loveinhollowspaces - Tumblr blog

[loveinhollowspaces]

i have never wanted to die as much as i do now. i have never experienced having so little to live for.. i have nothing. i have been reduced to essentially nothing. there is practically zero chance i am going to heal myself/become functional in time to ever have a family. i still don't even know if i could, given the opportunity - for all i know, every other circumstance could magically align and then i would discover that the iud already ruined me..

there are so many fucked things piled on top of one another that i lose track of them. now this. which 'this' do i even mean? what the fuck has happened? i feel like i have been hit by a train and then hit and hit again.. it is hard to not question my own sanity under this much pressure and pain, and it is hard to not break under the burden of my own weakness and vulnerability. i want so much to die now but, even being nearly blinded by it, i know that pain doesn't disappear if you succeed in avoiding it - it only gets redistributed to who and what you've loved.. it only creates an echo moving forward and backward in time, out of your control now.. in this way, it probably can't ever truly be successfully avoided. i expect this is the foundation of the concept of hell.

i hate that the pain of everything makes me miss him so much, but i can't turn to him. i can't rely on him. i would give anything to be able to rely on him.. to trust him.. for him to remember me..

but how can he? it's so painful to know him and remember him in ways that i don't think he can presently allow himself to know and remember himself.. and it's painful to understand it.. to have witnessed him break under the burden and uncertainty of his own vulnerability and pain makes me want to burn this world down for what it has done to him.. if he were less innately sweet, if he possessed less innate tenderness at his core, maybe he wouldn't have developed a necessity for such impermeable jagged hardness in the conditions we now inhabit.. maybe the fear of any potential additional pain wouldn't be so all-consuming as to drive so much of his behavior.. so much of his need for control, even when the only accessible form is destruction. it's terrible to see a man's learned fear of failure overtake his god-given desire to fight for and protect all that he loves.

i would give anything to help him and i know that i cannot.. no one can. his only hope for rescue is sincere faith in himself, enough to willingly face himself and all the buried pain he carries.. his only hope is to care for himself enough to bear it, and i'm so afraid that he won't ever afford himself that genuine care long enough to realize that he actually deserves it - he doesn't have to punish himself forever for all the destruction he's wrought by punishing himself.

it's strange to feel so much second-hand pain from him and to have so little resentment/anger toward him.. maybe it's a defense mechanism of my own that i only resent the world more instead of seeing him as accountable for his own choices and reactions.. maybe this has been my betrayal against him and now i'm just reaping the consequences of buying into his vision of his own weakness. i want so much to save him, like in the awful recurring dream of the fire.. maybe all i can really do to demonstrate my sincere love for him is have faith in his capacity to develop true strength and his ability to navigate repair in his life.. and if he can't or won't, at least i won't have burned alive with him by trying to save him.. maybe i'll burn alive some other way, but at least he won't have the weight of my destruction on his soul with all the rest, and at least i wont have the burden of failing him through a lack of faith on mine.

i wonder if we'll suffer this way in every lifetime or if there's at least one where we find and remain in the peace that we've experienced glimpses of together.. if this was truly our only life, it all seems so senseless now.

[loveinhollowspaces]

Trying to go through photos on my phone to clear space and I came across this picture of Meg and I.. I haven’t processed her death at all. I haven’t processed David’s either.. I wish I had any words for the way my existence feels. I feel dead inside, but it’s almost like there’s an elusive sense that life still exists somewhere only I can’t find it or feel it.. and maybe it’s a mirage, but my sense of being severed from it feels quite real and it’s painful and sickening. More and more, I feel as though I am a living ghost..

[loveinhollowspaces]

It’s hard to maintain the composure to not cry all the time.. it feels constant now that if I slip from mindfulness, then any given breath may become a sob.. my throat feels always tight and my voice comes out hoarse because of the burden of this ever-present pressure that I’m trying to restrain. But I hate all this useless crying.. nothing comes of it, there’s no apparent catharsis.. it’s just ugly, undignified, and exhausting.. it seems a bottomless well, so why endure it? What’s the use in being present to pain that seems more and more likely to have no end? How can there be growth in that? God I don’t know how anything is supposed to work anymore.. everything seems upside down and inverted and mixed together and I’ve lost any sense of meaning or connection.. how can I navigate out of this when I have no functional instruments?

It doesn’t matter how well a pilot knows how to fly if his plane is experiencing a fault of which he has no understanding or awareness.. a stripped jackscrew, an unsecured cargo door, an old and fraying wire. Of course the only respectable way to handle such an event is to try to keep composure enough to attempt rational solutions and to keep fighting to the end but, regardless of his persistence and will, in such a circumstance, the pilot's knowledge and skill will be void and his inputs won't matter..

I have not yet indulged in resignation, but in spite of my various attempts to move through this, I feel I have yet no instruments, no control.. just a repetitive song growing louder and louder in the background of my awareness, playing all the time: TERRAIN TERRAIN - PULL UP! PULL UP! TERRAIN TERRAIN - PULL UP! PULL UP!

[loveinhollowspaces]

To be a ghost in a still-living body is a terrible, aching hell.. will it continue like this always? It’s so difficult to not give up fighting this current when all my efforts amount to less than nothing.. I feel powerless and useless in every way. Where can I turn that I haven’t yet turned? It is anguish all the time and nowhere to go.. disappointment upon disappointment, failure upon failure, weakness upon weakness. It takes derangement to have the reckless confidence that death would be any better, and I, unfortunately, am not possessed of that kind of lunacy. If I have learned anything in recent years it is that one should never imagine that things can’t always get immeasurably worse. Of course, I also know well that things can be better than this, but then that’s often what hurts me the most lately.. I don’t know.. I am more lost and alone now than I have ever been before. This paralysis is such a sickening waste of life.

[loveinhollowspaces]

I want peace so badly

[loveinhollowspaces]

Ok, it’s so frustrating how fucking stupid ‘journalists’ can be, though.. there are so many articles about Meg that have jumbled, stupid information that would be really simple to fix, but instead they just don’t make sense, or they leave a wrong impression of what happened. Like it wouldn’t take that long for someone to just do a tiny bit of research and do a decent job, but instead all of these articles read like a stupid game of telephone because they’re all halfway plagiarized from each other. It doesn’t actually matter, but it makes me mad.. I just hate all of it.

[loveinhollowspaces]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10691991/amp/Utah-woman-dies-fall-Grand-Canyon.html

I don’t know how to process all of it.. the hits just keep on coming and coming. I haven’t known anyone as long as I’ve known Meg.. how many of my baby pictures include her? Toddler years, preschool, swimming lessons, every birthday party, every holiday, camping trips, elementary school, junior high, high school, etc.. What the fuck.. honestly. It’s so senseless.

I can barely feel anything anymore.

[loveinhollowspaces]

https://www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/news/people/tributes-to-boston-spa-man-who-worked-for-the-community-3639857

I hate the consistently senseless nature of loss. I hate this all so much.

[loveinhollowspaces]

I am reaching a breaking point.. I am severed from everyone and anything I have cared about, and the world continues to turn at an unreachable distance.. I exist on a distant planet, paralyzed with no way back, and all I can do is watch in horror as people live, and now die, in my absence. I have nothing, I am nothing.. I somehow feel both numb to and consumed by my grief and helplessness.. I feel like I can barely breathe, much less think or function.. I’m disgusted by the chaos around me and my apparent inability to just fucking pull out of this nosedive.. I’m panicked all the time, and it cripples me from reacting to anything, anything.. everything is wrong and I feel like I’m losing my mind from the sense of terror of being unable to impact anything how I desperately want to.. need to.. I fear I am experiencing a state of slow death..

I have no one and I know I need help. I don’t know what to do or what is going to happen, and the thought of this hellish existence continuing indefinitely is unbearable. Sometimes I imagine how utterly disbelieving I would have been if I had been shown 3, 4, 5 years ago what my life would become.. I feel as though I have been transformed into something so much less than myself.. I feel subhuman. I really can’t understand how.. it is all a horror.. I drive myself mad trying to identify precisely at what juncture I went so horribly off course.. how did I end up here? Why am I like this? Why the fuck am I like this? How many times do I ask myself that question every day now?

I am in hell and I cannot find a single foothold anywhere to try to drag myself out.. I can’t imagine that this is all that my life was meant to amount to, but at this point it’s difficult to maintain faith that there’s any meaning or order in anything.. I don’t know.

[loveinhollowspaces]

Honestly, I’m so fucking sick of feeling so miserable and weak. And why? Over what? Why should I be left so damaged by someone else’s failures?

God it’s so difficult to not acquiesce to the temptation toward anger.. It would be so fucking easy to turn away from the dissonance of pain and uncertainty for the honeyed peace of cold rage. Please try to fucking remember what is ACTUAL weakness and cowardice.. Your capacity for witnessing apparently disparate realities and bearing uncertainty without seeking the relief of premature judgment (i.e. rejecting some portion of reality for the sake of maintaining a false sense of certainty, control, etc) is largely what defines your intelligence. Like ffs, don’t become actually stupid simply because you’re so tired of feeling stupid.

I am tired and it’s difficult to not feel desperate for easy relief. I am afraid and it’s hard to coexist with fear like this, that’s dragged on like this.. I don’t know how to get unstuck from the things that don’t make sense.. it’s so tempting to reject portions of things I have known to be true. Unequivocally true. It’s a challenge to remain firm in my own values, or to remember what faith is, whether and why it has any value as a concept. The concise definition of the problem I’m experiencing is simply integrity vs. compartmentalization. Love vs. fear.

You cannot cultivate any kind of genuine strength without being intentionally hospitable to fear, and without becoming very willingly, intimately acquainted with the sensation of your own weakness. That means pain. And it’s not up to you how much or for how long. You fucking know this. This truth doesn’t change just because you’re out so much further from any familiar shore than you’ve ever been before. Please don’t get so overwhelmed with the feeling that you’re drowning that you forget. And yes, you may truly be drowning - that’s a fair and legitimate concern. But if you give in to the desire for relief by arbitrarily picking and choosing what’s true and what isn’t, you will be rejecting and discarding all of the potential for growth and sincere understanding that you’ve been fighting to hold for so fucking long. Should all of it be for nothing? And do you believe for a second that any real relief would be achieved? Or would you be burying yourself further down, diminishing your chances even more of becoming whatever it is you’re supposed to become?

If you forget, you forget. At a certain point, you can’t help that if it happens.. like, that’s the nature of forgetting, obviously. But Jesus, if you have any shred of memory - as you still do now - don’t voluntarily release it for anything.

All suffering and risk are justified in the pursuit of truth and growth. Don’t get bogged down in either resisting or adopting pain.. I don’t care how intense it is becoming.. just accept it and keep remembering the simple fact that you can and must bear it.

And fucking remember that whatever you can willingly and intentionally bear is representative of what you stand to gain in strength if you survive all of this. I know that at the moment there is very little tangible evidence to remind you of what you are, and maybe it would be easier just to believe that you really are being ground down into worthless nothingness, but you know.

[loveinhollowspaces]

I hate being like this.. I’m so afraid that I won’t figure out how to get better. I just want to feel like some semblance of myself again. I barely feel human at this point. It feels as though my function has been reduced to that of a filament for a constant current of anxiety to burn.. it seems to be burning so fast. I feel sure that the pace at which I’ve aged over the last several years must have doubled at least.

After his own research, Bryan feels that stellate ganglion block seems a much more promising option than any of the other very few (and potentially more experimental/unreliable/inaccessible) things we haven’t tried.. to the extent that he actually said, ‘Maren, it goes without saying that ultimately your decisions are your own to make and I have the utmost respect for your agency and rational capabilities, but this is the closest that I am ever likely to come to outright telling you what to do.’ Despite the fear that I inevitably have over the reality of having anesthetic injected directly into nerves which reside in my fucking spine, I’m extremely grateful for the clarity of his guidance. Obviously I feel it’s likely that I am a good candidate for SGB based on my own research and the absence of improvement by any other means for these specific symptoms that are crippling and disintegrating me, but I’m not foolish enough to overlook my bias here.. to overlook the distortion in perception I’m potentially very vulnerable to on account of being so utterly desperate for any kind of relief. I appreciate and trust him more than I can articulate honestly.. that I have someone on my side who is so professional, so utterly rational and unemotional in his decision-making while still having a capacity to express empathy (even/especially when he’s unsure of what can/should be done), so restrained and discerning in his own process of reaching conclusions, and whom I trust genuinely understands me, is worth more to me than nearly anything in the world, given the circumstances in which I currently find myself. Thank fucking god I have an advocate who is such the epitome of competence and excellence in his field.

So.. I’m trying to narrow down places that offer SGB, and he’s putting in the referrals and trying to help me figure out if there are meaningful differences in cost from one place to the next, as well as putting together documentation of my case to provide to my insurance which will show that we genuinely have ruled out every other reasonable option, and that all differential diagnostic procedures have been done and done and done. This is kind of him to do considering that it’s all but guaranteed that no civilian insurance company in the world covers SGB for PTSD. I appreciate it anyway just in case, cause I don’t have a fucking clue how I’m going to pay for this.. I know I have to, since my present existence as a literal fucking shut-in is, in reality, outrageously expensive and unsustainable, but still, trying to figure out how to come up with probably tens of thousands of dollars out of thin air makes me want to throw up.. but whatever, it’s still probably going to be cheaper than the next most reasonable option of intensive in-patient trauma treatment somewhere residential (which insurance also won’t cover). Either way, I’m scared that I may end up needing to sell my house.. I don’t want to give up the one thing that’s offered me structure and comfort and stability, but I know I’m not getting better with time and it wouldn’t be rational to cling to comfort/security when giving it up may be the only thing that can save me.. I don’t know. I hate it.. I hate feeling like my life has become loss after loss, and like I’m so useless and incapable of cultivating and retaining anything that I love or that could bring me joy.. I hate feeling so helpless.. I feel like a dumb, stunned animal, frozen in place as I wait for the predation of my darker fate. I don’t want to get swallowed up by the pervasion of this feeling day after day.. I don’t want to succumb to this nightmare and never regain my strength and purpose, never fulfill my potential and discover the fullest expression of my destiny.

I will give up whatever I must give up, I will suffer whatever unknown pain and fear I must endure, and I will take whatever risk is required of me to take - regardless of the precariousness of my current position and the leaden sense of weakness and uncertainty that hobble me - because if I am being as clear-minded and objective as I am capable of being at this moment, I know that any avoidance of these things for the sake of the mirage of immediate comfort will lead to worse outcomes. And I already know that there is no meaning or comfort or joy or pleasure in my life anyway, so I may as well move decisively further into the territories of fear and pain if they might hold an escape..

I watch so many stories lately of underwater cave divers, and how many get lost or trapped in myriad ways.. they almost always die, even some of the best divers. Or just stories of regular people doing regular things and making a simple, seemingly inconsequential mistake while alone that leads to their death, despite their most frantic efforts to survive. I feel in many ways that I am in such a situation.. I know that I may not escape it, regardless of whether I’m intelligent or not, whether I have ‘potential’ or not, etc, etc. But I also know from what I’ve observed and gathered so far that I certainly won’t survive if I give up at any point, or if I become so broken and pain-averse and timid that I cease considering risks and sacrifices that could actually save me. If I can get it through my head that I truly have nothing of real value left to lose and if I can remember that there is zero safety in indecision or avoidance, I believe the odds of a better outcome will be higher. Of course it’s very hard to make myself do these things when I’m working against a current of terror/panic that provokes me toward blindly clasping onto any bit of detritus, piece of crumbled monuments, rotting scraps of shelter, from a world I once inhabited, cultivated, and loved.. and especially so as I drift further and further from any internal connection to what defines me.. as I said, I feel as though I’ve become nothing more than a filament for this constant physical anxiety, and it’s destroying everything that made me who I was.. it’s distorting and disfiguring my sense of self and identity, and it’s robbing me of any capacity for joy, curiosity, pleasure, comfort, freedom, security, basic self-efficacy, or any small moment of peace.. But this truth only inevitably leads me back around to the only rational conclusion I can draw: that I have nothing of any real value left, and therefore it is not irrational to take risks with the material, transient things I still ‘possess’ for the sake of meaningful survival and recovery. If I die trying, it doesn’t matter. I’ll die one way or another, and my existence at present is not a life anyway.

[loveinhollowspaces]

I just feel like I’m losing my mind sometimes.. words feel so pointless to attempt.. I don’t know. I wish there were some way even just to pause this if nothing else.. any true reprieve, even if it couldn’t last. I feel as if my life has become an endless, empty night.. it is hard to bear this desolation without becoming defaced or consumed by it.. I feel desperate for a relief that I know not to expect.. While deep under water one could need urgently to breathe, but the water would remain impassive, heavy and silent around you, if you tried.. Maybe there was a time when I could breathe underwater, but no such enchantment is apparent in the world I inhabit now.. I feel as though I slipped through a seam of the living world somehow, and now it’s so distant as to feel like another dimension.. why can’t I get back? Everything is so strange and inhospitable…

[loveinhollowspaces]

I don’t know.. I feel like a broken record, or like I’m caught in some nightmarish circularly-repeating quicksand.. but I’m trying so fucking hard, and I feel so broken by the fact that things only seem to keep getting worse over time. What is wrong with me? Why are all my efforts so useless? I’m so open to trying anything that’s been suggested and I’m not half-assing any of it and I’m killing myself trying to be absolutely consistent and diligent, and yet regardless of it all, I’m not getting better.. it scares me to death and it’s sickening.. my life isn’t supposed to be like this.. I’m not meant to be disintegrating into nothing.. I’m so afraid that I’m not going to regain myself, and I’m not going to accomplish the things I care about and believe in. I’m so afraid that I missed any chance I had at having a family.. it kills me.. I feel so damaged in a way that I don’t know how to fix.. I didn’t know that it could be like this.. I’m so tired and my heart hurts and I feel like I’m being slowly weakened and dissolved by a corrosive anxiety and sense of dread that I don’t know how to turn off..

It’s so hard to remember how confident and hopeful I was even a few years ago.. I was so happy even in the challenging times and my optimism felt like a well I could always draw upon.. It hurts to remember it. Was I naive and stupid? Or not? I wish I could only feel like myself again.. I wish I could recover a fraction of the strength and optimism I had then.. I miss feeling safe in my own resilience.. I miss being able to trust in anything at all, but especially myself..

I’m so desperate to find a way to get better, regardless of what it takes.. I wish so much I could only find any small crack in the wall, a solid foothold in the sand.. or I wish that someone could recognize me here and offer guidance or a hand that I could rely on.. this all feels so nearly unbearable and I’m so exhausted and small. But truly, there must be some way out.. there has to be..

[loveinhollowspaces]

The worst dreams to wake up from are the ones in the house on Scottsdale in the final months.. the chaos and volatility, the fear, pain, confusion.. the fierce and gnawing hope.. Being on edge all the time, not knowing when his anger and instability would explode, nor knowing why.. a wrong look, a wrong word, a wrong item in his field of view.. things that were ok yesterday, and maybe even again tomorrow.. no way to know or predict the rules from one moment to the next. The futility of trying so earnestly to make a connection, to reach him beyond the storm and barricades.. being emotionally and psychologically pummeled in the attempt.. The feeling of everything I’d invested into my future over the preceding years, all the sacrifices and challenges and successes, turning into quicksand.. the feeling of having no agency over what was going to happen..

I think one of the worst parts has been never wavering in my knowledge of who he is.. I am haunted so frequently by Kathleen’s words, ‘I realized a long time ago that I never really knew who he was. There’s nothing he could do that would surprise me at this point.’ Of course, my fear based on all that’s transpired is that I never really knew him after all.. It’s so hard to reconcile everything.. And yet, I do know him.. his heart, his being. I saw him.. I can’t cease to love that person. I can’t simply forget the man.. I know it would be easier, but it would also be a lie. Even in the worst times, when I knew I was being mistreated, misled, threatened, I was so worried and concerned about him - because I know him and I know he was suffering.. how could that not pierce my heart? God, the conflict of emotions was a horror..

Still now, the lack of closure ravages and disturbs me.. I feel frozen and it’s hard to really trust anything again, even small things. I don’t want to feel these ways. I want so much to find the answers or clarity within myself that could release me.

[loveinhollowspaces]

I woke up and can’t fall back asleep.. the minutes and hours seem endless at times. My loneliness is consuming.

[loveinhollowspaces]

I don’t know why it matters or bothers me now, but I wish I had a way to connect/combine this journal with the original one.. It’s been a long time since I cared to obscure it, or since there was any reason. In any case, all I know to do for now is add the link here.. oh well.

https://lovetakentoemptyplaces.tumblr.com