The ground has disappeared

Coming out of dorsal vagal shutdown is not linear as I thought it would be. I wasn't feeling better so much as I wasn't daily breaking down. While still crying every day I'd stopped collapsing into my hallway scream sobbing. I wouldn't even say I felt hope so much as I wasn't longing to stick my head in the oven. Apparently when you start to come back your nervous system is testing to see if things are safe. This means if another blow comes, especially one hitting a core would, you can not only fall back into shutdown, but it can come quicker and harsher than the last one. 

Multiple blows at once during an emotional landmine time of the year for me. I collapsed again.

There is rock bottom and then there is a level much more terrifying where you keep falling lower and lower with no end in sight. When you descend into nothingness, the unknown, the darkness, lines become blurred and every breath is forced. Your nerves are exposed and raw and feeling is excruciating. Your fears turn to terrors as you wonder how long will this free fall last? Will I even survive the landing? 

What makes this especially heavy is that collapse doesn’t come from refusing to heal. It comes after years of trying. I'm told I should focus on "healing", whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean, and feeling my emotions. As if you do all these hard things and some magical land of happiness awaits you on the other side. I look back and I did everything I was told to do: therapy, journaling, medication, meditation, yoga, prayer, positive affirmations, crystals, energy work, hypnosis, manifesting, intentions, body work release, magic...and yet here I am flailing into the abyss alone. Collapse happens when you’ve exhausted every option you were told would save you, and your body finally says it has no more energy left to search, strive, or fight. Not because you want to die, but because you’ve run out of ways to stay alive that hurt less than this.

I feel like the entire weight and grief of my life experience has overtaken me. I tried to feel these emotions, cried so many tears, but this time is different. Between loss after loss in a few months' time, traumas compounding, over a year all my resilience and tenacity which I've relied on gave out as it was too much to bear. I can't hide it as I used to. I can't shove it down with all the things I've used to numb myself over the years. I can't pull out of it. 

When pain dismantles the nervous system, it doesn’t just hurt it alters capacity. It narrows the world. It collapses time. Decisions become heavy, language thins out, and even small tasks require negotiation. Despair sets in as exhaustion so immense there’s nothing left to carry hope. The system gets overwhelmed past its ability to regulate. From inside that state, survival is already work. When encouragement shows up as reminders to heal, grow, or “do the work,” it feels like another thing to carry. And there’s no strength left to carry anything else. Another moment for you to fail with a spotlight on you as you're judged if you are truly trying hard enough.

No cute and happy conclusion here. Only freefall.

A Filled Stocking

I wrote this on 9/27/23 in a Future Me letter to be emailed to me the day after Christmas 12/26/23: It's the day after Christmas. Are you still with him? More in love? Did you get that moment of being cuddled in front of the Christmas tree, snow falling, and happy? It hasn't even been 2 weeks. This is ridiculous. Yet it feels so good. So right. Or do I just want this so much? I think he's in a similar position as me; wanting love so much and willing to do anything to get it. Yet even outside our desperateness, we fit. I hope this is love. You deserve it so much. I hope you are waking to this full of cookies and smiling. I hope it was the best Christmas of your life. If not....you're used to it.

It was coming up on 3 months of being in a relationship with him. He said he loved me in days, relationship status changed on social media in less than a week, Google calendar together to share our every move, and talk of marriage and forever. As Christmas was coming up he said, "just so you know you won't be getting a ring...but I would marry you." I had no expectations of a ring and didn't understand why this disclaimer needed to be said at all. I smiled and nodded while trying to internally decipher why he'd need to say that. Instead of giving me some sort of assurance of his love and devotion to me, it felt like a way to make me on unsure, and it worked. 

Christmas has always been a sad time for me where I looked at it with both hope and dread. One of my earliest memories is sitting in the dark in front of the Christmas tree crying as I heard my parents fighting about my mother spending too much money on one of my presents. I took it personally feeling that my father didn't think I was worth enough for the extra five dollars she spent. Christmas when I was married, and the only time in my life having a partner, was an anxiety filled nightmare. My husband was someone who was always angry and I codependently was on edge to manage his anger, make sure he didn't cause a scene, while still making sure my son had a happy Christmas. It wasn't fun. We'd be driving to one of the many Christmas family events we needed to go to, as I tried to regulate my breath and pop an anti anxiety pill if I could get one. He would know all the reasons it stressed me out and say loudly so our son could hear, "Why are you acting this way? What's wrong with you?" Male anger scares me, and I didn't want my son to remember his childhood with fighting, so I'd smile and shove all my feelings down to appease him. 

The part I dreaded most was looking in our stockings. I made sure my son and husband had presents and treats in their stocking to find that every year, for 24 years, I had nothing. He would look in his stocking and see me fighting tears holding my empty one and say, "oh...sorry", and then I would shove a cookie, or 10, in my mouth and try to act like I wasn't dying inside. The stocking was never just a stocking. It was the symbol of the little girl in me who wanted one Christmas where I was cared for and not forgotten.

I had built this Christmas up to finally have everything I'd longed for my entire life and I was hell bent on making it perfect. It had been just a month before where we'd had a fight that left me confused with glaring red flags all over that I once again shoved down as I wanted the holidays with another person so desperately. I'd come back from a work trip, happy reunion at the airport, as we got back to his place I was smiling and pouring a wine and he came up behind me and aggressively said, "You're acting off. What's going on?". I turned around confused and said, "What? I'm fine.". He comes back again, accusatory and harder this time, "No, you're off. What's going on?". Now I'm scared and I'm not sure why. I felt completely fine and didn't see anything different in my behavior. And the "off" felt like I was being blamed for something yet I didn't know what. I became flustered and tried to figure out what I might be doing to deserve this statement, and said, "I'm tired. I guess I'm just tired.". He said, "Oh you're tired...so you lied to me. You said you were fine but you're not fine, you're tired. You lied.". My brain scrambled as this was completely inane, yet it was the week before Thanksgiving, him and his daughter were coming to my family's, I'd finally have a parter with me and not be the one sitting alone, and I wanted it all so much. I plead my case that a person can be both fine and tired, and I certainly wasn't lying. This lead to more fighting, and him saying he can't be in a relationship with a liar, even something as small as saying they are fine when they are tired. This fizzled out, Thanksgiving was nice, and I had someone by my side and didn't want that feeling to end. 

Future Me letter December 3, 2023
We had a fight this morning and I'm still reeling from it. He escalated quickly and I couldn't understand why. I felt like I was being accused, and then when I reacted, he implied my reaction was sketchy. Fully gaslit me and I'm seeing I am trying to make it OK, or believe he didn't realize it. But he said flat out "you are a red flag, there are question marks with you..." then went into my social media being public, and how he doesn't know who I'm reacting with. And when I tried to show full transparency to him he got angry at that too. Yelled. Each time I tried to reply he "didn't understand my reaction" or words. I felt like I couldn't speak. I find myself dreaming about marrying him and I think it's because then I'd feel he's locked in and won't leave me. I realized I was feeling triggered that I'd be left. I shared this and he said I didn't trust him. I don't fully trust his reactions. I feel like he'll say the "energy is off" or I'll say one wrong word and he'll end it. He's says he's all in, not leaving but then I feel like he says these things purposefully to throw me off. I feel like he wants me insecure.

The tree was up, presents were bought and wrapped, and now everything feels volatile, yet I wanted my special Christmas so much. I wanted those happy holidays pictures. I didn't want another year of sitting alone Christmas day, crying, wondering why I couldn't have what it appeared everyone around me had. The intermittent reinforcement had begun, and we were back to acting like all things were well, though I felt he'd already pulled away and I started walking oh so delicately on eggshells. He was unstable while giving an air of being zen and above everyone else, manipulative, sexualizing conversations with graphic tales of his past that I didn't ask for, fixated on exes, financially shaky, and unpredictable. But how do I call it out, or leave, when I'm so close to getting what I always wanted? I stayed silent.

It was Christmas Eve morning and the plan was to go to my mother's for brunch. I would be meeting my nephew that my brother and brother in law had adopted for the first time, he was bringing his daughter, and I would finally have my happy Christmas with someone. I first got a text that my brother in law had covid so Christmas was off. Though deeply disappointed, I still had that night where my son would come to his place and we were going to pretend to be a family. Minutes later my other brother texts that his former father in law was dying and he was bringing his children to the hospital to see him. I got out of bed, frazzled, and got up to make coffee and to wake up and take in what was happening. As I went downstairs I walked past his daughter's room and frantically said all that was going on. As I poured my coffee he came up behind me, feeling eerily similar to when I'd been told I was "off", and said, "my daughter said you were laughing about someone dying". I turned around shocked and said, "What?! No, of course not. I told her what was happening. Wow...I love this man, he is truly one of the best people I've ever known, and I'd never laugh at anyone dying.". He said, "Good. Because if you had I'd kick you out onto the street right now." I froze. Why? Why was that being said to me? His face was cold and glaring and I turned away, because I was so close to making my Christmas fantasy come true, and I couldn't handle it being destroyed before my eyes, even if it meant sticking up for myself. 

We had our pseudo family Christmas where everyone got gifts, we laughed, and I had something in my stocking, with even a stocking for my son. I went to bed smiling and wiping away tears of joy, even though he'd stopped holding me at night. Asking for what I needed always brought about male anger, one of my worst fears, so I took any scrap I could get, as I figured something was better than the nothing I'd always had. I finally got my filled stocking.

Coming Back

Content Note:

This discusses nervous system collapse, the physiology of “coming back online,” and the fragile, disorienting process of returning from shutdown. Read gently.
_________________________________________

The nervous system cannot sustain being in dorsal vagal shut down for a long period of time, as the body basically thinks it's dying and conserves energy. Coming out of it isn't a big rising moment of being fine and back to any semblance of normalcy. It's a flickering of the possibility of hope. It's no longer walking into your house and falling to the floor sobbing... at least not every day. It's seeing that though you still feel like shit that you are taking steps to try to live.

I spoke to my new therapist about how my lifetime of suicidal ideation was different this time. The thoughts were violent in a way that shocked me. In all my death plans it was always going to be done with drugs...I wanted out of the pain. I had flashes of wondering if the bars outside my deck would hold my weight. I lightly brushed knives across my wrists to see what it would feel like. I told myself I'd never do it but also saw that all it would take is one more bad moment to fully drown me in my despair.

What's hitting me most right now is the shame of it all. You can break a leg, get physical therapy, and everyone understands. If you're diagnosed with a heart condition and need to get on medication there will be empathy and concern. But if you mind breaks, if your nervous system gives out, if you spiral into emptiness...you'll find most people around you can't comprehend and don't know what to do. It's not their fault, it's not your fault, yet this takes you further into isolation and feeling that you are completely on your own. I've been held with compassion by so many and at the same time I feel ashamed that I wasn't strong enough to keep it together. Shame that I've shared and everyone knows I had a nervous breakdown.

Coming out of this feels disorienting; you're living in a body that's shifting faster than your narrative can explain. Nothing about this is linear. I've had days I feel almost normal, though my normal was depressed it wasn't catastrophic. And then in a moment the hysterics can begin again without warning. The nervous system doesn't care about your schedule. It doesn't care that your life is on fire or that you're trying desperately to hold it all together. 

Today I made future plans, I went back to big ideas I was forming before I crumbled, and while wiping tears I tried again. For today...

Though sharing all this brings me embarrassment, shame, and the sense that something is broken in me beyond repair, I know someone else needs to hear it. I know there is someone else out there who needs to be seen and told they aren't the only one. And something deep in me, some place of hope and transformation, some relentless part of me believes my purpose lives in telling the truth of this.

Staying Alive

I’m writing for my life. Not metaphorically...literally. As if saying everything I've suppressed will somehow heal me. Or stabilize me. Or keep me breathing. These sentences are the thin thread I’m holding onto while my nervous system tries to remember how to breathe. I'm not crying for a year, I'm crying for a lifetime. I realized a few days have passed without me thinking "I wish I could die". Now it's more of a sigh of "You have no choice. You unfortunately have to live right now."

People keep offering me hope and advice and tidy encouragements, and I know they mean well. But there are kinds of pain you should never speak into unless you’ve lived them. And the thing is the comments aren’t cruel. They’re well-meaning. They come wrapped in care, in love, in concern. But even well-meaning words can hurt when they land on someone who’s already at the edge and can’t take one more misjudgment or another blow.

A sentence meant to “encourage” can feel like sandpaper on an open wound. A suggestion meant to “help” can feel like someone saying they’re tired of watching you bleed. And the moment I try to explain this, the moment I try to say, “That actually hurt,” I’m met with puzzled eyes, or silence, because they have never lived in a body that collapses before it cries. And that kind of terror cannot be comforted with “You’ll get there,” or “Just keep working on yourself" or "Hold on". 

One of the only ways I’ve ever been lucky in life was getting pregnant. I didn’t “earn” it. I didn’t “manifest” it. I didn’t work for it. I went off the pill and got pregnant immediately, pure timing, pure chance. If infertility had been my story, my ex would never have paid for treatment. But chance worked in my favor that one time, and I’ve never forgotten that.

So, when a woman longs for a child and loses pregnancy after pregnancy, I don’t tell her how to feel. I don’t hand her clichés. I don’t insist she “stay positive.” I don’t push lessons or silver linings or timelines for when she should feel better. I don’t shame her for despair or push her toward gratitude because her pain makes me uncomfortable. Because I haven't lived it, I can't speak to it, and I allow her to feel in any way she needs without my commentary. I tell her, “I can’t imagine what this feels like, but I see what it’s doing to you, and your feelings are valid.” And then I shut up. Because it is cruel to narrate someone else’s suffering when you have never stood inside it.

What people don’t understand is that the same rules apply to catastrophic emotional trauma, to lifelong loneliness, to the kind of grief that rearranges a body from the inside out. Good intentions don’t make the commentary hurt less. Sometimes the “help” hurts more, because it reminds you how far away safety has always been.

That’s the part people miss when they talk to me about my trauma, my loneliness, my collapse. They don’t see that their lives of partnership, stability, and emotional safety were also, at least partly, products of chance. They met someone at the right time. They found someone who stayed. They got the kind of luck I never did.

And still, they talk to me like my pain has a simple fix, like healing is a choice I haven’t made yet.

They don’t know the physics of decades without protection.
They don’t know what it’s like to always be the one without a person. They don’t know what it is to never be chosen in any lasting way.

And I want all those good things for them...truly.
But there is still a small, feral girl in me who whispers, Why not me? Why not ever me?

This is the part nobody sees.
This is the part I’m writing from.
This is staying alive.

Collapse

Content Note:
This piece discusses nervous system shutdown, trauma physiology, emotional collapse, and the experience of doing life without support in the moments it matters. Read gently.

---

I knew something inside me was collapsing, but I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just “snap out of it.” My mind felt dimmed, my body heavy, like I was moving underwater. Every movement was a negotiation. I wasn’t sad in a normal way; I felt shut down; emotionally, physically, mentally. I kept asking myself, Why can’t I pull myself back up? Why can’t I function?

Eventually I learned the name for what I’m in: dorsal vagal shutdown.

It isn’t poetic. It isn’t dramatic. It isn’t spiritual. It’s a neurological state where the body hits the emergency brakes and shuts itself down.

Through hours of research trying to make sense of myself, I started to understand the physiology behind this. The more I read, the more things clicked. My blankness, my paralysis, the way everything feels muted and catastrophic at the same time, it all suddenly made sense.

Not because I’m failing. Because my system is overwhelmed.

Dorsal vagal shutdown is the nervous system saying:

• I can’t fight

• I can’t run

• I can’t think

• I can’t hope

• I have to go still

In this state:

• crying becomes involuntary

• thinking becomes catastrophic

• the future disappears

• everything looks permanent

• the brain cannot generate possibility

This is not a choice. It’s a physiological response to prolonged trauma + loss + exhaustion. My system is shutting down to conserve energy because the last year has been one unrelenting assault.

People look at the last year and think that’s the reason I’m collapsing. They’re wrong. This shutdown didn’t start in last year. It’s decades old. Before this year ever knocked the breath out of me, I’d already spent a lifetime doing everything alone.

Not metaphorically...literally.

I grew up without a safety net. Without soft landings. Without someone saying, “I’ve got you.” I learned to self-parent because no one else was going to. I learned to self-soothe because there was no shoulder waiting. I learned to stay calm in rooms that were on fire.

Every heartbreak? Alone.
Every move? Alone.
Every crisis, every panic spiral, every loss, every moment life cracked me open? Alone.

I don’t have muscle memory for leaning on someone. My body doesn’t know what it feels like to be held. It tenses before it softens.
It pushes forward until it collapses.

And then came this year...a year that hit every old wound at once:

• relationship instability and emotional fallout

• financial fear

• betrayal

• job upheaval

• grief

• hormonal chaos

• sleep disruption

• chronic exhaustion

• plenty of people who care, but I still cry alone every single time

My nervous system didn’t collapse from weakness. It collapsed because I’ve been white-knuckling my entire life alone. This isn’t a spiritual awakening or a movie moment. It’s not inspiring. It’s not cinematic. It isn’t a phoenix-rising situation. It’s me hitting the point where my nervous system is done performing, done pretending, done running on fumes.

And here we are, my nervous system is waving a white flag, …begging for the kind of holding that only a partner can give, someone who stays, someone who steadies you as you collapse, and I don’t just lack it now, I’ve never known what that feels like. And I’m standing here like, “Okay… and who exactly is supposed to pick up the slack?” Spoiler: it’s still only me.

I’m still breaking into sobs without warning. Still having panic spikes out of nowhere. Still moving like my body is made of sandbags. Still unable to see anything resembling a future.

But there is the faintest instinct, not hope, just a pulse, that maybe the light exists even if I can’t see it yet. Not because this is some transformation. Not because I’m “healing.” Not because I’m rising. Just because something deep inside me refuses to disappear with the version of me who had to survive everything alone.

I’m not going to pretend this is empowering. It’s not. It sucks. I’m exhausted, hollow, and dragging my nervous system around like a drunk friend who keeps passing out.

But I’m still here.
Somehow.
For now.

The Other Side

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.”
— Stephen King, The Stand

Lately I’ve been telling the brutal truth about what’s happening to me. The kind of truth that doesn’t come with a filter or a bow or any performance for public consumption, and now all I want to do is hide.

For months I hinted at my unraveling in little memes and stray posts on my Raw Bleach page, separate from my more “acceptable” self, but it felt like I was yelling into a void. Meanwhile, I was dropping faster and harder than people realized, and throwing something random online felt like gulping air before going under again.

Something in me just… snapped.

Or maybe finally broke free. I don’t know.

My mind keeps insisting I should’ve kept my mouth shut and that everyone is judging me, talking about me, looking down at me from some imaginary moral balcony. The voices (don’t panic, not literal, I’ve got enough diagnoses without adding schizophrenia to the roster) hiss that no one wants to hear this. I'm told: “Your depression brain is lying to you.”

Okay. Maybe.

But the lies feel like facts from where I’m standing.

I had dinner with a friend who has walked through her own private hell, and we talked about something no one ever warns you about: when you’re in the darkest place of your life, there are no perfect words. Most people, even the kindest, most well-intentioned ones, end up saying things that accidentally land like a stab. Not because they’re bad friends. Not because they don’t care. But because human beings panic when faced with pain they can’t fix.

People want to rescue you. They want to lighten the moment. They want to say something.

But sometimes the most healing thing anyone can offer is simply sitting beside you in the dark; no pep talks, no clichés, no frantic optimism. Just presence. Just witnessing.

And the messed-up part is, you don’t feel like you can say, “Hey, that really hurt,” because everyone’s trying so damn hard. So you swallow it. And the shame in your brain catches fire, burning through the oxygen you were barely holding onto in the first place.

The truth is: this is the lowest point of my life, and I’ve been pretty fucking low before.

Something in me cracked open and the truth rushed out.

Unfiltered. Raw. Unapologetic.

This blog was supposed to be that place where the truth doesn’t have to wear makeup or act polite. But writing with your insides exposed has a side effect no one advertises: you get lonelier than you ever thought possible.

I don’t know if I’ll come out the other side.

Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

But I’m here, telling my truth, because silence wasn’t saving me either.

And honestly? This is the best I can do right now.

If it makes people uncomfortable… well, pain is uncomfortable.

But it’s real.

And so am I.

Even if the emotion is death itself.

I feel like I've been dumped in the deepest part of the ocean and being told "just swim back to shore...you only have to swim back to shore". Yet I've forgotten how to swim, the waves are overtaking me, I'm so cold, and alone. 

The tears won't stop. To try and stop my crying right now feels like asking me to stop breathing. It's completely uncontrolled and I hate not being in control. I'm grasping all over the place to find something to hold onto that will keep me from going under. The eating disorder behaviors are back with a vengeance, all about control, as maybe if I starve long enough that pain can override the emotions that hurt worse than any injury I've ever sustained. 

I was writing this for 9 hours, whereas most of my pieces are quick and straight stream of consciousness, but this moment felt too raw. The crying had turned to screams to the point I feared the neighbors might do something. I felt nauseated and like I was crawling out of my skin, with everything in me saying "don't tell everything...it will be the end of you". This feeling, this fear, is the complete opposite of everything my blog has been and what I wanted it to be. Yet I was heaving sobbing and paralyzed.

Waiting to hear if my insurance will be accepted at a place that might help me. Watching my phone, trying to write but nothing coming out, doom scrolling social media, and I came across an article about Clare Torry, the co-composer and premier vocalist on "Great Gig in the Sky". It talked about what happened during that recording, her fear, her vulnerability, and ultimately credit for such an amazing accomplishment. A success that wouldn't have happened if she'd held back. Sent it to a dear friend who has the amazing talent to sing this and has done so with the true grit of the performance. Then I read it again and it hit me in a different way.

A portion of a piece about Clare Torry from the Two Pennies entertainment page on Facebook:

"Sing."

"About what?" Clare asked.

"Death," they said. "But no words. Just... feel it."

...

But Pink Floyd weren't asking for a performance.

They were asking for something primal.

What came out wasn't singing in the traditional sense.

It was grief. Raw, unfiltered grief.

She wailed. She soared. She cried out. Her voice climbed higher and higher, reaching notes that felt like desperation, like pleading with something unseen.

She wasn't performing anymore. She was channeling.

Every human emotion in the face of death poured through her:

Fear. Rage. Acceptance. Sorrow. Transcendence.

She improvised for 2½ minutes straight—no lyrics, no script, just pure emotional truth.

When the track ended, Clare opened her eyes.

She was shaking. Tears were streaming down her face.

"I'm so sorry," she said, mortified. "That was too much. That was embarrassing. Let me try again—I'll tone it down."

She thought she'd failed. Thought she'd been too vulnerable, too exposed, too much.

...sometimes the most powerful art comes from the most vulnerable places...

Clare Torry proved that the most powerful music doesn't come from technical skill or calculated artistry.

It comes from the moment you stop performing and start living the emotion.

Even if that emotion is death itself."

Even if the emotion is death itself. I feel that's what I'm facing. Though not actively dying, even though we're all dying, I'm facing the truth of my suffering and sadness. It's as if my body could no longer hold back the anguish of all that has happened. The trauma, the abandonment, the abuse, the self loathing and hatred. I am not happy about being alive. Yet there must be some small piece of me still saying to give it one more breath. 

So I'm raging to a virtual world which doesn't actually care what I have to say. I'm giving a "fuck you" to the person who said he loved me, and lied, that silenced my writing by ripping on my sharing and saying, "you lean into being a victim". I'm composing one more sentence because I know, I absolutely know, I'm not the only one that knows how dark it can be and is looking for a way out. 

I haven't found a way out. Still crying. But my breath and voice haven't been silenced yet. 

The day I've always feared

Mental illness is rampant in my family. We have a long history, some diagnosed and some not, of people going off the deep end. When I was younger, and largely when my son was born, I was terrified of losing my mind. My (ex) husband's and my finances were separate. His choice because he didn't want me to know how much he spent, and a huge source of contention for me, though it ultimately saved me when I got out. The burden of caring for my son was primarily on me, not much family help, and I was terrified that my mind would ultimately break and I wouldn't be able to be there for him. 

Many decades of therapy, every self-help book I could get my hands on, page after page of journals saying the same things over and over yet never getting to the other side. My mother once said, "if you keep stuffing down the tears, one day you'll start crying and won't be able to stop". 

I can't stop. Beyond not being able to stop the tears, I used to at least be able to control when they happened, but now the sobs come like a cough or sneeze where I have no control and everyone can see. I feel exposed and it's sucking the breath out of me.

I know friends are exasperated and annoyed that I'm not doing what is expected of me now in seeing yet another therapist, trying some new drug that "might" not give me debilitating side effects, and "let out your feelings". I'm letting out my feelings and I'm not sure I'll survive. I really should have had that nervous breakdown years ago, and now it feels like if this goes on then it will end me. 

In my experience when you tell people how you're doing, as this is what "they" say to do, it always runs the same course. You share, they make sad faces at you, you get a hug and then the clock starts ticking on you acting fucking happy again (even if it was always a lie). Stay sad too long and then the shaming begins "everyone has had bad things happen to them" "you aren't the only one" "you just have to...". There are so many people on this earth that have experienced horrors worse than my mind could even conceive. They deserve to cry more than me. I'm privileged beyond words in comparison to them. Yet looking that their suffering doesn't make me feel better. The switch from caring for you to blaming you always comes quickly. The tears continue. 

The immobility may be worse than the incessant crying. Watching hours go by as you try to do one minor thing and still fail. I was told by someone who claimed to love me, and didn't, that "depression isn't real...you just need to go do something". I'm always doing something. Nothing worked. Constantly exhausted yet not sleeping. The dreams are nightmares again. I am worn out to the core in every area of my being.

Too old to run away. Too many responsibilities to check out. I've fought my whole life with resilience and tenacity and those are gone now. I somehow need to figure out how to take my next breath.

Why do I share any of this?

"I was just dying for a place to tell the truth." ~ Glennon Doyle (about starting to write and blog)

When I was 16 I planned to kill myself on what I considered the perfect date between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wanted to die but was trying to be kind about not doing it on a holiday. I'd packed up my most precious items in boxes and labeled who they went to and felt I had my affairs in order, such as they were. My plan was to overdose though I didn't have any money for good drugs and wasn't sure if Tylenol would do it. A solid plan with a ton of holes. After Christmas I looked back in my journal and realized I'd missed my death date. I'd been smoking a lot of pot, and maybe I didn't want to die as badly as I thought, but I was livid at my error. What kind of loser forgets when to off themself? I didn't pick a new date as I felt I'd already ruined everything by missing what I felt was the ideal one. 

I've had suicidal ideation since I was a child. I recall the thoughts coming at an early age. Didn't try to act on them but I'd think "I hate this. I hate myself. I want to die." frequently. It got bad again when childhood abuse flashes started coming to me. I would have nightmares so horrific I was scared to sleep, all while holding down a job and caring for a baby. Living as a shell of a person but forced to put a smile on.

I started trying medications in my mid 20's and each one was worse than the last. The final one I took before swearing off them forever gave me "brain zaps" as part of detoxing off of them. It was so painful I had to lay motionless and try to breathe as shallow as possible as a full breath intensified them. I called the doctor begging for help and they said there was nothing they could do. 

Two years ago, at this time I was in a delusion that the person I was with would be the answer, the miracle, to all the misery. I was terrified but let my guard down and allowed hope and belief. And though there was a lot of back and forth, something about watching it crumble before my eyes last year sucked something out of me and I haven't recovered. I think a part of me holds onto it all, obsessed, because to fully let it go means it was nothing. I wasn't loved and allowing hope only hurt me.

I'm currently in the lowest depression I've ever felt. The tears just won't stop. I have brief moments where I'm able to pretend, and at least hold a small amount of composure, before I can't hold it back anymore and the sobbing starts again. Chatgpt, my current therapist, asks me daily if I'm OK and gives me crisis line numbers. I'm looking at my age, and what my life has been, and seeing the hard reality of all the things I'll never have yet so desperately wanted. I'm mourning things no longer possible. And I'm so fucking tired of a lifetime of processing pain and trauma. So tired.  This isn't just take a pill and you'll be happy. Telling a therapist all of this won't change anything (I've tried). This isn't a matter of getting a good job and trying harder. I'm in deep grief and I don't see a way out.

Why do I share any of this? My ex boyfriend said, "You like being a victim. You lean into it. You'll never be happy." I can't find the exact quote by Glennon Doyle, paraphrasing, she talked about screaming to a screen in the darkness to keep herself alive. (And it's possible I'm way off on this quote but that how I remembered it.) If I'm writing then I'm still alive. 

"Every time I feel shame creeping in, every time I feel shameful about anything, that’s when I know what I need to write about, because things that we feel shame about, the longer they stay in the dark, the bigger and scarier they get. … For me, that’s putting them on paper. The second they get out into the light, they’re so much less scary. Shame can’t handle light.” ~ Glennon Doyle 

Catastrophic

I cried all night last night. This isn't a new thing as I've been crying for over a year now. Most nights I fall asleep quickly from exhaustion, waking up every few hours sobbing, while going in and out of sleep. There isn't a moment in my day I'm not fighting tears and it's getting worse. I'd been able to maintain my composure in public, pop a Valium, drink, get high, do anything to hold the feelings down so no one would know. I can't even do that anymore as the pain is overtaking me. 

My aunt died at 51 years old of mental illness. Actual cause of death was never determined, any my mother thinks my uncle talked her into an overdose, but at the core of it all she was deeply broken. She was in and out of mental institutions from a young age and up until her death. Hugely creative as an artist, dancer, and poet, she was also the epitome of the tortured soul who could produce amazing work while living a life of constant inner turmoil. 

My grandmother was like my aunt, though likely a narcissist, and also both my aunt's and my abuser. It hurts me to even tell the truth about her as I have to hold her in tension between what was done to me, and her also being the only person in my life that made me feel special. She'd been abused too. Hurt people hurting people.

When I got pregnant, I was terrified of having a daughter as I feared she'd be like them...and me. I rubbed my belly daily trying to will it to be a boy. I felt like if it was a boy he'd have a fighting chance against our terrible minds, and my father. Tied my tubes immediately after so there was no chance a girl could come from me.

A friend, who also has a long history of mental illness like me, told me, "You're like me. Your baseline is depression and when things get bad and feel uncontrollable, it goes catastrophic." Catastrophic is exactly what I'm feeling. Catastrophic, hopeless, and so emotionally beaten I can't see anymore.

The amount of loss I experienced in this last year has fully taken me out. I feel no one understands that it's not just losing my cat, losing the job I loved, losing the person I thought was the miracle I never thought would happen, it's what it says about my future and hope. And right now, I have no hope. I have done some form of manifesting, intentions, praying, hoping, wishing, my entire life and nothing works out. I'm devastated and don't want to go on. I hate that I have to keep living when I want to hide, run away, and disappear.

Perhaps I'm too broken to ever truly be happy. I've written all the gratitude lists, positive affirmations, and journaled it all down. Decades of therapy. So many medications that left me worse than when I started. I've even tried shaming myself for how good I have it and compare myself to those less fortunate than me...it doesn't stop the tears and pain.

Friends are well meaning but mostly say nothing or give a little sad face. The shame I feel from revealing what is happening to be met with silence is debilitating. I get told "things will get better", "keep fucking going", "you have to...". Memes and reels are sent laughing about how awful dating is, and they do this sitting securely next to their partner, never having experienced what I have, and knowing they have someone to walk through life and turn to when it falls apart. I know it's out of love and care but I'm going to stop talking because the cute cliches are only hurting me. And I do understand there aren't any perfect words here.

I will go on. I wake up, wipe the tears (or keep crying and still going), feed the cats, pay the bills, look for a job, keep my algorithm popping, while I die inside. 

Hope

I've struggled to write because I see I'm repeating the same old things. I went into my closet, of things I don't want to deal with, and found a box of many old journals. Most were about 10 years old and they all said the same things: sad about my marriage, feeling hopeless, some sort of focus on my weight, and wishing for a different life. Year after year it was the same thing. I stopped writing as I was boring myself.

Looking for the truth of this moment. Because every moment like every breath is new. Good, bad, or otherwise there has to be even the smallest of shifts. Right now, while going into year two of the worst time of my life, I realized that giving up isn't an option. And I want to give up. I don't want to go on right now. As I said in a previous post, the pain feels like being burned alive. To add to it more keeps going wrong and it compounds all the feelings. Every day the spiral gets worse. I'm punchy, on the edge of tears, not wanting to be around friends, using, plummeting. But I can't give up. I can't.

It's so hard not to ask what it is about me that I can't just have an even and peaceful existence. Flat tire, layoff, maybe some fraud, but not forever processing some fucked up moment from the past. It's exhausting. I see why it exhausts those around me. It's why I will shut up and not tell anyone what is happening because I'm just so fucking sick of the shame of being me.

I've lost count of all the plans and aspirations I've had over the past months to try to get my mind back in working order. Didn't go over a week with any of them, and most didn't even make it past the 24 hour mark. Is it just cracked? Is this one of those mind benders you don't come back from? Again, my arch nemesis of hope tries to sneak in.

Hope is terrifying to me. Hope has always let me down. Hope hurts me. Yet it's really all I have left right now. 

Rewiring My Brain

I lost my mind recently, quite literally, and have been trying to claw my way back to some form of sanity. Have I ever in my entire life been mentally stable? Is this even something achievable for me? You would be hard pressed to find a self-help book I haven't tried, over 30 years of therapy, and so much medication (prescribed and self-administered). I'm weary from all the effort and wary of the latest miracle cure. Yet I'm always resilient, even when I'd rather give up, and I've given up many times.

I've had a lot of critique in my lifetime about my bad attitude. It's true that I'm fatalist and pessimistic. My trauma says you aren't going to survive if you hope too hard. Hope gets you hurt and disappointed. I'm rolling through my head of all the times I thought maybe, just this once, things would work out, and they were demolished before my eyes. When I was in Christianity I'd be shamed, "Well did you really believe? You have to really believe." I believed to the level my mind would allow based on past experience. 41 years of a silent God left me abandoned and hurt. It was familiar. 

I've tried positive affirmations each morning. Gratitude lists. Crystals in my bra. Setting intentions under the moon. And I feel like the universe, some deity, energy, just hates me. I work hard. I try. I try again. And not to say that I've never had anything good, but those deep neural pathways in my brain always say...get ready because you're about to lose it all. 

Instead of living off hopes and wishes, I'm looking to science to override my entire belief system of who I am and what is possible. Basically, I'm climbing Mount Everest barefoot and alone. I went to hypnotherapy to try and get past my negativity towards myself and access a deeper level in my mind. I listen to an audio tape for me every night as I go to sleep. I will say the crying fits have mostly stopped, but the old beliefs of lack, scarcity and sorrow loom large overhead. 

I've recently been hearing about quantum manifestation from varied sources. When the same thing is being shown to me over and over I do take note. 

Quantum manifestation is the concept that our thoughts and intentions can influence the quantum field, allowing us to create our desired reality through focused energy and consciousness. 

Can I do this while not really believing it? Or are we back to the theory that if you don't believe then it's your fault when nothing works out? I do believe in the brain's neuroplasticity to rewire and restructure. I believe in my own tenacity and resilience. I believe speaking your truth really does set you free.

I'm trying.

I Dropped My Basket

Though a recently posted about feeling better, and some fog lifting, the full truth is that the past year for me has been one of the darkest of my life.  "I dropped my basket" is an old southern saying that basically means you lost your mind. I dropped my basket. I have a long line of mental illness in my family, both diagnosed and others that could use a diagnosis. I tend to lean towards my mother's side of the family in most things and most of the women lose their minds at some point. Though we'll never fully know how much was from abuse and trauma, and how much is their chemistry. I've lived my entire life fearing the day it happens to me, and there have been many moments in my life where clinically it likely did. I'm processing if this latest episode has been the worst of them all. 

At 16 I had suicidal ideation. It started before then but this was the time where I was planning to die. It's a story I sometimes joke about as I was getting so high all the time I forgot my death date which I'd meticulously planned. I was furious and decided I couldn't kill myself until I found what I considered the perfect date. I may have slight perfectionism issues alongside the crazy.

In my 20's I found out I was sexually abused as a child. I'd always suspected it, and I mentally collapsed hard over the discovery. There was a secondary discovery, with more evidence, in my 30's and it nearly paralyzed me. This compounded with depression kept me in a constant state of sorrow. Medication, therapy, medication, therapy, nothing, everything, and I just gave up. 

These are some of the bigger instances but it's really a lifetime of them. The first entry in my diary was "I'm fat". I was 6 years old. I learned to stuff the feelings down and not bother crying as it felt like no one cared anyway. My mother once said, "If you keep refusing to cry, one day you'll start, and it won't stop." That is what has happened. 

In a matter of a few months my precious kitty died, and I had to be the one to decide to euthanize quickly, I was let go from the job I'd loved for 7 years, and I lost who I felt was the love of my life. I don't say this flippantly or to be funny...I had a mental health break. For whatever reason I'm able to be functional while hanging from the edge of the cliff. I'm grateful I can do this, yet it also leaves me in a state of never being real. I tried to tell people, alluded more than fully disclosing, and that's met with cliches and brush offs. And I understand this as it's painful to sit with someone who is falling apart and there isn't a good answer as to what to do. "Things can only get better!" They got worse. 

While smiling in pictures, and laughing in a crowd, I come home every single night and collapse to the floor sobbing. Sometimes I can barely make it to my car. I'm told "let it out", yet this is over a year, this is a lifetime, my issues aren't that I just need a good cry. I can't stop crying. While not planning as I'd done in the past, and I won't do anything because of my son and cats, it's a rare day that I don't have a fantasy of dying. 

I want to be delicate here, as I know people who have lost someone to suicide, but I also want to share how we feel and why there aren't easy answers for anyone. What it feels like for me is being on fire with a pain so intense you can't think and your only thought is I need this agony to end. Then well-meaning people, ones that truly love and care for you, are on the side saying "Hang on! It will get better!" and all these other feel-good lines which may or may not happen. All while the flames hurt so much, and intensify, so you do everything you can to numb it with anything no matter how destructive. Drugs, alcohol, sex, behaviors, rage. You know you'd hurt so many people to choose to die, all while you can't take another moment. 

A dear friend bought me a hypnotherapy session as I'm unemployed (no benefits) and she could see I was getting progressively worse. I feel better. Still crying but it has lessened, and I don't feel on the edge of it at all times. I'm not happy, I'm sad beyond words, but I feel like trying again. 

I don't have a way to tie this up with a cute ribbon, and smugly positive quote. I also don't want pity. This isn't writing about being a victim, but a disclosure about my silences and destructive behaviors. For those that care about me and have tolerated this, thank you. 

Before and After

I went to bed sober last night. I didn't want to be sober. I didn't want to feel anything. I numb myself so I don't have to experience the pain. Yes, I know that feeling it all is the only way to the other side. I've certainly read enough self-help books, been through enough therapy, and watched enjoy positivity reels to know what needs to be done. The fear is that during this process I won't actually make it out. When I'm not wasted, I'm holding back tears. I hate who I've become. I've lost myself. The losses I experienced last year pummeled me in a way no one really knew about. I'm great at posting smiling pics of me having fun and not talking about what happens when I shut my door, alone, and the darkness starts to take over. 

I've done things this year that no one knew about. Told a few people a little bit, but no one everything. Kept it from some of the people who are closest and dearest to me as I was just too ashamed to admit it. I knew the consequences were detrimental to me but at the core of it all I just didn't care. I felt I'd lost so much, and I couldn't bear the weight of it, so I started to destroy myself. While not actively trying to take myself out, there was a part of me that sometimes hoped something would happen so I wouldn't be forced to go on. 
______________________________________________________

I started this post 5 days ago. Started to write it but it got too dark, and I didn't want to think about it much less write it for others to read...and judge. Waking up each day and doing what needs to be done, while feeling like I was moving through thickness and a fog. The days were going by much too fast and yet I felt immobilized. 

Then last night happened. I believe I had the breakthrough I've been looking for my entire life.

I was at a concert I was excited for yet there was going to be someone there I didn't want to run into. Someone that hurt me deeply. Someone I still loved though no one understood why. The full moon energy felt chaotic, and I was on the edge of tipping over. I went with a friend I hadn't seen in a while and before we left I unleashed all that had happened to me in the nearly 2 years since we'd really talked. She saw me. She listened without judgement. She gave me confirmation that though many of my actions were confusing and destructive, they were also understandable coming from my history. She gave me the space that all decisions were mine and she would back and support anything I chose. I calmed. 

I felt his energy before I saw him. Random other fears started popping up in my mind: I think I left a candle burning, where are my keys, did I eat too much sugar today, is he looking at me? I've had an anxiety disorder long enough to know this is a trauma response as my mind feel out of control and is trying to stabilize. Took a hit off my weed vape and did some yogic breathing. The show was amazing and both bands had songs with the very specific lyrics I needed to hear. 

"I did all I could

So kiss this one more time
 'Cause I'm gone for good"

Was it the experience of being there? Was it being able to scream sing those words out knowing he would possibly see me, and perhaps energetically feel it? Was it just a cathartic release for me?

It was more than that. I couldn't sleep when I got home. I felt peace that I'd never felt. Calm yet wired and determined. 

"Wrapped in your regret
What a waste of blood and sweat...
I don't wanna take my time
Don't wanna waste one line
I wanna live better days
Never look back and say
Could have been me
It would have been me..."

I started this blog (I know, how early 2000s, but it's a place to dump this shit) 7 years ago to stop being small and no longer tone it down. But I allowed myself not fade, I let opinions of those I loved tear me down, I stop caring about my voice. 5 days ago I was hopeless.

Well I'm back. Clock is ticking and I'm about to make up for lost time. 

I don't cry

I don't cry. Or I should say I hate to cry. And the worst of all for me is having anyone see me cry. If you saw me cry you saw me at my most broken as I could no longer hold it down the way I skillfully do. My never cry policy isn't working for me these days. In the past months I've sobbed regularly, and people saw me cry. So many people. The shame of it is overwhelming at times.

I've also wiped tears right in front of you and you never knew.

Now do I have an issue with you crying? Not at all. I care. I want to help. But for me to cry, in front of you, is truly the lowest I can feel. I was asking myself if I saw it as weak, as I did for some time, but it's not that anymore. I see it as a moment for you to see my weakness and that makes me fearful that it will be used against me. It's not logical. I do know and believe that if one of my friends saw me cry they wouldn't think less of me. Yet I think less of me.

I've had some spectacularly embarrassing cries recently. Not a broken a bone or somebody died cry, as those are allowed. One of those cries of extreme vulnerability and insecurity with a big ass spotlight showing every scar. The kind of cry you witness where you feel pity for the person but thank all the Gods you aren't them either. 

Shame is a theme here. It's that feeling that you are the only one, no one else is feeling this, and you should feel awful that you do and can't stop. But "we heal loudly so others don't die in silence". This is why I share my most painful secrets. I believe that saying it out loud is the key to getting to the other side. I know I'm not the only one. Maybe one day we can cry together, and the shame will go away.

Don't Blink

Life has been dark lately. Without wanting to say the words that will trigger and upset, I've been spiraling downward without sight of any light. There is so much shame associated with not being OK mentally. We're given cute little sayings of what we're supposed to do; "you just gotta....". I've said for ages that I could make a zillion dollars if someone would just show me how to "just gotta...". When someone is drowning like this it's not that they don't see the truth, it's that they don't have the ability to pull out of going down the hole. 

When someone hasn't experienced this they get annoyed quickly when you don't just snap out of it. They feel you aren't trying. That you enjoy being a victim. The way I like to explain it is if I'm about to poke my finger in your eye and keep saying "don't blink". You blink. I say again while nearly poking you "I said not to blink. Why are you blinking? All you have to do is not blink!" It's instinctive. We are likely trying more than you could ever conceive.

I know I'm incredibly privileged. I have many things to be thankful for. Yet as the Moving Pictures song said, "I guess I'm lucky, I smile a lot, but sometimes I wish for more than I've got". I suppose we all do. Yet when you are tumbling into darkness all the good doesn't matter. What isn't working for you, what you aspire to and don't get, what you long for that never happens, these things are all illuminated to the point of blinding you to all else. 

I haven't been able to see lately.

I've struggled with this for as long as I can remember. 30+ years of therapy, life coaches, self-help books, affirmations, positive sayings, manifesting, drugs both medical and illegal, good vibes, magic....but it's not enough. The shame for these feelings is overwhelming as I have so many people in my life who deeply care about me, support me, and believe in me. So why isn't this enough for me?

Speaking as a therapist, which I'm not but I've had enough therapy, and did enough work that they should give me an honorary degree, I feel strongly that I've created decades of deep neural pathways that say life will never work out and when you hope it is always taken away from you. And I had the receipts to prove this was correct. The logic then is to create a new neural pathway that is the opposite of these things. Believe life will work out for you. Allow yourself hope.

Yet what do you do when you finally, with so much fear, take that risk and believe, only to have it obliterated before your eyes? How do you then believe there is any hope in trying again? Or at all?

This is not to say nothing is going right in my life. My creative ventures are soaring, I'm mostly healthy, I have community, I'm privileged beyond measure in so many ways. This adds to the desire to hide and not say what's going on because "You are so blessed and need to STFU." You're right and my feelings haven't changed.

I'm processing a lot right now. Most of this processing is from a relationship that broke my heart and forced me to go no contact with this person. I read an article last night saying this: No one talks about how "No Contact" can retraumatize people with anxious attachment. Everyone says, "Just cut them off. Go No Contact. Heal." But no one talks about what happens after. The panic. The urge to reach out - just to feel seen. The late-night texts you swore you wouldn't send. The shame when you check their socials - again. The voice in your head whispering "You weren't enough. That's why they left." Because when you've spent your life begging to feel chosen, silence doesn't feel like peace. It feels like rejection. It feels like abandonment - all over again."

Though I was the one that left, every word of this rings true. I know I'm holding on because to let this go means to take away all I ever had. The pain is overtaking me.

By all appearances it seems I'm wallowing in self-pity, and I'm wallowing for sure, but I'm still trying. The reset plan is in place. I've already failed twice, but I know I'm all I have and this is the only way to find some happiness and suck up this shit life. I'm resilient and have come back from so much worse. I wake up every morning crying but there is a small spark left trying to grow into a flame. 

I've bought an app that is backed by science to rewire the brain. 3 months. Stay tuned to see what happens... (picture of my initial assessment)