Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Sorry. Not Sorry.

I've been thinking about blogging for a couple of weeks now....writing and rewriting posts in my head but never typing them up.  Which I should have done, it would have been a decent chronicle of my ups and downs....something better than what I am sure this will end up being.  Sorry, not sorry.

I feel like I think too much.  And I'm not thinking about things that are good....but things on the rather messed up side.  For example, just the other day I had the following dialogue in my head "with all the work and extra hours I've been doing you would think that I would have more free time".  See? Completely irrational.  For the past several nights I've been having nightmares....the kind where your heart is pounding so much that you don't care if the dream signifies anything, you just want to feel safe.  Last night, they were so bad that I just stayed up with the light on until I fell asleep in absolute exhaustion.  Ever notice that when you wake up in the morning after a bout of insomnia that everything still feels like it is in the middle of the night? But at least I didn't feel like someone was standing in the doorway watching me anymore, trying to suffocate me with the bedsheets.

I'm blaming the nightmares on depression.  I've been bottling up my emotions again, because it is safer.  It still feels sad, but ultimately very, very safe.  Recently a friend asked me if I felt like I could ask people to support me.  I know that I do have plenty of people who love and support me.  I have no problems in dropping everything to help out those that I love in need; but I have a mental block in asking those same people to make time for me.  I've been trying to rationalize this out....and I'm not doing a good job of it.  Everyone who I would ask....has other people, people that I would be taking time from if I asked their loved ones to spend some time on me.  I don't want to impose on anyone....because if I impose on them, if I become a burden, they'll leave.  Cause everyone leaves.  I've known this for a very, very long time.  And was just reminded of this by someone who I thought was a friend, who I thought of as family, decided to cut ties abruptly.  I was very angry in the beginning....he's definitely uninvited to Thanksgiving....now I'm just really, really sad...because.....everyone leaves in the end, don't they?  This is probably why I put my heart and soul into institutions and causes....they have a less likely chance of leaving me.

So couple this with the exact opposite of situations....  I've had a couple of odd instances the past few weeks of meeting with people who I've trained in the past.  Meeting with people who are passionate about the work that I do is one of the best parts of my job....however this went over into the hero-worship side of things.  It caught me off guard.  It's good to know that I am doing my job well and that I've inspired people....but I don't think that I'll ever get used to being confronted with it.  I guess that I now know what it feels like when I've done that to people I greatly admire.  I would apologize to them....but I won't.  Sorry, not sorry.  I'm so used to working hard and never really getting recognition of my strengths and attributes that I have no frame of reference in order to handle not being taken for granted.  This is something that I must build.  I'm not sure what that building would look like though.  My instinct is to create something sturdy that I can hide behind to cry in, and then step out from when I need to be in front of people.  Maybe I'm a jack-in-the-box....no one really knows what the jack is doing inside the box....it could be crying, sleeping, plotting or planning....no one really cares as long as it comes out when it is supposed to.  Its not a perfect system, but a functional one until I can find something better.

Because everything has to get better....it just has to.