I get a sick feeling in my stomach when I see or hear of young, successful twenty-something's living their own independent lives. It makes me extremely jealous and jealousy is poisonous. There is no reason why I should be ashamed of my situation. Everyone knows what happened and why I'm living at home so why then do I feel such shame and embarrassment? Because IT IS! No matter what the good reason there is for it.
You wanna know what I did to celebrate the last year of my oh so glorious twenties? NOTHING. I can't have people over to my house to have a party. Now don't get me wrong. My parents were wonderful that day and treated me very nicely but it's not the same as having a good day with family and then having your dearest friends take you out for a night on the town. I did get a little birthday party hosted by my a couple of my dearest friends a week later and that was very, very nice of them and it was good for me. Everyone who was invited actually came! And I hadn't laughed as hard as I did that night in a long, long time so it was good. Actually, it was great. So thank you Jen and Clay for hosting and to all those who came.
But what will I do with this new year for me? Not only do I mean it as a new year because of the new year - 2011 - but also the new year in the sense that I am now 29 years old. I'm scared it will be no different than 2010. And I so desperately need it to be better than 2010. How can I better myself and my life? I am 29 years old!!! And what have I done with my life? NOTHING! I have no career, no husband, no family of my own, not even a boyfriend. All I have is my own immediate family and two dogs. When will my life begin? If I let 2011 and my 29th year of life pass by like I did in 2010 with my 28th year of life, I might as well throw in the towel.
I'm so tired of the daily struggle of life. I'm 29 years old! I should be out there having the time of my life! But I'm not. I'm inside here, inside a scarred body, trapped inside a scarred body that I find so ugly that I'm embarrassed for people to see me. Even my dearest friends it's still embarrassing. I don't want to be a victim but I feel like I am. They say to say "burn survivor" but somehow I don't feel like I have quite survived the accident yet, even though the accident itself is 3 years ago in the past. Does that make sense? I'm still living it. I can't let go because of what I see every day in the mirror. It's too hard to forget such a horrific accident. Will I be able to get through that anniversary date a 3rd time? You'd think it would get easier as the years go on but it hasn't yet. I try to survive that day by thinking about it as the day that I survived when I was so close to losing my life. But it's not that easy. It's just not that easy. The scars are too powerful. The scars that mar my body are like the hand and ankle shackles a prisoner wears. At least that's how they make me feel.
So 29, here I come. So far, it has been uneventful and I have been struggling day to day with pain and loneliness.
4 comments:
(1/3) When I was 20 I left my home area for the first time in my life to study in New Zealand. I embarked with the expectation of a wonderful and illuminating journey through a foreign land and becoming a rough and tumble traveler. Instead, I as time went on I closed up and went in the exact opposite direction. I was so aware of my foreigness that I felt alien, and towards the end of the term began to even dread face-to-face conversations. I returned home hoping everything would just go back to normal, but instead it felt like everything was out to destroy me. Now, I realize that during my time away I had begun to experience the first stages of major depressive disorder. A week after returning home I developed what I now know was severe IBS, which I still deal with. The thing is, before I left for New Zealand I felt truly happy. I was in love with my girlfriend, I loved spending time with my family, I thought I was an attractive person, I loved my friends dearly, and I loved just doing things. I felt like a completely different person had returned home, and I had no idea why I felt the way I felt. I had never had health issues in my life, period! The worst thing that had ever happened to me had been muscle strains.
My point is, after trying to resume my life as if nothing had happened, those things which used to give me pleasure, like hanging out with old high-school friends or playing in bands or visiting family, were instead activities filled with dread and worry, much of which was spent on the persistent, horrible pains in my gastrointestinal area. It felt like forces beyond my control were conspiring to make me suffer meaninglessly. I spent two years taking tests and hearing doctor after doctor tell me there was nothing wrong with me. It felt like a special kind of hell made specially for me. My being felt so wrong in such a way that I literally couldn't picture where my life would be in a year, because I felt like I had no life! My stomach was so bad that all I'd want to do is lay down all the time; I began missing classes because I didn't see the point in going and got 3 F's in 2 quarters (of which I am now proud). I stopped maintaing my friendships because I couldn't even hold a conversation without my mind being drawn into my body which felt so wrong and begged for an explanation that never seemed to come. I remember laying crumpled in the corner the bathroom of my aunt's empty house, crying and screaming at whatever higher power there might be to just TELL ME WHAT TO DO. I would have done ANYthing anybody told me to do to make me better. To fix me. Many times I would think, "what is the point of keeping my life if my life is simply an endless exploration of suffering?" Then I would think about my life before I left for New Zealand, and I'd remember how TRULY, and utterly GOOD life can feel. The feelings of pure happiness that I'd experienced had been etched so deeply into my mind that I knew without thinking I'd do anything to feel that again. I think that's just a will to live. In any case, that led to the whole bit where you start flipping through pictures, and now I know that can be a BIG F*CKING MISTAKE!!! Holy crap can that be a bad idea. I did that for years! I would find all the pictures of myself of me smiling, pictures I remember taking while I was experiencing real happiness. I wished with all my soul that I could just reach into those pictures and meld with that person I used to be in that moment. To just live as that person. Then the comparisons start up...
(2/3) For years I would scour facebook or old pictures for old friends, and find out about what they were up to. None hurt more than learning about the 2 and a half year girlfriend I had left to go to New Zealand. She had graduated college and moved to manhattan and began working in museums. And what was I doing? I was experiencing something horrible about which the only thing I understood was that it kept me from progessing in school; from progressing in happiness; in life. When I would facebook-stalk old high-school friends or pre-study-abroad-college friends they would all look SO HAPPY! All their faces were twisted in impossibly big smiles, DOING things! Doing things that made them happy! That is NOT fair, I thought. I didn't kill anybody; I didn't hurt anybody; I didn't do ANYthing wrong! Yet I felt exactly like I was being punished; wantonly beaten by my own life. I used to get so excited about my birthdays - I would hype up my parties amongst my friends to no end, invite everyone I could, and try to throw the biggest best theme party they had ever seen. But now I was turning 21, 22, 23, and I didn't care. Every day felt the same, so what difference would it make if I did anything ceremonious? What the fuck was there to celebrate about the way I was feeling?, I would say to myself. I felt like I was waiting - waiting to find out what's wrong with my stomach... Waiting to meet the right therapist... Waiting to see if therapy even works... Waiting to find a good psychiatrist; find health care; find the right balance of medication... In your post, you ask, "When will my life begin?" I felt the exact same way for years! My phrase was "when will I have MY turn?! MY turn at this life?" I couldn't remember what it felt like to be truly happy, I didn't know anyone I would call a friend, I never felt like talking to my family, and my parents were pretty much leading me by the hand through doctors, and through life itself. I would look at photos of my old high school buddies without me. I would look at the people in my life and see the things they had - a little piece of life they could call their own and care for. I realized that any piece of happiness - any smallest SLIVER of happiness that you can find in your life is worth protecting and nurturing as if your life depended on it. I didn't even know what I could do to make myself happy, so if a person actually had an idea of what makes them happy, I thought, there's no excuse to not hang onto it for dear life and follow that path... no, SPRINT down that path. I KNEW I was gaining absolutely nothing from all my suffering. It was only very, very gradually that I began to see what I had gained. When you feel like your life is suffering your world is small and dark, and why shouldn't it be?! All your attention and energy is drawn inwards like a black hole at the core of your being. You can't even IMAGINE a larger world with unknown possibilities for happiness. But it is there. It was only after years of extreme lows I began to believe that even in the deepest caves of despair, during my darkest days, that the things I thought would make me happy might actually simply be figments of my imagination; that my own true personal happiness would depend entirely on how I feel at the very moment, which depends on who I am at that very moment. All the suffering I've been through and all my dark days were horrible at the time, of course, but they've given me a perspective of life I believe very few people my age have. I feel like I've lived longer than other people my age. After feeling so close to that horrifying void of nothingness and true hopelessness, I feel a sense of clarity about the things I want from this life. All the worst of the suffering I went through, all those fucking years of
(3/3) slogging through that crap and going from doctor to doctor and therapist to therapist, DID amount to something! They amounted to my life! It's who I am! I've seen some shit, and I've been through some shit, and I feel wiser and more sure of myself because of it.
When you're going through the depths of hopelessness and bad, negative feelings you don't always see anything else. You think you SHOULD be feeling better, or you SHOULD have this because you're such-and-such a person, or you SHOULD be having the time of your life. Be wary of "SHOULD" statements, because they're like mirages. They call attention to an imaginary gap in the way things are, and the way you think things should be. The truth is, you are the way you are, at this single moment in time. The only person you could ever have the POSSIBILITY of being is yourself, at this very moment in time. You might not like things from your past that have contributed to who you are, but that isn't your choice. You CAN choose what to do about it. You can choose what to do next with your life. Even if it's a simple thing, like choosing to do someone else's chores for them, or sharing your new peanut-butter-brownies with your neighbor, you have given some meaning to your life - you've made someone else's life just a little bit easier, a little bit brighter. You'll have catapulted some good-will into the world, and who knows where it might end up! On my bad days, I just think about putting "positive energy" out into the world and wondering where it might end up, because then I'll know that I did that. I was the one responsible for that goodness in the world. It's the small, insignificant things I do that remind me I have control over my world (being the first one to pull the cord on the bus for my stop, being the first one to call heads or tails in a coin toss with a friend, organizing my room to make it just a little bit easier to move around) that end up as a significant feeling of control over my world. All that time I was in the depths of major depressive disorder I wished with all my soul to just be fixed; to be given a magical pill by my doctor that would make it all better. It was only through time, and years, that I realized how untrue that idea is. The truth I found for myself was that it is you, and you ALONE who can pull yourself through darkness. You never get over anything; you get THROUGH it, by fighting each step of the way on your hands and knees, crawling through the mud and filthiest, disgusting parts of life you never thought you'd see - but you keep on pushing and fighting for the possibility of everything you could accomplish with a life – YOUR life. Because THAT, is worth doing ANYTHING for.
why have you stopped your blog?
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