Dear K:

In my first of two  posts to you today, I will quote you from all your posts on this thread. When I do so, I retype your words, that helps me absorb them. In my second post to you, I will comment on these words.

“I have gone through many years of my life feeling in a hazy, eyes-filled-with-tears state off and on… sometimes I do notice if I am not in the right frame of mind.. I don’t know what to say, and my eye contact is quick, sporadic, all over the room to avoid making steady contact with the other person because for some reason I feel unconfident or weird or just… off. It is horrible. Other times.. I can make eye contact, be funny, animated and social. I have had bouts with what I guess is depression… Last year I moved 2,500 miles away with my fiancé, away from our families. I miss them dearly. I continue sometimes to spend some nights in a stupefied crying haze where I wonder how it is possible to cry so hard and not die or something. But then I wipe my tears away and go to sleep or get on with my life.. I was also pretty miserable when I was living with them… Sometimes I scream at the top of my lungs in the car and in the apartment because I am just so frustrated and exasperated. Then I get over it. Sometimes I spend my time after work and some of my weekends being pretty sedentary… exhausted and unmotivated…  I don’t make friends easily.. I feel so drained from constant talking and sensory overload… I feel stuck and so tired all the time… on the outside I am usually such a bubbly, smiley person.. pretty chill and friendly usually. So I’m not sure if it is normal for someone my age (early 30s female) to lay in bed so much and just relax on the computer or read, try to listen to meditation videos, shut my eyes… I feel odd being sedentary so much… I don’t allow myself to open up too deeply. It is all kept light and superficial… I am ashamed a lot of the times of my manners, I am afraid of people seeing me eat sometimes, I feel like I eat weird combinations of food. Sometimes, I eat in secrecy in the bathroom… I wish I would allow myself the pleasure of eating nicely… I wish I could just let things in my life flow with ease and gentleness… Sometimes I think I get so tired of having a routine… while I feel the desire to break out of routine, there are certain things in it that I cling to… I am an only child, and my parents never judged me or gave me a hard time about my food preferences. If anything, they wanted me to be happy… I remember I have always eaten weird… my mom would make me a whole box of Mrs. T’s perogies or two packages of ramen noodles.. I was chubby at times. I would also get made fun of for my weight in school from time to time… I recently gone off my latest anti-depression medication. For years I have gone on & off anti-depressants (mostly NOT being on them), because I always felt that they never really worked well… So sometimes I wonder if I am not really depressed; that I just need to sit with.. pent-up emotions that have left knots in my psyche and need to be untangled… I think our brains probably have stored.. every experience we have lived through and how each of them made us feel.. we need to actively try to recall these past memories, even though we think we may have long forgotten them, and to analyze what happened, how we felt, and how we can move past these memories to try and stop repeating these patterns indefinitely in our present lives…I don’t think I have the ‘mom gene’ in me. I have no friends… feeling like a shell of myself, a dried out prune version of the vivacious, beautiful soul I know is deep within me… I just need to learn how to better harness that divine power within me, within al of us.. access this eternal, unending power.. I am not sure why I have felt like such an outcast weirdo most of my life. My parents really did give me a great childhood and always tried hard to provide me with such nice memories, things to look forward to, and a warm & cozy home. wasn’t allowed to watch much tv or video games. I always was encouraged to play outside with my friends or by myself.. I am an only child.. Sometimes if my parents grounded me, I was obviously left to my own devices to try and attempt to resolve on my own what happened, what I did wrong, and how to  cope with the sadness I felt for being punished. I never had any siblings to run to for solace, comfort, and companionship. I feel like it has always been my own fault for feeling so lonely and miserable… I was never satisfied with my job or.. my relationship with my current boyfriend at the time… I have tended to stay in uncomfortable jobs and relationships for far too long… Am I too apprehensive to get out of my comfort zone?… I was generally grounded.. I was a happy child for the most part unless I was grounded or hitting a low point for some other reason or another… I talked back to my parents (so common, I know).. but I was obviously grounded for that. It was clearly stated because my mom would always announce (not my dad) that I was grounded and she would say something to this effect: ‘Go to your room, we don’t want to see you for the rest of the day. Go and think about what you’ve done, no going out to play with friends etc.’

This grounding would usually last about a week.

It was depressing honestly. I was lonely. I didn’t have/ wasn’t allowed to have a tv in my room, no video games, no pets, no  siblings. I felt so alone.. I usually had a great imagination and toys to play with, but it still left me with some damagingly lonely times… following the ending of a grounding, things would resume back to normal, but I still harbored feelings of animosity towards my parents for ‘making’ me feel badly, for punishing me, for banishing me to my room, where I couldn’t play with my friends. It was a perceived total loss of control and the inability to get it back until they said so. I hated it.. I felt powerless and hopeless. Felt like my life was bleak and over with even though I was very little. I felt like I was hopelessly in despair and had nothing to look forward to during these times of what felt like exile. While I had myself, my mind, my toys, space to play and let my mind wander.. it felt so narrow and suffocating.. It was all just that.. toys and inanimate objects. The one thing that wasn’t was always my mind. That’s the one thing I wish I could have utilized in more positive ways.. to leverage my mindset out of such bleak outlook, to shift it to a golden, abundant world of excitement and possibilities, to find the humor in the situation somehow… shifting the mindset to positive thinking, and keeping it there. To not complain”.

anita