(Cont..)

I’m feeling really done right now too. I’ve been studying part time and working and have been in therapy all at once and have been abused by my therapists. It is literally hell like it just keeps getting worse and you start to feel there is no justice in the universe after giving life so many chances. I understand now why people end up as heroin addicts or alcoholics, giving up but too afraid to die, as life may seem to give no other means of relief or resolution.

I’m at loss right now but in general I pretty much follow the advice of the other person commenting here. I take time out, until the existential dread and numbness melts down into extreme grief and then finally to extreme compassion for myself which makes me feel connected to something much bigger than myself and my trauma. That is a timeless kind of feeling like it’s not of this world. I’m not for organised religion fyi. Carl Jung said that we have to go through hell to get to heaven. Each time you’re destroyed you don’t necessarily come back as the same person but just more wounded. If you integrate a little of the trauma you come back as a transformed person, whom those old scenarios will eventually hold new meaning and significance to you, one day it will feel like lessons that nudged you closer to the person you were meant to be, eg no longer content in a manipulative or abusive at worst relationship in spite of the years sunk into it.

Now I’m on uni break I can pick up the pieces slowly and have moved to a house with a housemate I vetted and found online who is polite, respectful and a good communicator but whom I rarely see or talk too deeply with so I feel safe knowing no codependent or abusive situation should develop. I would have coped a lot better last semester if I wasn’t studying. I’d have been able to leave the unhealthy house I was living in and give myself more time to reflect and grieve instead of sucking everything up like I always fucking do. It’s true we have to be ok with ourselves when we’re broken and unable to keep it together. A part of me knows I should have quit uni long ago to focus on my health but I stayed as it seemed to promise more future security which could help me have independence and confidence. But it shouldn’t come at the price of treating myself as a human being. I’m growing tired of the aspiration for a career as something that will save me. I feel like the only thing that will save me is getting over everyone else’s expectations of what I should be and of what would define me as successful or functional, maybe find a way to have a quiet life though not without a few special relationships, sometimes all I want is to grow vegetables, live with loving people, look after a pet or two. (How I’ll survive financially is another question but not totally unfeasible). Like I’m starting to not care about anything that doesn’t truly matter on a deeply fundamental level and all I want is to be able to love and to be loved and live in peace. We may lose everything else in this process and perhaps never complete this process and get that love. But it’s what I live for. Just the possibility that I’ll be properly loved (not in a compromising abusive or codependent way) before I die. And I can forget all the other bullshit and all the people I come across who can’t join me in this goal. Your boyfriend leaving you is a devastating betrayal for all the years that went into that. It may be too soon to hear it but all you can do is not repeat it next time by allowing yourself to be with someone who can’t actually truly love you. I say this to myself after every relationship or friendship ends that was hurting me and in which I was too afraid of retribution or isolation to be honest and/ or leave. And I keep ending up with those kinds of people again and again but I I guess expect less from them each time and get less invested or attached as I can already tell how it will end. I feel more damaged but less surprised I guess. We will keep getting destroyed over and over again through life and losing parts of ourselves and I think maybe the best outcome is losing more of our egos and attachment to outcomes and riding the waves of this savage landscape up and down over and over and learning we can’t control fate and that we shouldn’t feel any less for that because much of it is just not within our power. It makes me a bit stoic and I’m sure part of that is trauma but part is real acceptance too. Just our intention here to heal and experience love is enough justify our existence. We might be misfits forever. We can’t do anymore than we can do. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. The world is fucked up for people like us. If it takes until middle age or senior age to be ‘healed’ and loved, or if we never achieve it, I say we can fully forgive ourselves and not say our lives weren’t meaningful. I wish I had more practical advice. I often turn to reading and drawing when I go into solitary periods to distract myself and cope so I don’t die of boredom from loneliness and at least feel I’m living somewhat or doing something to develop as a person and not wasting away in front of television or using drugs etc. It makes me less dependent on successful social interactions when my attempts to occasionally test the waters out there and meet new people go bad. I am slowly slowly slowly preparing to re-enter one of these healing periods, after feeling too angry and depressed to try after recent events. Maybe you have a skill or hobby you can periodically focus on as a distraction. Trite advice when you’re in the depths of despair, I know. I’m sorry for writing so much I hope you didn’t feel I was trying to take over your post and I really hope what I said didn’t make you feel minimised in any way. Trauma for me has been very time sensitive when there’s a time to feel shit and let yourself be bitter, a time to hear or want advice and times to grieve and connect...the way you’re feeling now might not be the way you always feel.