Panic / Pain / Hurt

Over the last few days I’ve had panic hitting me like a freight train. It’s woken me up and kept me up all night. It’s prevented me from being able to do much of anything. Even at my job, I find myself starting to panic and unable to breathe. I don’t think my panic has ever been quite this bad. I know this panic relates to this situation I’ve been dealing with over the last several days, it’s just frustrating how very little control I have over it. No amount of self-soothing or grounding exercises seems to be able to calm my frazzled nervous system.

The amount of pain that I am experiencing, on both a physical and psychological level, is overwhelming. My whole body hurts. I wish I could just shut the pain off but I can’t. It’s like the ocean’s waves, no matter how broken and torn you might feel, they don’t stop for anything. They keep pounding away, rain or shine, day or night, pounding on the sandy banks. I can’t stop this onslaught of pain no matter what I do. No matter how much I try to distract myself, or no matter what amount of kindness or love I give to myself. The pain remains, ever punching, ever probing, ever laughing. Pain please, please take it easy on me. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

I realize I’m going through a mourning process. I never knew how painful losing someone could be. I’ve lost people before, but it has never been quite like this. My friend one day just turned on me. That’s how it felt. Unexpectedly and out of the blue. Maybe it wasn’t unexpected or out of the blue for her. Maybe she’d been thinking about this for a long time. Perhaps a resentment had been growing inside her, one that she tried pushing down, until eventually it came out in a very powerful way. I really don’t know. And perhaps I will never know. This person is out of my life for good. I know that. And that stark reality is so very painful.

I just wish I had been given a chance to make things right. If I wasn’t a good friend, if I took too much, as she says, if I expected too much from her, or more than she was able to give, I wish I could have known that and had a chance to work on it. I would have done anything to be a better friend. The fact that I demanded too much, that I put too much onto this person, well, it weighs very heavily on me.

A part of me understands that this is not about me, and as I said in my last post, that I shouldn’t be heaping unnecessary amounts of shame and blame on myself. But saying it and doing it are two different things. It’s hard not to think I could have done things differently, that I could have been a better friend. It’s just horribly sad that I wasn’t given that chance.

Since I have been trying, however hard, to focus on what I do have in my life that I appreciate, and on the little things that make me happy, I thought I would list the things in my life that I am grateful for at the moment:

– my partner
– my therapist
– my stuffed animals
– my television shows
– the child I care for
– pillows
– music
– my dog and cats
– my friend L
– beauty of nature
– the warmth and protection of blankets

I must cling to all of these things right now to help me push through this very difficult time. I just wish they could help sooth my very heavy and hurting heart. I guess the only thing that will help with that is time. Oh how I wish time would speed up already.

What’s going on

What is going on. This is the second morning in a row where I’m woken up (way too early might I add) completely flooded by anger and rage. I have no idea why. I have no idea where it’s coming from. All I know is that I’m so angry I feel like killing someone.

I saw my dad last night. Well both parents actually, but I focus on my dad because of the anger and hatred that pushed up when he tried hugging me. Ggg.

Does this rage relate to my dad? I know he would always try to be more physical than I liked (he never understood why I never wanted to hug him – I suppose neither do I), but honestly is this cause for such anger and rage?

I am so tired of having these overwhelming feelings and having no idea where they come from and what they are attributed to. It’s more than frustrating. I just want a day that’s free from all this shit and emotional turmoil. One day free from all this, that would be nice.

Denial, depression, despair

I don’t know what I’m feeling one minute to the next. One minute I’m numb. The next minute depressed. The next minute despairing. The next minute, pressure and anger pushing up from seemingly nowhere. I’m being flooded with denial. Alternating with feeling completely in over my head. That this is really too much for me to handle.

A friend suggested I reach out to Bean and tell her what’s going on. I can’t. First of all, I have to wait all the way until next Thursday to see her. She couldn’t do our regular Monday appointment cause she said she had a work thing she can’t get out of. So I’ve shut her off completely. She is a stranger to me at the moment. Someone who exists in some far away world that is not my own.

Another reason I don’t want to reach out is, I wouldn’t even know what to tell her. I don’t even know what I’m feeling. I don’t even know what’s going on with me and why. I guess the truth is I don’t have to have it all figured out in order to reach out to her. But… Knowing this and believing it are two different things.

At this precise moment, numbness has moved in and has laid a cloak over my mind, over my feelings, over my thoughts, over my emotions. Numb. Numb. Numb. Without feeling. Empty. Hollow.

Sinking. Longing. Sadness. Mourning. Anger. Despair. Neediness. Frustration. Overwhelm. Pressure. Pushing. Shutting down. Heavy. Numb.

Yeah.

I have just cycled through all of these in the span of thirty seconds.

Great Brandic, great. What do you want, a medal?

Ugh. Mind please go away. Please just go away.

Hollow and lost to myself

I’m not even sure what is going on at the moment. I went to breakfast with my partner and some of her friends. I put on my “social” persona, and talked and smiled and laughed. But afterward, I’ve retreated inside my shell, and I don’t know where I have gone.

I guess the best way to describe how I’m feeling right now is numb. Or maybe I just am outside awareness of feeling. I don’t know. I’m not even sure who or what I am at the moment. I feel like a foreigner to myself.

You know that song: Oh where, oh where has my little dog gone, oh where, oh where can he be? Etc etc. I feel like that, just with myself. Oh where, oh where has my Brandic gone.

I feel like I’m in a world that doesn’t belong to me, that isn’t mine. It’s like, my world has been taken away, and everything that surrounds me is a substitute world that has replaced my world. Everything familiar and comforting is gone, and everything I look at feels strange and unfamiliar.

I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to go into my shell and get lost in a world inside myself. And yet… I can’t. I have twenty minutes before I have to leave to go get a haircut – one that I much need. Granted, I could always cancel and reschedule for another time. But I’ve been hating myself and the way I look lately, and my awful awful hair plays a big part in that. This is something I just need to do, however much I don’t want to.

Sometimes you just need to go through the motions. Afterward I can come home and zone out. Hide away inside myself. Push the world far, far away. Because that’s what I want. I want to push the world as far away as possible. It feels unfriendly and hostile. Actually… not even so much hostile, but strange, unreal and foreign. Unrecognizable. It doesn’t feel like my world. In my world, I fit in it. I belong, to some degree or another. This world… well, I don’t belong. I am a stranger. My friends don’t feel like my friends. My partner doesn’t feel like my partner. My partner left, and went to give me a kiss goodbye, and I just sat there frozen, looking straight ahead. I didn’t move, I didn’t acknowledge her, I said nothing. She kissed me on the cheek, said goodbye, and left. But I wasn’t even really aware of her leaving until she had already gone. It was as though I were dreaming while she was leaving, and then I awoke to then remember the dream of her leaving, and wished I had acted differently. Had wished that I had said goodbye or had acknowledged her in some way. But then again I don’t. I feel like I don’t even know her. She feels like a total stranger. She could come, she could go, and it would mean nothing to me.

Where did I go? Has a substitute Brandic showed up in my place? An unfeeling, numb, robotic Brandic? That looks and talks very much like the real me, and yet, is not?

I am surrounded by a thick fog. A fog which turns everything upside down and backwards. A fog which makes the world almost feel black and white instead of color. Makes the world feel strange and hollow and unrecognizable.

I am getting lost in this fog. How am I to get out? How am I to find myself?