Walk with me for a moment

i'm going to be honest, i think for a lot of us, this just wasn't our month. there are the holidays to look forward to if you celebrate, but overall, especially for us in the united states, not so great. things were especially rough for myself this month, losing my long term partner on top of a nation of people possibly deciding my future as a nonbinary person in this country was just overall not what i wanted to go through. much of this month was dark, bleak, anything but happy. still though, i pushed, because i remembered what happiness once was for me, and i knew i could have it back with time

before i met my partner, i had not yet realized who i completely was. i had finally understood i was bisexual, but there was more to me that i didn't have the words for yet, but to figure something out was better than nothing, as much of life was rather confusing and irritating at points until my late 20s. in my late 20s i was full of confidence, love, and passion for myself and others. a friend described me as a sweetheart, genuinely meaning it in every sense. i felt this way about myself too, that i had a lot of love to offer someone if they wanted it, and so i started looking for that someone

these days, after having poured that love over someone who once wanted it, then took advantage of it, i don't describe myself as i would in my late 20s. i do however, remember how i felt as i say those words to myself. passionate, loving, sweetheart. these are words that bring a warm smile to my face every time, butterflies to my stomach, because i know there will be someone else out there who is this, and wants it just as much in return. but that is for future emma to worry about, one has to love themselves before they can love someone else in a meaningful way, and i'm just not there yet

but towards the end of this month, things started happening. depression is a very cruel thing, it will make you sad, it will take the things and people you love and make you think you don't like these things and that these people don't really care about you. if depression really gets what it wants, you'll lie in bed all day, feeling of nothing. during a discussion with my therapist, they had asked if there was ever any sort of intuition i had about myself and my mental health treatment. i've been through treatment many times when it comes to therapy, i've long made peace with the medication i'll need for the rest of my life because i can have a somewhat functional and joyful day with it. so i told them, that the word that comes to me is "persist". to expand on that, my intuition tells me, that no matter how bad this gets, no matter how low i get, stick it out, see what's coming, this is worth getting through. maybe i've just been through therapy enough times to see it work out in the end. i'm not sure why i think this way, but i'm sure happy i do.

the last few days were really something special, that cold feeling went away, replaced by warmth. isolation was replaced with participating in the community i adore more than anything, and speaking with people who i understood really did care about me and what i had to add to conversations. dread was replaced with hope, with goals for the future, of who and where i want to be. i looked at these ideas with confidence, they brought me joy, and i knew that work would be required, but i looked forward to it.

sometimes i need time to get over what keeps me up at night, sometimes i need to speak with people who get what i'm going through, sometimes i need to remember i am not alone by reading a blog post and crying for 30 minutes after because in the author's efforts to feel seen, i felt seen. i needed all of these things in the end, and i have awhile to go, there's a lot of work to do to better understand some things i've been through. i'm long overdue for being in therapy again, but i feel a lot more confident about working through things, and happiness isn't some lost feeling anymore, i feel it right now, writing this post

Later Gator

Today, as I would often put it to myself, was a day. Nothing really went right, I cried more than once, it is the middle of November and it looks like shit outside which isn't really inspiring. So I had a plan. I would take a small, deliberate step. I would inch closer towards the woman I keep seeing in the mirror, that no one else can see.

I shaved my legs, arms, well just one of my legs honestly. It was taking awhile and I started getting lightheaded from the shower steam. I will get the other one tomorrow. It was nice, it isn't much, but it was a step forward, that I chose to take. This is very important for me right now. My head isn't in the greatest place and so a deliberate action on my part to feel better about myself, to feel pretty in a way that makes me feel pretty. Was a really big deal in that moment.

This is a short but very important post, because if the past few weeks have been a rainstorm, this was a small ray of sunshine.

Later Gator

The past few days have been very hard. I've been broken up with my partner for just about a week. A five year relationship ended by them running away. I stand here, and look at my broken life, and I want to pick up the pieces, patch the walls, dust the floors. It is just rather hard to do that when the roof has caved in and it is raining all the time. It rains so much when you're like this. It makes your clothes soaking wet, so heavy with weight that every action takes so much effort. You sigh as if you've run a marathon, and yet you've made the same pot of coffee you do every day.

I'm speaking with a therapist, which is good. This is good. I've acknowledged I need help. I've been through major depression enough that I'm diagnosed with it as a disorder, I'm no stranger to this. It is so demoralizing for it to be a different path with different way points, different breakthroughs, all unique every time. The analyst in me wishes for a system to this, the human in me scoffs at those who try to troubleshoot me like a robot when I am explaining how I feel. What an odd dance to be in.

There's an underlying part in all of this that means I'll get through it though, even if it takes time I know I will. For better, and often times worse, I'm rather stubborn. I don't like giving up. I know what giving up to this potentially means, and I refuse.

For now, I'll keep picking up the pieces

Later Gator

Maybe you aren't familiar with this, most doctors I've brought the symptoms up to don't have much to say about it. So here's the wikipedia article if you'd like to read that first: Exploding Head Syndrome - wikipedia

With that out of the way, I think I have this, but there's not a lot one can do about it. The name alone suggests that there's not a great deal of research and wikipedia suggests most people don't bother with reporting symptoms. I always found the name funny because I don't really associate it with my head exploding. It is a loud sudden bang with no echo. I also have the visual part of this as well. When falling asleep I can see a white light sometimes as bright as daylight. It is quite distracting and requires me to open my eyes to make it stop.

That's kind of the weird thing about this, it is quite jarring and alarming in the moment. But you shake it off after a few seconds. For me they rarely occur more than once every so often. The visual light part is more common for me. Tonight was odd though, as I began to feel my body relax into sleep, I was anticipating the sound of an explosion. I don't know how to explain it, I could hear it without hearing it. My ears were responding to the sound of it, but the sound wasn't being made. It became so intense I had to take a deep breath and get up. Robbed of a cozy bed because of imagining the bang rather than hearing it.

But is there really any point in getting help for this? It doesn't seem worth it really. It happens every so often, I am aware it is something my mind is creating and not a noise happening in life around me. When the audio part of this occurs, while jarring it is over in seconds and I know what happened and can relax and usually fall asleep again. But it is just such a weird thing to deal with. I don't like it, but I put up with it. I imagine a lot of folks are in this situation. It doesn't really cause much harm to me besides shortly interrupted sleep. That's not really something I want to start medication for. I've thought about running a fan in my bedroom, perhaps focusing on ambient noise can allow my brain to safely go into sleep mode without need to make noise by itself.

There's no real point to this other than to publicly log tonight's occurrence for myself and perhaps shed some light on what this is if someone out there experiences this too.

Later Gator

I don't think this has been a great week for a lot of folks, it certainly hasn't for me. In addition to how the election turned out, my partner left me the day after. Our relationship was never perfect, and to be honest this is probably a good thing in the long run. A lot of damage was done to me in the process of this relationship under the guise of good intentions, under my assumption of being a good partner. That's what will take a lot of work to fix and figure out my life on my own again, I'm not afraid to be single, but I have no one in my life now.

When we met in 2019 they were very charming, we fell quick. Things took a turn when they were diagnosed with cancer. It was early in the relationship, but I felt a connection to them I had felt with no one else, I felt we had to keep going and they had to get better because I wanted a life with this person. So through the course of 3 years, and you know what happened between 2019-2022 so add that on to the list, I looked after them. After work I cared for them, I helped them in every way I could. Friends started leaving my life because I was so focused on them getting better. After two bouts of cancer and a non cancerous brain tumor, they were free of that part at least. But they had changed. They would accuse me of cheating because I worked a night job and that must've meant I doing something behind their back. They were just different.

We would split off and on several times, each time the promise of getting better was made, and each time I bought it, and for a little things would get better. But it was just them in my life. Oh sure they had friends, but I never met them, as much as I wanted to. I was very isolated and I didn't even know it, because was running under the assumption I was in love, that this was my person, and that was all I needed in life.

This time is different though, it clicked. That I put so much into this relationship and that when I had finally hit a rough patch of my own. They split. They couldn't help me when I truly needed them most. So I sit at my desk, alone with my cat. I look back through all those years and I no longer see the love, I see all the things that should've made me leave, that should've made me let go. Relationships are very involved. things. I think there are points in this relationship that we genuinely loved each other. I don't really know what happened to change that. Few times in life are we afforded a gift with a bow that contains all the answers we need. I'll never really know, and it really doesn't matter. I'm starting therapy next week which is long overdue, and I'm looking forward to it as I genuinely need help. I know people want to help and I want to get better, because I deserve to be happy and confident in myself once again.

I have to ask one thing though, I lost all my friends. I don't really know how to make friends anymore. I know I haven't posted a lot on this blog so far, but if you've read the posts on here or you know me from somewhere. Would you like to be friends? You can email me at emma-at-emmas-dot-place or if you happen to know me from a community we might both be in, we can talk there. The one thing I do really know, is that I need friends right now, I know it is a lot to ask of internet strangers, maybe too much even. But I have to ask.

Later Gator