"Let's make a timeline."
I was sitting in my therapist's office, telling her that I was feeling lower than I have in a very long time. But that at the same time, I felt a resistance to those feelings inside of me. That I was again starting to be able to differentiate between my voice and the voice of my depression.
I told her that it felt like being depressed was just my default state. That maybe some good times will come and I'll be happy for a season, but eventually it will always go back to that grey dull suffering that I've known most of my life.
She said that it makes sense that I feel that way. I haven't had much time with wholeness and confidence and since I am not feeling it right now, I don't feel that it's real or can ever be a permanent state.
And I said that my depression also makes a pretty convincing case that what it's saying is actually reality.
"How does it do that?"
"Through evidence," I told her.
"What's the evidence? Let's examine it. Let's make a timeline."
And so we traced things back.
Over the summer I have been rejected by every woman that I have gone out with or asked out.
"Is that true?"
"well..." I replied. Sure, there were some people who were interested in me, but they were not people I was interested in. I suppose I didn't add those experiences in when I tallied up how unlovable and undesirable I was.
As I was considering that, my therapist asked me, "So you've been rejected by every woman you were interested in this year?"
"No, just since like March or so."
"Isn't that when things happened with Erica?"
Oh my God, yes. Why hadn't I made that incredibly obvious connection?
Erica, the extremely diligent reader may recall, was a young and beautiful and very intelligent woman who fancied me quite a bit. She pursued me. She asked me out. She kissed me sweetly. I fell hard for her. There are several glowing entries on here about how infatuated I was. There was a part of me that saw some red flags, but I had thought I had found someone I really connected with, so I ignored them.
We dated for about a month. She asked if we could move slowly and I was happy to comply. We would make out until things got too heated and then she would stop things.
One night she came over after some fundraising gala that she went to. She was wearing a tight red dress. I remember peeling it off her. I remember how she looked into my eyes as she lay on top of me. I remember her telling me that she was falling in love with me.
I was ecstatic.
Then she disappeared.
I never really found out what happened. Maybe she was scared. Maybe things were moving too fast. Maybe she found someone else. Maybe, as my incredibly helpful friend suggested, I am just really bad at sex and she wanted to find some dudebro with better abs.
Either way, she left without telling me why.
I was crushed.
But I was also super busy. I had to finish my senior thesis. So I buried myself in my work, keeping myself at a constant state of exhaustion.
And then when the summer came and I had nothing to distract me, I collapsed into a deep state of depression. My insecurities raring back creating self-fulfilling prophecies about how unlovable and ugly and undesirable I was. I never realized that it was because of how I never really dealt with my heartbreak.
My therapist asked me to remember how I felt about myself before the Erica incident happened. I was by no means perfect then, but I was growing, I was mindful, I was strong.
I felt good about myself. I loved who I was and even felt sexy for the first time in my life.
I wasn't obsessed with love and how to be loved, because I felt that would come in its right time. I was just focusing on how to be empathetic and healthy and whole.
God, I miss feeling like that.
God, it's up to me to feel like again isn't it?
And so I decided right there in my therapist's office that I was going to feel like that again.
It might take some time to get back to where I was but I will not stop until I surpass it.
I want to love myself so deeply that I will never be shaken by the whims and wishes of others.
And I want to be confident and calm and connected to everything around me.
I want to remember the words of Epictetus when he said that the moment we seek approval of others we have compromised our integrity.
I want to do as the Buddha said and love the whole earth like a mother loves her only child.
I want to be a Bodhisattva and bring compassion and peace to everyone I encounter.
And love will come. When I am ready.
Until then I am just going to focus on bringing healing to myself and as much of the world as I can touch.
2:09 p.m. - 2016-09-10
Recent entries:
It's a start. - 2016-10-13
So done. - 2016-10-08
Casual Sex - 2016-10-04
Better-ish - 2016-09-25
How Does Your Garden Grow? - 2016-09-23
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