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.