't help another, but i'm here to tell you that is NOT true. when you see yourself in anothers eyes...broken and all...the bond is profound. and when you begin to love that other person, even for all their darkness and ugly, because you can see there is soooo much more that others won't look enough to ever find...then you begin to want to save that person with your acceptance; you want to give them what you've not gotten elsewhere. you want to ease a pain for him, that you KNOW all too well. it's like a mirror...when you love someone out of the darkness...you can love yourself out of it too, because you are accepting his love out as your guide. for all the differences between cam and i....in this one very hard place, we were and are exactly the same. mirrored. and i can say without a single doubt that we saved each other. and every inch of that climb from the depths was filled with euphorias and joys i'd never experienced before with anyone.

and then we reached the surface together...firmly believing (still) that we'd healed each other, but we couldn't let go of each other. when you emerge from depression, there is alot of destruction all around you, created by your "disconnects". there is alot of repairing to do, of relationships. it's overwhelming and hard as hell. and we clung to each other as we each tried to work on these hard things in our separate lives. always escaping to be with each other when we could, and those stolen moments were like be refueled by all the right things.

but in all our hanging on....we got too attached, and all the beginning rules were still there. nothing had changed. and those things begin to weigh on the wonderful little haven we'd created together. if there was a way to be all that HE needs going forward in life, there could be a hope for us. but i cannot be the things he needs. i struggle with trying not to hate myself for that. but it's a fact. i cannot give him children. so...this decision for him to move on, makes all the sense in the world.

still...my life line has been severed, and i have to figure out how to not let the FACT of that...allow me to be drug back down into the depths. he gave me a strength and an acceptance, that even if i never get from others...has to propel me forward and onward. i can't let everything i gained in my precious time with him mean nothing. i understand that we were not each other destiny. instead we were just a perfect, beautiful place along each of our own personal paths...and now its time to move on from that place and finish our own journeys.

that understanding however, does not make the loss any easier to bear. it's a heavy, heavy, heartbreaking loss. and i'm struggling to stay above the surface. i'm struggling with accepting that i may never been SEEN again...and that has already affected me so harshly. i'm struggling with how to figure out how to use what he SAW in me, and SHOWED me so beautifully, about myself. things that are good and strong, that i can apply to making my life something better than it was before this whole journey began. struggling to find a way to not continue living in a lonely bubble and allowing my truths become a part of my outward life, instead of keeping them all inside...worried about how others will accept them. in so many ways, i FOUND myself, thru my time with him, because he allowed me to BE myself...good, bad, or ugly. and i want so much to be able to hang onto to the "me" that came to life with him, even while also fearing that the "me" i was with him, can only exist WITH HIM.

there is so much to figure out. so much to feel my way thru, instead of burying, like i've always been prone to do. i can only hope that "time" really does make things easier eventually. in any case, i need to honor the journey i've taken with him, by not allowing myself to continually go unseen. and that could go alot of ways, some of them very scary.




Ad: