Uncomfortably Numb

I’ve not updated for quite some time, it’s not that I’ve not had anything to write about, instead I’ve been thinking a lot about voices and where things are best placed. I’ve also held back from putting anything of import onto facebook due to the naysayers and their love of passing on ‘advice’. In fact online feedback is a tricky beast, in no short order let me go through some of the ‘advice’ I’ve received:

• On a post where I was starting to realise I was depressed, that I should consider myself lucky I could work at all from one person, and the advice that I should commit suicide and ‘bow out’ if I couldn’t cope with the world
• On several posts about work that I should simply ‘put up and shut up’ and that if I can’t cope with work then I should just go off and be dole scum
• On a post where I was talking about being fat and society’s reactions to this and my own struggle with the ramifications that I was a ‘whiny fat man’
• On not getting a job that I should harden up and not take defeat so personally

It goes on, I use writing and sharing as a tool to process my own thoughts and to ask for help as I can’t do it directly. In a lot of ways all I need to know is that I’m not alone, it isn’t me with these thoughts and worries. That if I am being irrational I can see it and do something about it. Comments and jibes like the ones above just make things worse. I am bearing my soul and trusting the people I know, and to have comments like the above returned to me reinforces my lack of trust in humanity. Did I mention all of these comments were from people I know and have called friends? It’s true. Some of the choicest ones come from ex-partners who know my weaknesses and use those against me.

I want to make the point of why I don’t write so much, why I am hiding from the world to a large degree. I’ve taken down the shield I had between me and the world down, I am raw and vulnerable and trying to learn how to cope with the world without being insensitive and disconnected from it. I don’t want to regret this action, I don’t want to have to put the defenses up and I certainly don’t want to pass any of my bad habits or experiences onto bean. If I do that, then I think I shall truly feel as if I have failed as a parent.

I was talking to a very close and dear friend yesterday about this. We took things to the illogical conclusion that there’s only one person in the world who is entitled to complain about their lot. This one person suffers in a way that no other human being has suffered or will ever suffer. We were facetious in our example, however if you look at the responses given above, the logical position of people seems to be ‘Well you are still about to y, x (the mythical uber-victim) can’t do that so shut the eff up’. So, I say nothing, I write nothing and instead meet up with close dear friends and talk instead.

I would like to write more, just at the moment I’m in a state of flux and I don’t feel I have the safe space to write about it online. Equally I wanted to write a little about why I find it hard to ask for help, and why I’ve been quiet. I write and share as I am (indirectly) asking for help. It hurts me to admit it, however it’s true. Yes I have medication, yes I have someone to talk to officially, what I’m doing is looking for support and to build a support network. I know I don’t want to be as cynical as to to start cutting people who hurt me out of my life, and yet I start to see that perhaps this is what I need to do.

Life is hard, and not everyone is as good at it as you. A kind word isn’t hard, and yes everyone does need a push every now and again. Just be kind with it, consider what you say to people and the effect it can have.

Choose your words carefully as they can do more damage than you know.

Mirrored from Never a dull moment. Please leave comments there thank you!