I'm That Person

Some years ago, I had a friend that decided he was in love with me.  That was rather awkward for me because I didn’t feel the same way about him, yet he continued to pursue me.  I told him “no” several times, which made it all the worse when he poured his heart out to me about his feelings.  I felt like crap for that.

This went on for years, even when I was married, and there was even a point where I almost caved – but that didn’t happen, and a couple of years ago he actually met someone he could fall in love with, and he recently got married.  I’m thrilled for him and I hope they have many happy years together.

Something else that happened a couple of years ago….. I realized I was in a similar situation….except this time I was the pursuer.  I had this dumb little crush on a friend, and I kept thinking it would go away.  Except it didn’t.  I tried a couple of times to tell him, but of course, he wasn’t interested.  And I started thinking about how awful it must be for him to put up with a loser like myself trying to express their feelings to him, and it suddenly occurred me….

I’ve become That Person.

When I was younger and fair bit more attractive, there was almost always some guy following me around like a lost puppy, trying to convince me that he would make me SO HAPPY if only I would give him a chance.  No matter how gently or harshly I tried to let them down, they would not give up.   Sometimes it was annoying, but most of the time, it just made me feel like an awful person – awful for not being able to even try to date this person, awful for not being able to see the beauty in everyone, awful for just being myself and doing whatever it was that made these guys think they were in love with me.  On the one hand, it irritated me some, but on the other, I felt sorry for these guys.

And, oh my lord, pity is the last thing I would ever want.

So with that jarring realization, I have since put a lid on those feelings and work really hard to ignore them whenever I’m around him.  I think he thinks I’m mad at him.  I’m not.  I’m mostly just mad at myself and trying not to inflict my irrational affections upon him.  And hopefully, one of these days, I’ll meet someone else.  Someone I can fall in love with and be happy.  Because don’t we all deserve that much?

Followup

Alright.  I suppose an explanation of some sort is in order.

I have a serious chemical imbalance.  I’ve talked about the depression before and most can tell when I’m not dealing well with it.  My doctor seemed to think I didn’t really need an antidepressant anymore, but when I find myself trying to figure out how to make sure everything is covered so I can leave this life, well, it’s kind of a huge gigantic red flag.  Something needed to be done.

I know several of my friends noticed something was up, and I very much appreciate your concerns.  I’ve had tons of counseling over the years, and I still don’t know how to communicate when things start getting dark.  It’s a very scary place to be.  I have, however, worked hard to train myself to recognize when I need to make a change and get out of that dark place.  It happened this week when I was checking my life insurance policies to make sure there would be enough to cover expenses “just in case.”

I thought I could wait until I go see my GP again (because he’s the one that writes the prescription), but my next appointment isn’t until the end of June.  I could try to get one sooner, but by the time I get down that far, a couple of weeks can be a couple of weeks too long.  It’s weird….I did manage to make it for years without any sort of medication, but once I realized how much pain I had actually been in, I didn’t  ever want to go back to it again.  And when I find myself headed back in that direction, I want to do everything and anything in my power to make it stop.  And that’s when it starts getting scary.  Fortunately, there is an over-the-counter supplement I can take that makes a world of difference for me.  Three days in, and I already feel much better – so that’s a good thing.

As always, I have a lot of resentment about how people like me are treated.  I have a real medical condition that requires intervention.  The way most health care professionals treat me makes me feel like I’m not really worth the time and effort.  No, it’s not cancer or anything that will directly kill me in six months, and yes, I can function (for the most part) in the real world, but it’s very important TO ME.  It matters TO ME.  Treatment makes a huge difference for me – it’s the difference between being a productive member of the human race or just taking up space.  And when I feel like all I’m doing is taking up space, well…..that’s when I start double checking those life insurance policies.  Everyone deserves to live a good life.

Anyway – I’m working on getting better.  During this particular round, I feel like I lost everything – my confidence, my strength, my sense of humor.  It’s been a real struggle to keep moving forward and every little setback has felt like a huge boulder knocking me backwards.  When “what is the point?” becomes a daily mantra, it’s time to get serious about my health.

Is Now Good?

So let's just say......




You've got this friend who went through a really rough patch with that whole depression thing...yuck!  But they got better, they're back on their feet and things are really looking up for them.  Well, for the most part.  There were a couple of things that happened that hit them really hard - they were completely misled by a guy, then later on they were offered a "pity lay" by someone else.  But hey, nothing the average person can't bounce back from!  And even though your friend isn't necessarily the average person, you don't worry about them anymore.  After all, they're better now! 




Right?




Oh, sure, all better!  Of course, that does cause one to wonder - at what point is it ok to seek help again?  When one starts the "planning process" again?  Or after one is dead?  One certainly wouldn't want to bother anyone with stupid little problems.....

Yup

I’ve been struggling lately.  A lot.  Basically, it all boils down to “why am I still here?”  I feel I have zero to offer the world at large anymore and any purpose I might have had has been fulfilled.  I really don’t have anything left.  Boys are grown and living their own lives.  Everyone else in my family has their own thing going on.  All that crap about destiny, special purpose, finding my gift, whatever  --  pretty much don’t buy into that anymore.

Yeah, I have friends and I do stuff.  I just don’t know why I’m still doing it all.  I feel like I just take up space and waste time.  Woohoo. 

I’ve always lived my life with a goal.  When I was busy being an advocate for Paganism, the goal was to achieve tolerance.  Well, it will probably never be what I had hoped for, but it’s a far cry better than when I was a kid and Family Services wanted to take my brother and me away because of my family’s religion.  I feel I achieved a great deal, but I need to move on from that.

I have goals in dancing:  get better, get stronger, dance more.  It’s an open-ended goal, and not so easy to say, “Yes, I have achieved this.”  Maybe that’s a danger  --  no real obvious goal to work towards.  Nothing I can really hold up and say, “there – I did this.”

I have started playing music again, and I am helping a friend to achieve a few of his goals in that regard.  It’s fun, and I do have a good time dinking around on the bass again, but I keep asking myself, “what’s the point?”  Yes, it’s fun, and I like to have fun, but I keep thinking I should be doing something worthwhile.

It’s like I’m stuck in a loop of logic.  I know not everything has to have a purpose, and we should be doing things simply for the enjoyment, but more and more I find myself questioning if I’ve ever done anything that was worthwhile.

Maybe I’m just having a mid-life crisis.

Still Here

So, I have depression. If you've read my stuff here before, then you know that – rah. It's not any sort of a secret, nor is it a secret that I take medication to stave off the darkness. As anyone that takes a maintenance medication, I have to be very careful about it, and I always make note when it changes.

About a year and a half ago, I did have a change in my meds. I used my insurance's mail-in option, and the generic I received was different from the one I had been taking. Not thinking anything of it, I started taking the new ones when my old ones ran out. Holy crap.....

All generics are NOT the same. This particular one did terrible things to my head. I called my doctor, got a new prescription, got rid of the mail-order crap and was able to get things straightened out again after about a month. Lesson learned – don't take that generic!

So this year, I've been planning on weaning myself off the meds. It's been a while and I really need to learn how to live without the chemicals. I had one more month, then a few of the smaller dosage meds to step down with. I got the last month of my meds filled, brought them home, set them on the microwave and went about my day. When it was time to open up the last bunch, wouldn't you know it? The wonky generics!

Well, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot, anyway. Bad mistake. Bad, bad mistake.

Everyone has heard stories about how some anti-depressants can actually cause suicidal tendencies in users. This is the one that does it for me. I spent two days reconsidering “the plan.” Yes, I've made a plan before – obviously, I didn't follow through, but it's there. After a couple of days, I starting thinking maybe I should do something about the incredibly dark and evil place I had been dwelling and try to get back to some semblance of normal.

This has been a rough year for me head-wise. I've had several bad patches of severe depression over the last few months, and it has been a struggle. Even the best medications, therapists, exercise programs, etc. can't fix it all, and sometimes the darkness wins. The trick is to keep it from taking over completely, and remembering that it WILL get better. It can be really tough to get to that point where you know it will get better. When it gets to the point that I start pulling up details of “the plan,” I start telling myself to just wait one more day. Thankfully, I don't deal with that too often anymore.

A couple of days ago, when I was starting to come back up, my mom called to check on me and make sure I was ok. Of course, I told her I was fine, everything was fine. She asked me if I needed anyone to talk to.......yeah......that's a tough one.

Sure, I have friends, and sure, they say I can talk to them any time I need, but I know how that usually goes. Everyone has problems. Everyone needs someone to talk to. And usually I'm the one they want to talk to. And you know what happens when I need someone to talk to about what's bugging me? I end up listening to everything that's been going wrong in their lives. So I stopped trying.

So maybe that will help explain some of why I've been so quiet lately. I'm still single....still afraid to talk to men. Still dancing – probably one of the few things that is keeping me going. Still here. Still hanging on. Working on getting better. Taking it a day at a time.

No Room, No Room!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about energy, reality being what we create, karmic return/energy spent is energy returned, etc.  I don’t think that, as living entities, we operate in a complete vacuum when it comes to the expenditure of energy.    We create our own realities by what we put out to the rest of the world – if you think someone is out to get you, eventually someone will start wondering what you’re trying to hide and begin digging around in your private matters.  Self-fulfilling prophesy!

I have a tendency to trust everyone, which leaves me wide open to be blindsided in those instances when someone decides not to play nice and does something really shitty.  It actually doesn’t happen as often as you might think.  There’s a song by the band Rush that basically says, I believe in the decency of people, but we read about the exceptions every day.  And that’s true.  You don’t hear about the kid that helped another pick up their books after everything went skidding down the hall – you only hear about the kid that went ballistic and stabbed another.  You don’t hear about the community that came together to help a family whose house burned down – you just hear about the arsonist that’s been torching homes.

It actually causes me physical pain to hear about all the awful things that we are capable of doing to each other.  When I was younger, I was out there doing everything I could to work as an activist, fighting for equality and tolerance.  I’m not sure why I can’t do it anymore, but conflict and drama (and there is ALWAYS drama!) has caused me to pull away from it all. 

I cannot handle drama at all.  It serves no purpose other than drawing attention to someone who isn’t happy with themselves.

So if I walk away from something, it’s not that I don’t care…..well, ok, in some cases, I don’t care.  But more than likely, I just can’t handle it.  It’s taken me a long time to recognize this and respect my own needs.  I do try to do what I can, but if I’m screwed up, I’m not going to be any good to anyone else.  If anything, I’ll be a hindrance.  And yes, there’s been a couple of things happen that have made me consider my role in the drama and conflict.  I’m just going to take care of what needs to be taken care of, and if anyone else really wants to get all offended, well, I just really don’t have anything to say about that.

Except maybe you should consider the reality you’re creating for yourself.

The Weight of the World

Oh, yes, we all have that "weighty issue" that we drag around with us.  We hope that someone might someday come along and help us - actually help, not just say they're going to help.  But what I've discovered is most times, a person will come along and say "oh, yes!  I will help you with your burden!" then as soon as you accept their help, they either drop it immediately to the ground and skip merrily away, or they use it to bludgeon you about the head and shoulders. 

Sometimes whatever it is that we carry around with us is something we can't "just" get rid of - and it is incredibly painful for people to tell you to just "cowboy up" and deal with it.  Oh, how I would love to smack the people who do that.  There's that whole "walk a mile in my shoes" thing, but for some, they still wouldn't get it.  So my load.....remains my load.

But sometimes we reach a point in our lives when we realize we've outgrown that load.  I've been working on getting rid of a particular bit of burden for some time now, but believe it or not, some folks insist on making sure I still carry it around.  There's a friend for ya.  I've finally found a place where I'm happy and I very much would like to put all my time and energy towards that happiness.  If I can just kick this one thing to the curb, I would be so much happier - and yet.....

I have one obligation left.  I will fulfill that obligation. Then I'm done.