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.