Category Archives: isolation

Moving on…

It has been difficult, but I have moved forward, and am beginning to find what I want to be. And what I want to do. It just won’t involve other people much.

Most of us find ourselves having to reconstruct our lives… the nons evolve, but not in isolation. We have to deal with suddenly discovering your world is not what your thot. Without warning, we find our world gone… and we are alone to rebuild.

I have written about how people who find themselves the victims of mental illness, will find their friends slipping away. Gradually, many of us end up without any direct contact with the outside world. We tend to become “loners” because we are forced to, not because we are driven to. The illness does not make us want to be alone… it makes us want to be understood.

What makes us seem to want to be alone, is that we can’t get people to understand what is happening to us. We can’t just “get over it”, or “move on”. We can learn about our illness, and sometimes find ways to mitigate it. But those problems/mistakes will never go away. We will have to always be on guard for each little sign that something is amiss.

People have said I am brave. It makes me feel good to hear… but I do not think of myself as brave. Is it brave to swim ashore from a sinking boat?

This is where I am.

I need to find a life… a way forward. And I need to do it on my own. It is slow going. But there is progress. In reality, I do thing I know what I want to do with my life. I am struggling to try to make it happen. But there are no other options.

I’ll try to write more about how I am doing towards my goal. I will actually be taking a needed step forward today. It may well make no difference at all. There are still major obstacles. But I have to move forward.

Coming to Acceptance

My thoughts have been drifting around my memories, and what is lost. There are so many wonderful things I have done, and seen. I have had great friends, and been involved with wonderful people. I loved my time in archery, college, and teaching. At every step, I thot I was making life-long friends. But I always found that when my life had to shift places all those friends were lost.

“All” is not a fair word. I still know a couple people from my archery days. In Seattle. I have not seen them in many years. That is my fault. But when I left teaching, I was shocked how quickly I was forgotten. Not one person I had known contacted me after I left. I tried communicating with a few… a few times. Some said we would get together when they come to Portland… never seemed to happen.

Retirement was almost 20 years ago. I have not had any new social contacts since. There have been no new people coming thru my life. That makes it hard to make new friends.

I give up.

All my life, my single greatest fear… one I constantly fought, was of ending up alone. Here I am.

So now what? What do I do with my life now?

I have hobbies… they are not very fulfilling though. There is no purpose to my life. I have no goals. No dreams.

That has to change.

I have struggled with what to do. Without friends, I have no-one to read off. There is no-one to react to what I do, to give me any feedback. So I never have any sense of success. If I write, who will read it?

This is where I am. For a couple of years, I have been trying to find purpose. No luck. How can I find purpose with no feedback? As a teacher I understand how important it is to perceive ourselves as making progress, and succeeding. After years of no feedback… my ambition has faded. Now I usually don’t try.

This is where I am.

Next?

Non-Traveling Guy

My travel has gradually diminished to nothing. There is no-one to encourage me to go. I am on my own in figuring out how to work past my fears… phobias. Even remaining people close, have given up trying. I will not be trying.

Putting effort into travel is virtually guaranteed to be lost effort. And one more failure. I can’t do much by myself. I will only put energy into things here at home.

That has been the de-facto situation for a couple of years at least. But has been recently confirmed. I need to move on.

I Am a Cat Person

WOW! …am I ever a cat person…

I understand cats. Predicting their behavior is pretty simple. And I talk to them. Lori rolls her eyes and shakes her head when a cat will do what I say with a simple, calm, quiet command. “Down”… and they will jump down off wherever they are. Lori yells at them 2-3 times before they decide to get down. They understand what I want them to do.

We lost our oldest kitty – Cymbeline – a month ago, at 17. It is still very difficult to think about her. She slept in one of the cat-beds on my desk. There are five cat beds around my office. During the winter, three of them have warming pads. There are often four cats sleeping here.

They are my friends. They are my only friends. Caliban sleeps near me all the time… wherever I go in the house. They each have their own personal ways of accepting commands. But they are always around.

Our backyard has cat-fence so they can’t get out, and others can’t get in. They love it out there. Except Miranda… There are some cat-perches out there.

There are three cats here now.

They are a calming influence in my life. They make it easier to relax. Their positive reaction to me makes me feel better. I take care of them too.

Fighting Aloneness

WOW!

I picked a huge topic today. but important to many people.

There is a huge emptiness in my life. I am a writer… trying to write a book… it is in my head. I used to have friends I wrote letters with… handwritten! No-one does that anymore. On-line is shallow and fleeting. I struggle to go past our driveway. Being around people is frightening to me. My cats understand me…

Where do I go from here? I have been here a very long time… where do I go?

An Open Window…

I am trying to give people a chance to hear from the other side of the Mental Health issues we face. These Blogs may come back to haunt me. I make bad decisions, and people may respond in ways that make me think they are angry at me.

My response: Get in line.

I am used to people being mad at me. Even when they are not. My brain goes into protective mode and it assumes anyone with cause, is mad at me. Unless I have direct knowledge, they are not. There is almost a constant fear in my brain of people being mad at me. If I cannot know better… my brain assumes they are mad.

That is what my brain does. And NO amount of knowing that, will ever be able to stop my brain from going there.

If you fall into a pool of water, your brain will respond in a certain way to save you. It would take a lot a practice to learn exactly how to react in the best possible way… that protects you the most quickly. But it would take practice. You would need help…

Here is the catch… there is no way for the mentally ill to practice unless there is someone to practice with. We need help. We need someone to unlock the doors to the pool.

I don’t have the keys.

Depression

I am amazed at how people do not understand Depression. Lori gets mad at me if my depression interferes with plans. After 25 years, she still gets mad when my depression hurts our plans. It is pervasive, and constantly damaging to our relationship. But it is what it is.

When I am depressed, I am totally on my own. No-one does anything to make it easier.

If Lori does not understand why I am depressed, then I can just disappear into my office. I can tell when Lori is mad at some bad behavior of mine. I can even hear the greater impact of her feet on the floor… stairs in particular. I understand why she is angry. She is a normal human being. But she does not understand how I react, let alone why I react in strange ways. So she gets angry at me. almost every time.

I have learned to deal with things on my own. Depression lasts a lot longer, and takes more of a toll, but I can get thru it on my own. I have for 55 years… since my first memorable panic attack.

Mentally ill people spend a lot of time and energy trying to adjust to the behaviors of even our closest friends. I do not understand you every bit as much as you do not understand me… stop getting angry. I have tried anger, and it does not help. Try to image a different reality. Give us a break.

It has always been my experience, that when I, and other mentally ill people, need help the most, is exactly when people pull away the most…

Who to have as Friends?

I have found it very difficult to have normal conversations with people, without have to spend most of my time either… trying to figure out what people think I mean, or trying to explain what I mean.

I have found it easier to communicate about everyday things, with people like me… so I don’t have to explain each point along the way. Just let me say what happened without having to explain everything. It gets so tiring to have to worry about how someone will interpret what I say. People like me, don’t need the explaining part.

I want it to be “normal” for me.

Do you realize how rare that is for us?

The Ghost in the Room

There is a ghost in the room… wherever I go. It is me. The ghost of who I was… of who I was on the inside, haunts me every day. I died decades ago. I disappeared under a cloud of misunderstanding, and mistrust.

When I talk with anyone, my ghost is in the room. Do I listen to my “reality” voice, or my ghost?

People don’t even know who I am. People I worked with for 15 years know virtually nothing about me. Or I should say… about my ghost. People are afraid of ghosts. They are afraid of me. I am two people. Or was… the real me is now limited to this office, and my writings. They prefer the public me. Even with its faults.

But the ghost haunts me… I can not be the public-me so much anymore. The energy to do that has long since faded. And when I have to be the public-me, the ghost pulls at my mind…

There is a ghost with me always.

I Have SiBS

Star is Born Syndrome.
And how to get out of it.

I used to be a teacher.  I was liked, and even admired, by students and faculty.  I was trusted, and influential.  I had built my own home to my needs, and was well known in the community… having gone to city council meetings.  I had friends, and family.  I had been president of the teacher’s union.  All of that and more.

Now I live in virtual isolation… dependent on my loving, successful, liked, and admired wife, financially and otherwise.  No friends or family.  No one knows what my opinions are, and no-one cares.  People don’t trust me.

This was a thot I just wrote down this morning. My “Run Away” approach to life has not worked out as well as I had planned. The last several months I have been trying to build a foundation for getting out to have lunch with a friend… or such. Over the years, I made a lot of different attempt to meet, and develop friends. It never worked out.

Now… I am not sure which way to go. I no longer have confidence in my understanding of what others want, or how they think, or feel. I am flying blind.

My foundation is my confidence in my ability to disappear. I would like it to be confidence in my ability to keep trying, and take more chances. I should be able to do that. That word “should” again.

My meds are stable, and very consistent… even if one requires going out. I know what happens without them. Was that 2 years ago?? It was not good.

There is not going to be a better time to start. I will be writing about how this is going.

The Knights Who Say Ni’

I am a Knight who says Ni’.

My primary battle cry is “Run Away!’

When things go badly with people, I run away. I get out… and try to disappear. I vanish… as best I can. Fear makes us do funny things sometimes. A lot actually. I have no idea what people think of this, but my impression has always been that people were glad to see me go. I was not wanted there anyway. That is what I believe.

This is a feeling that sweeps over me. My hands shake. My brain races, looking for a way out. Panic. Panic can make us do irrational things… especially when I tend to do “irrational” things anyway. What do people think?

I even want to run away from my home. There are times when I must run, and my office is not far enough. I think I need to live by myself. I am not good around people. I do not trust my interpretations of what people are thinking or feeling. My psychologist said I was hyperempathetic. It seems to cause rapid imagination.

No matter what happens, I gradually hide more and more. I have been trying to get better… to reach out more. But every time I try, I mess it up somehow, and have to hide again. I do not understand people!

“The Road to Moscow”

by Al Stewart

I have listened to this song hundreds of times. I can not get away from needing to understand WW2.

The song is about a Russian Resistance fighter… his story… and his reward of life exile in Siberia. Because he met westerners. My father met Russians who were probably shipped off to Siberia, just for having met a westerner. 30 million Russians died… more than one in five. In some cities… fewer than 10% survived. Over 85% of Hitler’s war effort was against the Russians. Many say 90%.

Why?

My father never stopped looking for why. And he left me that heritage… I have to understand, why? How could such a thing happen??? 100 million people lost in a World War… who even knows that?

Irrational R Us

Learning to worry about every single little decision – which I already do – because it might be wrong, feeds my anxiety… there is literally no way I can be sure I am being rational. Do you have any idea how that feels? To know that no matter how careful, and thought out, you still may be completely wrong??

It is not a confidence builder.

And they wonder why I drop of Facebook. I can never know if I am saying an acceptable thing, let alone the right thing. I worry about each post so much; I almost always think about deleting them. So I run away. I can’t say the wrong thing of Facebook if I stay off. I can’t hurt anyone’s feelings if I am not there.

I have a degree in Math… and I can say, there is a pattern there. Who knows… it could even lead to total isolation for fear of offending. I’m not an expert… though I sort of am. I’m just an expert at the other side. I can describe what things are like over here… but seeing from your view is a bit tough.