Lonely on Thanksgiving

"There are a lot of people out there in a lot of pain." --(One of my old professors)

An obvious-sounding statement, isn't it?  And yet profound.  If you stop to think of all the people out there right now who are hurting, and lonely, or even desperate this (or any) time of year, the magnitude of that sadness is really astounding. 

So if you are one of those who feels forgotten, abandoned, or alone this week...this post is for you. 

Maybe you will be spending Thanksgiving with a house full of people, but are drowning in your own private world of sorrow.  Maybe you are completely isolated and terrified that life will never change.  Maybe your family is broken and your holidays are a searing reminder of the happy gatherings you no longer get to have. 

Wherever life finds you, I wish you the strength to make it through the tough days like this.  I can't muster any sunshine & roses speeches, because I don't feel sunny and rosy right now.  There will be other people on other blogs spreading joy for you to capture if that is your wish. 

There are others of us just trying to deal. 

I was just reading a post over at The Introvert's Corner called "Introverts and the Loneliness Loop."

Dembling writes:

"We desire and require deep connections and would rather be lonely alone than in a crowd. But realistically, those deep connections are not easy to find, and if we get caught short and our only choice is superficial socializing or nothing, we can get lonely."
 

I've been feeling that way a lot lately.  I either sit at home by myself, or I go out with people and still feel just as lonely afterwards.   It's been a lot of years since I've had a 'best' friend or close relationship.  And it's hard to feel fully yourself when no one else really knows you. 

At no time is that loneliness more magnified...than during holiday season. 

So if you find yourself here today, count yourself among friends. 

Nashville

It's that time of year again.  

Burnt orange leaves are my drive through Tennessee.  Gray, windy days are the cold blanket around me as I walked the streets of Nashville in my own private bubble of pain.  

The songs I played, the food I ate, the view from my downtown hotel:  all vivid memories that start to replay when the weather turns like this.  

And then there's last night, when I'm watching the new show Nashville on ABC, unprepared for each shot of the city's sights to be a trigger.  

I was thinking drama...and romance...and country music...

Instead, the characters walk the Shelby Street Bridge, and I'm back on it. 

I'm staring into the water wondering how many people have looked over this same ledge, wanting to end it.  

So I go back, but I don't.   At least, not all the way in.  There's a dividing line you have to create, where you can open the door and look in the room, but not shut yourself in there.  I don't want to remember what that feels like.  

A few months have gone by now in which I don't think about killing myself every day.  I wasn't sure life would ever surpass my secrets and my plans.  Yet, here I am.  

Every day I talk to people who are exactly where I was, sometimes to an eerie degree.  

The other day I worked with a man who had gone from independence and a career ... to losing everything and living in chronic pain that hurts with each step he takes.  He didn't see any hope for his situation to change, couldn't remember what it was like to be proud of his life.  

It felt familiar.  

Trapped without a way out, abandoned by your friends, betrayed by those you love...everyone thinks they're above suicide, until suddenly it becomes the most rational option you can think of.  

The question is: how do we survive our own minds with the torture of constant pain?  

How do we hold onto the 1/10th of 1 percent that wants to believe that the pain might someday end, when 99.99999% of our brain is trying to kill us?  

Do we gamble on the unknown that is the future, or wear the certainty of death?  

Thankfully, thankfully, the future is always a mystery.  Thankfully, I found a way to hold on during the 1/10th.  

"Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark."  

-Rabindranath Tagore

Violated by my cat.

My cat just licked my nipple.  I then proceeded to snort toothpaste out of my nose.

Me: Innocently standing in front of the vanity brushing my teeth.

Cat: Hmm.  What's this object pointed at me?

First of all, I'm pissed that she waited 4 years to tell me she was a lesbian.  Did she think I would judge her?

Secondly, I'd like her to go back to her usual inappropriate behavior, like sticking her nasty cat lips on my bathroom cup or trying to lick sweat out of my belly button after a run.

Even the times she tricks me into thinking there is a hazelnut on the floor and then laughs when I scream and throw her turd across the room...even then I tell myself that this is how normal cats entertain themselves.

Or other times when she uses the carpet as toilet paper and smears a 4-foot long poop streak across the floor like Toby in the Stanley Steemer commercial...did I punt her into outer space?  No I didn't.  Because what else can I expect from someone with 3-inch long ass hair.  Really.






You'd think I'd be happy, since nobody else has been licking my nipple in recent history.

Nope, not happy.

Creeped out.

On a positive note, it makes me feel progressive to own her, since we will probably join PFLAG to advocate for lesbian cat rights.

On the other hand, I know it's bestiality when humans molest animals, but I don't know what to call this incident when I go seek counseling for it.

Can you go around telling people your cat licked your nipple?  No you can't.

So consider yourself privileged.


(Incidentally, Urban Dictionary defines turd as: "Generally, a log-shaped piece of shit. Nevertheless, they are also found in coil-shape, mushroom-cloud shape, and even loch ness monster shape.")

Cock-eyed hairy bunghole.

It was so blissful to sleep through the night last night.  

Not because a crying baby normally jars me from a peaceful slumber; I'm nobody's mama.  Not because my cat can't figure out how to plug the power cord back into my printer so she can wake me up with the "urr-EEEEER" of her scanning out pictures of her hairy bunghole, or whatever she thinks is so goddang funny to wake me up with at 4 in the morning.

No, it was simply nice to not have to blow my nose thirty times or wake up repeatedly from my throat hurting, because that's how I got to spend the other two nights of my lovely three-day weekend.

It wasn't even a week prior I had commented on a post entitled, "Is getting sick the way you say "no?" If you can't say no, your body often starts doing it for you."  The irony doesn't escape me.  I could feel it coming, though.  And instead of taking a day off when I knew I needed it, I let the exhaustion seep into my pores until I was so thoroughly run down that my body made the decision for me.  Time off got turned into misery, followed by recovery.  Yaaay, life.  

The thing is, there was nothing uniquely taxing about the past month.  No 5-alarm crisis at work, no mountain of tasks taunting me at home.  The string of seven dentist appointments and mention of the word "root canal" on my uninsured teeth?  Sure, that was a *tad* stressful.  Helping my mom move the past three weekends?  Not my usual downtime for relaxation.  

But truly?  It doesn't take much more than the normal day-to-day shit of life to wear me down.  Cleaning the bathroom and buying groceries and running mundane errands: this is the crap that does me in.  

The required pace of life + my introverted personality = disaster.

I'm not sure I get a choice in the matter, but unfortunately the mad rush of our society just isn't working for me.  There are people that thrive on constant action - and interaction - but I'm not one of them.  I figured out a long time ago that I was an introvert; unfortunately, that didn't include figuring out how to manage my own needs.

I'm starting to notice that, if I don't have at least one day a week where I don't have to go anywhere, do anything, or see anybody, I just can't function.  Well...to be correct, I DO function, but in a far bitchier manner in which I resent all the time I should be unplugging from the demands of life.  (This is another reason to be thankful I don't have children, because I would never get a break.)

I used to read Gone With the Wind and fantasize that one day I'd be out in the country with miles of green and my big wraparound porch, where I'd be lazing on my little wooden porch swing.  Is it too late to marry a farmer?  

If you'll excuse me, I have to go pretend I don't hear scratchy noises causing mi gato to stare cock-eyed at the wall for the past hour.  (Note: for the love of all things holy, do not ever do a google image search on "cock-eyed.")  I think the correct way to describe it would have been: with her head cocked to one side.  But the process of verifying that fact has left me with a horrifying visual disturbance.  

Now be quiet and don't question my title ever again.  

The home that wasn't.

After writing just a few short days ago about relative happiness and contentment with my life, I spent most of Sunday bursting into random, unexpected crying jags.  Like an open palm smacking me dead in the chest, the reality of my broken home periodically knocked the wind out of me.  

Saturday I helped my mom clear things out of the home I grew up in, the same one my dad moved out of six months ago.  No matter how old you are, home is home.  And you want it there to go back to.  

You're never old enough to stop wishing it would all work out...somehow. 

You're never old enough to stop wanting the smell of roast at Sunday dinners, the security of your old bedroom (just in case), the safety of that one place in the world where you belong no matter what. 

I think about how hard each of my parents worked their whole lives, only to start over at (what should be) retirement age with half of what they had.  I think about the seven-year relationship I dragged myself out of, and wondered what kind of strength one has to conjure to close the door on forty years.  I think about how lonely it must feel to lose the partner you've had since you were a teenager.  

Their sadness, though well-hidden, makes me sadder than my own sadness.  

A divorce is the final decree on the matter of whether you get to have a happy family.  Until the decision is handed down, you are free to entertain the fantasy that one day - yes, one day - resentments will be abandoned, bitterness will be overcome, and wrongs will be forgiven.  

You're free to ponder the unknown because it's still unknown.

Until one day it isn't.  

One day the pre-existing factions within your family quake into full-blown fault lines.  The alliances that festered through the years persist long after the dust settles on the end of a marriage, splitting your family into divided loyalties.

There was no glamorous affair, no knock-down drag-out fight, just a fading gloom that quietly disappeared into the night.  Without a clear-cut reason, I sometimes find myself forgetting why it is they're not together anymore.  I wonder if they know, either.  

When the last box is taped shut and hauled away, you're left standing there with the reality of the situation.

What you thought was a broken home reveals itself, instead, to be an empty home.  

Where there could have been joy or love or happy times...

... is the ghost of a family that used to be...

...and a home that's never going to be -home- again.  

Why you should give up hope.

Life is pretty damn good lately.  There are times I even catch myself thinking, "Wow, I actually feel kind of okay. Is this happiness?"

Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of things I don't have - that I thought I would - at 32 years old. 

I don't have a relationship. 
BUT I also don't have a sh*tty relationship.

No one lies to me, makes my life miserable, or expects me to do everything for them.  No emotional roller coaster, no divorce, no broken home.  Could be worse.  Has been worse!

I don't have a family.  
BUT....I DON'T HAVE KIDS!!!

Let's face it, that's a shit-ton less work for me! I get eight - or more - hours of sleep a night. This fact alone makes me a much nicer person.  I'm sure there are awesome guys out there who would actually do 50% of the housework, but none of them have proposed to me yet. 

I don't have a prestigious career. 
BUT I don't have a job I hate.

I don't work 70 hours a week at a job that sucks the life out of me, with no time left for the things I want to do.  I have a great schedule doing work I enjoy, with people I enjoy, and relatively low stress.  Having experienced the opposite, there's a lot to be said for this. 

IF

Forgiveness = giving up the hope that the past could be different than it was,

THEN

Happiness = giving up the hope that the present could be different than it is. 

The moment I descend into self-flagellation over what I could be doing, or should be doing, or what everyone else is doing, I become immediately dissatisfied with my life.  This is another reason why Facebook is the devil.  We often feel perfectly fine with ourselves until we start comparing our lives to all these people that *seem* to have something we don't. 

If I decided to wait until I had a boyfriend or a better job or financial prosperity to be happy, god only knows how long that might take.  I have enough. And that's all I need.  If I can't accept myself and my life and exactly the way things stand today, there's no hope for tomorrow. 

For every little thing you don't have - that you think you want - is something you *DON'T* have that you should be damn thankful for!! 

So seriously, give up the hope that the next person who comes into your life is going to make you happy, give up the hope that a different job would make it all better, give up the hope that your family is going to get along one day...and see if you can figure out a way to accept exactly what's in front of you.  If that fails, here's a quote to live by:

"I may not be where I wanna be yet,

but I sure as hell ain't where I was!"



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Depression: The Invisible Prison

I used to wish for cancer. 

Pray for it, even, which is a backwards thing for an agnostic to do...but then, no godly person could get away with praying for death. 

I would hear these stories of wonderful, beloved people being robbed of their futures, happily-ever-after with their partners, the chance to see their children grow up....
...and you know what I felt? Envy. 

I was jealous that these people got a free ticket out of this house of horrors - and didn't even WANT it - while I was being forced to stay against my will. 

I know; sickening.

And because it's such a twisted and disgusting thought process, I would feel immense guilt over it. I was ashamed to be frittering away my existence with suffering, while others who actually *wanted* their lives and their family and their friends - who could actually enjoy being here - would not be allowed to stay.   

The guilt may have had less to do with my perverse death wish than the fact that I was not living the life I had been given; I was wasting it.

One day after the next, I wallowed in the cesspool of depression, rejecting life. I would walk by this poem I had pasted on my fridge: "I Will Not Die an Unlived Life" and feel horrible about how horrible my life was, because that is a depressed brain does.

I was reminded of all of this today when reading a paradoxical post by Adam Alvarado at The Last Broken Home: What a [Death Row Inmate] Can Teach You About Being Yourself -

"We can piss away one more day being angry, and vengeful, and sad – about crap that’s gone by, and passed by, and no longer a part of ourselves or our future. Another day being afraid of so much, and hurt by so much, and less than our better selves because of it."

Isn't that exactly what I did for 5 years?

I may as well have been in prison. 

Hell, there IS no worse prison than our own minds. We sit there suffering day after day, waiting for someone to come let us out...only to find out one day that the door was never even locked.

A friend of mine once blogged at "The Invisible Prison" (which she has since taken down, much to my dismay). There couldn't be a more fitting metaphor for suicidal depression. From the outside, no one can glean any possible reason for this self-imposed sentence. There are no bars, no chains, no guards...

...yet we're not so much afraid that door will never open; we're afraid that it WILL, and we'll have to face the world once again.

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