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I've been deeply depressed for some time now, and really haven't said much of anything to anyone about my ill-mood. I hope that with this entry I might rectify the issue of being bottled up with emotion. Before I begin, I would like to give fair warning to anyone who may find themselves reading this. It is highly likely that the words to follow will make little to no sense. It is also very likely that I will jump around in my writing, bouncing from one topic to the next and skipping through time--there will be no guarantee of a chronological order, or any logical order of any kind. In expressing my emotions I typically share several seemingly disconnected thoughts. I may also write something completely random and unrelated, such as what I am doing/experiencing at the present moment. I extend my apologies to anyone who may find this writing difficult to follow. I suppose that now, with the introduction/warning out of the way, it's time for me to start telling you the stories.As I sit here, trying to talk myself up, and beat myself into sharing what I've been feeling, I'm finding myself growing nervous and shaky. I would also swear that the room has grown colder. A quick glance behind me to the thermostat reveals that the temperature is 74°F, much warmer than I prefer. I guess my nerves are merely playing tricks on me. sigh Simply put, I'm not happy. A few weeks ago I decided to change the status and mood selectors on one of the social networks I have a profile on. I guess the change was a slight cry for help, thought at the time I hadn't really thought of it as such. A friend on that networked messaged me, and inquired as to what the story was behind the statement I had selected (which read following my name "is a very confused individual..."). I shared the following with her: i dunno. i've just not quite been in a good place recently, and have been struggling to make it through. even though i would love to place all blame on diana, i can't. just life stuff. "trying to find myself" sort of stuff. i've spent a bit of time trying to figure out why i'm not happy... last night the simplest answer came to me -- i'm not happy simply because i'm not. (yeah, kind of a 'duh!' sort of revelation, but it truly struck me when i thought it) now my biggest thing is trying to figure out what all it will take to make me happy. what i'm missing. what i'm needing. ...in a way, i'm feeling nearly the same sort of things i felt before she and i got together. that i'm incomplete. that there's a void needing filled. those feelings diminished when we became an item, but never really went away. i gained having someone to care about and provide for. i gained having someone i could spend time with. i gained a family. i got everything i thought i needed... but, it just isn't quite right. ...i think my biggest problem is trying to figure out what i need, and worrying about what i'll find as the answer. i've made some really huge commitments, and i don't want to turn away from them. ...there's more buried inside that i do plan on writing within the next week. i feel as if i am very close to expressing everything i have stored away. A few days later, I had actually perked up a bit, and had gotten back into the mood to write something (the entry prior to this one). Oddly enough, while I was comprising my views, on the material I found my emotions making that turn back to where I had been. After completing the entry and editing out the darker subtones I had placed therein, I found myself writing that concerned friend once more:
i was writing something somewhat cheerful or promising, then suddenly it turned dark and depressive. the words i found myself writing follow: I've been stepped on, beat down, beat up and any other colorful wording or phrasing you can think of. Emotionally, I am bruised and bleeding. And at times when I think of something positive I'd love to do, to better not only myself but the world around me, I begin to remember how the world around had treated me before. Sadder than that is most of those who scarred me were in situations much worse, and have yet to prove themselves different. those words are going to be part of my focus in the forthcoming writing. just thought i'd share. I suppose the reason I am now sharing those exchanges with everyone is to help illustrate what I have been feeling. Another reason is that I simply would not be able to fully recreate my thoughts and emotions. Now, I'm trying to rethink my direction of this entry. Already I feel as if I've gone slightly off-track. Last night I turned the television on, and watched a repeat of an episide of Criminal Minds. The case revolved around a high school teenager who had been tormented by classmates. At the end of the show I found myself crying because I had related on some level. Sure, my path never took me to getting so beaten down that I wished to take revenge and kill those who hurt me (though I did act out once and injured a tormentor--for a very quick moment I felt strengthened, empowered, just completely on top; very quickly, however I felt and unimaginably strong sense of guilt and remorse). During that episode, one character said to another something to the effect of "while most of us cannot remember one thing that they teach us in scholl, when it come to being bullied, we all have an elephant's memory." So true. I am haunted by my experiences in school. And, I had honestly thought that I had forgotten about most of them. I strongly believed that my past was behind me, and that I had let go of it all. I was sadly mistaken. All it took to unlock that door was Diana's ten-year high school reunion. Seeing some of those faces at her reunion brought back the memories of how they had treated me, and how numerous others had treated me. I remember being carried across the locker-room and dumped into a garbage can in my freshman year. I remember having a written work I offered for a group project being destroyed by classmates. I remember being called names. I remember being beaten. I remember being spat on. I remember being so mistreated because of my awkwardness. Fortunetely, I do remember some positives. I remember a few classmates taking a stand for me, because they saw that I was unable to do so myself. Still, the negatives haunt me. Part of my recent moods have been related to my trying to come to terms once again with those feelings. For some reason, it just seems to be harder this time around. I just can't seem to forget. Can't seem to forgive. Can't seem to forgive. I thought that I was better than that. Perhaps that's why I was capable of getting over things before. I truly, honestly believed that I was better than that. Better than them. I had nothing to prove, no axe to grind, nothing to fight for because I KNEW that I was better. Today, I'm not so sure. I thought that esteem issues were supposed to be a thing of childhood, not adulthood. But every passing day seems to prove the opposite. I don't seem to have the same faith in myself that I once had. I feel more useless with the passing of each dawn. Some of that comes from my inability to find a way of contributing to my family. Around the same time as Diana's reunion she and I attempted to gain employment at a call-center. She had gotten on (though she never went to work there--that's another story which I feel I'll tell more of later in this writing) and I hadn't. I was not considered for three reasons: 1. I was in school, 2. I'm the primary caregiver, 3. I had no experience. That bothered me. Upset me. Made me feel like I was absolutely nothing. But, it's been that way for quite some time. I've checked in on jobs off and on for a year or so, and haven't been able to find one damn thing because I cannot drop everything at a moments notice and work at any od hour, or I am inexperienced. It makes me wish that I had never left the factory job I had. ...and that brings me to another point in my sour mood. The job I had, which I gave up on. For over a year (six months as a temp, eleven full-time) I had worked at Concept. I was making decent money, I was able to deliver just about everything that the family needed or wanted. I was happily miserable--if that makes any sense. I thought that we had everything we wanted, and more importantly everything we needed. Then, my world collapsed.
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It's now been two days since I began writing this entry. I was doing just fine until I hit that last paragraph. For some reason, I just couldn't go any further. I'm having great difficulty with trying to find a way to share the next bit. Diana left me. I never saw it coming. She left me. I cannot remember much of the day she told me that she no longer had feelings for me. I cannot remember the exact date. I cannot remember the exact words. I cannot remember anything but little clips and phrases. Essentially, she sat down and told me that she had moved beyond her feelings of love for me and had fallen for the old friend that she had been calling while on break and on her way to and from work. Her demeanor at the time also suggested that had it not been for the fact that the man lived out of state and she was not in a postition where she could leave the Commonwealth, she would have left and taken the children with her. Diana left me. Though we still sat in the same room, ate the same meals, and shared the same bed, she was thousands of miles away. She left me. I lost my ability to function. I simply could not continue with daily life. What life was there to continue? If I remember right, I had missed one, possibly two days of work prior to her announcement to care for our kids--a simple stomach bug had been caught. Then came the blow, and I missed a day or two more, where I could not convince myself to leave my bed. I finally managed to contact work, and asked for a leave, based on the news I had received. I stated that I was unable to mentally process anything, and that I felt it was not a good idea for me to attempt to operate any machinery. I also stated that I would need the time to see if there would be any sort of reconciliation, or whether I would need to find a new place to start my life over. I was granted a thirty-day leave. That time was not long enough. During my time away from the factory I lied to my friends and my family. I put on that happy face, went out with Diana, stood by her side, held her hand, kissed, hugged, and did everything I could to continue painting a picture that things were fine. I lied to everyone saying that I simply wasn't at work because I received a suspension over some trivial matter. In some sense, life did continue. Diana and I went ahead and took the family on the road, and traveled to see her foster family in South Carolina, as we had planned. A trip which had been planned for months to take place during that time--I had scheduled a week's vacation the month prior. A road trip, which took us only one city away from the man with whom she had been talking. She had even planned during the week prior to the trip to meet with him. She had fought with me over her wanting to take the children to meet him, and possibly staying the night at his house. Diana left me. Used me. Wanted to take our children to meet the guy who might've became their new daddy. Diana began daydreaming and planning a time when she and the kids could be with him. Imagine me, walkign around the apartment, tending to the kids, cleaning messes, and listening to her yammer away with him on the phone; her asking about his house, how big it was, how many rooms there were, making sure that he understood that if he wanted her he'd be receiving a family and not just a girlfriend. After she took delight in the responses he gave, she realized that she was destroying me, and in some odd feeling of guilt she asked me if I would move with her; that I could rent a room from the two of them, and that I could likely be a nanny sort of figure, and that it would be possible that I could transfer my employment to the company's base which was merely some thirty miles away. Diana left me, but because she felt guilty, she offered me a role of being the babysitter in consolation of having my daddy-ness ripped away from me. On our last night in South Carolina, she telephoned the man to make the arrangements to meet with him. She wrote down his address and directions to his house, dressed herself in the finest outfit she had packed, put on too much makeup for taste, and argued with me about taking the kids. To save an all out fight, I assisted in loading the kids into the van and readied myself to come along. I planned to ride along with her until she reached his home, then when she had gotten out from the vehice I was going to lock the doors, jump into the drivers seat, and make my way back to Kentucky. That didn't happen. Diana managed to misplace the directions to his house. Since it had gotten late, and he had told her over the phone that it would be possible that he'd be napping where he had already put back a few, she decided to give up, and we all returned to our room at the hotel. She says it was that night where she began to see that she was fine where she was with me. It was that night where I REALLY began to see what a mistake I had made in loving her. I have not been right since. I swore to myself that I would find a way of getting out--that I would leave as soon as I was capable of making sure that she was a completely stable person, that she could funstion on her own, that she could care for and love our kids in the same manner that I do, that she would be able to fully provide for herself and the children. That has not happened.
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I fell for someone not too long ago, in a manner not so different from Diana's. A common bond of friendship was built between this woman and I through a multitude of IM and email exchanges. Somewhere in those exchanges--where we discussed troubled relationships, parenting techniques, and any other odd thing we could think of--my feelings grew. I tried several times to deny myself of those feelings--to bury what I was feeling, and convince myself that I was mistaken. I've written about this before, or at least hinted at it in a literature assignment in which I reveresed the gender roles and gave myself the name Mary. I shared that writing with the woman I fell for as a means to share a little bit more of what I had been feeling. The idea of that writing came from Diana, shortly following my confession to her that I had developed feelings for another. I still beat myself up over making that confession; not so much for the fact that I would've wished to keep things quiet, but for the fact that I in effect betrayed the trust that the unnamed and I had established. While she (the unnamed woman) has forgiven me for sharing my secret with Diana, I have yet to forgive myself. I used that writing to convice myself that I had not really fallen, but that I simply became confused (if you can tell the difference). In an effort to keep our friendship alive, I stripped myself of emotion whenever possible in our communiques. I plead the fact that there wasn't any Mary anymore, that I had killed Mary through the writing of the paper. I continued to deny the use of the word love when referencing anything from that frame. Only recently have I actually used love to refer to the strong feelings I had for her. As I expressed earlier, and as is the basis of this writing, I have been feeling very down as of late. I mentioned this to her a few weeks ago just in conversation. I stated that I was sure that if I cried, I might feel better. That somehow led to us discussing the last time time another had cried, at which point I divulged what I had experienced the last time I cried. I then shared that it was over a love I once had. The days I spent trying to get over her were more painful than the days spent receiving the news of Diana's interests in another man. --- broke 11/25
Tags: #thoughts and stuff, #unfinished thoughts