No-one took joy in your existence, or anything else? Damn.
I keep thinking of that quote, “the banality of evil”. Not that your folks were evil or anything, but the opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference. At least with hate, you’re still concerned with and aware of the object of hate.
:: nods :: Breaking the bad old patterns.
I should probably be on that list as well, but I’ve learned not to mention it. 
Thanks.
For me, giving up would mean something in my life so traumatic happening again, that I go back to having nothing, living on the street, sleeping with bums at the Salvation Army hostel. Except I’m in a different country now, and the prospect of that happening to me here is beyond terrifying. I’m only nine years into not living like that, and I really like my wife and our house and our stuff. I can’t do anything to jeopardize it. No matter if I feel like giving up, I just can’t. Ever.
Would that be giving up? Sounds like you pulled your ass out of the fire, which seems like a strong move to me. If you’d have given up, you’d be dead now.
Or did I misunderstand?
Well, yeah, since you put it that way, I did pull my ass out of the fire. But if I were to give up now, it could lead to a repeat of that lifestyle, and that scares me plumb to death. So I don’t even consider giving up.
Sorry if I was a little too …overreaching with my comments. 
Unrecognizable in a good sense… that’s something to strive for.
Don’t worry about it.
Is this what it’s like to have a reputation as a slut? I’m so ashamed!
If it’s any comfort, I think of you as a senstive, caring slut 
First of all, gigi, I hope you know I was being a turd. I live in the Bible Belt where the main purpose of church is to feel superior to the others around you who don’t go to your church. Meh.
I actually think that for those who actually have beliefs, church can be the best place to meet people. It’s always nice to mingle with like-minded individuals. Or I would assume it would be, having never found anyone quite like me.
It amazes me to see how close to “normal” my life has been. Normal being defined as there are others who walk around pretending to be human while all the while thinking about how little they actually count. Not that it’s the right way to live, not that it’s how I want to live, but it’s nice to know I’m not alone. Like finding those hundred million bottles washed up on the shore, ya know?
The thing is, giving up is just so easy. It’s so much easier than doing all the work to stay alive and functional.
Priceguy – seriously, thanks. Comments like that make me smile. My daughter is a stone-cold hottie and she doesn’t realise it (friggin’ teenage girls!!) so I am loving showing this thread to her – it’s really boosting her self-esteem.
Aww!
Well, my old girlfriend dragged me kicking and screaming to the Wiccan Church of Canada, and when I got there I found it basically fun but harmless. It reminded me of the Scarborough Theatre Guild more than anything. So maybe there’s something for everyone.
The thing I found very hard to do for the longest time was to go to a church that I did not believe in, in order to share events in the lives of other people. I’m the kid that quit choir when I was 12 because I couldn’t sing what I didn’t believe in.
I’ve mellowed a lot since then.
My mom used to work at a mental hospital. She told me that the official definition of ‘normal’ was something along the lines of “most common type of behaviour”. It has nothing to do with happiness or fitness to survive or anything actually related to mental health. So I don’t worry so much about being normal.[sub]Not that I can do a lot about it anyways…[/sub]
Yay!
Some people rag on the idea of ‘enhancing self-esteem’, but there is a group of people for whom that can be very helpful. If someone had taught me during public school that I was actually had some worth, I think my life would have been a lot different and better, and I wouldn’t have come so close to giving up.
At first I was all like “uh oh!” But then I thought
Good for her and her self-esteem.
Maybe she’ll learn something from this thread. This is the kind of stuff that she should be learning at her age, but schools just don’t teach it. She can learn essential life lessons at a younger age than most of us did. Maybe she won’t have to learn it the hard way.
She can be reminded of how cool her mom is. Girls that age sometimes let that slip their minds.
I probably shouldn’t have included that last one.
My personal belief is that that group has a membership of about six billion. Earlier in life I had this notion that liking yourself was the same as being an egotist, when in reality it’s kind of the polar opposite.
One neat definition I’ve heard of it is that on one end of your positive emotional energy spectrum (whoa! jargon!) is (self) nurturing, and on the other end is confidence, or courage. Basically your inner mother and your inner father. When you’ve got both, you’ve got self-esteem, which is just another word for happiness.
Actually, what is funny, and I have mentioned it before in other threads is that she and I are very close. She is truly my best friend, and I have had our closeness remarked upon by my banker! One day, after school started, I had to go to the bank and the girl said “where are your kids?” I reminded her that school had started and she smiled and said that everytime I come in with my kids the 3 of them (this is a grocery store branch) always talk about us when we leave because it is so surprising to see a teenaged girl so affectionate with her mother in public.
She does sometimes forget that I am an ok person, though, that’s just being a teenager. Lately, her self-esteem took a real dump. She went through that puberty weight gain period where she was kind of lazy and eating too much and she got kind of chunky. Not enough to be a real concern, but enough that she became self-concious. Through a lot of other (very common teenager) issues, it got bad, but it has gotten better as late.
Yeah, Sunspace has it right.
The thing is, it doesn’t happen all at once. Depression is a sneaky bastard; it creeps up on you. For me, I was in the middle of money worries. Being laid off a month early meant missing out on $1800 in wages and having to pony up nearly $400 a month for COBRA. It meant I had to sit down and get all the paperwork figured out for making unemployment claims, and cross my fingers that I wasn’t disqualified because I also had a part-time job as well.
The painful medical procedure? It was a colposcopy - that is, checking for possible cervical cancer. So, there’s the stress of a cancer scare, and on top of that, the GYN should have used a local anesthetic for the biopsy and didn’t. I was literally white knuckling and crying through the ordeal. It took me about twenty minutes afterwards to put my composure back together and make my way home. I cried for three days, and there really wasn’t anyone to take care of me.
The trip home to my parents was supposed to be a joyful relaxing visit - just long enough to catch up and just short enough to take off before we got on each others’ nerves. Instead, on the second evening, I’m having to call all my siblings to tell them Dad’s in the hospital. It’s a stroke. We don’t know how bad. When I wasn’t at the hospital helping take care of him, I was taking care of my mom, including walking her through a Suze Orman living trust and will kit so that - God forbid - should my father be lost to us, Mom could take care of things with a minimum of fuss. (BTW, he recovered fully in less than a month’s time, and he damn well better watch his blood pressure now.)
Each event was another load on my shoulders. Being physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted was normal. Feeling like I would never catch up, and why does all this shit happen to me, it must be because I’m a bad person and deserve it filled my head on a constant basis. The insomnia made things worse, and on top of that, as soon as I got back home, I had to hit the ground running at my part time teaching job, because my principal was counting on me.
All of that, I could chalk up to stress, because God knows facing up to and dealing with a bout of depression was more than I could handle at the time. It requires making calls, getting appointments, filling prescriptions, and taking care of myself when all I want to do is curl up in a ball underneath my bed and stay away from the big bad world that hurts me.
It was the suicidal ideation that finally got my attention. Speculating on ways to kill yourself so it looks like an accident so your family doesn’t have to deal with a suicide is neither normal or healthy. There was no excusing that as just stress. And since suicidal ideation leads to suicidal impulses, there was no ignoring it either. No matter how bottomed out my psyche is, I can still recognize how much pain my death would cause my loved ones, and if nothing else, that obligation will make me get on my feet and go get some help.
Looking back on things, I’m amazed at how well I coped and how I just kept going. I have to give myself credit. I often get down on myself for how little I’ve accomplished by my age, especially considering the resources I have. But then, I have to stop and remember that about once a year I get ganked by the complete and utter crap that happens to me as well as a brain that just doesn’t handle serotonin as well as others do. The fact that I keep getting back up, dusting myself off, and trying again is as much a testament to my character as any other accomplishment.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
I don’t know if I could make it through what you have. To make it out the other side when it felt like you wouldn’t–powerful.
Holy Hannah, phouka, that’s rough.
I think that stress does tend to bring out this kind of reaction. It’s almost as if, when you’re dealing with external events that cannot be avoided, you can’t divert your resources to battle internal demons as well.
That was one thing that my counseling demonstrated: that I can be in the deepest pit of terror and despair, where I’m curled up in a little ball, and utter blackness consumed my sight, and I felt utterly alone, even though my counselors were there… and even then, existence continued. My lungs and diaphragm breathed, my heart pumped, and little by little–miracle of miracles–I doscovered that I could pass though to a further side of the place that I thought would extinguish me.
I never would have believed it.
Doing it while supporting others and getting up to speed on your job… that’s strength, phouka.
I gave up without realizing I was giving up. The reason I say that, is that it happened very early, and it was a gradual thing. I also hadn’t made any really close friends, the closest was someone who I’d hang out with occasionally. So I didn’t know first, what I was giving up, or second, that I was giving it up…I hadn’t experienced it, so I had no way of knowing.
You can look at some of my other posts as examples of what I mean by giving up, but I basically closed myself off from everyone else. I didn’t leave my house unless I had to go to work or get food. I didn’t talk to anyone outside of what was required for my job. I also created reasons to remain closed off, that I didn’t want to hurt someone, or I didn’t want to have someone else have to deal with any problems I might have. Oh, and I didn’t need or want emotional support.
Or, to use your metaphor, I closed the circle, and then locked the doors, reinforced the barrier, and put snipers on the walls. Maybe I would have gone to something social, maybe not, but no one was getting close enough to find out.