"Wow! You really do have terrible luck!" Not the first time this has been said to me yet it still hurts every time. I had a friend say she wished people wouldn't say this to me as it then puts it in your head that it's real. This is true. I've never felt I had luck, history to prove it, but there is something about someone confirming one of your deepest pains that hits in a way that feels like being stabbed. The man I thought was the love of my life said this to me in Vegas on what was supposed to be a whirlwind New Year's Eve weekend. He was a big gambler, I'm not because of the no luck lifetime streak, so I said I'd just watch. He did some slots and quickly lost. He turned around and said, "You really are bad luck!". I hadn't done anything. I'd stood there. I'd watched. I'd done nothing yet I was getting blamed. He later went on to say it was just a joke but only after I'd fallen apart in a drunken sobbing fit. Sometimes I think what bothers me more than just being one of the unlucky, is that the lucky ones don't acknowledge what they have. I won't say I've had nothing lucky happen. I got pregnant easily, without trying, no miscarriages, and a healthy pregnancy. I fully own this was luck and coincidence, and would never tell a woman with a different experience how she should feel about it, much less give her some "unlucky" comment. How hurtful. Yet I hear it all the time.
I ruminate over these things obsessively. More than I tell people. More than I've told any mental health professional. It's too shameful to fully admit how bad it is. I've tried, alluded to what my mind does, only to be met with a metric shit ton of shame. "Well, you should stop doing that!" "You are only making yourself feel worse!" "How is thinking about that going to help you? You are trying to make yourself feel bad." If I told you to stop breathing for the day, could you? The amount of energy to try and stop the thoughts, and it never working, is a mental level of exhaustion and failure that makes you just give up. Though I don't give up. My methods are sometimes healthy, sometimes very wrong, but I can't explain that I'm trying when all others see is failure.
I explained to my psychiatrist that the rumination has gotten much worse. My nerves feel exposed and things said to me are like acid being poured on them. I find myself on spin cycle "Why did they say that? Like why the fuck say that to me?" She feels I may be getting "flooded" with the extensive ketamine treatments and this feels like a perfect description. Imagine every pain, bad word, trauma, upset, sorrow you have swirling above you at all times. Even when smiling and talking it's there. And then someone laughs at one of the worst traumas of your life....how would you react? I saw a meme that said "Rumination is your mind trying to solve the unsolvable". That hit so hard but also dead on. "Why couldn't my father love me?" "Why am I also the lowest person wherever I go?" "Why did he say he loved me and then purposefully devastated me?" Why? The mind just won't stop.
Six months of ketamine treatments. Nine months since I nearly killed myself. My PHQ-9 scores (depression screening test) had me at 9 - 3 weeks ago. A single digit is a big deal as I was at 21 when I came in. I've been 18 for two weeks. It's been 2 weeks of a lot of stressful situations, reasons to not be happy, but I also feel the regression. And I hear the comments. "I thought you would have been better by now." "Are you doing the work?" "I've been watching and can see you are improving." It feels like have your little sad moment but the clock is ticking.
The catch-22 of being open is that people often mistake access for invitation. I share because openness and vulnerability matter to me, and because someone else may need to hear that they aren’t alone. I was talking to a friend about cutters and said that though I never did it, I always understood it. She said, "Words are your cutting." Possibly one of the most telling statements of my life. I have an almost physical need to say things out loud. It isn’t because I think everyone needs to know everything about me, and it isn’t simply a desire for attention. Saying it lets the pressure escape. But when someone tells you something personal it doesn’t suddenly make you part of the story. It isn’t an invitation to interpret the experience, tell them what it “really” means, or prescribe what I should do next. Sometimes I need what I’ve said to be received, not reviewed.
It's so hard to end a writing piece without a cute conclusion. Though I haven't tied it up with a pretty bow in a while. The hopelessness is overtaking me again. I feel constantly on the edge of breaking down. It's that feeling like when you're about to cry and you don't want anyone to see it, so you pinch yourself and bite your tongue, and act like something is in your eye as the tears come out...all day long.
Though it's frequently discounted, I have been trying my entire life. I've tried. 30+ years since one of my first diagnosis and pumping me with meds. My situation isn't emotionally palatable to most. It's shape shifted, told things weren't as I remember, and all the shame and blame that I should try just a little more. I don't know what to do. Do I shut up, stop giving everyone access to me, and slowly implode? I've resigned myself to living but I don't want to. The memories of that night in December float around in my head and whisper there is a way out of this pain.
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