**EDIT to note: This post below was written and in draft since July. I never posted it. I dont know why. Probably because posting it was the exact same cycle of “help/acknowledgment/silence/you need to feel differently feedback, that this post was essentially about. But this is how it feels, some days thick and so deep, other days like you are floating watching your own life as a tv show, not really living it. but this is a truthful blog, so it is going to be published. I hear you. I wont tell you its wrong or to change, I just hear you, wherever and whoever you are. You are heard and you arent crazy. It really is this hard and this is really how it actually feels.**
I thought about the signs of a complete nervous breakdown last night, what is the options, what can you actually really do to prevent it when you have no options. What is a cry for help when there is no help to really change the causation of anxiety and the stress being suffered. What does a cry for help even do? I think it pushes people further away, its probably why so many people disappear with no signs, people say i had no idea. No one really cares and can really do anything to help anyway. If they did, they’d call or message or email or turn up or check in on you, knowing you are under immense exhaustion and emotional distress. That you window to relief is narrowing and becoming smaller and smaller and less light coming in. knowing they cant fix it, but they still want you to know they care??? You know they are busy, you know they are struggling, but you don’t want to bother them you don’t want to burden them with the burden that you are. Or dare to tell the truth about how bad things are.
The energy to do things you need to do, becomes more depleted and more empty. There is a million analogies about empty cups and oxygen masks and the usual self care advice, but it’s all rubbish if there is no break or oxygen to take up. The help lines give you village analogies, but we don’t live in the village anymore
The burden of your own life, the burden on your own anxiety, the burden of your own existence on everyone else around you and the burden of even speaking to anyone, no one wants to hear it, they just want to offer you advice on how to make the noise of your mouth go away, they dont have answers they dont want to hear the advice has been tried over and over or cant be tried due to the risk or safety of your own family or the stress to make that happen. You are trapped. You are drowning, whats the point of even telling anyone anyway. They wont believe you, its not possible you could tried it all and it worked once and now its so bad it doesn’t work anymore.
Sitting in the car with fear and terror to even start your day. Waking every day to fear of what the day will hold, how will you get through, how will you mentally survive, physically survive the constant nervous business and state of alert you need to be “on” all the time. Sleep is non existent. Sleep is a normal function humane to live, sleep is kept from you, sleep is stolen from you.
When you are told your feelings are wrong, when they don’t live your life, they don’t live your heartache, your sleepless nights night after night after night, then don’t feel your despair, they don’t feel your constant worry, research, hope, pleading, repeated requests, they don’t live it. they don’t see it, they don’t want to hear it or see it. This is the most lonely place in the world, because even if you tell others, they don’t want to really help. They just want to fix you so that you can stop bothering them with your isolation and pain. Scream into an empty room.
Other parents with the constant distress and trauma, can feel it and understand it they know all you sometimes ache for is support, to be heard, to be thought of, to be cared about. Not to fix it, because its not really fixable, if you try to fix fix fix then all you will do is hit mental and emotional brickwalls forever, everyone else tells you to readjust your life and your acceptance of the the grief you will always have. It is a fact. You aren’t wrong to grieve, you aren’t wrong to cry when you see other children riding a bike and talking to the parent, not running away, not hitting themself, those are things that break your heart. What kind of person wouldn’t hurt when you are confronted with sad reminders everyday of the things you want and wish for your child, your family, your own happiness. Adjust your happiness, says the people who have a different life, be positive, bury the hurt, bury the trauma, don’t talk about it shhhh . Don’t let the feelings out. Don’t make us sad or uncomfortable, you can be sad but don’t tell us about it don’t tell us your sad unless you do it on “terms” that we set. Or we don’t want to hear it. We don’t know what to say or do, so we will say nothing, you can drown you die you can disappear, the silence of no “complaints” “negative” is so much more comfortable to others than the deafening mental beating of the the repeated groans, screams, grunts, kicking, dropping, hitting, throwing, crying and closed doors of the world no one really understands or wants to know about.
The endless therapy, articles, advice, attempts, failed moments of every heart wrenching attempts to make your day feel like you can breathe. They don’t count. They aren’t being positive, they aren’t worth a mention. Drown in your attempts for normality, for happiness even just a pinch. a second of silence, a moment of slower heart rate.
Don’t even bother, no one wants to really know because they cant sit with you, they only want to make it go away, make you go away. Shhhh don’t say it, unless you are prepared to actively make the hurt go away and quiet down. Don’t make others feel a drop of your day, thats too much for them to tolerate or hear. Try living it and then have others tell you how wrong you are, a failure you are, you should give up because unless you do it how they want, they don’t want to know.
I pray none of my children or family ever have to feel the pain I feel or the pain that no one wants to know about it. Where does it all end. You just eventually break? You just become so numb to the pain and the anxiety that you medicate yourself to not feel anymore hurt. You can disappear and never burden anyone again. Just live in the chaos, don’t bring your head up for air.
When will it get better. They keep saying it. But do they have our life. What if this is it. How will we live like this. I keep going to counselling, doctors, therapists, reading, trying, but it makes everyone else feel better. When will it make our physical and emotional day a bit easier to live with. Will it ever? Maybe this emptiness is what they keep telling us to just accept.
A Journey to Joy 