I wrote an upsetting and slightly hysterical post last week. Slightly removed from it, I am first of all mortified that I was so careless and let my shame spill out. That I let people see, however clumsily and ineffectively, how hard I struggle, most days, to just appear happy and stable. I am also deeply touched by some of the responses and grateful for all of the love that came my way. I think, in re-reading it, that I made it all seem petty and silly and narrowed down to a lack of a partner or a secure job, to the same loneliness that bedevils most single women. There is truth in those things. I am lonely most of the time and my career is not anything like I dreamed it would be. I haven't been on a date in years. Literally years. These very concrete holes in my life do exist, yet that is not the gnawing I feel ripping through my chest and into my fingers. I feel myself spinning into a familiar yet uncontrollable place and it frightens me. I don't know how or even if I have the will to fight my way back. I don't know if all of the work on coping and the training that I have done over the last two, five, ten, the last twenty years is enough. These are old battles, ones begun in the years before adolescence. I have once again made food an enemy. I have an almost uncontrollable urge to rip off my skin. I am exhausted during the day, yet can't sleep at night. None of this stems from the day to day. My daily life is, if I look at it objectively, better than it has been in a long time. I had an amazing year in 2012 and have so many wonderful projects in the works for 2013 and beyond. Beyond that, I have gained knowledge and skill, especially over the last two years. I know how to move from this spiral of shame and hate. I know how. I wrote a post about a year ago to a friend's brother and said, life doesn't get better, you get better. You get stronger and smarter and you find what makes your heart sing. I believed what I wrote then. I still want to believe what I wrote, but there is this nagging voice. What if I was wrong? What if I had it backwards? What if, even when life does gets better, I don't? I walk around with this false confidence that doesn't quite reach my eyes and an eternally broken heart which does. I pretend that I am smart. I pretend that I have healed, whatever the fuck that means. I talk and talk and talk about eating disorders and cutting and depression and suicidal idealization, as though they are completely defanged; foes long dead and buried. I buy into the "act as if" school of thinking. And I am lying. I know in my core that I am lying. But, there is this; my core could be wrong. I hang onto this one little thread of hope that says that core fear of not ever being okay is wrong and I will, once again, dig myself out of this spiral and get to a place where I can talk of wanting out as a long ago memory....of it being something I just felt once....as something from then and not from now. I am just hanging onto that thin shiny strand and hoping, hoping that I am wrong.
I question the intelligence of writing this, in the throes of the spin. After this entry I won't continue to post about it. Although there is a value in writing for an unseen audience, of attempting to clarify your thoughts enough for others to understand, possibly empathize a bit, and maybe, just maybe see themselves in your struggle, at this point I feel that this discussion needs to once again become private. It probably should never have left that realm. It is hard to put on your public mask when you know people are reading about your private shame and I need to be able to wear that mask, to smile and say I'm fine and have it end there. So for now, I'm fine. Thanks for asking. We'll talk soon. Love, Nancy
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
And here we are again.....
Night:
For a person with as many friends as my Facebook page or my phone tells me I have, I am shockingly alone when it gets dark. This statement is not meant to denigrate my friends. My solitude is not their fault. I create it myself. I carry it almost as a badge of pride, yet I can, tonight when the future seems so unbearable, admit that it is killing me. When I am alone at night and the world closes in and I am literally unable to breathe, I do not have someone to hold on to. I am so so so so afraid of being held, yet in these moments I look that fear in the face and know that of which I am most afraid is the only thing that is going to save me. This sounds ridiculously melodramatic, but isn't all psychic pain ridiculously melodramatic and incomprehensible to anyone not in the throes of it? I have, on some level, admitted it and have even been taking action in my own messed up way; by trying to fill that relationship place with spiritual or career guides, with mentors, with people who I think will be there because I pay them to be. This is, once again, proving to be an absolutely terrible system.
I need to be held. I need to mirror my self worth in someone's eyes, and not in a someone who is paid to mirror it back. I've been pretending to be done with therapy, while simply making someone who is trying to do a different job fill that space. It has now blown up in my face. I can so easily use this to fall back into a place where I am struggling to live. I can feel that pull. I want to end things tonight. I am acutely suicidal and if I weren't so damn worried about everyone else and the unintended but absolutely predictable pain that (even) my suicide would cause, I would do it. I'm exhausted by the fight. I literally cannot see to tomorrow. Which proves to me once again what an ungrateful and pathetic person I am. Because this pitiful and self centered way of dealing is contrasted by what others are fighting. A friend, who I care for deeply but with whom I have not been in touch, other than the occasional like or comment on Facebook, passed away suddenly, at least it was sudden to his friends. He had kept his illness quiet. It is heartbreaking and I am heartbroken--for his loss and for the loss of his future. He leaves a college age daughter and so many friends and colleagues dumbstruck. He was still young enough for this unexpected death to be tragic. On a personal level, he was one of the first people to reach out to me in LA and to value me as an artist. I will always hold him in my heart. Yet, and I am not proud-- indeed I am disgusted to admit this--deep inside, where I am filled with shame and self hatred, I am jealous. Again jealous of someone who got out early. That is reprehensible. I don't have an explanation. It's been a rough start to the new year. My commercial agent dropped me, and in trying to do so in a way that was kind, basically said that I am untouchable as an actress. A job I was counting on to help get me out of debt is ending. I don't have a theater gig. My production company feels like a pipe dream. These things are unrelated, and in no way on equal footing, yet my broken spirit feels them the same. People die, people abandon you (even though I have learned through many years of therapy that you cannot be abandoned as an adult), careers don't happen, relationships evolve/dissipate/fall apart. Failure exists over and over. I know this. I know it as a successful person who has fought over and over again through depression and anorexia and cutting and has also experienced moments where I've been overcome with happiness and love and the joy of sharing the experience of life. So where does that leave me tonight? Alanis Morissette manages to make music out of these feelings. I know that is what I should do....make art, elevate it to something worthy, but all I can feel right now is a primal urge for self destruction....
Morning:
After writing this, and a few restless hours of sleep, I'm actually at a new day. Choked down 2 pieces of toast and a cup of coffee. I am embarrassed to read the words above. There is nothing more self centered than someone circling their own emotional shit. Yet, I don't think I am able to retract it. I still feel the truth, no matter how sadly distorted to my own reality, in those words. I wish I could say that I awoke to a new day where the sun is shining (it is in actuality raining) and I feel inspired to tackle the world in new ways. I don't. I feel hungover, though I did not drink last night. I feel completely defeated. I want to crawl back into bed, though I awoke well before my 6:30am alarm. Instead, I will go out into the world. I will go teach my classes and praise my students, and admonish them to always give me 100% of their energy, to breathe, to love what they are doing. I will meet with my business partners and believe in my projects. I will read a script and prepare for an audition. I hope that by engaging my students and friends in my battered dreams, a little inspiration will come back to me and I will once again climb out of this spiral of self loathing. I'll go hug some puppies on my break and listen to music and maybe go into an empty studio and dance or sing. Somehow I'll fight my way back. I always do. I will just keep telling myself that I always do.
For a person with as many friends as my Facebook page or my phone tells me I have, I am shockingly alone when it gets dark. This statement is not meant to denigrate my friends. My solitude is not their fault. I create it myself. I carry it almost as a badge of pride, yet I can, tonight when the future seems so unbearable, admit that it is killing me. When I am alone at night and the world closes in and I am literally unable to breathe, I do not have someone to hold on to. I am so so so so afraid of being held, yet in these moments I look that fear in the face and know that of which I am most afraid is the only thing that is going to save me. This sounds ridiculously melodramatic, but isn't all psychic pain ridiculously melodramatic and incomprehensible to anyone not in the throes of it? I have, on some level, admitted it and have even been taking action in my own messed up way; by trying to fill that relationship place with spiritual or career guides, with mentors, with people who I think will be there because I pay them to be. This is, once again, proving to be an absolutely terrible system.
I need to be held. I need to mirror my self worth in someone's eyes, and not in a someone who is paid to mirror it back. I've been pretending to be done with therapy, while simply making someone who is trying to do a different job fill that space. It has now blown up in my face. I can so easily use this to fall back into a place where I am struggling to live. I can feel that pull. I want to end things tonight. I am acutely suicidal and if I weren't so damn worried about everyone else and the unintended but absolutely predictable pain that (even) my suicide would cause, I would do it. I'm exhausted by the fight. I literally cannot see to tomorrow. Which proves to me once again what an ungrateful and pathetic person I am. Because this pitiful and self centered way of dealing is contrasted by what others are fighting. A friend, who I care for deeply but with whom I have not been in touch, other than the occasional like or comment on Facebook, passed away suddenly, at least it was sudden to his friends. He had kept his illness quiet. It is heartbreaking and I am heartbroken--for his loss and for the loss of his future. He leaves a college age daughter and so many friends and colleagues dumbstruck. He was still young enough for this unexpected death to be tragic. On a personal level, he was one of the first people to reach out to me in LA and to value me as an artist. I will always hold him in my heart. Yet, and I am not proud-- indeed I am disgusted to admit this--deep inside, where I am filled with shame and self hatred, I am jealous. Again jealous of someone who got out early. That is reprehensible. I don't have an explanation. It's been a rough start to the new year. My commercial agent dropped me, and in trying to do so in a way that was kind, basically said that I am untouchable as an actress. A job I was counting on to help get me out of debt is ending. I don't have a theater gig. My production company feels like a pipe dream. These things are unrelated, and in no way on equal footing, yet my broken spirit feels them the same. People die, people abandon you (even though I have learned through many years of therapy that you cannot be abandoned as an adult), careers don't happen, relationships evolve/dissipate/fall apart. Failure exists over and over. I know this. I know it as a successful person who has fought over and over again through depression and anorexia and cutting and has also experienced moments where I've been overcome with happiness and love and the joy of sharing the experience of life. So where does that leave me tonight? Alanis Morissette manages to make music out of these feelings. I know that is what I should do....make art, elevate it to something worthy, but all I can feel right now is a primal urge for self destruction....
After writing this, and a few restless hours of sleep, I'm actually at a new day. Choked down 2 pieces of toast and a cup of coffee. I am embarrassed to read the words above. There is nothing more self centered than someone circling their own emotional shit. Yet, I don't think I am able to retract it. I still feel the truth, no matter how sadly distorted to my own reality, in those words. I wish I could say that I awoke to a new day where the sun is shining (it is in actuality raining) and I feel inspired to tackle the world in new ways. I don't. I feel hungover, though I did not drink last night. I feel completely defeated. I want to crawl back into bed, though I awoke well before my 6:30am alarm. Instead, I will go out into the world. I will go teach my classes and praise my students, and admonish them to always give me 100% of their energy, to breathe, to love what they are doing. I will meet with my business partners and believe in my projects. I will read a script and prepare for an audition. I hope that by engaging my students and friends in my battered dreams, a little inspiration will come back to me and I will once again climb out of this spiral of self loathing. I'll go hug some puppies on my break and listen to music and maybe go into an empty studio and dance or sing. Somehow I'll fight my way back. I always do. I will just keep telling myself that I always do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)