Good evening ladies and gentleman
“I deserve this,” “I’m no good,”
“I’m better off alone.”
Three phrases, each more powerful than the last. Some of, if not the most damaging phrases a person could say to themselves- to believe this of yourself is near emotional suicide. That pain, that weight sits heavy on your heart as it guides you through life, pillaging and attacking any sense of happiness or joy you choose to feel. The good, the beautiful, the happy end up saturated in nothing but pain, because you are at the point where you don’t know how to feel anything else.
I have, for many years tried to convince myself I’m better off this way, better off alone. I know it’s not true, for i know how good i am when around people. I don’t shy away from the fact I’m not particularly good with people and never one to connect particularly well, but when i do its like wildfire. It sparks connections in my mind i considered long dead, lighting the path in the cold, dank forest back to the cabin, to the fire crackling away, to the smell of old books and hot tea and to someone you could lose hours in a conversation with, simply just because.
And i know, trust me i know it’s the easiest thing to just say. I can write any sort of wistful nonsense about anything, you could close the page on your phone and go about on your day not giving another thought to what you read. The thing is…you.
Who are you…to you? What do you want from your life? Do you want to be happy- do you want to be rich? Do you want to fall madly in love and travel the world…or do you just want peace? We all have a goal, humans are like that, not a literal one- an idealistic one. It means everything to you and nobody else would ever understand. But, because you are the only one that understands, you are the only voice telling you that you are going to get there and the only one telling you its stupid and you should give up.
You don’t think you will, you hope on days, sure, but more often than not you feel so lost and alone tomorrow seems like today and the day after that. The monotony of life is something you feel so strongly now, ever since you lost that hope that drove you so hard.
You have been through so much, yet you feel like you deserve so little. Your dreams remain that, dreams. You were once upon a time filled with hope, to have it taken away in what felt like an instant. You held onto it, clung and prayed for all your might. You chose to believe in you, when nobody else did, not even those closest to you, not even those you loved. In a world where you felt so connected and so alone, longing, yearning for someone to be there for you to any sort of degree you would be for them. The weight got too much though and whatever power you had left was beaten. Down and out for the count. Heartbroken… and feeling so very, very alone.
When something goes wrong, it’s a natural reaction to look for reasons why, not matter how big or small the problem was. Why did my car breakdown, why did this project go wrong at work, why does the drawing i did look like a collection of scribbles rather than the mountain range i envisaged. In particular when a love is lost. Someone you cared for so much more than yourself, more than anyone else in the world, gone. You gave them your best, you loved them- and off they went.
I have never been in love- but I am obsessed with love. We live in a world so saturated in this fantastical ideology that love is the ultimate goal and without it you are incomplete as a human being. True or not, whether I believe it not is irrelevant, because millions, billions of people do.
I imagine love to be like a virus. As you get to know that person more and more, start to notice more and more, find yourself thinking about them more and more. They find their way into your head and no matter how much you try to get rid of them, no matter what you smoke or what bottle you find yourself in the bottom of, they’re still there in the morning, headache, bad stomach and all. But at the same time, it’s the greatest thing in the whole world, worth every hangover to be with this person, to do and feel all the things you didn’t know you even wanted.
People say being heartbroken is like that person, the person you gave your heart and soul too pulling that heart from inside your chest and standing on it until it explodes. Yet, given the opportunity to just see that person again, there would be no question you would happily oblige to having your heart ripped out over, over and over.
The resulting loneliness means you turn the pain you’re feeling inwards, hence the question of “what you deserve.” “I could have been better, I should have been better,” “Only if i had done this differently.” You are in so much pain your mind is doing anything it can to find that space where you felt some modicum of happiness, drowning in so much nothing you’d give anything for that familiar painful relief.
All those years ago, you risked your heart and it broke you. Everything you were..gone… everything you know is never going to be the same. Ever. You see the world now and its tainted in darkness, the inky blackness of where your heart used to be sees nothing but pain. Pain is all you see, for the last time you weren’t in pain, the resulting anguish hurts in ways you never wish to feel again.
The walls can be rebuilt, and they will be. Harder and higher, more battlements. More men at turret stations, medieval archers at covering every inch of the walls. Nobody finds their way in anymore. You have to be alone, because as the past has proved, it keeps any more pain out.
So as I sit here writing and as you do hopefully reading, if you take anything away from this….
I see you. I see your pain, i see your suffering, your passion, your longing, your soul screaming in pain. I see all of it. I can’t say i know how you feel, because i’ve never been brave enough to feel a tenth of what you have. You have jumped head first into the pool and i am the one courageously dipping a toe in the water. I am always going to try and understand though. I don’t claim to be right or be able to help or even save you from the demons that plague you as you wash up in the morning to the moment you lay your tired mind on the pillow.
Truth is, I am nobody. I am a man behind a screen, scrawling letters on a page in the hope they mean something to someone. If they do, then maybe my life might have some meaning, maybe i will have done something good for someone. A smile here, a pick me up there. I’m not looking for anything other than that. I can offer you nothing other than words and a hand to hold as i say:-
You’re pain doesn’t have to define you, its trying so hard to swallow you whole. You deserve everything, the world and more. If i could give it to you I would. I would search high and low for your happiness and drag it back to you, excited to show you what I’d found, even in the words on the page. I can’t make you see that, I can’t make you trust that. As far as you are concerned on the other side of your screen is someone looking to increase the audience traffic to the site so i can hopefully go and make Bentley payments from a chateau in France.
Words are just words in the end, they mean very little without context. I do not come to you looking for you to forgive and forget all you feel. I don’t think you are gonna work through how good or horrible you feel about yourself in a day. You think life is nothing but pain, but you miss the other half of that sentence:-
“Life is nothing but pain…today.”
Today is a bad day, a horrible day. But tomorrow is a new day and has the means to be whatever you want. If you do find a step forward, great. I’ll be celebrating the victory with you just as much as I’ll sit with you in the dark as you languish in the depths of your own personal hell.
We live in our own personal traps, I just hope you know that you don’t have to do it alone.
Never alone.
Yours, with love as always.
D.R x
