TheBanyanTree: Still Recovering

[Theta Brentnall]

Dear girl, talk about yourself as much as you need to - we're here, 
listening and sad that you have to travel this road.  It never fails to 
amaze me that families, who should cherish and nurture one another, will 
be cruel and dismissive of their own members.  They lay down a layer of 
pain that never quite goes away.  It takes work, but you can relegate 
them to the status of distant strangers who have no meaning in your life 
- believe me.  I know.  When it finally happens that you look at them 
and your brain registers them as strangers who might look kind of 
familiar, but nevertheless strangers, it is very liberating.

Theta

On 10/14/2014 9:53 AM, Monique Colver wrote:
> Man, depression sucks. Majorly sucks. I’ve had my setbacks, and I’ve had my
> moments of pure joy, and I’ve cried at the aloneness of it all, and I’ve
> cried with happiness because of everything I do have.
>
> And while I’ve made great progress this these past few months I still have
> those pesky issues cropping up now and then, bad songs in my head that spin
> around, like I’m circling the drain on my way to nowhere.
>
> Sometimes I feel disconnected, from people mostly, from a rich social life.
> I would say I’ve forgotten how to interact with people, but it’s not like I
> ever really knew. It’s not as if I have superior social skills that cause
> others to seek me out. I have adequate social skills, but I’m not
> charismatic, I’m not a leader, I’m not wanted.
>
> That last word just snuck in there when I wasn’t looking, like the
> suspicious character hanging around the entrance who waits for someone who
> isn’t paying attention to leave the door ajar when they enter. He grabs the
> door handle before the door whooshes shut, and he creeps inside, where he
> can take whatever he wants, break whatever he wants.
>
> The past being what it is, gone, I like to stay away from it, but in my
> treatment I’ve had to face some of the things from my past that I tried to
> hide away in the dark corners of my memory, corners that I don’t want to go
> into, areas of concentrated pain. These are the things that I need to let
> go of, because even though I put them away, they’re still trying to get out
> and hurt me. Pain is like that. There isn’t anyone who is familiar with my
> past who can or will either confirm nor deny what happened, so it’s pretty
> much up to me to and my admittedly inferior memory to recall and dispense
> with them.
>
> Or, they will confirm parts of what happened, but then they laugh so much
> because, to them, it was funny, it was all a good joke played on me. They
> mostly have nothing to do with me anymore though. They want nothing to do
> with me, my family of origin, because we have nothing in common, because
> I’m too far away, because I’m nothing to them.
>
> I have my friends and my family of choice, and they love me despite who I
> am. Mostly.
>
> It’s been a battle this year, an epic battle, similar to the battles many
> people face every day. I know there is nothing unique about me, or my
> battles, I am just like so many others struggling to come to terms with who
> we are and how we got here. Trying to make sense of it.
>
> I’m so tired of talking about myself, but at the moment it’s all I have.
> I’m mostly happy these days, mostly on top of things, mostly looking at a
> future instead of a past. But. Still.
>
> When I shattered earlier this year, like a piece of fragile glass toppling
> off a high shelf, I went looking for glue to put things back together. But
> when I tried to put the pieces back together, I found that some of them
> didn’t fit. I can’t get all the pieces back like they were before, and
> that’s probably a good thing because I was carrying around too much
> self-loathing, too much regret. It’s better that I throw some pieces out
> and remake something new, something I couldn’t have imagined before.
>
> And that’s where I’m at, and what I’m trying to do. Make something new that
> I couldn’t imagine before. It just takes time.
>