what do you do when you suddenly realize that the only reason you're alive is because you don't know how not to be? Not because you're particularly attached to living, or have anything to really live for. You simply don't know how to let go.
I have basically nothing tying me to this life. I have no job. I almost never see or talk to my family, and never about the things that really matter. Of the people I still count as friends, I'm not even sure they would notice if I were gone. The only ones who really depend on me are my cats. Some days, they're the only reason I even get up all day.
there are days when I don't even bother to eat. I shower only when I can't stand myself anymore. I clean only when I have to. Bills get paid late, or not at all, because I just can't be bothered to go out to do so.
I wouldn't say I'm depressed. That would imply that I feel SOMETHING. I don't really. It's been forever since I felt something I would call a real emotion. Even then, it's always fleeting. I'm not even sure I'm capable of real emotions. I can't remember a time when I felt anything other than mostly numb.
if I had to guess, I'd say I was about eight or nine.
when I was about 10, I tried to kill myself. I don't think I really wanted to die. I just wanted to stop hating myself, and for everyone else to stop hating me. I just wanted to be SEEN and have someone realize that I was there and in pain and to do SOMETHING to fix it. So, I tried to strangle myself.
turns out, that's impossible. I was sitting on the couch next to my mother. Don't even remember what we were talking about, but I was probably upset over her not doing anything about my brother torturing me. It doesn't really matter, anymore. I just remember wrapping my hands around my neck and pressing it into my knees as hard as I could. I held on as long as I could, until I got so lightheaded I almost passed out and didn't have to the strength anymore. My mother just sat there watching me. After I let go, she just asked me, 'are you done yet?' like I had been throwing a small temper tantrum over not getting the toy I wanted, not like her daughter had just tried to strangle herself.
she never mentioned it again, and I realized (at least in my 10 year old brain) that she just wouldn't care if I did kill myself.
I think that's probably about the time I realized my feelings weren't important enough to talk about. That no matter what I felt or cared about, no one would care enough to pay attention long enough really understand and try to make it better.
maybe that's when I became numb. Maybe I just learned to bury my emotions so deep, that even I can't find find them. After all, if it's not OK to talk about your emotions, then it's not OK to have them.
I know I learned to hide what I was feeling.
it wasn't safe to be happy, because anything that made me happy was taken away. My brother destroyed, stole, and mocked anything and everything he even thought I might enjoy. My mother took away the one thing he couldn't ruin, the one thing that brought me even a little happiness and peace, as punishment whenever I broke a rule.
being angry just wasn't an option. Yelling got me in trouble, no matter what the reason. Any physical expression of anger got me in even more trouble, and usually meant my brother beating on me.
I learned at a very young age, five or six, that crying was never OK. Crying got me yelled at and called a baby. Later, crying only meant my brother would hit me harder, yell louder, and use worse insults. Clearly, being sad was not an option.
I learned not to show emotions. Not to have them. Emotions were bad. They meant pain, in one form or another. Happiness was turned against me and ripped away. Anger meant punishment and pain. Sadness only made me a target for more pain. It was safer not to let anyone know what I was feeling. Not to weakness. Not to care. About anything. In any way.
I was finally learning that at least happiness was an OK emotion, right before it all got ripped away and thrown back in my face. I had friends I counted closer than family. I was in love. I was in college and loved my classes and major.
then my relationship blew up and my heart was torn to shreds, set on fire, and spit on. So, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I internalized it. I buried all the hurt and anger and pain as deep as I could, and I never talked about.
after all, I thought it was finally OK to be happy, and that had proved wrong. There was no way it was OK for me to be sad or angry or upset.
I went numb.
I started to withdraw. I stopped talking to my friends as much, and rarely about anything important. I flunked classes because I couldn't pull myself out long enough to do the assignments.
so, I tried to start over. I transferred schools. I stopped living in dorms, and lived with friends full-time.
it didn't work.
I didn't fail anymore classes, but I withdrew even further into myself. I stopped talking to my friends unless they started it. I stayed in my room most of the time.
then summer came. Suddenly, there wasn't even school to draw me out. I stopped talking to everyone, if it could be at all avoided. I stopped coming out of my room, unless it was to eat or use the bathroom. I bottled it all up so tight and buried it so deep that NOTHING could get out.
I tried, a few times, to fix it, but I didn't know how. Efforts to come back out and interact were either ignored or used as opportunities to berate me for withdrawing in the first place. No one bothered to ask why. No one made the effort to come to me. It was like they expected me to do all the work, without understanding I didn't know HOW.
finally, I was given a choice. Either I let myself be essentially kidnapped (tied up and forced unwillingly into a vehicle) and dropped off with my mother, or I do something about it. So, I left. I packed a bag and started walking. I took what little control over my own life that I could, and I left everything else behind.
that night, I lost everything. Everything I had ever owned. All the friends I long counted as family. The one place I had come to believe where I was safe from being hurt, attacked, lied to, stolen from, and made to feel like less than. The one place where I thought it was safe to be myself. All the progress I'd made in learning to trust myself and others.
they proved to be just the latest in a long line of people who betrayed and abandoned me. Either there's something about me that pushes people away and makes them lie to me, steal from me, and use what they know to cause me pain, or I have supremely bad judgement. Either way, it became clear that it's just not safe for me to let people in and become attached and vulnerable.
I spent the next six months working to build a life for myself. Doing what I could to have a place to live and a way to support myself. I made no effort to make friends or build attachments, and did little to foster the few I still had.
now, more than a year later, I'm no better off. I have a place to live. I have enough to survive, barely. I have my cats. I have a family that knows almost nothing that goes on in my life, beyond funny cat stories. I have friends that only know a little more. Both live at least 3 hours away.
and I've come to the conclusion that the only reason I'm still alive at all is because I just don't know how to not be. Or, maybe, it's because I learned all those years ago that I'm not important enough for it to matter if I die.
I'm just numb.
I let people float in and out of my life without making an effort to either draw them in or keep them there. While I miss having close friends to spend time with and talk to, it's just not worth the pain in the end. I can't think of a single person who picked me over something or someone else. I've always been the expendable one, so it's safer not to have anyone close enough that they'll have to make that choice.
I can go weeks, or months, without talking to anyone but store cashiers. I do go months without touching another human being.
some days I am so starved for human contact I sleep just so I don't have to feel lonely. I dream of conversations so real that I have to seriously think if they actually happened or not. I spend all my time reading, and the characters tend to feel more real to me than the actual people around me. I'm 12 again, and living almost entirely in my head (without actually thinking about and processing the things that need to be).
I just don't know any other way to be. Any way that's safe. Any way that hasn't always ended in pain and betrayal.
I don't know how to be a whole person. I don't know how to feel. I don't even know if it's possible, anymore. Maybe it's too late. Maybe I finally succeeded in killing that part of myself, instead of just burying it. Maybe it was never there to begin with, and I just made it up to make myself feel more real.