The Girl Without A Face

I haven’t written here for awhile. Its not that I don’t have anything to say. Quite frankly, I’m sick of discussing the pain. I’m sick of feeling this way. I want to “get better”. I want to move on and “be normal”. The reality is, I’m pretty fucked up from it all. Sure, I’ve done a lot of journaling, talking to my sister, cutting off toxic family members, but what now? There’s an emptiness inside of me that I can’t quite work out. I feel different from everyone else. Even when I know I can find other people like me, and I start to think of taking steps to do that, I find obstacles in my way before I even get started. I tell myself, “I’ll start when my son graduates”. It gets so heavy sometimes that I don’t see the point in doing anything, but then I realize I can’t leave my son behind either. Caught between a rock and a hard place.

So, I started therapy again. I don’t want to have to be the person to go to therapy. I don’t want to have to re-explain my complicated fucked up childhood to a stranger. I wish I felt nothing when I did talk about it. I’m so tired. I want to get to the point of indifference, or acceptance, or peace. I want to understand how to move on from the life that sent me into psychosis. Its like this dark secret I carry around with me underneath the mask I wear for strangers I meet. “You don’t even know me”, I think. “And if you did, you wouldn’t even know what to think”. It comes up when my new, younger boss says “does that make sense” condescendingly. It comes up when I’m one of the only people to miss the sales rally and I have to explain over and over again that I have to be home to take my son to school. Underneath that is the fact that I have no one, no support, no emergency contact to call. It triggers the memory of my former life crumbling to the ground.

I know it sounds dramatic, but I truly feel like a fish flailing. It was like I had to start from scratch after my breakdown, but starting from scratch in your 30s as a single mom of a teenager is much different than when you are first starting out and building friendships in your 20s. Daily, I flip flop from day dreaming about what I’ll do when my son graduates, to not having the energy to think about tomorrow. I’m so incredibly resentful that every other person I’ve ever known has already moved on. It’s just me and my son during this final leg of his high school career. I have no former friends checking in. No family asking me how I’m doing. I talk to my sister who lives in another state, she’s traveling the world while I’m suffocating under the weight. I’m happy for her, I am. Life is all about choices, and I chose this life at 18. I just never realized at the time how lonely it would be. Maybe this is the first time I’m admitting to myself how lonely I’ve always been. I don’t see a way out of the loneliness. That’s why I had to enlist help.

The thoughts came back of not wanting to be here anymore so I knew it was time to talk to someone. My goal in therapy was to be as open as possible, what do I have to lose? I let her know that as well. It’s exhausting to talk about everything, it brings up pain I didn’t even realize I was suppressing. They don’t call it work for nothing. I just can’t help but think that this is my only option for a semblance of a life filled with happiness and acceptance of the past.

I have to do what I hate the most. Ask for help.