Well that was quite a ride. I'm still a little dizzy but I'm back on the optimistic track, at least for now. It's funny how I can recognize the pattern and yet when I get to this stage it always feels different, like this time it will be true. This time it will happen.
I went down pretty hard this time, but without being totally aware of it. I mean, I knew I was feeling sad but I think I slipped into a kind of depression I've never felt before. This is a self-diagnosis of course so its inaccuracy could be phenomenal but I digress. Let's start at the beginning shall we?
I found some old emails from Jean. Actually, all of them. I'm a pack rat, what can I say? I saved them all to those old school floppy disks, along with everything else I ever wrote in college. When I finally found a drive that could read the disks I was inundated with what I had forgotten about my former self. I didn't have any of my emails to her, so I could only glean snippets of myself through her responses. It was very disturbing. Every email was like a love letter to me. I wondered if mine were the same to her. When we became friends the bond was so fast and so tight it seemed like we'd be friends forever, but I can't remember exactly how I worded my feelings. I can only hope it wasn't like hers to me- declarations of everlasting friendship and perfect soul mates with undertones of possession I never could have seen at the time. All of this sounds like a romantic interest, and it was in a Victorian sense. We did not have sexual feelings for each other, at least I didn't for her, but there was this romantic notion that our friendship was above any other, the kind great epic stories are made of, and we just knew we'd always be there for one another for the rest of our lives.
I should never have saved them let alone read through some of them again because it sent me back into a mind space I did not want to be. I still haven't thrown them out. I don't know why. I can't seem to let go and I know it's really screwing with my head. Anyway another round of analysis began and I realized that she was just the last in a line of much lesser betrayals that finally broke something in me. Since I ended that friendship I learned how to be friends with people while not letting them anywhere near my heart. I knew how overly sensitive I had become (or have always been) and in order to cope I just built walls everywhere. How do you stop a defense mechanism? How do you stop protecting yourself even though you know you're overreacting and shouldn't be hurt by certain things? This is my dilemma. I started thinking that I'll never fall in love because I'll never be able to let down the walls. All because of her. The hate and anger and pain all came rushing back.
By the end of December I couldn't stop thinking about how broken I felt and it manifested in tears. I was crying at the drop of a hat but at the same time didn't feel the usual heaviness I feel when depressed. While the tears gushed all I could think was why am I crying so hard? Just stop! This is ridiculous, cut it out! But they wouldn't. One morning I was 3 hours late to work because I literally couldn't get out of bed and when I did I happened to get a phone call from K. As soon as I hung up I cried for half an hour. It was getting out of control.
Then something went down with my brother which absolutely sent me reeling. He and my mother have had an unspoken tension between them for years now, but the older I get suddenly the more I find myself involved. To make an incredibly long story short, dealing with him when I was already feeling so down sprung a hysterical leak, and while on the phone with my mom. I don't know how she could understand me between sobs and erratic breathing but she managed to calm me down.
Christmas was hard, mostly because I was still crying a lot. Christmas Eve my mom and I had another talk which resulted in me crying for almost an hour, stifled as it was. That however, was my last cry. I think I just needed to get it all out, and by all I mean my anguish over this family drama as well as the residual pain I guess I'm still feeling from the self-loathing I carry around about how I let everything play out with Jean. I hate how she is still part of my life but I just need to come to terms with the fact that she is my history and always will be. I just can't let her keep being part of my present.
Since that night I haven't cried and have been much happier. I suppose it was kind of like a cleaning of the slate. I started the new year with some ambitions and so far have actually followed through. Work has been great, the apartment is great and I hold hope that I will actually do some new things this year, not just say I will. Life is hard enough as it is, I don't need to keep making it harder for myself. That's not to say I won't go down again, I'm pretty sure it's in my genes, but I can try to prevent myself from dwelling on useless things. Ah the optimism the new year brings.
May it have brought you some as well. :)
