Alone

Can anyone relate?
I don't feel horrible, horrible like I used to. Just alone.
Flat.
Last night I thought of two ways to describe it:
1) If the rest of the world is a collection of dots, I feel like the one dot that is out away from the rest, just out in space.

2) There is a room in my brain marked "motivation," but it's dark and unused. The lights have been off for years. Inside sits old, out-of-date machinery covered with inches of dust. Cobwebs are anchored at every surface. Outside of the room sits an old man on a stool. He has been there making sure I can't get in. When I approach the room he says, "you can't go in there" in a loud and booming voice.
So I turn around and walk away... again.
Maybe someday I will learn how to get past him, but I haven't yet.

Alone? No, not exactly. Isolated -- definitely.

Flat? YES! Ninety-nine percent of the time it's "Feelings? What feelings?" One percent is torture.

How heavily armed is that old man?

(((((((((((Elana)))))))))))

I'm so sorry you are feeling alone. I totally understand. I've been there this last week with Thanksgiving, vacations always make it worse. I totally understand the flat feeling too. Been there done that. Sometimes it seems better to feel bad than to feel nothing at all. I hope you feel better soon.

hi elana,

i'm sorry to hear you're feeling alone. has the feeling (it looks like it was this morning) passed, or is it still lingering around? i'm not sure what to say that will help, but i would comment that perhaps you've put up walls to protect yourself, that are leaving you also feeling closed off from others.

for instance, i think you put a lot into PC with reading the posts and providing thoughtful, and often helpful, replies, yet i noticed that your profile won't allow for private messages. there was a point at which you had posted something in response to a thread that i started, and what you said was helpful to me and i wanted to send you an email to say thanks - but i couldn't. just mentioning it because i wonder if there are other people that have been in the same boat, that are trying to reach out to you - but can't.

at any rate, not trying to convince you to change your privacy settings or anything (not at all), just commenting that maybe you're feeling alone because it's safer than feeling close to others.

if i'm way off the mark, just ignore, but please accept a hug

Hi seventyeight,

No, you're on the mark. I'm working on that in therapy...
Thanks for your response.

Yes my motivation room is locked away...blocked by boxes of anxiety, fear, and sadness. So my goals are unmet....if I met them I'd feel a lot better

I do relate. But for me I was thinking a few hours ago that I am one person, in a sea of all the others. To someone outside if they seen me down the street they wouldn't know who I was and they'd know about my feelings and hardships just as much as I'd know about theirs. I started thinking this as I looked over my want to be different.. No matter how different I might make myself to be I'll still be a nobody to that stranger down the street. I don't want to be a nobody to everybody, but not everybody can be a somebody to everyone.. Makes me feel extremely insignificant and alone..

As for the old man.. well my motivation room is more like a house, and that house has a lawn, and when I so much as step on one blade of grass that old man comes running off the porch screaming and yelling: "YOU GET OFF MY LAWN" chasing me, trying to beat me with his cane until he can't see me anymore..

((((Enana05)))) You are not alone...we're here with you.

(((Enana05)))

Thanks for your description of flatness, and connectedness. I managed to 'fail' Group Therapy, needed my own path...

I have managed to break into the block of total flatnessd, mere moments at a time. Just start getting things dusted off and I am locked out again.

Some parts of my motivation are so covered in dust/and webs it seems like another person existed before this one I call me now.

even within myself I am a dot out in space

this reminds me I did not do a Metta Meditation today, this ususally helps me get more connected.

We are not alone. It just feels that way sometimes.

G1

Three times in my life I have totally given up (and this doesn't even include the days of "just" despair). The peace "beyond" was very tempting. I had virtually NO motivation to live. I wasn't even a dot, or a grain of sand, that would mean I existed, and I felt I did not. And I had built walls after the abuse. Walls to keep out anything and anybody, even those that might've been able to share with me, to help me, to be a friend. I closed them all off, I closed myself off. I stayed "flat" inside. The fear of "closeness" and "feeling" was just too much.

So I stayed isolated until I couldn't bear THAT anymore. I think it is natural to want to be around other people, to have friends, to want to trust, but so much stands in the way as we are battered, abused, and learn not to stay vulnerable for very long, that the end result will be pain. How very sad life can be.

So I prayed. What did I have left to lose? And I got an answer. It said to do two things. The first was to go (one more time, it was going to be my last) to yet another pdoc. He saved my life. I got my diagnosis of bipolar disorder (finally, at 48 years old) and was given medications that helped the insanity in my head. The other thing that happened was I went to an AA meeting. Oh how scared I was! But it was a beginning. Dare I hope for something positive? I began to change. Baby steps. from A to Z slowly, A, B, ....

But I still escaped into myself, away from others, even away from myself. I now know I also have a form of dissociative disorder from all the abuse.

But somewhere along the way I started to be curious about the good things around me. It was tempting to want to know the beauty in life. Again, dare I hope? Well. Now I had to enter the "motivation" room, to get the courage somehow, the will, the desire, to become stronger, to learn, to let others in. A weak desire to do these things was my only weapon to get past the old man.

Ok. So I reached out, and to my amazement, grabbed that old man by the nose hairs and yanked him out of that chair. A shouting match ensued. I knew he was weaker than me, I only had to stay strong. I grabbed his cane and threw it out of reach. I kicked his chair out of the way and he stood there trembling, weak-kneed and tired from the battle. With every breath I grew stronger, I found my "voice" and told him to leave and I pointed in the direction for him to go. He paused, I could see the edges of fear form in his eyes, and slowly, reluctantly, he hobbled away, broken and defeated.

I tentatively opened the door. It squeeked from misuse, cobwebs fell away. I entered. Suddenly there was a light. And a sign that said "you are welcome here". I was? I didn't trust the sign. What did it mean? So I took a tentative step.

There was another sign. It said PsychCentral. It's easy to guess the rest. I have found a place where I can be heard. I am learning to share now with my new pdoc all the hurt and pain I have held in forever it seems. I can come here and read what others have gone through...it gives me courage to fight my own hell. And the biggest blessing of all is that my sis and I have reconciled. I now have a true sense of family, albeit small, but that is enough, not only here, but in real life too now. What a blessing this all is! I am so extremely grateful.

It is a hard journey, this thing called life. But I am motivated now to find answers, to heal, even dare to be happy, to learn how to be in control of my life, and learn that no matter what, I have a right to live, a right to exist, and above all else, I am reaching out and within, and learning how to heal.



(thank you dps)