Throughout my life I have experienced death multiple times. My experiences however, were limited to great aunts or uncles I barely knew and grandparents who had been suffering. Whenever death has occurred in my life I have seen it coming. With my grandparents, although I really loved them, part of me was happy when they passed away because their suffering had finally ended.
Recently, I received news that a person in my life was involved in a terrible accident and may not make it. It has been really hard for me to comprehend my feelings. She is an amazing person and I have really enjoyed the time I have spent with her but when I received the news I just went numb. I wanted to cry for her like everyone else but I just couldn't understand that this was actually happening. I had just seen her a couple of days ago so I just couldn't think of her as anything but happy and healthy. At first I wasn't that upset by the news because in my mind she was going to be okay and soon I'd get to go visit her in the hospital. As I heard more people talking about it I started to realize how real the possibility was that she may not make it through this.
Talking about the incident makes it hard for me to put on a brave face and fight back the tears. Never before has something this unexpected happened and never to someone so young. Thinking about it makes me mad and regretful. I know there is nothing that could have been done differently, in hindsight you think of all the ways it could have been prevented but in actuality bad things happen and there's no way of stopping it. What is done is done and now all I can do is think positive thoughts and hope that she will make it out of this okay. If however things get worse, I will be prepared for that too. None of this is fair and nothing like this ever should have happened but it did. As wonderful of a person she is, I cannot stop terrible things from happening. All I hope is her family will be able to get through this difficult time and that by some miracle she can go on to live a long happy life.
Monday, July 15, 2019
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
The Neverending Battle With Anxiety
Most of the time I like to think I'm doing great handling my anxiety. I have never been to a doctor or spoken to a therapist but I've discovered what my triggers are and have undergone my own exposure therapy to help it go away. But then I come home after a trip to visit my boyfriend's family and start crying when he tells me his family thought I was distant.
I like to think I'm doing well but I'm not. I want to go to therapy and have someone to talk to but I can't afford $100 a session and insurance doesn't cover it. Sometimes I get close to opening up to my boyfriend about how anxiety affects me but I don't want to rely on him for my emotional needs so I explain it as my personal issues and leave it at that. Having him talk to me about his family feeling unable to talk to me and thinking I was unhappy and uncomfortable during the trip hurt me. Not because of what he said but the fact that these kinds of issues just won't go away. I don't think I've made a new friend since I was 16 and I'm 22 now. I just seem to have this inability to connect with new people and I just can't converse like a normal human. I wanted so badly for his parents to like me because I didn't make the best impression the first time. I felt great coming home from the trip, I felt like I fit in with the family more but when my boyfriend talked to me it felt like I was delusional the whole time. How I felt and how others felt was so different, it crushed me.
I don't know how to talk to people. I thought it was just starting conversations I had trouble with but maybe I have trouble keeping them going too. I wish I could be the perfect daughter-in law, helping out around the house, telling funny stories, bonding over shared hobbies but I guess I'm just the girl his family secretly hopes he breaks up with.
My boyfriend and I have had a special bond from the first day we met. Usually I'm super quiet on first dates so much so that my ex-boyfriend used to tell me it was my turn to talk and would not say a word to me until I started a conversation, that didn't work very well... With my current boyfriend it was a little awkward at the beginning but as we started to walk around and talk more, everything came so easily. When I talk to him it feels like I can say whatever I want without judgement. I don't need to second guess everything I want to say because he has always understood what I was saying and was receptive to my thoughts. That first day with him showed me everything I needed to know and from that moment on I knew I never wanted anyone else. Unfortunately this was one of the only times I've bonded with someone right away.
In school I would spend the first half of the year trying to form friendships and only got a couple of months to enjoy my friends before the summer came and went and I was yet again placed in a new class where I had no friends. You'd think with how often I was forced to make new friends that I wouldn't have a problem with social anxiety but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. In my school years I had big falling outs with my best friends that made me distrust friendship. I desperately wanted friends but I wanted friends that would be there for me forever not ones that would leave me because I wasn't good enough for them. To me it was all or nothing and since I couldn't have all I choose nothing. I'd hoped it would be something I'd grow out of as I got older but it didn't happen. In my first year of university I tried really hard to be friendly but yet again people were only my friends for class and when class ended they were gone. So I stopped trying and hoped that if I was meant to have friends it would just happen at some point. But here I am going into my last year of university and I'm still friendless.
At this point I really want to start improving myself and learning how to properly cope with my anxiety. However, without access to a therapist I worry that I'm stuck this way forever. At this point I don't even know who I am without the anxiety. I'm used to being a mess of a person. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be normal.
I like to think I'm doing well but I'm not. I want to go to therapy and have someone to talk to but I can't afford $100 a session and insurance doesn't cover it. Sometimes I get close to opening up to my boyfriend about how anxiety affects me but I don't want to rely on him for my emotional needs so I explain it as my personal issues and leave it at that. Having him talk to me about his family feeling unable to talk to me and thinking I was unhappy and uncomfortable during the trip hurt me. Not because of what he said but the fact that these kinds of issues just won't go away. I don't think I've made a new friend since I was 16 and I'm 22 now. I just seem to have this inability to connect with new people and I just can't converse like a normal human. I wanted so badly for his parents to like me because I didn't make the best impression the first time. I felt great coming home from the trip, I felt like I fit in with the family more but when my boyfriend talked to me it felt like I was delusional the whole time. How I felt and how others felt was so different, it crushed me.
I don't know how to talk to people. I thought it was just starting conversations I had trouble with but maybe I have trouble keeping them going too. I wish I could be the perfect daughter-in law, helping out around the house, telling funny stories, bonding over shared hobbies but I guess I'm just the girl his family secretly hopes he breaks up with.
My boyfriend and I have had a special bond from the first day we met. Usually I'm super quiet on first dates so much so that my ex-boyfriend used to tell me it was my turn to talk and would not say a word to me until I started a conversation, that didn't work very well... With my current boyfriend it was a little awkward at the beginning but as we started to walk around and talk more, everything came so easily. When I talk to him it feels like I can say whatever I want without judgement. I don't need to second guess everything I want to say because he has always understood what I was saying and was receptive to my thoughts. That first day with him showed me everything I needed to know and from that moment on I knew I never wanted anyone else. Unfortunately this was one of the only times I've bonded with someone right away.
In school I would spend the first half of the year trying to form friendships and only got a couple of months to enjoy my friends before the summer came and went and I was yet again placed in a new class where I had no friends. You'd think with how often I was forced to make new friends that I wouldn't have a problem with social anxiety but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. In my school years I had big falling outs with my best friends that made me distrust friendship. I desperately wanted friends but I wanted friends that would be there for me forever not ones that would leave me because I wasn't good enough for them. To me it was all or nothing and since I couldn't have all I choose nothing. I'd hoped it would be something I'd grow out of as I got older but it didn't happen. In my first year of university I tried really hard to be friendly but yet again people were only my friends for class and when class ended they were gone. So I stopped trying and hoped that if I was meant to have friends it would just happen at some point. But here I am going into my last year of university and I'm still friendless.
At this point I really want to start improving myself and learning how to properly cope with my anxiety. However, without access to a therapist I worry that I'm stuck this way forever. At this point I don't even know who I am without the anxiety. I'm used to being a mess of a person. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be normal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)