I really wasn't prepared to relive the trauma with my ex.
I know I said I would get into it in the last entry, but here we are. Processing the whole thing was so daunting, I felt I had to lay out everything that happened from start to finish so as not to lose track and spiral into an abyss of anger and despair.
I started a private document titled "In Lieu of Therapy" to recount my last big disaster of a relationship, but as I was writing the context of how we met and how we got together, pages and hours and pages later, I realized just how long this was going to take.
My writing made it all the way up to just before reconnecting with him, my ex before he was my ex, when I couldn't carry on the recount. I jumped to recording the last message I sent to him after we broke up and never spoke again, and a vent session on how I felt about it. That was all I could manage; the whole story remains entirely unwritten save for a handful of hopeless poems and monologues.
It's October, 2024.
Let's Start Again.
I'm 26, I've been single for a year and a half, and I have my first therapy appointment tomorrow.
I know that I need professional help to get past this. I've leaned on my friends and family, and tried to process my trauma and sadness myself, only to fall into the same mental and emotional cycles. It is too much to hold, it is too much to put on others, and I cannot go on like this or I will lose my mind. I am afraid of myself, and of trusting people, and of my inner demons.
I felt an intense wave of depression overwhelm me at work on Monday, three days ago, which became an uncontrollable emotional reaction. I had to leave for fresh air, only to end up heaving in my car with the windows up.
All I wanted to do was walk into open water and never come back. I considered soft suicide. Nothing violent, but to find somewhere that overlooked a view of the world and stay there until I fade into nothing.
Once I stopped sobbing and began breathing again, I felt empty. I wanted to crawl into bed and waste away. What is the point, if I can't find real love and real trust, especially if I haven't even experienced it like I thought I had all those years. The idea that he never even loved me during all that time that I loved so hard and so stupidly, with so much faith, destroys me to my core. You're telling me that I don't even know what love is? That what I thought was love was just manipulation? I don't want this...I don't want to believe it but I can't accept that how he treated me was love, I'm trapped in a contradiction and endlessly unanswered questions.
Help.
So I emailed that therapist that I'd felt too burnt out to contact for the last couple months. Doing so took a bit of the edge off. Two days later I heard back and booked two therapy appointments. Fortunately, a cancellation opened up a spot for me tomorrow, and I am relieved to start this journey of finally untangling the baggage that has been strapped to me for too long.
The part that's laughable about it is, I'm so close to receiving the help I've needed and yet, all I can think about is how healing will unfortunately diminish my creativity that stems from being depressed and lost. Isn't that sad? Part of me would rather suffer just to create art that reflects my authentic experience of being mentally unwell, than for me to get better and move on.
You're wrong. (< Me to myself) Healing will not erase the memories of what it was like to feel this way; healing will be making peace with those experiences so that they don't continue to disrupt my every day life. I will probably continue to reflect on this period of conflict, but from a place of better understanding it. I will have a better grasp of my thoughts, instead of spiralling over and over. These cycles of sadness have done nothing but spin me around the same feelings iterated in different word combinations, as I have made little progress. Perhaps my creativity will flourish once I am safe outside my torture, when I have released myself from my pain and my trauma is no longer a birdcage pattern but instead a lesson I can study.
My hardships will always be a part of me, but I can't let them break me down any more. I have been hurt by the same thing enough. I'm ready for some positive character development.
Bring on the therapy.
Percy
