Sinking .. In an Ocean of Grief
Just like every other day, the sound of my alarm jolted me out of my sleep. As I reached over in the darkness, eyes barely open, desperately trying to shut the alarm off as fast as I could.. all of a sudden my head started spinning. I immediately lay back, starring at the ceiling trying and failing to calmly breathe in and out. Suddenly, my duvet felt as though it were a weighted blanket anchoring me to my bed. With all my strength, I hastily threw my covers to the floor, but to no avail, it still felt like somehow I was restrained to my bed with a jumble of thoughts running rapid through my head. "Why am I going to work today when it doesn't matter if I show up or not - they will find someone else to replace me the moment I'm gone -I don't even have a real job - what have I been doing with my life? - why am I still here. Why can't I just time out of this game -I'm never going to amount to anything - ... Suddenly, I knew in my heart my time was up. Time stood still and there and I was all alone with the thoughts begging me to end it all.
A wave of assurance washed over me as I thought about what oblivion must feel like. The silence. The void of existence. The escape. What is must feel like to just .. take your last breathe and finally be done with all of the stresses of the world, the anxiety, the pressure to be perfect, the need to be better than everyone else , the constant rejection and failure, the heartache ... the loneliness. In that moment I was sure that this was it. If my time were in an hourglass, the last piece of sand had dropped, the buzzer had rung, and the game was over.
A wave of assurance washed over me as I thought about what oblivion must feel like. The silence. The void of existence. The escape. What is must feel like to just .. take your last breathe and finally be done with all of the stresses of the world, the anxiety, the pressure to be perfect, the need to be better than everyone else , the constant rejection and failure, the heartache ... the loneliness. In that moment I was sure that this was it. If my time were in an hourglass, the last piece of sand had dropped, the buzzer had rung, and the game was over.
The entirety of my safety plan was lost to me as if it never existed in the first place. I didn't imagine my family, my friends, my co-workers. I didn't even imagine my funeral. Some people say, at the end you see a light, and if you want to live don't go towards the light. Well, I wasn't chasing any light. I was chasing the darkness.
I rolled to my side to text my Boss that I wouldn't be in, that I was having a panic attack, and didn't know what to do. It felt like somehow this was me saying goodbye. Before I could even process what this meant, tears flooded my eyes. I would be lying if I said they were tears of sadness. It felt more like defeat. Like I was being tested yet somehow I wasn't passing or failing. This was the same test I've taken over and over again and somehow I just couldn't even get the answers down.
Immediately, my Boss text me back but instead of the typical "OK, thank you for letting me know" she advised me to call my therapist, take my meds if I'd forgotten to take them, and verified I was in a safe space. I thought if I just stopped texting she wouldn't bother to check in on me like this. I was wrong. Over the course of a few hours, she told me her story, I told her the bits and pieces of mine, she listened and listened and listened some more. I didn't have to break it down more or explain things further. She understood. For the first time it felt like I wasn't speaking into a void, looking for fancy words to describe how I was feeling, I didn't have to filter out the bad parts or feel shame for the things I couldn't bring myself to say out loud. For once, it felt like I wasn't speaking another language when I tried to tell my story.
In many ways her interference saved me from what could of been another attempt at taking my own life, but more than that, it was the ache in her texts and the warmth in her responses, her consistent texting back that helped me realize that though in this moment I felt worthless to myself, to someone out there I did mean something. I know it sounds insane. I know my family loves me. My friends care for me. I have more encouragement and support in my life than I even realize but this was different.
Most of my life I've fought in the darkness to be seen. To feel heard. Not loved, or admired, or even respected. Just to not be invisible. So much of myself has been tied to other people, other relationships, other traumas. When I tried to explain my life to people, take ownership over my story, the responses are typically the same - people genuinely feel bad for good people who have experience some type of hardship in their life. They give advice, recommendations, they do their best to empathize and though I am grateful for those responses it isn't what I want. It isn't why I speak.
I guess the entire time what I've been searching for was just to not feel so alien about my life. My experiences. What I've been through. To not feel so alone. The outcast in a world filled with so many perfect people who can calmly rationalize a bad day and "just push through". To validate that yes, life sucks, sometimes more than it doesn't suck, but it is still worth living.
Immediately, my Boss text me back but instead of the typical "OK, thank you for letting me know" she advised me to call my therapist, take my meds if I'd forgotten to take them, and verified I was in a safe space. I thought if I just stopped texting she wouldn't bother to check in on me like this. I was wrong. Over the course of a few hours, she told me her story, I told her the bits and pieces of mine, she listened and listened and listened some more. I didn't have to break it down more or explain things further. She understood. For the first time it felt like I wasn't speaking into a void, looking for fancy words to describe how I was feeling, I didn't have to filter out the bad parts or feel shame for the things I couldn't bring myself to say out loud. For once, it felt like I wasn't speaking another language when I tried to tell my story.
In many ways her interference saved me from what could of been another attempt at taking my own life, but more than that, it was the ache in her texts and the warmth in her responses, her consistent texting back that helped me realize that though in this moment I felt worthless to myself, to someone out there I did mean something. I know it sounds insane. I know my family loves me. My friends care for me. I have more encouragement and support in my life than I even realize but this was different.
Most of my life I've fought in the darkness to be seen. To feel heard. Not loved, or admired, or even respected. Just to not be invisible. So much of myself has been tied to other people, other relationships, other traumas. When I tried to explain my life to people, take ownership over my story, the responses are typically the same - people genuinely feel bad for good people who have experience some type of hardship in their life. They give advice, recommendations, they do their best to empathize and though I am grateful for those responses it isn't what I want. It isn't why I speak.
I guess the entire time what I've been searching for was just to not feel so alien about my life. My experiences. What I've been through. To not feel so alone. The outcast in a world filled with so many perfect people who can calmly rationalize a bad day and "just push through". To validate that yes, life sucks, sometimes more than it doesn't suck, but it is still worth living.