Messages

 

This week I started taking a walk every morning in preparation for the coming low light season.  In the low light season, taking a walk every morning makes a difference to my mood especially as winter goes on.  I am starting now so as to establish the habit in advance.  I really didn't want to take my walk this morning, but I did anyway. 

I have always wanted or expected that I could learn to enjoy physical exercise.  But I don't enjoy it, and with years of trying behind me, I suppose I'm ready to accept that I never will, and that I can and must do it anyway.  Just because it doesn't feel good doesn't mean it isn't doing me good.  I can do things that are difficult and painful.  I mean, I've kept myself alive all this time, haven't I?

I've been hoping for years to teach myself to enjoy physical activity. At times, I've gotten into a rhythm with regular physical exercise and appreciated the benefits, but I've never been able to keep it up for longer than a few months at a time before something derailed me, and I've never enjoyed it. I like swimming pools because I like being in water, but I don't swim properly, and I can somewhat enjoy walking especially if I have company, but mostly physical exercise is a dispiriting chore. I guess I'm starting to realise that there are a lot of things I have to live with and do my best at but must stop expecting to change my feelings about.

I'm trying so hard to be okay.

Who am I? 

I am a person who has squandered her potential and disappointed herself to the extreme. 

Thank you, Blueberry    And Cascade, and Armee, and rainy and Hope.    I'm really in a deep pit right now, looking for a way out, not seeing it at the moment but still believing it's there. 

I'm sooooooooooooo lost in here 

I don't think I ever really knew, but when I was younger I had at least some kind of idea.  I had a few labels I could hang on myself that felt worthwhile, that felt like they could meaningfully define me in some positive way.  I had things I wanted, things I expected, things I truly enjoyed.  I haven't got anything like that now.  All I am now is a shell filled with former selves.

NK, I think I sort of do assume that those things have to happen consecutively, because the prevailing opinion (not here, elsewhere) is that the one is holding me back from the other.  The idea that it might not be so is interesting and I need to give it some thought.  That's challenging because I've only just now begun to really wrap my head around the idea that I'm grieving and that grieving is necessary.  I've been running away from it all my life.

Chart, thank you for your reply.  There's a lot to think about there, too.  It's difficult for me to accept your kind words and your generous view of me, but I am here and I am trying.   

Meanwhile, I need to stop doing stupid things that mess me up.  Why can't I remember that the reason I should not snack late at night is not "it will make me fat" but "I will wake up depressed in the morning and then deal with intrusive thoughts of dying all day"? 

Welcome back, rainy!  It's good to see you.  I'm glad that you're doing better and that you have a promising therapist.  Family stuff is haaaaaaaaard.  We are here for you   

I appreciate your comment, Aphotic 

It occurred to me yesterday that with my recent awareness of how old I am and how fast the time is going that a component of my recent depression is realising that the life I would have liked to live was never in the cards for me, and I am grieving it. Now the question is, how can I finish grieving the life I was never going to have and get on with making something out of the one I do before it's too late?

Thank you for the kind words and support, friends.  Hope, I'm glad you found something helpful in my suggestions. 

I've been very depressed lately.  Things have been just too much since the floods in December and January.  I could have maybe gotten past that by now except that bad things keep happening.  We've had work layoffs and scary and expensive medical difficulties, and every time I think I'm catching my breath, bam, something else comes along to knock it right out of me again.  I'm struggling to believe that anything will ever get better.

[really really]

This is the beginning of something I've been trying to write.  I can't really get it to go where I want it to go, but I've put too much effort into it to erase it and forget about it. 

My mother got pregnant with me accidentally-on-purpose to manipulate my father, and started to resent me before I was even born because her pregnancy didn't get her what she wanted from him.  Thus, I was born her scapegoat, and she was hostile towards me from the beginning.  She decided that there was something wrong with me, that I was crazy or defective or unlovable or something like that, and she sold that narrative to everyone in the world including me.  I spent many years of my life operating on the premise that I was crazy, but also that I was BAD.  That somehow it was all my fault.  Thus, all the difficulties I had in life, all the emotions, all the reactions, the mistakes, the discomforts, the illnesses...the longing to be loved, the wish that I could be SOMEONE ELSE without even knowing who that would be...all immutable, all a part of my fundamental make-up, but at the same time, something that I had chosen to be and could choose not to be if I really really wanted to.  It was all on me, in every way.  All my responsibility to manage and minimise however I could, even though it was inevitable that I would fail, impossible for me to ever be good enough.

Every so often it hits me how everyone in my life including my father who should have known better bought into this and gave up on me very early in my life, therefore making it pretty much true.  I've never been able to be who I could have been.  The struggle now is to not give up on being who I can still be.  The anger is real, even though I can't feel it for more than a moment.  Even though it quickly degrades into depression and self-hatred.  The anger is real. 

NarcKiddo, Little2Nothing, Blueberry, Hope and san, thank you so much for being here and understanding.  And anyone else who reads here, thank you, too!  I appreciate you all so very much   

I've been trying to write a post for ages and really struggling with words.  I was having some strange symptoms with my vision and having intense health paranoia as a result of that, irrationally fearing the very worst.  Well, yesterday I went to the eye doctor and found out that I have a detached retina in my left eye.  Which is scary, but not as scary as the stroke or brain tumour I was worrying about.  "Easily treatable", I'm told.  Easy for who, the doctor?  Doesn't sound like it will be very easy for me.  I'm having surgery tomorrow morning, which will be followed by a recovery period of unspecified length, at least one week, during which I will have to literally keep my head down.  As in, pointed towards the floor. I'm renting special furniture to keep my head in the correct position for sitting and sleeping.  Not sure how the rest of life will work with that.  I guess I'll find out.  It will take several weeks after that for my vision to return.  But again, at least it's not a stroke or a brain tumour or anything else permanently disabling, and my vision is expected to return.  I've handled my anxiety pretty well so far despite how big a fear and trigger the thought of losing my vision is for me.

So relieved to hear that you are on the mend!  Warm wishes for your continued recovery