#crippling loneliness with the inability to ever feel like I belong

[guarshroom]

Y'all ever just be an inch from having a complete mental breakdown at work?

[xsoldier]

Neural Repository: Consciousness Stream on Self Pain

You always see the faves of the depressed people who've killed themselves, and they're smiling and happy. That's likely because tendencies of hyperaltruistic behaviour get exacerbated when there's an extreme lack of dopamine. People become disproportionately more likely to take more harm upon themselves than inflict it upon others. But they're not always that way. Some people are just genuinely cheerful and love putting out happiness into the world.

I know I was.

What most of you don't know is that it's the one year anniversary of the first time in my life that I can remember deeply and wholly wanting with my entire being to not exist. To be done & gone. To will myself into nothingness. To disconnect my conscious self, and just let my body be a stand-in until I could return. To freeze myself in stasis and come back to life later. Or just die since none of those other things are actually options. It wasn't for months still that I'd actually experience the helplessness that lead me to knowing exactly how I'd terminate my life, or experience the emotional roulette rollercoaster of not doing so (about 6 separate times now) purely through the luck of circumstance of brain chemistry in the moment.

Suicide is very much a crime of passion against self. Opting out, and unsubscribing from the flow of the every day that you just can't handle anymore. It's harder when you've very carefully thought through everything and still come to the same answer. I wasn't surprised when Dana killed herself. She was about the only human whose absolute desperation and inability to escape the moments of self were like a reflection of my every day. She dealt with depression and I didn't, and I learned a lot from her. I was so annoyed when she died, because it filled me with an imperative purpose that I had to fill, and it meant that that option wasn't available for me. I talked everyone through it that I could, I spoke about her death, and I never even received a farewell or details about why. The reason that I always spoke so definitively despite that is that just about my only skillset is recognizing patterns of human emotion, and it was like staring in a mirror.

I've probably aged a decade in the last year. You can be around people all the time, but that doesn't overcome the pervasive sense of exclusion and loneliness that becomes all-consuming from where we need it most. We work long hours, because taking time off makes things worse, as the only sense of belonging and purpose is the small refreshing breath of being useful when you're drowning in an ocean of complete despair. Drowning people don't LOOK like they're drowning. They don't yell, or splash, or cry out for help. They just struggle a little differently, and then sink.

I don't remember what happiness is. That's not to say that I haven't BEEN happy and had wonderful experiences over the last year, it's just that every moment sense, instead of experiencing bad moments, life has become a series of the good moments merely being momentary distractions from the deep and inextricable sensation of the endless chasm of the complete and utter abyssal void that is what remains of me. The deepest, most delicate, sensitive, and vulnerable part of myself was utterly disintegrated and my happiest and most confident self is obliterated as being less than worthless. The start of my descent was the limb-shattering drop to rock bottom, followed my months of clawing through bedrock with shattered fingernails splitting to the bone. The only constant sensation of being buried in the scalding frozen blackness, slowly suffocating within the claustrophobic emptiness of being absolutely abandoned.

I know people cared about me. I know people care about me. None of that even scratched the surface of this place. They were a glowing distraction that faded, just making every moment more and more desperate. It's like sleep paralysis, where even as soon as you know what's happening, and every moment just gets worse. It doesn't matter that you understand it, or that you know what it is and how it works. It gets worse. Loneliness is the health equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes A DAY. Our brain experiences the social pain of abandonment the same way that we process the physical pain of being HIT. You want to escape it and what's worse — you don't want help. You don't want pity. That hyperaltruistic trigger means that even causing someone a fraction of the inconvenience that the every day pain causes you actually makes you feel WORSE not better. You are a constant net negative on literally every. single. interaction. for yourself, but it's smaller when you just let it happen. Once you start talking about it, it ends up echoing like a scream that shreds your vocal chords to pieces in seconds and adrenaline and desperation are literally the only things you have in your veins.

Each day, you recognize yourself less. You end up yearning for the worst days you can remember, because it feels like a comforting familiarity. You don't yearn for good times, because you literally can't remember what they feel like. They're a distraction, not root cause analysis. Anything that isn't digging at the core of the issue is extraneous and worthless, and nothing else consumes your thoughts. It latches on to your basic survival instincts for food & shelter, it encompasses the entirety of your need for social inclusion. The idea of self-growth and healthy focus without meeting those other two things first literally doesn't exist, because your brain is CERTAIN that you are moments from death during every agonizingly hour-long second that you experience that state.

As serotonin drops your general harm aversion for others and self drops at the same rate. It doesn't make a dent in the hyperaltruistic behaviour meant to secure you a tribal in-group to help ensure your survival. Eventually you're a net negative on ANY given scenario, and you don't want to try with another group. You enter a state of apathy and learned helplessness. Every response to attempts at improving elicits a dysfunctional response, so there's no telling what actions or behaviours net a known outcome. The momentary improvements are eclipsed by the shattering insecurities and inability to do anything positive. I'd been sleeping with a weighted blanket for months to prevent the crippling anxiety, and my medication hyper expresses my need to take action on things met with an insurmountable apathy as a roadblock to all basic needs. I start to experience panic attacks to positive stimuli because I'm so used to dysfunctional response that I'm ACTUALLY afraid of feeling good, because the drop I experience afterwards is so far down. Every one of the brightest and most positive moments I've felt has been suffocated, and the darkest moments I've felt were the brightest. My friend murdering herself kept me alive, because it gave me a purpose. My friend who I saw 5 days a week for the last 5 years being DEAD was the moment that made me feel the most hopeful about myself in the last year. Knowing that I feel that makes me feel even worse. I've almost murdered myself 6 times this year — I didn't though. That's just circumstantial luck and brain chemistry because I'm existentially horrified of injury, hospitalization, or being in a mental ward. Deep down, I can't do it without a guarantee that I won't be certain that I'm gone and experience as little pain as possible in doing so… and that just hasn't happened yet.

It's part of why I left America and all of the resources I had behind. It's infinitely harder for me to kill myself here. I knew that the moment that suicidal thoughts were replaced with panic about my extant plans for self termination being derailed in my new surroundings. Again — it's a crime of passion against self. It has a lot to override to put you there, but I felt it was necessary to call out that I've spent a year with this as my constant daily "normal" and being very used to overwhelming thoughts of suicide and being well-beyond the most utter insignificance as my day-to-day, and it was necessary to time-stamp those thoughts.

Don't ever feel bad if you did or didn't reach out to a friend you lost to suicide. It's a very weird beast, and there's no telling how it's going to manifest. If we all had an "off" button on our arms, every person would have used it at some point, and the things that hold us back or let us make one vary greatly from person to person. I don't want to be remembered as someone who was happy to combat and offset all this pain and sadness. I just want people to know that I was that kind of person when I WAS actually full of joy and happiness, too. I used to be really great, and I'm still trying my damnedest to make the world a brighter place inspire of myself, and inspire of the fact that you're not in it anymore either. I miss you @acrid Every fuckin' day. Even when I hate myself. I really try to remember the best of both of us, and put it up on display for everyone to see, because maybe somehow I'll find myself again some day, too.

[jouchi-josei]

lot of feelings.

i managed to write this a couple weeks ago. (i don’t remember if it was before or after i ghosted everyone. hah.)

this is the raw truth of what i felt in those moments, writing what i’ve been so desperate to say. whether the sentiment behind all of this is still present now doesn't matter.

save your time from trying to help me: i’m kind of already a lost cause.

spend your time reaching out. to those who feel like they have no one on their side. to those who aren’t comfortable enough to speak up. to those who aren’t as lucky as i.

i was supposed to cover “Words Fail” from Dear Evan Hansen and post it, but lately, i can barely get out of bed without being in extreme pain, both emotionally and physically.

///// suicide & extreme hopelessness trigger warning //////

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKP9UdIcXFk

“Words Fail.” Not only the title of the song, but a reminder. A reminder that no matter how hard you wish to explain yourself through spoken or written word, there is only so much that can do to express your true self. As someone who is lucky enough to be able to explain themselves through words at a decently comprehensible level, not being able to do so is so disheartening. So exhausting. So… isolating.

Before coming to Japan, I rarely experienced that. I always had a particular metaphor or analogy that could help others understand where I’m coming from. When I looked at people, I could see it click in their minds: they understood me on some kind of level. Some kind of understanding was enough for me. I managed to do that through word alone.

But… I lost that. I couldn’t explain the crippling loneliness, the lack of motivation, the overwhelming insecurities, the inability to get out of bed. I couldn’t explain why my depression was so bad.

People kept asking me, kept advising me, kept… trying.

Long after I stopped.

Rather than taking the time to try and explain myself thoroughly, I merely answered with an, “I don’t know,” because trying to formulate a proper response was too fatiguing.

My suicidal ideation is as heavy as it was the weeks following my last suicide attempt. And I mean that: it is. People have been fighting to keep me afloat, and I do not want their efforts to be for naught, but it’s been real difficult when I have not only a lack of a will to live, but a strong desire to die. Lack of a positive + presence of a negative = overwhelming negative.

When I was physically separated from my amazing support system and suddenly couldn’t avoid my problems by sleeping, I was forced to spend more time in my own head.

I was forced to really see myself. Discover more about myself. And the longer that that happened, the more I realized how much I hate myself. How disgusted I feel when I think about my being. I merely avoided it by focusing on other people. But being here forced me to confront myself straight-on. And what an unsightly thing it is.

I mess up a lot. Over and over and over again. And I was forced to come to terms with: even if your heart is full of immense regret and you swear to never do it again, people still might not give you a second chance. And they’re not obligated to. You just have to recognize that you messed up. And decide to do better next time.

But I’m also at the point of: why should I forgive myself when they won’t forgive me either? Why should I cut myself loose so easily?

They’re good people. Amazing people.

I’m the mess up.

I shouldn’t share something people have told me in confidence. I shouldn’t betray someone’s trust like that. I shouldn’t... use "coping” as a fucking an excuse instead of just owning up to the fact that I messed up. I hurt people I care about. And I need to take whatever repercussions come along with that.

My friends have called me out on this, but I didn’t do anything about it until recently. Like, mad recently. And the only reason I decided to do something about it was because my defenses were so broken down, I was forced to recognize that, even if I had no ill-intention, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt others.

My mom would do the same exact thing to me. Air out my dirty laundry for everyone to see. And I mean, literally everyone.

Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

(Don’t want to be, though.)

There are times where I wish I didn't have my heart open for everyone to see, I wish I didn’t “lead with the worst of me”. I wish I could stay quiet and not be vulnerable with people. Because now there are people who have parts of me I wish I could take back.

But no. That’s not who I am.

Inauthenticity I despise more than anything else. Of course, I could always just keep my heart tucked away, for only a select group to see, but my extreme trust issues say, “Share everything with everyone all the time! So no one can talk about you behind your back and use it against you! Because you don’t trust anyone ever! And that’s why you’ll never really love anyone!”

And yet, part of me has been terrified to talk about it: my suicidality. Because I’m so scared of being pulled back to America. I’m scared of whether my efforts of fighting for Japan will end up being futile.

The main thing that I’ve been fighting for for my own sake was Japan. The opportunity to study abroad was actually taken away from me back in January. Due to my mental illness and my “risk factor” of being abroad, UT decided to pull the decision from me. They offered me to study abroad in the Fall semester (those of who know how studying abroad in Japan works know that that would be impossible). They asked me how I felt over the phone. Was I meant to respond in a chipper voice, excitedly accepting their choice? (spoiler: I didn't) And they didn’t even offer me any kind of chance to try and prove I was stable enough to go abroad.

I had to find the solution myself, without their help.

I don’t… want to prove them right. UT screwed me over. Took away the one thing I wanted for myself.

I fought for it still.

And now that I’m here in Japan: a country that has no easy access to mental health professionals, xenophobic towards any and nearly every kind of 外人, and where my voice is lost among the overwhelming crowds…

I question whether I should be here or not. But America also holds a lot of bad memories for me too. Which one is better to lean towards? Who knows? People ask me whether I want to stay or to leave? I don’t know what I want. All I know is that I want to die.

But I’m tired of faking it. Faking that I’m living a luxurious life in an amazing country. Faking that I’m having a good time when in reality, I spend more time crying and wanting to die than I don’t. Faking that I’m capable when in reality, I am so weak.

I’m done “pretend(ing) that I’m something better than these broken parts; pretend(ing) I’m something other than this mess that I am. ‘Cause then I don’t have to look at it, and no one gets to look at it. No. No one can really see.”

(Please do listen the song simply for that portion [^] Please.)

So, here I am: extremely suicidal in a country where I feel like I don’t belong. Here I am: too exhausted to try and carve a me-shaped space into this place. Here I am: having an identity crisis of who is Kamea versus KayCee, and questioning why it feels as though there is such a huge discrepancy between the two. Here I am: resisting the everyday urge to self-harm, not even for my own sake. Here I am: seeing all of the mistakes I made and wishing so badly I can undo all the hurt and pain I caused. Here I am: wanting so badly to just disappear and never return. Here I am: wishing I didn’t have an overwhelming love for my friends.

Because if I didn’t, I’d be long gone.

But no. No, I had to care about people and have a love cultivated and nurtured for them and have a desire to witness their lives with all their accomplishments and failures. Witness how far they go even if I may not be a direct part of their lives anymore. How badly I want to see my friends (all of you) go off and do great things. Because I know that you all will because you all already have. Pride swells up in my chest as I see all that my friends have done and do. And I love all of you, overwhelmingly so.

But.

I wish… God. I wish I didn’t.

I wish my heart didn’t burst every time I saw someone I loved. I wish I didn’t look at people and think, “Yeah. This is okay. This is worth living for.”

I wish I didn’t have that.

Because then this would finally be over.

But no. I had to care about people and have people care about me. They reciprocated in ways I never thought they would. My friends have made such strong efforts and put their trust in me even long after I begged them not to because I’m as ephemeral as they come. I am fleeting, and all I will do is leave destruction in my wake.

As much as I wish I could disappear in a puff of smoke, my friends would probably see my leaving as detrimental: a destructive explosion rather than a raincloud fading away to let the sun shine.

My friends held their hands out to me and I made the mistake of reaching back. And now, they won’t release me any time soon.

How badly I wish they would. Because I am a bomb with the timer counting down. Because I’ve shown such horrible sides of myself and yet they love me through all of it. Why? Is it because I’m a project person and humans feel this integral need to help/fix people and they are using me to fulfill that craving? Or is it because they care about me? Wholly and unconditionally?

God, I don’t understand at all. I don’t deserve their love or their trust, but I have it. I don’t… understand.

I don’t know what to do. I used to say, “I’ll figure it out” rather than saying, “I don’t know.”

But… I’m at that point. I don’t know. Nor do I think I will ever.

I know that talking about this is what's keeping me alive. Having this conversation, even if people aren’t “ready” to have it, is important. Because I never EVER want anyone to feel the way that I do. But I know that there are. Some of them may even be reading this. My heart aches for you.

Talking about it is my lifeline right now. Sharing my voice and my story just in case someone may need to hear it.

But... I’m also tired of talking about it.

I hope... that people can still do it. Be a leader in pushing mental health awareness. Be a leader in showing that talking about suicide is not taboo. Be a leader in fighting against those who try to silence you, including yourself.

Even though I won’t anymore. I am tired. Exhausted. Done. It’s a waiting game for me now.

10 years since my depression manifested. 5 straight years of everyday, non-stop suicidal thoughts. Some people may see that as a short amount of time. Yeah. You're right. I'm weak. And tired. And over it.

I put in as much work as I can. I’ll just cheer from the sidelines from now on.

Good luck to all of you. To all of you who still have that drive to continue forward. I believe in you. And I know you will accomplish great things.

I wish you all the best.

^

i wrote the ending of this post the day that i managed to complete my plan of suicide, details and all: i was... just waiting for the energy.

it never came.

so, i’m... still here.

[mindfulthoughtpollution-blog]

The Bipolar Support Group Shuffle:  A Short Story

      Harold walked the trash lined streets of Berkeley, imbued with a deep abiding need for human connection. He tried looking people in the eye, staring in an attempt to tease out understanding, the fleeting remnants of empathy. His want lead to several fight-fuck-or-flight scenarios that were both harrowing and reinvigorating. Aside from the brief foot races, rushing around and past drunken homeless men wielding chains, breath stinking of cheap-and-available vodka, he found himself an object of desire. Well, in a sense, primarily he was being propositioned by concentration camp thin meth addicts who tried to barter with their withering sex appeal in exchange for drugs. Direct offers were put to him by route of drug addled confusion, they thought Harold was his younger brother Joshua. This was the natural byproduct of weight loss in combination with the skewed and fractured memories of drug addicts. Everything was hazy and distorted in the land of sunken cheeks and open weeping sores. Harold’s unwillingness to play these scenarios out resulted form the abyss of his loneliness. It was all encompassing, beyond the usual routine of urban reclusiveness that he was accustomed to over the course of his adult life. Earlier in the year, he found himself immersed in a number of awkward fumbling social relationships that predictably fell apart as the bonds strains under the weight of collective neuroses. This assessment was most likely a gross simplification, their were individualized aspects that sabotaged each one, customized the path of social suicide, individualized methods of a particularly gifted social anarchist. Combined with his stubbornness,  an unwillingness to compromise or backtracks, his burgeoning social circle shrunk.

      Among the ruins of his social life, was the memory of his muttered confession to Kyle. Harold had spent nearly the entirety of his adult life with a diagnosis of manic depression. During his freshman year at Berkeley, Harold began taking a low dose anti-depressant for crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as the dose built-and-built, his mania became more and more pronounced. The end result was a week, give or take a few days, of full blown explosive mania culminating in a handful of benzodiazepines and a seventy two hour hold at Herrick Hospital. When Harold was diagnosed with manic depression, via the age-old-human guinea-pig method, he was overcome with solemn resignation. Within weeks, Harold had a lithium induced fine motor tremor to go along with hia inability to mange money. Harold wandered the streets of Berkeley in a daze, gradually adjusting to a high dose of lithium, he felt lethargic, grotesque, his mental state transparent and palpable. Harold clung to the belief that he was transparent for years to come, every interaction with a shaking, babbling incoherent was a sober reminder of who he was, and  if worst came the worst, who he could end up being.

      In the Media, bipolar disorder had made headway in the public consciousness, for every small gain, little uplifting commercial, a celebrity “outing” them-self, there were  school shooters, abusers, addicts, a never ending stream ranging from bad to worse.  Being a closeted manic depressive was for the best, anyone who knew simply twisted it against him, in a vile or crass manner, but there was a niggling urge to confess his secret. Harold felt it was the missing piece, an explanation for some of his undesirable traits that could get him some leniency in the social arena. Harold confessed his bipolar disorder to Kyle about six months into their friendship. Harold told him towards fashioning a social safety net, during a time he was struggling against extreme familial upheaval. The news had landed with a resounding thud, that eventually morphed to obnoxious maternal-type nagging. Within about a month after Harold confessed their friendship had fallen apart. He took one key lesson from his time with Kyle; sometimes loneliness is better than being eviscerated for a semblance of honesty.

      Months passed since Harold had seen Kyle, and his ability to be alone had begun to disintegrate. He found himself searching the internet for support groups that might offer some  relief. It did not take long for Harold to find a support group, meeting in the basement of Herrick Hospital every Saturday. One support group for actual bipolar people, three meeting several times a week that served the friends and family. The martyrs of whole process, those who had to be around the psychotics, junkies, sex addicts, future mass shooter with healed razor blade scars on their wrists. Scared over wrists were track marks for the lithium set, among the telling signs of lives wracked with shame and regret. Harold contemplated going, listed the excuses for avoiding the sacred ground of his indoctrination into anti-psychotics and crippling mental illness. The intervening years since his infamous code ‘5150’ had been wrought a chilled acceptance of what he was, the expected ceiling of his achievement, the bated breath resignation towards a life of staggering mediocrity.

      There had been threats along the way a dangling sword of Damocles that gained coherent structure as the missed doses of Abilify (Note: Abilify is an anti-psychotic) began to fuse together, menacing and unforgiving. The Sword’s weight was comprised of the missed pills, fifteens and tens in pastel of yellows and pink. Harold found out the hard way suicidal thoughts arrived when the pills stopped. He could feel his heart beating against his sternum, hard then slow, it beat in schizotypal repose. Then came the alternating hot-and-cold sweats, the shift in his interior monologue between explosive anger and an abyss of sadness that guided him through hardware stores on solemn missions to find single sided razor blades, for ahem, an box cutter, no wink, no safety check. Harold would leave awash in cowardly flop sweat, dumping the bag into the nearest trash can before fleeing back the dank muskiness his apartment.

      Threats of sending him back, to staggered gait heroin addicts and long spindles of drool attached to heavily medicated schizophrenics, manic depressives, occurred when his anger flew out of control, broken doors, high-end electronics, splattered food. The standard waste products of wrestling with a diagnosis that was wrenching his potential away form him at a rapid pace. Sometimes the cops were called, masculine female officers in button down plaid shirt and pleated khakis would run down the suicidal ideation check-list, that for some inexplicable reason, they would have to read from a clipboard they guarded like a well seasoned poker player. Harold gave the right answers, always the right answers, deviating meant another ‘5150’ more time among the hollowed out, medicated zombies, burnt and beaten, the slashed and burned.

      He had a sense of morbid curiosity, returning years later, an alumnus of a club no one has ever, or would ever want to belong to, returning to view the campus once again. Harold traveled down to Shattuck on a blustery day in early November, light was shinning in subdued observance of the occasion. He stood out front of the seven plus story structure, all glass and egg shell white painted steel. The hospital was another outpost of a bizarre fixation of the medical establishment with high end, modern lobbies, all chrome and polish, with rooms like you might see at third rate nursing home. Harold walked briskly past the reception area darted to the nearest elevator.

      The room was peeled wall to wall red carpeting stained with mashed in cigarettes and detox vomit from different eras of usage, stacks of chairs and peeling, beaten folding tables. The general aesthetic of a wrong turn; screaming red carpet and tables with water damage from months and months of coffee urns boiling through coffee until it was the taste, and consistency, of diesel fuel. Seeds of doubt were multiplying and dividing within him, hesitance blooming into a full blown panic attack. This was it, some kind of psychic trap, the moth to the flame, this journey had become a full expression of his desire of self-immolation. Somehow, someway he was going grind himself to dust. It was only panic, he lapsed into the fallacy that mental health professionals had intuitive abilities, before them he a transparent supplicant ready to reaped from the herds of capable.

      No such luck, or he wasn’t that lucky.

      As the chairs were unstacked and placed in a safety circle, the numbers of lithium congregants swelled and spilled out into the hallway. They were divided into two groups the regular adherents going with counselor of choice, newcomers waited top be field and sorted, apathetic to the khakis-and-sweater-vested savior into whose care they were assigned. Harold just sat, breathing in short, shallow bursts, flecks of sweat appearing on his brow. How come mental health professional equate shopping at the Gap or Banana Republic with a veneer of professional dress; crossed his mind among glib cynical pokes and prods meant to tear at austerity of this support group circle jerk. The meeting began with a grayed and generally unkempt women in a ankle length purple floral print dress asking them to qualify how they were doing on a scale form one to ten, ten being best.

      Harold sat in his chair, digging his back against the padded frame of the chair. The words of his fellow congregants washed out, not registering.

      “Your turn.”

      “Me?” Harold pointed to himself, feigning a casualness of someone who happened to wander into a bipolar support group.

      “Yes. What’s your name, and how are you feeling?”

      “My name is Gabe, and I am an eight, right now.” Harold gave a fake name, knowing that if and when he should chose to bolt out of the meeting, he didn’t want anyway of Them tracking him down.

      Next was the in-depth check in, a graying woman, rail thin, a contorted scare crow, began to run down her latest stay in a mental institution. The words dribbled out slow, and deliberate, every syllable was a reach. Diane’s eyes were rolling back into her head, a heavy dosage cautionary tale, a tragedy case highlight reel. Harold was grating his back teeth, trying to temper his panic with an inculcation of artificial morbid curiosity  Her med list ran together, a general history of hits and misses, long stretches awash in the afterglow of daytime television, fumbling with jig saw puzzle pieces. Harold sat through ,desperately choking back his want of running out the room, stripping off every shred of soiled clothing, back to being fully anonymous. Diane’s run down petered out, exhausted, she flopped back against her chair.

      An youngish asian girl, Sydney immediately picked up the baton. More coherent, not dribbling down her face, or intermittently passing out. She went on about a man she had been a single, as in one, date with that she believed was the One. The perils of dating the mentally ill, love and hate come so fluidly, merge into one another without warning, and on occasion without reason. She was running through a list of details from the poor guy’s dating profile, if he only knew, if he only knew, bubbly, happy, interwoven with classic delusions. Worrisome, but Harold let a slight smile over his face, as Sydney wound down, he rose to his feet and slipped out the side door. vowing not to return to Herrick for any reason. It was more a cavalier romantic gesture then stemming from internal stability, but he knew in those brief moments that somehow he was different, and he was hopping this notion of different meant better.

[wildwestlife-blog]

I came across an article that had 15 questions to help people who feel lost. I added the questions here and answered them to help me work out my issues.

15 difficult feelings that mean you are evolving.

1. Feeling isolated from others.

- This is a feeling that I have had most of my life. I’ve felt like I have never completely fit in with any one group. I can assimilate with different groups, but I have always failed to fit in.

2. Having difficulty focusing on tasks.

- Over the past few years (it is currently October of 2017), I have noticed a significant decline in my ability to focus on general tasks that I would have otherwise had no issue with. My recall has suffered greatly and formulating solid plans has become a distant memory. I’m not sure how, or if I can ever get that back.

3. Feeling restless and anxious.

- An unnerving anxiety and inability to control my wondering mind keeps me from sleeping. I’m exhausted everyday, but yet at night, I find myself mentally wide awake yet unable to fully organize my thoughts. They are all over the place and I sometimes have a hard time deciphering what is fact and what are the figments of my wandering mind. It’s a scary thought to not now what your mind is doing. It’s also incredibly lonely because nobody is there to listen, understand or care.

4. Irritability to those that you are closest to.

- This is a tricky one. I understand that people don’t think they way I do. Then again, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what it is that I’m thinking most the time. Any and all irritability stems from my issues rather than what others cause.

5. Feeling gripping fear at times.

- Not knowing what to do and where to turn to is terrifying. The feelings of doubt and inadequacy can be mentally crippling and overwhelming. There’s nothing worse than feeling that you are losing control of your mental capacity to think rationally.

6. A new tendency to be confrontational.

- This has not been an issue for me. On the contrary. I have felt more and more introverted and withdrawn than confrontational. I’ve lost a fire to step and and take control of situations. Then again, I may have never had that fire to begin with.

7. Becoming more dissatisfied.

- I would assume that many men my age go through similar thoughts and feelings. It’s not a midlife crisis. It’s more of wanting to know who I am and where I belong rather than being dissatisfied.

8. Feeling lost.

- The fact that I’m unsure of who I am and where I belong causes me to feel lost. If you don’t know who you are, how can you have any direction in life?

9. Feeling a strong desire to be alone more often.

- There’s is an intense desire to split off from society and move to the woods, but not alone. I wish for my wife and daughters to live a simpler life in a small community with me.

10. Begging to question your friendships.

- You need friends to begin questioning your friendships. This is an issue that I do not have.

11. Feeling intense sadness.

- Loneliness makes what I’m going through so sad for me. I have no male role models to look up to. No one to turn to for advice. My wife is amazing, but she could never fully understand what I’m going through. Just as a man could never fully understand what a woman goes through. There are certain aspects of each gender that can only be understood by the corresponding gender.

12. Dreading the future.

- An uncertain future is a scary prospect. Whether or not it is warranted remains to be seen and really shouldn’t be looked at as scary. However, not knowing who you are right now makes it all that more terrifying. How can you be excited for the future if you can’t understand life right at the current moment?

13. Desiring for things to be like they used to be.

- Most people would say, “Life was so much simpler back then.” There always seems to be a large amount of truth to that. The more we chase after life’s carrot of the pot at the end of the rainbow, the further we get from stopping and smelling the roses.

14. Having strange and intense dreams.

- As sporadic as my mind is at night, I never wake up and recall dreaming.

15. Desiring to cut off romantic relationships.

- I have had more of a desire to connect with my wife. I truly wish to rekindle her love for me. My issues have put a wedge between us and I can only blame myself for not being able to figure out how to fix myself.