not my best self today

the title of today's entry was a thought i had as i was getting some coffee in the kitchen at work this morning. it feels as if the full weight of all the struggle of this past year is crashing down on me.

i think i know why at least in part this is happening now. my heart has been opened up to deep feeling by two events  -- the loss of one friend and the beginning connections to a new one. as a result, all of the hurts and disappointments that have happened over the course of this troublesome year have been brought to the surface.

i've never been very good at compartmentalizing. i tend to have to shut down all emotion if i am to get through dealing with the difficult ones. if i start to feel something, i feel it all. the saddest part is that even in the midst of what could be a good thing, the emotional pain only has me seeing all the things that could go wrong, all the ways i may just be making a fool of myself, and all the ways i may be hurt deeper still.

what this current time has shown me is that there has been no healing from all of the various events of 2014. i just took the pain and stuffed it behind a wall or buried it beneath the floorboards of my weary soul. now with new wounds and old scars ripped open,  i just sit and watch as the darkness descends again.

a very human experience

you know, i think it's funny how no matter how many times i have this experience and how many times i want it to be different the same pattern pretty much emerges. i meet a guy. he seems interesting. i start to like him. throughout this phase i'm pretty easy going.

i share more about me. i get to know him more. i like him more, and i think the feeling might be mutual. i start to want to see him more and get to know him even better. i want him to be more present in my life and i in his. it's about at this time that my fatalistic side starts to emerge and with it all of the self-doubt and reasons why the relationship will not proceed any further and/or is doomed to fail eventually.

the reasons often vary. sometimes it's about logistics. sometimes it's about the "shoulds and shouldn'ts" about how i feel i'm expected to behave or what i should want to be a respectable individual -- playing by norms that society has established that i neither asked for nor do i feel really fit me. always there is the common element of how i do and don't see myself. any assets i possess become diminished if not imperceptible and any "liabilities" become magnified -- looks, age (a new addition to the list), neuroses, this continually sensitive and increasingly vulnerable heart -- all seem ample reason for anticipated rejection and all cause me to question what i am doing.

i'm in the grips of this same pattern again. i know i have to accept that what will be will be. people tell me to take risks. i know i need to and i do. it just would be nice if, when i did so with men, the results were more often rewarding than damaging.

cold heart

this has been another one of those lost weekends. i've been drifting in and out of a state of a deep and mind numbing depression. some moments i resemble a sentient human being. in others, i feel as if it is an effort to remember my own name or much about my identity. the purpose and meaning of my life are swallowed in the sadness of the isolation and solitary nature of it.

there have been a few bright spots -- a new friendship that i hope will continue to develop and deepen; another friend who may be making a long-desired visit after the new year. but even so, these bright spots feel like burning embers from a fire that died long ago, doing their best to hang on to provide some last bits of light and warmth in an ever encroaching darkness and cold.

it's snowing outside right now. the kind of snowfall that is blowing and persistent. it may be cold outside but i fear a greater chill has overtaken my heart.

memorial

another difficult day. we had a memorial service for our friend and work colleague who passed away. we got to share remembrances of her life. it was lovely. there was much laughter and tears. i hope it served as a catharsis for the hundred or so folks who gathered to pay their respects.

for me, i suspect, the pain will linger for some time to come. she was a very large part of my life here in this organization, and supported me in so many ways -- not just in work but in life. we talked many times over the course of the day. she was the only person here that i shared the full extent of the emotional struggle i have been having over this very difficult year. and now she is gone, and i wonder what does that mean for my life both here at work and outside of it moving forward.

the pain is so great that it feels as if my heart will never recover. my life continues to feel as if it is becoming so quiet and so small such that it hardly seems to qualify as "life" at all. i just don't know.

loss

someone i worked very closely with died yesterday unexpectedly. we believe she was not even aware of the condition that led to her passing. it was one of those situations that the person was here one day and gone the next.

i don't deal with death very well. it's not so much about how upset i get as it is i have a hard time registering the reality and permanence of someone's passing on. i was saying to a good friend yesterday that i still have to remind myself that my grandmother is gone and she died like 14 years ago.

and as much as i recognize that this loss is not about me, it truly feels that my already lonely world has become even more isolated and colder. yesterday, i reached out to a few friends and only one was available to help me process this loss. i went to bed feeling the pain of aloneness deep in my soul.

today i came in and there have been many hugs and tears shed by those who knew and cared so much about her. she helped so many of us. she was a force of nature in how she embraced life. it all seems so unfair.

i truly hope my colleague and friend is in a better life in the hereafter with loved ones who had moved on before her and where the love and peace of god surrounds and sustains them all. she so deserves that. she will be sorely missed.

in the middle of a shit storm

i'm not sure quite how to describe the kind of day i have had at work (though the title of this entry is a good first attempt), and i feel i should add the kind of day i've had thus far because i'm still here waiting for another meeting to start. suffice it to say that on more than one occasion the thought of asking my boss to add my name to the workforce reduction list, so i can escape this insanity.

ultimately, i've got to figure something out. i'm not sure what the solution is and as a result no clue how to get there. all i know is i'm tired of working so hard to try to do the right things in the right way only to have all that effort undermined by decisions of other leaders. i've been very disappointed that our senior-most leaders have allowed this situation to continue in this way for this long.

it does not help that i leave this craziness to return to an empty house and an empty life. it feels like there is no consolation for me anywhere in this world.  

no discernible presence

i woke up this morning not feeling very good about myself. this should not be a surprise. i went to bed feeling the same way. and now? no change really.

it feels as if i've pretty much lost all sense of who i am and what exactly my life is supposed to be about. i've been in a similar place before, and somehow that fact provides no consolation.

i look into my mind's eye to see that mental image of myself and there's nothing there. it's as if i am staring in what used to be my self-mirror and there is no reflection back at me. even physically i feel so insubstantial i would not be surprised that i would not cast a shadow on a brilliantly sunny day.

every day continues to feel harder to get through than the one preceding it. and the reason i am even occupying space on this earth has become an inscrutable mystery. how does one have a fulfilling life when you feel you have no discernible presence in reality?