Pushing Through the Rubble

Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash

This is hard to admit, but it’s the truth. If you suffer from any of the following conditions, you can expect to lose friends:

• Depression

• CPTSD

• Panic disorder

• Chronic pain or chronic illness

• Disabilities, including “invisible” disabilities

“Due to a lack of information, the average friend does not know how to support their depressed friend. On the contrary, the average friend may suggest that the latter become strong and positive no matter what. This kind of advice hurts us because depression is an illness, not a weakness. And then, we tend to avoid such friends because we don’t need to feel worse about ourselves.” Mahevash Shaikh, “Losing Friends Is Normal if You Live with Depression,” Healthy Place.

What some might call self-pitying, a victim mentality, or attention-seeking behavior is actually a way of processing trauma, re-evaluating, cocooning, feeling the aftershocks of a painful loss, and hypervigilance. Ruminating out loud might be a part of the process. It can also be driven by the need to feel seen, heard, and validated. It’s a purging of the mental and emotional “bacteria” that continues to spread through their nervous system. They are trying to make sense of it all, vacillating between anger, regret, self-loathing, self-blame, depression and rage. It’s exhausting and being alone with it feels like an endless fall into darkness.

There are very few people who can handle, understand, or hold space for someone battling deep depression. I remind myself constantly that that is okay. Maybe it triggers their own experiences with trauma, depression, or grief. Maybe they don’t know how to help. Maybe they don’t have the emotional bandwidth because they are dealing with their own struggles. Maybe they just don’t understand that it is more than being sad. Mabye they wonder why you can’t flip the switch and just “think positive thoughts.”

I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to be around me when I’m at my worst, feeling my losses the hardest. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less. All I know is that it’s unfair of me to expect everyone to get it, especially those if they have no experience with things like clinical depression, complex PTSD, and serious anxiety disorder.

Some days I sit deeply steeped in my grief. I want a way out. I want to see a hand reaching towards me, strong enough to pull me out. But that hand belongs to only one person: my Higher Self. I ask myself what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing that keeps her at bay. I grow impatient and frustrated. I always hear how I can’t become this version of me until I “let go” of the past. I think what I need to accept is that this same pain has changed me, irrevocably. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

My nervous system is still in tatters. My hypervigilance and anxiety cause me to jump to conclusions, seeing danger everywhere, even in the slightest change in someone’s body language and tone. My mind spirals and before I know it, I am convinced that I am unlovable, that all my friends and family think I’m a burden, a loser, a liability. Time and time again, I am proven wrong about my assumptions. But I still can’t seem to break this line of thinking until I discover something to prove otherwise.

Lately, both the chronic back pain and the impending holidays have isolated me even more. I watch all the videos of my grandchildren, create gift lists even though I know I won’t see them. I feel like a prisoner of both my mind and my home, terrified to run into people in a town where I have zero support system. My daughter, my dogs, and cats, are my heroes, my catalysts for healing.

Sometimes I stew in darkness instead of trying to numb it. I feel it. I feel it. I feel it. And hopefully, it changes me in the best way possible. Hopefully, it won’t be for nothing.