i had a moment

i had a moment this past week. i was reflecting back on a difficult therapy session and wondered, as i had at times in the recent past, if maybe killing myself would be easier than continuing to endure the emotional pain that currently fills my life.

i then had a sense of peace about the idea - a reaction i had never had before.

then i became afraid and wondered, "is this how it starts?"

almost paradoxical

i believe the best compliment i've ever received in my life occurred during my senior year in college. it was during a senior retreat, and i was with a group of people that i had traveled together closely with through the college experience for the previous four years. we were seated in a circle and charged with giving "affirmations" to one another with each person taking a seat in the center of the circle and then all of the others each sharing a single positive trait about the person.

when it was my turn, i listened to some very nice comments but one stood out. when it got to a girl named laura, she made a statement that has stayed with me to this day. she said something to the effect of, "if you're ever having a day when you're feeling down about yourself, you should talk to clarus; he will make you feel so good about who you are."

i care about my friends, and to the best of my ability, i do try to provide support and encouragement to them.

recently, i've had opportunities to be that encourager (at least i hope i have been) to a few young guys whose life paths have crossed with my own. whatever form the support has taken, i've come to recognize that my motivation is to provide them with the sense that there is at least one person in this world who cares about them unconditionally. that no matter what else is happening to them, they are valued, and yes, i'd even say loved.

there is one thing though that is almost paradoxical about this desire to be an encourager, and that is this. the one person i seem to be unable to encourage is myself.

a note to a friend

i wrote the following to a friend in a skype message last sunday. today i realized that i could have written this note on any day for the last few years (if not for much of my adult life), and it would have felt as true then as it did when i wrote this and as it does today:

just got back from my walk
did a lot of thinking
i’ve always tried to be a good person
i’ve tried to be kind, considerate, giving, gracious, loving
to all the people who have been in my life
and yet none of it seems to have mattered
my life is pretty empty and meaningless and i’m always alone

lasting effects

it occurred to me recently that if you want to know how an emotionally painful experience affects me, all you need to know is this one thing. my dog nicholas died a little over seven years ago. to this day i refuse to get another dog.

pushing back the darkness

it hasn't been a good week. first, i came to the realization that my current job is likely not the right job for me. it's a perspective that has been developing over time, but recent events have convinced me that i am not happy in the role i'm doing and the prospects of becoming so are limited.

the second disappointment of the week is that a friend with whom i shared several special times has decided that he can no longer continue in engaging with me in that way. it is a decision i understand. it is a choice he needs to make to achieve the happiness he wants in his life. i just wish that his happiness did not have to come at the expense of my own. our meeting up has been one of the few enjoyable things in my life at this time, and now those opportunities are gone and i'm a little more alone. and so again, my depression deepens.

it's been difficult living a life where, more often than not, life seems so bleak and full of an unending stream of painful disappointments. i have spent so much time over the last few decades fighting the feeling that ending my life would be better than continuing to live it. pushing back against this kind of darkness that envelops my mind and consumes my soul for so many years has been exhausting. it feels as if there is no relief in sight and when something seemingly good comes along it eventually just fades away like a mirage in the desert, leaving in its wake more devastation in my heart.

last night, i wrote to the friend and said that i felt like i was one or two disappointments away from deciding that life is not worth living. i think that could change if i experience something extraordinarily life affirming in the near future. the sad thing is i have no real hope that it will. i think so many years of pushing back the darkness has killed it.

being forgotten

watching oneself fade to obscurity in the life of another is a difficult experience. feeling that this occurrence is viewed as a positive to that person is devastating.

disappear - dear evan hansen original broadway cast recording

want

this is all i wanted. it's all i ever wanted. all i want but seems i will never have.

for forever - dear evan hansen original broadway cast recording

the never knowing

this past week i experienced probably the most painful therapy session i've had since re-engaging in seeing a psychotherapist. so painful in fact that i started packing up to leave before my therapist (who i will henceforth refer to as "dr. m") even had to tell me that our time was coming to a close. i had gotten to the point where i literally could not talk anymore, and i left wondering why i voluntarily subject myself to this kind of experience week after week.

the depression is continuing to escalate. it's gone from something i experienced just late at night to late evening and early morning to evening and morning and now it is starting to creep into all parts of the day. every day i have thoughts of not being sure if i can go into another day feeling the way that i do. i have had so many times in my life that i've been in this state that it just seems as if this is all that life is and if this is all it is, then maybe it's not for me.

during this week's session i came to the realization that what is most hurtful to me about the dissolution of my friendship with sean is that i will never know what happened. i will never have an explanation as to why we went from being friends who communicated multiple times a day about all things in life to a state where i don't hear from him for weeks at a time and can't get him to engage in the simplest of conversations when he does manage to respond. even when i ask him directly to tell me what's going on, he can't find it in himself to tell me.

i haven't heard from him in a month and given the fact that i am done with reaching out to him, i suspect i never will again. as a result i believe my chance to have some explanation, some understanding of why i lost another person that i cared about deeply is gone forever.

this is not the first relationship where this kind of dynamic has been at play. the most profound is, of course, my relationship with my father (or lack thereof). he was not present at all in my life, and he died before i could ever find out the reason why. i shared with dr. m this week of how, as a child, i used to imagine finding him some day and if not establishing a relationship at least getting him to share his reasons for not acknowledging my existence. death robbed me of that chance and replaced it with an unsolvable mystery.

i often wonder why i have been the "lucky" one to experience this kind of situation over and over in my lifetime. i guess that answer is just something else that will have to be packed away in the place of never knowing.

please stop playing in my head

please stop seeming true. 

tapes - alanis morissette

for those who are left behind

it's strange how the journey to a painful realization can be almost as painful as the the realization itself. i had an online "conversation" with sean this past weekend that firmly established (finally some might say) in my mind that our friendship is at an end or perhaps i should phrase it this way. any substantive engagement in the friendship on his part has ended (though one might question, if there's only one person present, does that a friendship make?).

i'd write more about what transpired, but at this point, does it really matter? i will share that within the conversation i was attempting to get some acknowledgment from him of the concerns i had about the growing distance between us and the hurt that it has caused me. while i recognized that he would likely state that there was nothing he could do to ease the pain, i wanted to know that at least i had been heard. that acknowledgment never came even after i explicitly asked him to comment on what i had been sharing over the past few months.

my therapist says that there is a particular psychological character trait that manifests in certain people of being able to completely engage and then disengage from a relationship at the flip of a switch. one moment they can be all in and the next they can be gone with no trace to be found. it's the underlying trait to the phenomenon called "ghosting." this was his speculation for what i was experiencing as i shared my confusion of how sean could be so fully present for one period of our friendship and so completely absent for another - an absence that manifests even when we are in direct contact with one another.

the emotional pain i'm experiencing does not have its origins in this specific situation. it traces back to my absentee father, who ghosted from my life just prior to when i was born, and has been nurtured by similar situations where friendships just ended without really any explanation as to why the other individual disappeared. it's difficult to experience this phenomenon once in one's life. repeat performances can definitely take a toll on one's sense of worth to others as it has with me.

from the explanation by my therapist that this type of relationship dynamic is well-documented in the annals of psychology, i recognize that what i've experienced is not unique to me. it is just a fact that certain people are able to remove themselves from friendships without a goodbye or an explanation or a even a glance backwards. i just wonder, for those of us who are left behind, for me who has been left behind, how do we stop the pain from reverberating throughout the remainder of our lives, affecting any future relationships that we might become brave enough to enter?

i will do my best to bind up my wounds and yet i have little confidence at the moment that complete healing is possible. i feel there will continue to be a remnant of the pain of this experience embedded deep in my heart, joining the others that already reside there.

i have experience

i heard back from sean yesterday about the message i had referenced in a recent blog entry. actually, it really wasn't about that message. it was a response to a simple message i had written earlier that day about how i thought of him daily with a hope that he was doing well. i wished him a good week.

part of the reason i wrote the message is i had been questioning why i had not gotten a response to the previous message and it was now three weeks running of silence. i noticed that when you looked at my recent conversations, it indicated that the last message had been removed. i'd written a series of statements and then deleted them as i didn't think they were helpful to conveying the feelings i was trying to express. in seeing that i wondered if maybe he had assumed that there was no message to read, so i wrote my simple message to test my theory. In doing so, I thought that he would see that message and then would see the previous ones i'd written.

sure enough, i got a response. unfortunately, that response only brought more hurt feelings ("the key" at work) as it was also a simple response. it said he was "doing good" and asked how i was doing. i wrote back that i was glad to hear from him and that all was well with him. I continued with how life had been challenging on my end. i told him about the busyness of work and the health scare with my mother.

i also shared how i was confused about what was happening between us as he made no acknowledgement of my previous message. i stated that i wasn't sure what i would hear back but had hoped that there would be some recognition of what i'd written. "even an 'i'm sorry i missed your birthday' would have been sufficient," i wrote. i shared that over the past couple of months, i'd tried various means to communicate, and they all seemed to have failed. i expressed that i felt something was not quite right, but i didn't know what and that i needed his help in understanding the situation. i asked that he write back soon.

i got to work and thought let me try again with those other means of communication. i texted and emailed. i planned to call but stopped as that has been one communication mode that has always proven to be unsuccessful. "why bother with that one again," i thought. in truth it was also a concern that if he answered i really wouldn't know what to say. i was afraid that all the months of pain and confusion would tumble out in an incoherent, angry mess that would just make whatever problem that seems to exist worse.

and so once again i wait for a response to my request for clarity. i have little confidence that it will come. then again, with every message i send, i wonder if he will write back. i wonder if that's it, and i will never hear from him again.

you see, as i've shared in this blog many times before, i have experience with men disappearing from my life. it is not easy when the signs seem to point to it happening again. it's not easy at all.

not a one

this past week, driving home from a long day at work, i found myself reflecting on what seems to be a recurring experience in my most recent relationships with men. you see, i have a fear of rejection and abandonment when it comes to relationships with other members of my gender. it's a fear that likely stems from the fact that my father essentially abandoned me, having had no contact with me between the age of about 4 until his death when i was 14.

the recurring experience has been that, with each of these recent relationships, there has come a point when i've expressed that i have this fear of sudden, permanent loss - a breaking off of the relationship that comes from some flaw inherent in me. to a person, each guy has shared with what i believe to be true sincerity that they were not going anywhere, that they would always be there for me.

so how many of the men who have said this to me are still present in my life in any meaningful way if at all? not a one.

it's difficult to be hopeful about experiencing lasting friendship/companionship when one's track record is so perfect.

a simple statement

i had a therapy appointment recently. we talked about broken relationships. the absence of my father, who i never got to know. the distance between my mother and me that really has always existed but has been heightened by her inability to accept that i'm gay. we talked about the unfulfilled dreams of relationships past and present - sean, michael, and so many others.

and at the end of all of that, towards the completion of our session, i made one simple statement.

i wish my life had been different.

i'm not sure i've ever said anything that felt so true. it was like i looked at the landscape of my entire life and turned back around to describe how what i saw made me feel.

this simple statement continues to reverberate in my heart. actually, i think it has been for quite some time. and the sad thing is i've lost hope that it will ever end at least not until i do.

the key

i've been going through another difficult period. every night, i have a pretty intense depressive episode -- not as strong as what i experienced during my most recent two year depressive state, but certainly the most intense since that period. the thoughts that run through my mind are consistently about the sense of loneliness that continues to be a palpable presence in my life and does not seem it will ever end.

the intensity factor has been turned up by my most recent "encounters" with sean. the trend of our interactions being few and far between continues. the last substantive online conversation we had was about three months ago, and it paled in comparison to the kinds of chats we had in the first couple of years of our friendship.

each contact has essentially been a variation on the same theme. he begins with what feels like a perfunctory, "sorry i've been away" and then a cursory he's been busy. recognize these responses tend to come a few weeks after my own messages of how i hope he's doing well or am concerned if he's doing well often with my sharing some experience that i've just had. sometimes i even admit that i miss him.

his most recent contact came after i had shared some songs that had great meaning for me. it's something that we used to do with one another, and i still choose to believe it's something we've both enjoyed over the course of our knowing one another. for me it's an opening of my heart to share how i'm feeling at that particular moment in time.

i wrote and shared over the course of a couple of weeks. during that time i got one "sorry i've been away" message and then another that also said that he'd been "very introspective" and "withdrawn" and it wasn't "anything you can take personally." and i snapped. i wrote back several lines of how i did take it personally and the reasons why. i even shared that this was the second year he had not acknowledged my birthday even though i had mentioned something i did on my birthday during one of the messages i had sent.

i wrote this message tuesday. he has not responded though i suspect he has been online since. not even a "sorry i missed your birthday."

i miss feeling good about this friendship. instead thinking of it has become like a key to the door behind which lies the deep pain of feeling inadequate and worthless. and once that door has been unlocked, it feels as if i am flooded with a sadness and despair that goes bone-deep.

in those evening hours before going to bed, i have moments where i think about how many times i've felt this way about this and other relationships.

i think about how these recurring thoughts are like living with a chronic disease.

i think about how it's a disease that may someday either drive me mad or kill me.

i think about someone, who i thought was my friend, that doesn't seem to care about any of this, and the key unlocks, and the door swings wide open.