#losing yourself

[nobeerreviews]

We lose ourselves in things we love. We find ourselves there, too.

-- Kristin Martz

(Rapallo, Italy)

[farfrompryingeyes]

Love is a gamble. You have to be willing to lose yourself to win.

[ryn-stillstanding]

ive been largely medicated for so long, i don't know what normal is for me anymore...

for the last 2 years, ive been on large doses of multiple meds at a time. trying mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety, antidepressants, usually multiple different ones at the same time.

i dont know what parts of myself are me, and which are side effects of medications.

before my brain started attacking itself, did i have a stutter? did i have such a hard time communicating my thoughts? were my lips always this chapped? was i always this tired? did i drop things as much as i do now? was i more interested in relationships? more invested in friendships?

i know we all change, but meds changing the way you talk, walk, act, live - it isn't talked about as much as it should be. i used to be really smart, you know? i used to have amazing ideas, and complex, intricate thoughts. and i never had issues communicating these. i used to be passionate about my future, determined, and driven.

i just feel like ive lost so much of myself to my mental illness. and ive lost what scraps were left to my medications.

[yagirlyubnub]

[pink-alchemy]

[dark-strangers-art]

The most painful thing

is losing yourself

in the process of loving someone too much,

and forgetting

that you are special too.

~ Ernest Hemingway

[juliasdowntonstuff]

Just some late night ranting

This will be an unusually personal post for me. I never truly talk about all these feelings and emotions, at least not my own. So this is quite a different post to what I would usually put on here — and it has nothing to do with Downton.

I just think I have to get this off my chest, and I feel like my friends just wouldn't understand. This will also be my own personal reminder that feeling like this is okay.

I contemplated posting this a lot since I wrote it a few days ago. In the end, though, I am putting this on here with the hope that maybe someone else finds this who needs to read this at least partly as much as I needed to write it.

Also, this is the raw, unedited text copied straight from my notes app, so please excuse any mistakes.

This will talk about loss and grieving for a loved one, so take this as a trigger warning if you don't want to or can't read about that.

It’s currently 3:15 am on the 21st of November 2023. I am writing this to hopefully make some sense of at least some of what's keeping me up so late when I am doing just alright during the day, mostly at least. My friends wouldn't understand, and I don't blame them. How could they? None of them have had to deal with this yet, and I am happy for them. I truly wish they won't have to for years or even decades to come.

My mum is dying. Even just writing that sentence hurts like hell. She was diagnosed with cancer in late January this year. She did the chemotherapy, had radiation treatment and then had an operation. Everything was looking so splendidly after that. The doctors said that she was in remission and that should be able to get back to work sometime in the New Year. She truly started getting better after all the treatment, and it looked like she could start her new job after all. She was originally supposed to start said new job the day she got her diagnosis — a job she has worked so hard for all her life, and now she'll never get the chance to do it. Still, there was hope and we all clung to it. We were happy with the progress she made during the summer. And then they found the metastases, most prominently in her brain, and ever since then she has started losing parts of herself and abilities she once had, almost on the daily. Everything she once loved, she can’t do any more. She’s losing her memories and she’s starting to lose her control of words. My mum was always one of the most eloquent people I ever encountered. She was who I always turned to whenever I needed anything, anything at all. She’s not dead yet, but I am already agonizing over all the things I never asked her and the answers I’ll never get. And that is perfectly acceptable.

My mum attended every single event I ever participated in since kindergarten, all the choir concerts in school and now at uni; every single swimming or reading competition I ever took part in: she was there, front row, cheering me on endlessly. Next week I'll be singing and playing the first ever concert she won’t be able to attend and I am already saddened by her absence even though she is still here. She just won't be there in person. She was and is my biggest supporter. She’s not dead yet, but I’m already grieving just thinking about all the things she won’t get to witness, the milestones I won’t get to share with her. And that is perfectly acceptable.

I'm driving the 300 kilometres home from university every week to help my dad care for her. While I am there, I'm also doing the grocery shopping. People in my hometown have started looking at me and talking to me as if she’s dead already and it hurts unlike anything. She’s not dead yet, but I am already feeling her loss whenever I have to go out and see people who knew her. And that is perfectly acceptable.

I have had some time to come to terms with the reality of it all — that my mum won’t be here forever. Of course, she was never going to — that’s how life works. But she was supposed to have so many more years of life ahead of her. Now, suddenly, she doesn’t. All she has left are a few more weeks. No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot imagine a life without my mum in it, and I don’t want to in all honesty. But the truth is: I have to. Because sometime soon that will be my reality. I am already mourning my mum even though she is still alive. I get incredibly sad every time I look in a mirror or someone takes a selfie with me, because I don't just see myself in there, I also see her. I am the spitting image of my mum, and that serves as a constant reminder of what I'm about to lose and it won't ever stop reminding me and my family of this, of her. My mum is my best friend and I will forever be grateful for this special bond we shared and still share. This is not what life's like for so many people out there. People who don't get along with their parents or have no contact with them for various reasons. That's a fact that makes me even more emotional about it all. I am grieving the person I am and I will be grieving who I was when she was here because I know that when she dies, a not-so-small part of me will die as well. And that is perfectly acceptable.

I am grieving the woman who has been with me all my life, who raised me to be so independent, but who also helped my whenever I needed help and who stood by me no matter what. I am grieving my guiding hand in life. I am grieving the woman I have looked up to ever since I was a little girl, amazed by the effect my mum had on other people, most notably all her students. My mum is the reason I am becoming a teacher as well, her passion for that occupation and all it entailed was the match that lit the spark within me. My mum was my role model — she is my role model. 

I am mourning my mother, prematurely. She’s not dead yet, but I am already agonizing over her loss and the huge gap she will leave in our lives. What I’ll do when the time has come to truly mourn her I don’t know and I wish I wouldn’t have to find that out for a while yet. But I'll have to, and that certainty hurts unlike anything I've ever felt. I've lost both of my granddads to the same illness, so I know this kind of loss and what the weeks and months leading up to the inevitable feel like. But what I felt then and what I am feeling now simply cannot be compared. During our drive home from a visit with my granddad ahead of his death almost exactly two years ago, she said: “We're saying goodbye a little more each time we go, aren't we? Because a little part that was there last time has already gone missing and won't be found again by the time we return. And at some point, there won't be anything left at all.” And she was right. The extent this time around, however, feels so much greater and much more profound.

People in my life I've told about this situation ask me how I am doing all the time. All I manage to get out is a (mostly fake) smile and a forced “I'm fine.” Because how am I to say all of this to another person, straight to their face? I can't and I won't. After all, my mum is still alive. She is not dead, yet. I have nothing to grieve for, not yet.

And still, I am grieving this loss. Which is perfectly acceptable. At least, that is what I have decided for myself.

It is perfectly acceptable.

[cinnamonchaos]

"I'm not afraid of being lost. We all wander off from time to time. It's the fear of never quite finding myself that keeps me up at night." - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I wish I knew what to do with my life, what to do with my heart. I don't know how to stay tender with this much blood in my mouth.

"I am sick of haunting myself from within like an old house"

"I feel as if I'm made to understand, but not to be understood."

"I was born homesick in my own body, does it ever get better?"

[moonsprinkler]

how do you handle the grief of losing a part of yourself? especially the part wherein you're aware that in some way you allowed it to be taken from you and that you could've prevented it from happening if you were just knowledgeable??

[ashes-and-ruins]

i don’t feel so good.

my thoughts are racing and my hands are shaking and is this what it feels like to fall? to fall from yourself? is this what losing feels like? is this what this is? my hands are shaking, why are my hands shaking? my wings are burning right off of my back and oh god, i’m icarus—though is there a version where icarus didn’t fly too close to the sun, because i never made it that high, i was just trying to fly as far as i could, and now look where that got me. my lungs are seizing and my body is at war and my mind is somewhere short of lost.

i don’t feel so good.

[the-knife-in-my-heart]

i lost the only part i liked about myself that night

i lost you

[fatecanberewritten]

What had become of him? He searched and could not find himself.

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (transl. C. Donougher)

[lyric-central]

[rawraminirawr]

Inspired after seeing this quote on just-another-broken-soul

[a-dash-in-the-middle]

Count on @clarasamelia to make living room concerts

This is not her first one made for alien eyes but it sure is giant so I reccommend all the eyes to signal their arms to take their ears and strap in because it is about to be one crazy ride

[thestateofardadreaming]

We know poor choice occurs in various ways. One woman marries too early. Another becomes pregnant too young. Another goes with a bad mate. Another gives up her art to “have things.” Another is seduced by any number of illusions, another by promises, another by too much “being good” and not enough soul, yet another by too much airiness and not enough earthiness.   And in cases where the woman goes with her soulskin half on and half gone, it is not necessarily because her choices are wrong so much as that she stays away from her soul-home too long and dries out and is rather of little use to anyone, least of all herself. There are hundreds of ways to lose one’s soulskin.

Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype - Clarissa Pinkola Estes