Wide Awake...Again

My alarm goes off in an hour and a half but there's no way I'll be able to get back to sleep with how bad my anxiety is. I really need someone to talk to but no one deserves having to sit and listen to the nonstop drama that is my life.  Sometimes I lie awake at night and cry for no particular reason at all, and yet, there are so many reasons...at the forefront of why I cry a lot is how very painful this divorce is for me, not because of anything that's happened, but rather that it highlights my glaring inability to be successful in relationships. I wasn't emotionally stable enough to get married--I'm not emotionally stable in any relationship, platonic or otherwise--and I don't think that'll ever change.  I don't feel as though I'm capable of loving others in a way that they deserve because I myself am incapable of loving myself in a way that I deserve. I'm not good at relationships. My emotions for others are complicated--mostly in part to having borderline personality disorder--and it is my complex, intense way of dealing with others that makes my interactions with others so stormy, both good and bad. If I like you--as a friend or a lover--I really, really like you--my positive feelings for you are all-consuming, sometimes obsessive, and every time I meet a new friend it's like it's the greatest relationship I've ever had. But when things are bad--they get so very bad. I've had several close friends admit to me that although they love me very dearly, being in my life can be exhausting. But I understand, because being in my own head is exhausting. Having to sit and parse the nonstop drama and the constant fluctuating of my highs and lows has been a burden I've carried with me since early adolescence. 

I was a very odd, reclusive child, but it wasn't until I became a teenager that I began to realize that there was something very, very wrong with my emotional regulation. It wasn't just that I could be moody, it was that my extreme reclusiveness had stunted my ability to know how to react to and interact with others. I felt out-of-place in my friendships, feeling emotions like everyone does but never completely being safe in how I felt. Secure. Never knowing if the intensity of how I felt was normal. My later diagnosis of having borderline personality disorder perhaps offered an explanation, but little relief to how I was feeling. How I deal with life. How I constantly feel as though life is attacking me all at once with feelings I don't really know how to deal with, or am ill-equipped to deal with.  Ill-equipped describes so many facets of my life. I'm ill-equipped to be a good friend. I'm ill-equipped to deal with my past history of abuse. I'm ill-equipped to handle life without problems with addiction and substance abuse. And at the heart of it all--I'm ill-equipped to know how to love others. Not really. Sure, what I'm feeling for my friends and significant others feels like love--but I know it isn't quite right. Not quite normal. Because what is normal for me is so very foreign to how others feel. To how they interact with others. 

I'm not sure I ever want to go through with what an absolute disaster my marriage was ever again. I want to save others the devastation that my emotional instability causes. I want to save others from myself. I'm not sure what others deserve--but I know in my heart it's far better than what I can offer them. I wish I knew how to be a good friend. I wish I knew how to be a good significant other. But I just don't. It's a skill that has thusfar eluded me--and at the age of 38, I'm not sure by now if it's a skill I'll ever have. I would need to know how to love myself first--and that's not something I think I'll ever be capable of doing. I'm known at my job for being kind and nearly always cheerful. Sure, I'm kind to others because of the way many people treated me growing up--but I'm also moody, and reckless with others' feelings. I can be dishonest, emotionally-manipulative, and cruel. Not that everyone doesn't have aspects of their personality that are unpleasant--but the degree to which I can be unpleasant almost frightens me because of my underlining emotional problems.

I'm keenly aware that reestablishing a relationship with a therapist would be helpful. But for right now I just don't feel capable of opening up to one--not to the degree to which I'd need to deal with my deep-seated problems. And once again, on yet another sleepless night, my deep-seated problems are what's keeping me awake. My significant other and I had a heart-to-heart last night just before I went to bed about the fact that I'm not emotionally ready right now to get married again at least any time soon, only some of which is because of my divorce. There's so many things I need to work on. I'm scared. And hurt. And scared of hurting others, especially him. And he understood how I felt, and that's probably why I'm having trouble sleeping, too.

Trouble Sleeping

Wide awake after less than 5 hours of sleep. My alarm goes off in an hour for my work day which starts at 6am. Problems--and life in general--seem so much worse late at night and early in the morning. During the day I can often distract myself from my anxiety and depression, at least for a little while, so I can make it through yet another meaningless 24-hours of my existence--but when it's dark and quiet the things I've tried so hard to ignore for so very long seem overwhelming. My insecurities stalk me during the day, and when I'm alone with my thoughts they seem to suffocate me--thoughts of being unlovable, worthless, never good enough, fatally flawed. I've noticed that it never matters what I'm told about myself. I feel completely impervious to compliments, and almost suspicious of the givers. Why do you like me? What is it about me that you even find tolerable, let alone lovable and praise-worthy?

Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in my thoughts. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person in the world, the only person who has ever felt this way, and the only one who's lying here on yet another sleepless night, wondering what now? Where do I go from here? How do I get up tomorrow and do it all over again, pretend that nothing is wrong, pretend that my life hasn't become completely empty and unbearable with this depression that I lug with me every hour of the day like a heavy cloak? 

Pretending that nothing is wrong. It's such a ridiculous task to undertake. Why do we do this? Why has it become the norm in society to just smile, to brush it off, to suck it up, to fake it? What would happen if a friend asked me how I was doing and I said, "Not well, actually. I'm going through an extraordinarily deep depression. In fact, I struggled to even get out of bed this morning." It would be shocking, perhaps, if it were just me--but I suspect that so many people with whom I come in contact during my day aren't doing well, either. We're all stuck here together in this life with very human emotions--fear, sadness, disappointment, anxiousness, regret--so why has it become the norm for everyone to pretend that none of these emotions exist out in public?

Then there's the thought that maybe people don't really want to know how you're actually feeling. Maybe that's why we never truly say how we're doing. Maybe they're all just slogging through their day, too, and trying to ignore how they really feel--maybe hearing that someone else isn't doing well just isn't something they know how to process--or have the strength to. 

Why is life like this? I didn't feel this way when I was very young. I wasn't depressed. I wasn't anxious nearly all the time. I never had trouble sleeping. It seems the longer I exist the more things I find to be depressed and anxious about. Like right now, as I'm sitting here awake hours before the sun rises, writing out my feelings that I'm scared to talk about. I feel very alone in all the world. Am I?

A First Post

This year has been one of the worst years of my life.  I'm going through a divorce, my significant other recently had cancer, and I just lost one of my best friends. Friends have been imploring me to talk to someone about my feelings, but I'm so emotionally overwhelmed that I don't even know where to begin. I guess in the meantime I'll just write about how I feel.