I’m easily traumatized. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but the smallest things hit me like a punch in the face and I reel for days. I try to steady myself on work, on my feet and sticking with routine, but as of now, it’s failing me.
And I’m stuck in this awkward tennis match where I have to be okay for everyone else, to function at work, to exist with my partner, but when it boils down to it, the other side almost always wins.
“Uh, yea, hi, I can’t come into work today because I’m having a nihilistic crisis.”
Not really a good excuse, is it? Channeling the entire weight of the universe through a single human being feels so impossible. I’m being crushed under the sadness and pointlessness of the world. But how do I explain that to someone? How do I tell my partner that I don’t want to have sex because the endorphins from the orgasm will only last so long, I’ll drift back down from the clouds, and be right where I started?
I have nightmares every night, but can’t describe them to other people. They aren’t nightmares filled with killer clowns or zombies trying to eat my brain. They’re feelings, not fear. I wake up, sweaty and disoriented. And the rock in my chest that I thought, for a while, had been dissolved, returns. I feel the weight of the world once again and can’t escape the downpour of emotions my brain is creating.
Is it because I’m weak? Is feeling things so deeply and powerfully a bad thing? The trend right now is drifting back towards spiritualism and Eastern, sort of zen healing. But right now, being connected to Mother Gaia, feeling what I’m feeling, fucking sucks. There’s no other way around it. It fucking sucks.
I want to disengage. I want to pull the plug, extract myself from the Matrix that we live in and just…breathe. I want to cry. I want to scream and break things. I want to cry some more. I want to sleep for eternity.
There is no way for me to outwardly express what the hell is happening in my head. I can’t explain it to anyone, and that isolation is not helping. I’ve always been better with writing my thoughts than expressing them. But even now, I feel as though I’m rambling, that none of this makes sense and sounds outrageously manic. I can assure you, mania is not the hole in the bell jar, keeping me from taking that deep breath of relaxation and relief I so desperately yearn for. No, this is depression.
Full swing, back at it again, depression. Seasonal? Probably. Not worth exploring? Probably. But the trauma. The heart-stopping, gut-wrenching terror I feel when I see anything related to my former employer? Most likely. The agony and sadness felt if I stare too long into the middle distance and allow my brain to derail any safe thoughts I may have? I would say so.
It doesn’t make sense. I never pegged myself as a traumatic person. But even writing this, thinking about what happened, where my life is right now and where I imagined it would be, makes my chest hurt. Listening to my brother censor himself on the phone while we’re talking about work (he works at my former job), is painful. I am wildly proud of him. There’s no reason my sensitivity should keep him from living his life and doing the things he needs to do.
At work? Glassware hitting the floor makes me panic. The servers think it’s funny, because I play it off as a concern for the lack of glassware and the subsequent cost it takes to replace said glassware. It’s not though. It’s truly panic, zipping through my veins and making my hands sweat.
Why am I like this? Why did my personality split off into so many little pieces, so many little factions, that like to rear their heads at terrible times? They like to remind me that I don’t matter, that nothing matters, that we’re playing a game we won’t, we can’t, win. And sometimes, like right now, I think they’re right. What’s the point in all this? Why even care why I’m like this? It spirals so fast and so spontaneously that I’m left screaming and attempting to cling to something solid, something real. My hands find nothing and I’m left to fall.
Self-destruction seems obvious. I broke my record a few weeks ago, but struggle to find the opportunity to do it now. I struggle to do anything now. Even writing this post has taken me an hour. I pause, try to collect my thoughts into coherent sentences, stare at the scars on my hand, and wonder where my blade is. Then, I refocus my energy, and start again, pecking away, returning to the struggle.
Round and round this merry-go-round goes, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be off it.
Stuck Between Lucy and Lucy 