Thursday, August 8, 2013

When?

When I was a teenager I used to have bouts of sheer misery. Days or weeks that would go by where I couldn't sleep, couldn't smile, could not pull myself out of the deep dark funk. Usually these gloomy periods were due to some sort of rejection, by a boy, a teacher, or a school play director. I took everything so very personally. That has always been my nature. A "no", a sneer, a shrug of the shoulders was always an indication of what I lacked. It was representative of  what I wasn't, what I was too much of, or what my ugly, evil core deserved.

Along the way I grew up and experienced these sinister feelings of self loathing less. I like to think it is because I matured and grew more self confident, but in reality it may be simply because as life went on I experienced less rejection. In college I got the guy, a faithful boyfriend who stood by me through it all, I got the friends, the grades and the attention I craved.

I got married, got the jobs, the house and the life that I wanted. It made it easy to push away the ugly feelings, the despair, the self-loathing.

But it is so precarious. My happiness due so much to outside circumstance and affirmation. A small slight and I find myself sliding back into the dreary dungeon of depression. When I couldn't easily conceive, I blamed my body for it's incompetence and hated it endlessly. When a friendship fails, I always blame myself for my lack of charisma, when someone ways no, it is always, always because I'm not enough.

I am a relatively intelligent woman. So when will I ever be able to push this nonsense away? When will I ever stop internalizing every no, every mistake, every failure? I should know better. I should stop feeling it so damn much. Yet, at almost 39, I often feel it just as deeply and painfully as I did in adolescence.

When, when will I ever learn?

3 comments:

  1. Maybe never, 'cause you're human, and not perfect. ;-)

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  2. Funny - a friend of mine and I were just talking about this yesterday. We are almost in our 40's. When will we learn to just get over ourselves and stop obsessing and focusing and devoting/wasting time and attention and emotion to the things that - honestly - don't matter? We are smart chicks. We are moms and we run businesses. We have successful marriages. Yet we still can't pull ourselves together.
    Maybe next year.

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  3. Do you identify these feelings as depression? Sorry to get really personal, but most of what you have written I can identify with. (have always taken everything really personally, been sad for no real reason, had particularly bitter feelings about certain issues/people, major internalization of my feelings, thinking I wasn't good enough, etc.) Depression, if you have it, doesn't go away permanently...I have always suffered from it and I know I will always have bouts that come and go. You just have to keep doing what you are doing -- be self-aware, realize your feelings are, as you say, 'nonsense' -- because you are AWESOME, gorgeous, and have an amazing life!!!!! -- and do things that make you happy (work out, write out your feelings, spend time only with those that make you feel good, etc, etc.) I am sure as you look back on when things seemed dark - they always, always get better! Much love!!!

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