First of all, I should apologise. I haven't been in a blogging frenzy lately, so updates have been few and far between. I have also been busy. However that is not the point, the point is I have been trying to pretend everything is OK, when everything is patently not OK. So I am back in the blog, and there are lots of things I want to say, quite a few I need to say and somewhere between the two, things I will say.
On the plus side, I achieved one of my life goals last week in that I did a stand up comedy routine in front of an audience (albeit a small audience). I just want to say that I am extremely pleased with how it went, it is definitely something I will be doing more of and, importantly, nothing I am about to say alters that, or diminishes my enjoyment of and pride in that box being ticked.
Having said that, I have been trying to use the high from that event to cover up the disturbing realisation that I am not OK, but today the tide broke over it, washing away any pretence of OKness. I guess it has always been this way for me, pulsating highs and crushing lows coming one after the other. I have been telling myself that I SHOULD be content, happy, on a high and therefore that I must be on a high. All evidence of my heart however was telling me otherwise. There's a terrible feeling of emptiness in me at the moment, a dread of each day being hollow, purposeless, aimless, wandering. I guess I have come here to talk about it because that is what I do, write about things. Here I can type the words out and know that you will read them and I don't have to subject you to the mess I am in as I press each key, living out the misery I am typing, wincing as I draw the words out of myself, crying as I read it back.
And right there we have one of the major problems. I cannot bear the thought of being burdensome on loved ones, on my friends. I hate the thought of being weak, of being a net 'need' upon people I care about. I have only ever wanted to make you proud of me, proud of knowing me, relaxed around me, happy to be with me. I want to be a giver, for my friendship and my love to come with benefits, not costs. Totally irrational of course, for everyone comes with both benefit and emotional cost, but that is how it is with me. Because I struggle with mental illness, I am determined it shall not affect outside of me, that I contain the negative aspects inside, so that none have to pay in any way for my suffering.
It is a literal insanity, because I am ill-equipped to nurture myself, and nurture surely is a natural thing to expect or hope for from friendship and love? The bleakness I struggle with will not allow me to believe I am capable of giving you the love and tenderness you deserve, and therefore that it would be selfish of me to expect it in return. The ridiculous thing is that however logical it all seems to see it in words, the experience is very different. The actual wrench I feel all the time, in every way, that I would rather rip out my heart and throw it away than let it poison someone else's life. The sheer terror of reaching out, of being in need, of expecting you to meet that need.
What has hit me, and why everything is not OK, is that I have realised I am only ever giving a part of myself to you, only the part I like to think of as relaxed, happy, loving, fun. It means you don't know what it is to be loved by me in totality, and that is an awful thing to realise. Perhaps writing this is the start of a different approach, certainly something needs to change. Perhaps what I am saying is that soon, somehow, I will need to reach out. Because it cannot go on like this, it has done so for far too long.
