Love Is A Losing Game

There is a difference between being alone & loneliness. Being alone is a choice. You enjoy the peace being alone gives you so you rather do things alone & keep yourself company. Loneliness isn't a choice. Loneliness is a deep, aching feeling you can't shake. I can feel the loneliness in my bones. Some days I will be okay & then it hits me. It hits me when I see pictures of everyone with their families. It hits me when I'm at work & the client on the phone says "it's my turn to host Thanksgiving this year! Let me ask my husband what he thinks about this." Loneliness hits me when I'm sitting home alone on a Saturday night, asking, no, begging, The Universe to make these awful feelings go away.

These past couple of weeks I have felt like an empty shell. A lesser version of myself, just going through the motions of the day. Waking up in the morning is one of the hardest things to do & I just want to stay in bed & hide from the world. Lately it feels as if every mistake I make is blown out of proportion but I know it's just that I've been much harder on myself. My self-esteem is almost nonexistent, I am so unorganized & I can't focus on anything to save my life. I can't even find the motivation to make myself something to eat so I either won't eat at all or I'll order something. My room is a disaster & my to do list just keeps piling up. Now add the continuing feeling of dread from the pandemic & looming doom for the election & there's no wonder I am so incredibly unstable these days.

I began writing this post this past Saturday on Halloween. I had all these emotions in me that have been building up for the past couple of months. In that moment I had never felt so sad. Like a wave of sadness just overtook my whole body & I couldn't stop crying. I woke up the next morning, got ready for work & had decided that Sunday was a new day & we were going to do better! The Universe had different ideas for me because it hit me one more time, right where it knew it would hurt me.

One thing people don't talk about is the stages after you get out of a depression slump. How everything feels so new & you see things so much clearer. You forget what it feels to actually live. You forget what it's like to actually feel something instead of feeling empty or wanting to die all the time. There was once a time I thought I would never catch feelings for anyone ever again & then I did. I talk about him often because he is the first man I could honestly say has treated me with so much respect. It hits different when you've never been treated with respect. Whenever I doubted myself, he was always there with words of encouragement to do better & that pushed me to do better. I think that should've been a sign for me because I've always done things for other people rather for myself. I never want to disappoint but the only person I leave disappointed is me which is the most important person. Nonetheless, I had my hopes set high with this one for like 2 years & well, Sunday shattered everything for me.

Now, I'm not saying I am sad & depressed over a guy - I was sad & depressed way before this. But you know when you're running late & you hit yourself against something because you're rushing? It's like "GREAT! BECAUSE I NEEDED THIS RIGHT NOW! What else God???" This was that for me. As I sat there on Sunday listening to him talk about someone new, I felt the little ounce of happiness left in my body dissolve. Look, I know this person owes me nothing, okay? I know I've been so afraid to be upfront on my feelings. I know all of that. I think any other time I would've been like "okay, this hurts but we knew this would happen." But this happening now when my mental stability is already in a fragile space? It's left me absolutely destroyed.

Usually I can mask my emotions pretty well until I can run to the bathroom & cry my eyes out. Yesterday I found myself being unable to hold anything in. Of course the first phone call at work was someone who wouldn't stop yelling. Usually I would stick up for myself but yesterday I just let her say whatever she wanted because there was nothing she could say that could make me feel worse than I already did. As soon as I hung up I was in tears & all I remember is him telling me to ignore the customer & not let them get to me & in my head I'm like "you think I'm crying because of this client right now??? I don't give a fuck about them!" But I couldn't. I just waited until he left & I was alone to cry my eyes out. I played my playlist of sad songs & just cried. I wasn't just this situation that made me emotional, although it felt like the last part of my heart was shredded into oblivion. It was the timing & at that point in time I felt so low. I felt so rejected by life. It was like The Universe was like "what else can we do to show her she is worthless?"

Last Tuesday I turned 27. It's supposed to be my "golden birthday", the year of good luck. I'll tell you I have never felt more alone & sad on that day. Even as my coworkers & my best friend tried their hardest to make me feel loved, I still had this empty feeling. It's the same as being in a room full of people & feeling like you're all alone. I wished for the ground to swallow me because I was over this feeling.

Wednesday was my weekly therapy session & for some reason I didn't feel like telling my therapist how I was feeling. Make that make sense! The one person I can tell anything to without judgement & I was afraid to say anything. I spent the first half hour just talking about my days since I last seen her. It's funny because I spent the whole time doing small talk to avoid talking about what was really going on, only for her to be like "sounds like we need to talk about you going back on your meds. You've listed all the symptoms of depression." I was surprised because I thought I was doing a good job at being "normal" but she's that good! I ended up making an appointment for the next day to get back on them. I thought I was doing a great job being off them since July but I know realize it's been a slow spiral into this depressive episode we are witnessing now.

This past week, as well as the past couple of months have been a lot. You can tell from my posts, you can tell from my decline in socializing. You can just tell. I can tell but I can't stop. I've tried doing things I used to enjoy but that doesn't help. Even hanging out with others doesn't help. I've isolated myself from mostly everyone because I don't want to being everyone else down. Everyone has shit going on in their lives, the last thing I want to do is bring anyone down. It's hard to talk to other people about the shit that goes on in your head when you don't even know what the fuck is going on in your head. Depression is a different kind of monster. It creeps on you when you least expect it. It turns your vulnerable thoughts against you. Everyone around you can be showing & telling you that they love you but all you focus on is who doesn't love you, what you hate most about yourself. I hate everything I wear, I hyperfocus on all of my flaws & convince myself this is the reason everyone hates me.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in this alone but I know I'm not. Sometimes I'll begin to open up to others but recoil because they start saying all these things that I know are true but sometimes things are easier to say when you're not living it. Like this whole heartbroken thing. I'm heartbroken over a person I never dated. It's easier for someone on the outside to say "you'll find someone, don't worry." They have all the right intentions & I appreciate that but it's so hard to believe when you've been overlooked your whole life. I'm 27 years old & I've been someone who's been ignored her whole life & if someone paid attention to me, they used that to hurt me so at this point, it just feels like it's a sick joke The Universe is playing on me. Again, this is me placing my expectations on hope rather than base it on reality & the reality of this situation is that there was no way this person would ever see me as anything more, as much as I hoped, & now I still have to see him everyday. Everyday I have to see him & act like this doesn't affect me. I'm not blaming him at all, I blame myself that I put myself through this humiliation AGAIN. Like I love learning shit the hard way obviously.

So where does this leave me? On Sunday night I texted my boss saying I would be taking Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday off because I was feeling burnt out & overwhelmed. I am so incredibly thankful he understood & told me to take as much time as I needed. I spent much of Sunday night in silence, listening to the rain. Today I woke up, got myself my favorite coffee & breakfast & watched a Christmas movie to try & up my spirits. I caught up on some reading, went down a tiktok spiral & tried to distract myself as much as possible. It worked because it wasn't until later this evening that I began to feel sad. One thing I've learned about feelings is to feel them. Every time I've tried to avoid them, they've exploded at the worst times. This is why I gave myself today to just feel & release.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, as well as Election Day. There's a lot of anxiety in my own personal world as well as all around the country. I plan on focusing on things I can control like purging my space, doing things with future me in mind. I know it's not as easy as flipping a switch & ~*thinking positive*~ It's just trying not to let the depression consume me & walk through it. I have to know that one day this will all pass. I have to believe that one day this will all be a memory, that I can say I survived. I have to believe that this is all true because right now it is the only thing getting me through the days. Seeing a future without depression is what gives me hope. Then maybe all those things people say while trying to cheer me up will become true.

Although my 27th year of life, & all of 2020, has been a roller coaster thus far, I have to believe that things can only go up from here. It's time to take all that energy I've invested in other people & invest it in myself because I am the one who has to live with myself. There are many things I regret in life but I will never regret how much I love people. Eventually all that love I give to people will be returned but for now, I will give it to myself because I think I deserve it. It just took me awhile to figure it out.

As always, thank you for those who always read my posts. I can't say how amazing it is to have a lot of people supporting me, even people I've never met before. For those who followed my journey on Twitter & shared words of encouragement when I would tweet about the loml, thank you because y'all made me feel like I could do anything. Tonight I will be listening to Bad Religion by Frank Ocean for the 3948473 time today but know that one day I will be okay.

In the words of the GOAT, Walter Mercado: "con mucho, mucho amor" 💛

PS: remember in my last post I was talking about living life by own rules? A bitch got her nose pierced 😌 & a new tattoo. I'm enjoying this new look & thinking of new ideas to add to my sleeve. This golden tattoo means the world to me 🌻💫

I remember the first time I saw someone my size with tattoos. It was a wrap! My tattoos are one of my favorite things about me 💛🌻💫