It’s one of those times again. I’m perpetually short of
breath. My skin feels tight and it feels like something has its claws in my
chest and just keeps squeezing. Every day blurs into the next and all I want to
do is scream. And sleep.
Sometimes I can learn something from my depressive
episodes. It requires a moment of calm in the fury. It’s as if an alligator has
me in its death roll, jaws tight, spinning and spinning and – somehow – I, in a
moment of dispassionate clarity, notice which direction the bubbles from my scream
are headed and I make a note to myself that, if I get out of this, that’s the
way up.
Possibly more accurately, I’m in the irresistible gravity
well of self-loathing. While I have nothing better to do than sink ever
downward, I examine the physics of my fall, and, by doing some instinctive
mathematics, noting all of the bodies powerful enough to exert their force on
me. Thus I can infer the shape and location of the dark planets disrupting the
orbit of the known objects in this tediously drawn out metaphor for my psyche.
Acute depressive episodes, if I can have that moment of
clarity, allow me to measure the profile and power of the demons in the dark. If
I can get a decent look at the shape of the horrifying feedback loop my brain
gets stuck in, I guess it was worth something. Lesson learned, on to new
terrifying vistas.
It takes a number of these insights to extrapolate a
picture for myself, and it takes time, examination, and rumination to turn that
picture into emotions and then words. My emotions don’t really translate well,
at least not without a hell of a lot of work, so this process is laborious, at
best.
This particular cycle seems to have shed some light on
why I hold myself in such restraint when it comes to feeling connected to
someone. To not belabor the point any further, I simply can’t place that much
responsibility onto someone that I love. Allowing myself to feel loved,
genuinely engaging someone on that level – at least at this point in my mental
instability – is potentially a death sentence in which I make my loved one the
executioner.
I have abysmal self-worth. I genuinely hate myself with
the heat of a thousand comments sections. As such, I end up outsourcing my
value to the outside world entirely. This ends up with me being kind of a needy
piece of shit, begging for validation on the regular. Thankfully, there’s
Facebook. It’s my one stop shop for people to make me feel like I have any
trace of merit. I can diffuse the power of that sucking hole inside over
whatever percentage of my friends haven’t unfollowed me yet.
I hate doing it. It’s tedious, annoying, and
narcissistic. Also, probably not an effective long term solution. However, it’s
gotten me through so far, despite… everything.
The reason I’m so scared to have a genuine relationship
is because if I began to focus on just one person for all of that support I
need, it would be hideously unfair, cruelly dependent, and ultimately it would
taint any of the joy that romance is supposed to infuse into one’s life. They
would become my reason to live, in the worst way you can imagine. Every word.
Every action. Every facial tick. Everything. All of it. Everything that they do
– it would be how I determined if were still worthy of drawing breath. You
know, after it was all put through a filter of my own paranoia and
self-loathing.
So there’s me, watching each minute thing a person does,
weighing my life against that. They’d become my sole anchor to being a human. That
isn’t a relationship – that’s profound sickness in the form of dependence. Romance,
playfulness, confidence – they all die. All I’d do is panic each time the cloud
of a bad mood crossed my lover’s face. Each harsh word, every deep sigh, all of
it would send me into a catatonic haze, afraid that that would be the end of it
all, that would be what pulled the rug out from under me.
What kind of person would I be if I knowingly did that to
someone I professed to care about? And, in some dim, distant way, to myself?
Logically I know that to rest my survival on something so potentially
tumultuous as one other person’s perception of me could be disastrous. Especially
when I know I’ll interpret the signs in the worst way possible. Especially
since, when the chips are down, I begin losing all ability to communicate.
Especially since, as soon as I begin seeing the signs of negativity, I
immediately begin planning my exit strategy, hardening my heart out of
self-preservation.
Especially since I know that I can in no way offer
someone anything of equal value.
I can’t do that again. I can’t turn someone’s love for me
into that toxic dependence again. I can’t turn someone into my life support
system again. I can’t turn love into pity and obligation again.
I have to get better. I don’t know if I can, but I don’t
want to be alone. Most of my relationships were pretty awful and easy to write
off, but I’ve lost wonderful women now, because of my own weakness and terror.
Because, like all abused children, I carved sword and shield from my own self,
built myself into armor protecting… nothing. I used up all of myself to prepare
for strife and suffering. I am prepared for battle, but not for life. A hollow
suit of plate, fighting a battle many years lost. A ghost, needing someone to
haunt in order to feel connected to the world, yet unable to stomach the guilt
of being such a parasite.
There is no optimistic resolution here. No closure. No
hero’s journey. I give you nothing and yet implicitly ask your validation. Same
as always.
