The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself (Mark Twain)

@PiecesOfWhoeverIWas sits beside you and hugs you tightly 💗 you've been through so much bless you 🙁 I wish there was a way I could take away all your troubles and pain💖 it's not easy putting yourself back out there and finding the right company, but it's not impossible, you are a great lady with awsome children and you can do anything💖 just take some time to think, to be kind to yourself and know I'm right here for you 💗 we all are

Our feelings about ourselves are really at the heart of everything, aren’t they? They say, if we don’t love ourselves, how can we love anyone else? They say, if we don’t love ourselves, who will? They say we have to support ourselves, even when (especially when) we don’t have that elsewhere.

I don’t disagree with any of that. But, how very lonely. No matter how much you try to boost yourself up, you’re always aware of that gap. There’s always that fundamental need of love that goes unmet. How can that be enough, when we know humans are designed to live in community?

How is it that some days I do feel like I can love people, very genuinely, and sacrificially, more than myself?

How is it that other days I feel like I am really ok with myself? When I’m alone. Until I’m around other people again.

There was a discussion question in one of the communities recently about goals. It made me realize that I don’t really have any goals I’m working toward anymore. So much has changed in my life, yet again. I don’t mind too much starting over, but starting over looks a lot different now than it used to. I’ve had to give up that what I wanted for my life once just isn’t possible anymore. Maybe that is why I feel so lost and empty.

I have so much on my mind in so many directions that are falling apart, I’m struggling to do small steps to make any kind of change for myself. I feel stuck.

I can think of a couple things I’d still like to see in my life. One involves my kids. Sadly, one thing I’ve been keeping inside is that their dad has recently been suddenly breaking some of our agreements concerning the kids. He has people influencing him, and it’s all coming to a breaking point. It’s really upsetting me. And so, these goals I had been working toward for them are now changing without my consent.

Other goals I have for myself revolve around my mental health. And I don’t even know what to do with those. I feel like even though they seem like the hardest, because they’ve been a struggle my whole life, they might actually be the most attainable because they only concern me. I don’t have to worry about anyone else interfering or taking my power. That’s probably what I will focus most on here.

I’d like to return later today if I get a chance, to make a formal list of goals and brainstorm maybe some beginning steps. I need to get things out of my head and onto paper. I think that will give me perspective so I can take all the fear and emotion out and start breaking things down logically.

I guess between writing that last post and now, I haven’t had time or felt in the right place mentally to talk about goals. I’d still like to soon. I know it’s important and will help me.

I keep waking up in the mornings in fear with a feeling of intense foreboding. I don’t think I even had a nightmare today. I’m tired and I haven’t even started my day yet. I wish my mind and body reacted differently to things. I feel like I allow myself to be defeated. I don’t think I have that much control over it though. It’s not as if I forget about the positives. I try to think different thoughts, they just don’t stick. I have difficulty believing them. I already know how certain things are going to be, outside myself. I am unsettled about some things in my reality but trying to change them only causes more problems. I feel stuck with a bunch of things that make my heart hurt, and I have no power to transform them.

I felt ok the last couple days, but didn’t have time to write anything. I don’t want to feel like I only come here with negative things to say. Oh well, I guess that’s what it’s going to be for now.

I’m going to put a Trigger Warning TW here, because I’m venting very pessimistic and don’t want to bring anyone else down with me. I just need the illusion of getting it out somewhere so I don’t feel so alone.

Have you heard of the word “volunteer-told”? Have you ever heard someone say, “Gosh, I was so happy when they volun-told me to do that?” I haven’t either.

Volun-told is where you’re volunteered for something without being asked first. People have a habit of scheming what my usefulness is, creating a whole plan even, and deciding amongst themselves how something is going to go. They might know weeks or months beforehand but wait until the last minute to tell me. Why? Because they know I’ll say no, so they mold the situation to where there’s no time left to say no. It matters not how much I already volunteered for, allowing myself to feel guilty and trying to make an effort to meet in the middle. If the plan falls apart and everyone’s let down, it’s my fault. If I get irritated or sad about it, they get mad at me. And then they’ll say they love me. They love me by viewing me as an object, disrespecting my time and feelings, denying me a choice. I feel so cared for. 

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. How I feel doesn’t matter. Nothing’s ever going to change. I can move, change people. Just substitute one person and scenario for another. People are the worst. Is being alone really worse, when being with people is nothing but this over and over and over? I’ve waited long enough for a decent friend. It’s never going to come. Life is about fake empty relationships where people use each other. That’s what I observe when I’m out and about. I think successful relationships are built on both people using each other for mutual benefit. We value people based on what WE get out of it. If someone is kind to me like in church, it’s short-lived pity and they move on once they feel they’ve saved me. No one sees what I’m made up of. No one thinks I’m worth anything because of who I am. 

God does. My kids do. Hopefully that’s even true. It’s all I have. I don’t belong to this world.

I have got to get rid of my negative mindset. I’m never going to get better thinking that way. I am addicted to feeling sad, because it’s become more familiar than being happy. Feeling good is scary, because the rug can be (and constantly does get) pulled out from you at any moment. I’m never caught off guard when I’m sad. But what kind of life am I living being comfortably miserable? I need to honor my feelings without letting them run me over and self-fuel.

Brainstorming.

Limit exposure to influences that fuel painful feelings. Take a step out, but don’t leap so far out that I can’t find my way back to myself.

Have some kind of reminders of things that have gone right in my life. Pictures, quotes, art.

Have reminders of things that make me happy and mean a lot to me.

Be more committed to sticking by a routine. Must have quiet time every day, prayer/meditation, Bible/reading. Helps most to start the morning off that way.

Must exercise. This will be the hardest thing. I am always drained. Will have to brainstorm on this further. I know it’s going to take unique motivators to get through to me.

Keep eating healthy. Doing a great job with this.

Have a child-like mindset again. Try to remember how I loved life when I was more innocent and naive.

I set a boundary with regards to the volun-told situation I was venting about. It hasn’t necessarily resulted in anything yet, but it still did something good for me mentally to have expressed it to them.

I have also minimized direct contact with my kids’ step-mom. We ran into each other in public yesterday, unexpectedly, and it was awkward. I can’t tell how she feels toward me, but she frowned when she saw me. I don’t really care. I lack the drive to try with anyone who decides to tell me my kids and I are going to *** because of our faith. It just feels like nonsense I don’t need to waste worry on. That might be the first time in my life I’ve genuinely ever detached from worrying about anything.

I’ve been waking up with foreboding feelings. Not after a nightmare, just randomly. It’s like God is trying to remind me my time here is limited and not guaranteed or predictable.

That’s all for now.

Ok. 

I have been deep in thought the last few days. People things. Observing conversations. Observing myself.

What do I want to say? I am thinking about, what we say we want. So many people I’ve talked to, and how their heart longs for love. This isn’t a post about romantic love. Love in the form of basic human kindness, companionship, and care.

Shoo.

Sometimes, maybe, we hurt, and we get so wrapped up in our own hurt that we deny the love to others that we so want ourselves.

Careful now.

Is this what everyone does? Is this why so many go feeling unloved, because we’re so focused on what we’re getting or not getting, and forget we still have to give too? No, certainly not. Well, not all anyway.

I know SO many like here who give and give and get little to nothing in return.

Then what am I seeing? Maybe some of what I’m seeing are those that already fit in, but I come across for different reasons. I just assume they’re like me and those I feel protective of here, but they’re not really.

Sorry, this isn’t meant to make sense to those reading. I just need to get it out of my head to reread later.

I just feel really sad after seeing interactions between people sometimes. I’m not even involved. It’s none of my business, except when I’m asked for advice. (I’m actually feeling pretty well today, to make sure I put that out there.) Sometimes as an outside observer you can see the larger interactions and decision points in a different way, because you’re not emotionally invested. I see people’s pain blocking them off from giving kindness to another in the very same sort of pain they are. People who have complained about the very thing they’re now doing to someone else. And yet I feel compassion for them too because I know they don’t see it that way. They are being self-protective, trying to find that place of caring for themselves first.

And don’t we all struggle with that line? That delicate spot between sacrifice and self-respect? 

Perhaps I was just shocked with the ferocity, a herd type gathering around and boosting each other up. No filter netted with kindness, just cold harsh rhetoric at another’s expense. It’s an easy place to fall into, the false safety feeling that comes from being part of a group that rallies around one another and excuses poor choices. But it goes beyond enabling, into narrowing in on a scapegoat. Who the scapegoat is can change from day to day. The point is, the group relaxes its individual morals because it collectively justifies that the target deserved it.

This isn’t so much about them though as I’m making it seem. What it is, I see things like this and I have such a strong reaction, and I naturally start to question if this is how I’m also being. In my life, am I so hungry for understanding that I’m denying understanding to others? But then we get into that inner fighting amongst myselves. 

Perhaps, if I’m even bothering to ask these questions then that means something. Does everyone ask themselves these sorts of things? It doesn’t really matter if they do. I want to. Asking questions matters. As soon as I sense that group energy building and fueling itself, I don’t want to be part of it, I immediately start to question it.

I was really excited and determined the last two days to come on here and write about what a positive mindset I was having. I wanted to tell you all about how I know everything’s going to be ok, how I know I’m going to make a friend. I’m writing it still because I think it’s important at least to document. So many times things have gone well and I didn’t have time to write, and by the time I come back things are bad again. I’m tired of those lost moments. I want to have something good to report. So I’m still writing it.

When I’m there, I can’t imagine how anything can bring me down. It’s like I know it can, and statistically I know it’s just a matter of time. But I try so hard to hold on to it.

Well, I guess I don’t really have to explain how all that came crashing down. Here I find myself again feeling worthless and coming up with ideas how to fix it. 

I worry there really is something very bad about me. I worry about my thoughts influencing people here. It tells me to stop talking, to keep quiet. That’s something I can do to feel like I’m making things better.

Earlier I thought about sharing my name here. I can’t even imagine doing that now.

What is wrong with me? I should have this figured out by now.

How am I still surprised when everything turns upside down?

I’m ok, don’t worry.

I haven’t done my path exercises in a while. I’d really like to get into a better routine of things for myself.

I am in an overall good state of mind right now. There’s a lot going on, mostly not so great things, but it’s as if my mind knows I need to stay focused. There’s no time to feel depressed about anything. It’s funny how that works sometimes. It’s focusing more on gratitude for the good that’s always there.

My son had a seizure. I don’t want to elaborate on the details here. There’s some fear for future episodes, but my mind doesn’t want to focus on that either. I want to stay positive for him and all my kids.

I need to put this somewhere. In the days leading up to his seizure, I was having dreams (nightmares) about getting a phone call that something bad had happened to my kids. I didn’t dream anything specific about how or who. I kept waking up scared. Of course after the seizure, last night I had more specific nightmares about him.

Also, I learned at the hospital that apparently my kids’ step-mom blocked me. After texting me putting down my faith, and I decided it was best not to respond, she blocked me. I actually considered blocking her back then, but decided it was immature because of the need for emergencies contact, and that limited contact would be better. It seems she does not consider such things. I discovered it because I had written to set my hurt aside and thank her for her help with my son. It has made me feel very unsettled. I wish they didn’t have to have much contact with her.

I hope that the next time I write, it will be not to vent but to start the positive exercises I’ve been wanting to explore.