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.
1 comment:
Nancy, I love you. And there is nothing you could ever do or say or think or write that would make me love you any less. Certainly, there is nothing in the above post that would have that effect, on me, or on anyone else who loves you. Life is really, really hard for some of us. People who've never experienced real depression cannot IMAGINE the pain and the horror of it--for me, it literally, physically is unbearable to interact with another human being; the WEIGHT of it, the DEPTH of it, the way it creeps like blackness into your mind, body and soul and takes over--there are absolutely times when suicide seems a reasonable,or even the THE reasonable option. I am so, so, so grateful for all of the hard work, all of the fighting back you've done and continue to do. I don't take it lightly, and have such a deep respect and appreciation for your willingness and ability to keep fighting the demons who rage against you, and who never, ever, ever fight fair. It makes PERFECT SENSE that those who've experienced rejection, shaming and abuse protect themselves by refusing to be held or to be open or to let anyone all the way in. Even when we realize it's not working, it's such a core part of who we are that it becomes exhausting and seemingly useless to try something else. I know there's nothing I can say or do to make things okay. But please know that I am ALWAYS here, and I TRULY understand what you're going through, and I am more than willing to just sit with you, whether face to face, on the phone, or just soul to soul, and bear witness to your pain without trying to change it, fix it, explain it, or shift it. I love you, I love you, I love you. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
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