Hope

A vast expanse of empathy, compassion, hope for every man, woman, and child in my heart to drink from but not even a drop for myself.  It is not without limit, however, if it were, I still would not know the taste.  I lay there on the shore reminding myself others must drink first, encouraging them in fact.  Riddled with guilt, shame, and disgust whenever wavering from my resolve and even for barely entertaining the idea of being famished.  Punishing myself for fantasizing about how refreshing it might be.  Gas lighting myself into believing that I don't need the same things as everyone else.

It is there in front of me barely an arm's length away, it is my lake, but instead I perish on the embankment.

I've come to realize that I've had an inner mantra that I've quietly repeated to myself for years:
I can not feel.
I can not want.
I can not live my life how I want to live it.
I can not be happy unless it is happiness for others.
I can not do anything without the intent or the impact being for the greater good.
Wanting is vain and I do not want anything.

An internal Great Leap Forward; I am succumbing to the decisions of Mao Zedong who, plot twist, is also me.  I feel vulnerable against what feels like a giant army of self doubt and this negative mantra spinning around in my head with my only weapon to defend myself with being hope - what do I do when I feel hopeless, what then?  It has been an endless battle and throughout my life the struggle has been labeled as many things; Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and most recently Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder depending on which of my past doctors you ask or for what period of my life you'd be asking about.  One thing is certain, my existence in this world has me feeling akin to Sisyphus.  I've found comfort in the familiarity of the fictional character ever since first learning of him in adolescence.  Then nursed an even stronger attachment by divulging in Camus's Sisyphus in my mid-20's.  "The boulder is me, the boulder is me, the boulder is me" I repeat to myself.  The boulder has only gotten heavier and the will to push has diminished over the years.

Clumsily teetering between what I viewed as pragmatism, the idea that life is meaningless and the only meaning that it will ever have is the one we give it - exercising this, trying my best to allow myself leniency and love, then these stifling thoughts disguised as selflessness to swallow the pill of me becoming my own abuser through a very unhealthy form of extreme people pleasing has been debilitating.  Never getting what I really needed because of my own constant invalidation of how I really felt.  Mostly immersing myself in toxic relationships in all facets of my life with people who only take, who use me, who make me feel less than because my own subconscious berating wasn't enough because perpetuating the trauma was the only version of any kind of relationship I knew.  Surrounding myself closely with people who either blamed me for their own vile behaviors, dump their own guilt and shame on me, or disrespect boundaries I clearly set.  Then inexplicably, willingly, burdening myself with their bullshit as if though I had to, a compulsion.  Purposely being around people, conscious or not, who brushed off when I verbatim told them I don't want to be here.  Ostracizing myself from probably the only two people in this world who actually care about me at some of my lowest times because I was shown in my formative years that that's all I was when I needed anything at all, a bother.

I slowly buried myself alive, one grain of dirt at a time, with every I'm kind of ______, I'm okay, it's my fault, whatever you want to do, I want to do whatever makes you happy, and every moment I had a chance to yes to something and then doing just that.  I realized that I've struggled with my identity because I never let myself indulge.  Less and less did I let myself draw, paint, write, read (fiction) or anything I enjoyed regularly and justified these actions or lack thereof with the notion that anything that did not feed my logical well was vain, impractical, and overall, an utter waste of time.  I only read science non-fiction, although still fun and interesting, I never let myself take a moment to breath.  I seldom allow myself the banalities of life.  This blog for example, for years there was only a handful of public posts.  Only recently did I brush the dust off of numerous drafts, complete them, and publish them, backdated.

I write this here and now because I want to force myself to do the things that make me uncomfortable and it makes me very uncomfortable to be vulnerable, as if though a poisonous something or other might appear by osmosis and bite me dead.  I don't completely throw out a need for acceptance or social interactions.  However, I have a better grasp of the once foreign idea that first and foremost I need to live my life for me.  Now, I dare to allow myself to wonder, who am I, what do I want?  I can't say I remember the last time I felt this good and I definitely don't feel what some might categorize as a normal or standard baseline, but I also don't need to.