Ok, so, my old blog had to be deleted because of nosy co-workers, so I'm not sure how much of this is news, and how much is known, to my three regular readers (mom, me, and the crazy cat lady).
So, as some of you knew, I was suffering from pretty severe depression last year, and for a long time before that. Well, the fact is, the depression was really just a symptom of a much deeper problem. I'd been suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome since witnessing my best friend's death, and no one really knew what to do to help me for years, and it kind of festered for about 16 years. And while it festered, I basically crawled into the bottom of my soul, curled up in a fetal position, and sucked my thumb while the auto-pilot ran things for sixteen years. I don't know how else to describe it.
The good news is, I'm feeling much better now. But the bad news is... obscene. The 'auto-pilot' Nate, my own personal Beta Unit (Watch 'The Last Starfighter', or nod sagely because you already have.), in the course of running my life, well, it went and did some things that can't be undone. Some shouldn't be undone, some I wouldn't undo even if I could, and many needed to be done. Because I'm going to need to do so for any chance of making sense of things, I'm going to call him Nate2.
Nate2 went out and got laid a few times. But he wasn't a real person, and couldn't keep a relationship going. Nate2 went out and made friends. But he didn't have enough of a functioning heart to let any of them into. (But he did keep bringing them down and laying them at my feet like a dutiful housecat delivering birds and squirrels for family provender. That was enough to attach a few of them to the real me, thank God.) Nate2 went out and got me a few jobs, a driver's license, and moved me around like a nomad. Nate2 made a brief effort to get my body into shape, and then gave up. Nate2 beat me, screamed at me, threw water on me, pissed in my face, and finally managed to get me barely functional enough to spend some time with my father before he died, and that is something worth thanking him for above all other things, because otherwise the regret of not being there with my father would be killing me. I think that also put me on the road to recovery, because that's when I finally poked my head out long enough to get the help I needed. Nate2 edited two bad friendship choices out of my life, but he did it rather clumsily, and aftershocks still rumble from one of those 'relation-quakes'.
But Nate2 didn't do one really important thing for me: he didn't take any mental pictures. In the last sixteen years or so, not only has my short-term memory detoriorated badly, I have very few detailed memories of anything I did, anyone I met, or anyplace I went. It's like everything from that period is a story someone told me, and I only remember a few of the more interesting parts. The lack of memories has hurt me in more than the obvious way, too.
Memories of the past are part of learning. There's a lot of things I haven't learned yet, because while Nate2 was takin' care o' bidness, I was... doing nothing, feeling nothing, caring about nothing. You can't learn anything about life that way.
I've spent the last 16 years in what amounts to a waking coma. And now I've finally awoken, and the whole world has moved on without me. I'm sixteen years behind schedule, 21 years old, in a 37-year-old body. I'm completely unprepared for grey hair, baldness, aches and pains, adult responsibilities like rent and paying the bills and taking care of my shit. The problem is, people don't see the 21-year-old me, they see this 37-year-old that I don't know how to be.
I'm 21 years old. I should be out 'sowing my wild oats'. Problem is, they've gone moldy waiting for me to do so. And 37 is too damn old to be 'hitting on chicks'.
I have sixteen years of catching up to do, and I don't even know where to begin trying to figure out how to go about starting to do that. I desperately need a reset button. And that's one thing life doesn't give us.
So, this is it. Some people I know have hinted around that they sorta sometimes read this blog. Yet none of them have ever posted here. Well, now is the time to start. I need some help here. I am lost, flailing in cowshit. Now, more than ever, I could use a little advice.
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11 comments:
First (wait, I need a tissue), I'm glad you've woken up. From someone who's been, on and off, in her own "coma," I hope you don't spend too much time looking back at what you missed. What you did or didn't do. I know how hard that sounds. And I don't want to say anything trite like "live for the moment," even though that's what my therapists have been telling me. Frankly, I don't know how they do it, and in the heat of the moment, when either I just want to crawl under the covers and cry for how I handled x, y, or z, or simply drive into the creek, I find it impossible.
You've got to find your own way to live. Getting up every day, and trying to do the right thing, and finding something about life that makes it worth getting out of bed for.
I hope I helped a little.
So am I the crazy cat lady, or is that someone else?
Heh, of my 'three readers', only my mom was a real person, and she doesn't own a computer, so I'd be astonished if she'd ever read my blog. I was just trying for funny.
Hmph, live for the moment, huh? That's the best trained professionals could offer you? Are they aware that that is a lot easier to do with money? More to the point, that it's only possible to do if you are in fact, financially independant? I could have told me that winning the lottery would make my current problems far more manageable.
Good lord. I just figured out why I never killed myself. Nate2 was running things, and not programmed for that function, and I didn't have the energy to do it myself. Now that I'm no longer soul-crushingly depressed, or having traumatic flashbacks and daymares (and you know, I was right up until the end of last year, and now I'm not; say what you will about therapy, that shit works) and I'm back in the saddle, I'm actually in more danger from myself than before.
I really do need to find some way to deal with this hole in my life before I fall into it. Right now all I can do is stare into it's depths, and wonder what might have been. And that's a road that goes no place good.
Ok you talk about Nate2.
But what about "The original"???
He hasn't gone anywhere, just been overshadowed by the trauma.
What was important to him? His goals? What did he do for fun? What made him feel on top of the world unstoppable??
While you are figuring those things out - I suggest a sort of closure ceremony.
To let your friend go (not completley of course) and move on as the new Nate.
Go to your favourite place and read him a letter out loud. Or go to his resting place and just sit. Do something symbolic of your move towards the future. And promise him and yourself that things are going to change for the better.
I assure you it helps to press that reset button.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to come out as cynical. That wasn't my intention. Maybe we just don't have the best therapists here. Or I can't afford them. (currently on a state-sponsored health insurance plan that doesn't cover mental health)
But I like "gal friday's" ideas. Try to come back to who you were, what you liked. I was stunned stupid when, in the depths of my black hole, when I was leaving a session of physical therapy, the PT told me to "have fun." I cried all the way home. I'd forgotten what "fun" was. Heck, I didn't even want to write, and that was the one thing in my old life I could always count on to bring me joy. And bit by bit, I started to remember.
Shit-fuck-piss-damn-fuck-fuck-fuck!! I HATE losing an entire post to goddamn computer stupidity!! Grrrr.
Alright...deep breath.
YGF,
I had thought of holding a wake for my autopilot, but had also dismissed it as too insane for anyone to accept. Then you come along and suggest it too, and now I'm thinking maybe I'm not as crazy as I'd assumed. Thanks.
The problem, however, with trying to go back to who I was is, the things I was doing back then, simply aren't options anymore. My brothers all have lives and homes of their own, the Internet has driven the BBS into extinction (I was huge in the private BBS thing back then), and the people I knew back then, I simply don't know anymore, they've all gone on to their futures.
Opus,
In no wise did I think YOU were being sarcastic. I was merely expressing my disbelief and disgust at the insensitivity of your therapist(s).
Pretty much everyone,
I'd like to re-assure you that my comments about posing a danger to myself were hypothetical at most. As I said, I'm no longer monumentally depressed, and not having daymares and flashbacks. The ability and intent poles have reversed: I'm no longer having suicidal thoughts, but I'm now actually capable of acting on them if I were to.
So, basically, when I say I need a reset button, I mean for the whole damn shootin' match. I can't simply pick up where I left off back in '91, that place no longer exists. No, I need to completely start from scratch, and yet somehow keep the gains I've made (the few friends and memories that Nate2 did manage to bring me that I actually kept a hold of).
That's a frickin' JOB, let me tell ya.
You're right. It's hard work. A friend who is also in therapy likened it to Weight Watchers. The meetings are just for the weigh in and a little encouragement; but the rest of the week, you have to do the work.
Whether or not my therapists are any good, I learned a lot about myself from all that work. I've learned, if not to stop doing all the crappy things I used to do to myself, to at least see when I'm doing them and why. And this lead to substituting healthier behaviors and treating myself with more love and dignity.
Best of luck. Just type at me if you'd like a sounding board.
Hey, I was on autopilot during the early nineties. It was only for about two years, though. (I was working and had two kids in diapers...::shiver::...don't go there!)
Sorry I've been more silent than I should have been. Death'll do that...bah dum pah...
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I know you are working your way back through a lot of stuff. Don't expect it to be done overnight. Don't (as Doc Cochran would say...sorry, lots of DEADWOOD as I recuperate) put a goddam clock on it. Give yourself the time to work back to where you want to be.
Yep, you're 37. That's NOT 73. Or even 44...ugh... You're still a young man with a long life in front of you. You really are only as old as you feel. (Consequently, my age changes daily.) A ninety five year old woman graduated from college a couple weeks ago.
Figure out what you want out of life. (Me, I'd make a spreadsheet if I were you.) Then figure out what it would take to make those things happen. Go slow, but go. Processes and progress will make you feel better about yourself and the world around you. Each small victory/success will give you confidence to advance to the next.
That doesn't mean that you have to stick, vehemently, to your original plan. Sometimes, life throws you a curve ball. Don't be afraid to research any opportunity and revise your goals.
First off I have never been one for mushy happy go-lucky feel good bullshit so take this as you will.
So, even if you have really awakened as you say and find that you know who you are thats a good thing so, make do with what you got and be proud if that. Then keep in mind that the people you say were your friends and now have their own futures and no time or don't care about you, well then they were never worth you time to begin with.
Now figure out what you want with your life and go for it and take chances if you must. That doesn't mean go stepping on people or forgetting them either, but do what you got to do. Your NOT getting younger.
Look at me for example, I continuosly take chances and I'm still not there yet but that hasn't stopped me from trying.
Who Knows maybe our comic will go somewhere and Wallah, Happinness!
Good luck.
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