This morning is marked by an anxiety attack that just won’t quit. The heart palpitations that are chocking me remind me with every painful beat of my heartbreak. I know it’s over between us. Even though for You it was barely anything, it was everything to me. I know we will never be together – I’m not THAT delusional. I know You probably hate me right now. I know You will likely always consider me a psycho and a creep. But I would still do it again. Suffering in silence is what I have been doing for far too long. No more. I have seen and experienced first hand the suffering caused by holding shit hidden deep inside and pretending in public that everything was fine. I would still write to You about my feelings for You. I did not expect an answer but I got one and it was as painful as it was likely true. You have cut off all contact and blocked me on Facebook. I do not blame You. From your point of view it was likely a creepy and an inappropriate message. But I would still do it again. As much as I am pained by it, I am not ashamed by my unrequited love for You.
It too shall pass as most things are wont to do. I will probably get over it. I will start anew. And when I do, the burden of never having admitted my feelings will not weigh heavily upon my shoulders.
My inner démiurge seems to have been satiated and anxiety has passed for now. I have admitted my “problem.” Perhaps these bouts will become less painful in the future but I know that the love that I will always carry for you in my heart will be lighter, for it will not be darkened by shame of hiding it.
Tag Archives: self-help
Moving Forward.
Today was my first session with a shrink psychologist. I didn’t feel that it helped and I honestly don’t see how it could. But I know people whose lives were greatly improved by going into therapy and I have got to believe that there is an end game to this madness.
Also, not unexpected but still kinda weird, I got homework to do! Homework! Not sure how I feel about this. Schooling was never my strong suit. I need to believe though that this will work. Here’s to forlorn hopes and last resorts!
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Day 8. Yours Truly: Front and Centre (Part I).
Since I have no clue what to write about today, I will use the daily prompt. Standing out in a crowd is a bit of a sensitive issue with me. So instead of screaming into the digital void about my broken heart, let us venture out into the history of how yours truly has ended up in this unenviable situation.
Childhood
You see, as a child, although I had quite a bit of anxiety already, I was fine being in the thick of fun performing in dance recitals, plays, and so on. In fact, like my father, I am a natural extrovert. With the onset of ADHD-PI (or ADD, as it used to be called) things have started to change. Of course at the time I had no idea about any of that alphabet soup, nor did anyone else in my backward-ass place of birth. The way to deal with unruly kids was to pump them full of tranquilisers and stuff them in the room with padded walls. As my attention began to wonder quite a lot, I became more and more introverted. (The running joke/explanation was that I had “deep inner world.” So as much as I tried to concentrate, there was only so much information that would sift through the inattention filter. No matter how much I studied, my marks kept getting more and more depressing and so did I. The level of anxiety though, kept going up and up. That wouldn’t do in my society of birth and so I did the best I could (and my best was quite good – too good, as it turned out) to put up the appearances of normality and to lock down any out-of-place feeling or impulse.)
Present
So how is it that I went from being completely locked inside my mind (more on that in the next post) to being someone with a bunch of friends and even appearing regularly on stage? Well, my medical condition can be controlled. I came a long way from the beaten down sorry waste of flesh to be someone that others might like and respect. I learned to venture out into outside world. It is still difficult to do so completely by myself, without a social buffer in form of friends, but I manage to do it. And every now and again I latch onto something and become obsessed with it (more on that in the next post as well). I started going to a bunch of local comedy shows and eventually paired my love for comedy with my photography obsession. So I got noticed by comedians and became friends with great many of them. These new connections brought me in contact with a lot of new people. It seems many of them liked me but I was close only to a few. Comedians like to party (evidently to keep inner demons buried under drugs and alcohol). I never got into drugs (too level-headed for that) but alcohol has always been fun for me. (Don’t worry – this story does not end in me becoming an alcoholic.) It’s a great dis-inhibitor and that’s what I need at parties. Nevertheless, I have mastered an ability to be alone in a room full of people. I tend to retreat into a corner of my mind. Even when I join a group or a conversation, I never really feel like I’m a part of it.
Then things changed. Through my association with the comedy scene, I eventually discovered improv and fell in love with it. It has so many fascinating sides: from games, to storytelling, to masks. (Eventually, there will probably be a long post dedicated to improv.)
One of those characters is me.
See, this art form requires one to be fully in the moment, to discard whatever else is going in one’s life. I came to improv already with some experience in that from meditating (unsuccessfully) and rock climbing (rather successfully). Improv also allows you to become someone else, a character. Then there are the scene partners. Those that I have met mostly came to this also with all kinds of inner demons. It is such a wonderful feeling of being able to connect with others going through similar feelings and craft something wonderful with them that makes us and the audiences happy. Improv allows one to stand out without standing out. We all wear masks. I have conditioned myself early in life to keep mine on all the time. So through improv there is a secret me that gets to shine while the public known me can recede in the background. Therapy, it seems, can exist in the most unusual forms.
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Day 5. Fear.
I have been thinking about fear and the nature of that emotion. It has occurred to me that when it comes to human relationships and life in general, fear is not so much us hiding from things but rather hiding things from ourselves. This gives us an illusion of having control over our lives because we make the choices and call the shots. The sad reality however is that we are sometimes ruled by the things we are afraid to face so we pretend they aren’t there or that they are something else.
Unwittingly, I have become a master at that technique during the last 15-20 years of my life. That realisation has sent me into yet another panic attack. How could I have been so blind??? And then anger sets in: why didn’t anybody else see this and help me??? But the answer, of course, is because I have been putting on a façade for most of my life. Dealing with having a learning disability in a society that praised and deified uniformity and conformity required it. So no one then could see what was going on. I have walled myself off from everyone and thus made myself alone. I used to joke that I had developed my ability of being alone in a roomful of people into an art form. Only now I realise how detrimental that was. So even though I had eventually learned to overcome the loner mode, I have not simultaneously developed a way of dealing with the world. So something had to give and I began putting scary things into their own walls so that I wouldn’t have to deal or look at them.
There’s a terrifying aspect to this whole thing: when it comes to relationships, we see what we want to see because often enough we are unable to cope with the idea that the other person might not be that into us. And then, you get to break down and hopefully ask for help.
It had not occurred to me to do this before. A place that is so anonymous if it needs to be where I can scream the most inner things to the universe and still maintain my privacy? A comedian friend of mine, while pulling me out of what was fixing up to be a marathon drinking session in a dive bar, has told me to write what I’m feeling and write it out all the time. There’s no shame in this and no one, except a few people will ever read this. There’s a tremendous freedom in this. Eventually though, I will have to re move a cloak of anonymity either off of this blog and my true inner state. It will be me vanquishing another stage of fear by removing walls from myself and opening up myself to the world.
In the meantime, the minutia of writing this blog and being part of the WordPress community is helping but GODDAMN I am in so much pain every moment of every day! And I still dream of her.
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Day 2. A Cut Too Deep. (Letter #1).
After some heavy thinking I have done in the past week or so, I have come to realisation that I have no choice but to cut you out of my life. I’m sorry it has come to that but just being friends and hanging out with was never going to be enough for me. I care for you too much to be around you without being with you both because it would be too painful for me and because I would not want to poison you with my misery.
I wish things could have turned out differently. I wish hadn’t pushed you towards the arms of another. (Definitely wish I had’t arranged for the circumstances where you two met.) I wish I could have been what you wanted me to be. I am not. Perhaps with time I could have changed, likely would have, but it is too late now and you could not wait. I wish you could have given me more of a chance; I wish you would be willing to wait… You are like an untameable mustang, a force of your own. Unwilling to settle for anything less than you deserve, you cannot be with one who isn’t what you want. There’s no blame for you in this; but the end result is all the same: we must part ways for I cannot bear for it to be otherwise. I would never presume to tell you whom you can or cannot date. But if I cannot be with you than I cannot be around you knowing that you are with someone else, seeing you with someone else, someone better.
All I ever wanted was to hold you close, to be able to say I’m yours and to call you mine. Alas, that is not to be.
I realise now that I should have been more open with you about my emotional health issues and more truthful about the cause of my idiosyncrasies. Not to mention that I should have sought professional help a long time ago. But it was easier to fool myself that I’m stronger than the depression that has been slowly suffocating me for the 20+ years. I would start new hobbies and get obsessed with them and they gave me great outlets for relief of anxiety and depression but whenever I would be forced to be by myself they would spring back up. Things became harder and harder to deal with over time. Even cleaning my room became a task of Herculean proportions. I finally have reached he point where I realise that I cannot deal with it by myself. I will seek the help. “I’ll drop the cross of self-denial,” so to speak. Regretfully for us, it is all too late. Perhaps, once I’m better we may see if there’s still something there but I will not ask you to wait. I will not be this unfair to you.
I care oh so deeply for you, my dearest, dearest girl. ‘Til better times, perhaps.
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Day 1. A New Beginning.
This blog is to help me document my recovery from deep depression and a host of other issues as well as to help me pick up pieces of my broken heart and try to make sense of life and events.
I have been sliding down the depression cliff for some time, rationalising not seeking professional help by pretending that it was my “normal,” that it was a cultural thing. But a breakup turn my slow slide into an uncontrollable tumble. And I finally came to realise how screwed up my life really is. I made a first step: contacted a mental health clinic that came recommended by a trusted friend. I am yet to have my first appointment but decided to use this medium as a way to arrange my thoughts and feelings.
So here goes…
Forlorn Hope: A Diary Of A Broken Heart 