A Glimpse Into The Madness 27Feb2012

It's 11:30.  Normally, I'd be sound asleep by now.  Ironically, I had all the electronics and I was pleasantly reading a book and texting a friend of mine.  Oddly, our conversation stirred up some very deep, painful issues of mine.  To help me sleep, I'm going to be blogging about it here.

For the past eight months, I feel like I've been slipping slowly into a kind of madness or into a state of numbness where I don't feel anything.  I've found myself in a frenzy, moving from one activity to the other, like I was trying to run away from something.  Other times, I found me trying to bury myself in video games, or books to read, or endless Facebook updates, trying to ignore or numb away something I'd been feeling.  Sometimes I've turned to more potent numbing agents, like masturbation.  All of this to try to avoid feeling one thing.

Pain.

Working backward from right now, where I do feel the pain and the sadness.  I can see that my actions lately have made me feel like I'm slippy closer and closer toward acting out sexually with another man.  I can see that I've been putting myself into increasingly more compromising situations.  The cycle is very slow, generally every few months.  I feel like I've been getting very close to a breaking point of sorts.

The root cause? Last year I was in a very close friendship.  I shared a lot with this other man.  I struggled with having romantic feelings on and off.  I started to become very overdependent on him for getting my emotional needs met.  To make a long, painful story short, the friendship eventually fell apart and I had to distance myself from him.

Since then, I don't think I've ever fully recovered from it.  I've withdrawn and isolated my heart to being hurt further.  I've taken steps to numb myself from the pain, which only seems to make the pain feel even worse.  I've noticed that it's been difficult to feel like I have and friends, even friends that are close.  I've felt like there is no one that I can trust.  I don't even feel like I can trust myself, or my own motives.  I feel like I've been playing more and more with fire, and that eventually I'm going to get burned by it, unless I can find another solution.

Pain has been a reoccurring companion for me in my life.  I remember crying myself to sleep at nights when I was younger because I didn't feel like anyone liked me and that I didn't have any friends.  The feeling has continued with me as I've grown older.  I realize that my perceptions are horrifically tainted and twisted by the beliefs I have about myself: that I am unlovable, and not worth the notice of others.  Sadly, I've turned this belief against others.  Many times, a friendship has taken root in my heart, only to later be blasted by my anger and by my inability to love the other person.  I've often felt like my heart was a lonely, desolate place where no one else was.  Many times, it's been like Tumm has rampaged and destroyed everything, only to ultimately curl up in a ball in the center of the blast radius and go completely numb.  I honestly feel like the cycle of destruction and attempted rebirth has gone on far too long in my life.  It would be nice for a friendship to grow, become strong, and stay alive in my heart.  Sometimes I think my heart just isn't fertile enough for it.  I've always thought that friendships were hard to form.  Now I'm beginning to think I may be the difficult person to be a friend with.

The pain is often frustrating for me.  I have tried to pray many times for it to be removed.  I've even tried to surrender it.  I feel like I need to give up on both.  Neither has made the pain stop.  I find myself praying increasingly more in order to have the strength to bear the pain I've been given to bear.

At the root of the madness are number of competing and fighting ideas and desires.  On one hand, there is a part of me that so desperately wants to be loved.  On another, there is a part that wants to be free from pain and suffering and that doesn't want to hurt any more.  The part that desires freedom from pain says that in order to have love, I will have to open up and risk being hurt.  The same part decides to keep me guarded and isolate from others.  The other part cries out so desperately to feel loved that it often comes out in ways I can't control.  Sometimes that part of me starts to listen to the lie that the only way I will be loved is if I am loved sexually by another.

I can see but one path that may lead me back to sanity.  I have many safe places to embrace vulnerability and let my pain be shown.  Perhaps there, I can finally step into my pain more fully, and allow myself to feel truly loved again.