I’ve been quarantined upstairs in my house since Monday (I’m fine!), and now there’s a near-total lockdown in Los Angeles (it’s fine!), so after a few days of isolation, I’m thinking a lot about how your feelings sneak up on you under duress. I tend to spend the first few days of recovery (I’ve had a lot of surgeries this year) repeating the words “I’m fine! It’s fine! We’re fine!” and then things shift and I’m crying. Or things shift and I’m great, but I look back and say, “Holy shit, that was horrific!”
The point is, it’s hard to tell how you’re feeling when a lot is happening at once.
So even though I wanted to take a few weeks off from doing threads while I recovered, it occurs to me that some of you might need a place to unpack some stress and share whatever crazy electrical currents are bouncing through you at the precipice of what’s bound to be a pretty difficult winter. Having been alone and in pain all week, I’m acutely aware of the weird little online habits you develop when you’re alone and in pain — or just alone and doing fine, but also craving a way to express what’s living under your skin.
You can express it here. I’m listening — and so are a lot of other smart, big-hearted people. Thanks for hanging out here and making this part of my life so much more rewarding.
Hey there Heather and everyone else. I've never felt so low in my life and could do with any help and thoughts anyone might have. I'm almost 40 and my boyfriend (of a year or so – he is in his early 30s) broke up with me last week because he's not ready to have a baby, and so suddenly, I'm going it alone, I guess with an anonymous sperm bank donor. I knew it could go either way with him as he does want kids one day, just not yet – but we love each other. And I thought he'd say yes. I mean, who throws away a life partner?! (The only one either of us have ever found thus far, after years of fruitless searching in my case). He does, it turns out. I am so depressed. I live alone and was used to having him here, on my sofa, and I have to admit that life feels pretty pointless at the moment. Can anyone help? And yes, I definitely want a baby. Have investigated this enough to know that despite the situation I'll still go ahead and give a child all my love and the best possible life I can; that's not the issue, I've got that. Anyway – thank you!
I’ve spent the past two days stuck in my head, and after some overwhelming feelings and journaling, with a little bit of crying, I’ve come to the realisation that I hate myself. You always try to avoid that thought. Like, “no, I don’t HATE myself, I’m exaggerating, I’m just feeling a little insecure.” Well, that’s not the case. There’s insecurity there, sure. But based on all the things I put myself through the past year, the things I let slide, I absolutely hate myself. This is both a scary and freeing thought. Freeing because, finally, I don’t have to lie to myself and pretend I don’t hate myself and try to see a friend that I can’t spend more than a few hours with to lift my mood. Scary because hating yourself means, at least in my case, that you don’t care about yourself. I spent my whole life working towards grades, red numbers scribbled on a page. With this pandemic I realised that I wasted all that time with my head in a book because it didn’t lead me anywhere, and everyone else who did not studying as hard as I did, are out living the life I spent so long working for. All that left me with was a bad case of perfectionism and impostor syndrome. Everything I thought of myself feels false and I feel horrible in every way and I know I’m spiralling but I genuinely don’t know if I care that I am. I have no motivation to do what I want to do, the things I love don’t bring me joy anymore, and I just feel bad about myself. It’s even worse because I’m just EIGHTEEN. I shouldn’t be feeling like this horribly so young, should I? I just don’t know how to keep pretending like I’m okay, because I sincerely don’t know how to pick myself up again. It feels too lonely and too scary and I don’t think I care enough to try anymore.
Heather, your heart is so good it radiates through your columns and threads. Thank you for creating this space.
The world doesn't prepare you for how raw it is to be 20-25 years old, I am glad to do it only once. My mother took her life when I was thirteen years old and it's just this year I have begun to grieve in a way that feels more immediate than before. This tumultuous year marked ten years since she's been gone, a milestone that crept up on me. If there's anything I know stages of grief is misleading, it's more like cycles. I feel as if I was put in a centrifuge as a young girl and I've been spinning at varying speeds for the entirety of my life. My entire identity changed forever just as I was coming out of my girlhood. The concept of death doesn't scare me but not being able to give your love to someone who desperately needed it, does. The concept of death plays in my head almost every day, different people, different scenarios -- and this year there is so much death around us. There's not much to say from me here, just that I miss the thought of having a mom, and the thought of others losing their kindred spirit to this virus feels heavy on everyone. I don't spend my days angry at the world for not allowing me to have one more butterfly kiss from her, but more for making me a cup for others when I wish to be an ocean -- something I am slowly working on. I am just hoping to shout into the void that my heart is heavier today than most.
My mom lived in a different city than me, and five years ago I moved to that same city for university. I recently had to order her death certificate to do some paperwork, it's been a long time, and it's just a piece of paper. Reading that piece of paper felt like holding a piece of my own history. On her death certificate it says it was an accident, I thought it was purposeful? The address she lives at is on my commute to work? What is acute combined methadone, fluoexetine and amitriptyline intoxication? Did you know a dead person can cry? I didn't know... I just don't know. It all feels like I am spinning faster than usual here inside this lonely centrifuge.
The digital age and death isn't something I feel has been written enough about. In 2010 I was thirteen years old, I grew up with the rise of the internet and social media.
There is a real dissonance between death in the physical world and the eternal life of someone who existed online. On Facebook my mom is a real woman 36 years old, every year I get a notification of our friend anniversary. It feels cruel and at once comforting. There she is right trapped behind a screen, forever intangible. I'll be on the train in my Photos app & it'll look at a photo of me and ask 'Is this 'Mom?' or 'Share this with 'Mom'?. I am pulled out of my reality into one where I remember -- yes I do have a mother and I suppose now than I am twenty-three we look alike. It makes me want to shout from the rooftops - "I have a mom everyone! Remember! I do!". So I suppose this is me shouting from the rooftop.
My estranged biological father just died, and I found out via facebook messenger while eating a burrito. My nuclear family all has covid right now. My very, very beloved grandmother is dying of Parkinsons and I can tell she is uncomfortable and unhappy every day. I got 7 job rejections in the past three weeks. I have been living in many different places, often many different countries, for 3-6 months at a time to try to keep my international relationship afloat. My mother has been alienating my siblings while dumping all of the emotional fallout of that on me. I found out on Thanksgiving that my aunt secretly took my grandmother out of her nursing home for an indoors, unmasked Thanksgiving and I burst into tears of rage and helplessness.
This feels really stupid but I just put wedding invitations in the mail and I have these fleeting but heavy fears about my family collaborating to end my relationship or ruin my life somehow. We've been engaged since January and every family member I've told aside from my brothers essentially had the same response 1. Is he Muslim? 2. If not, when will he convert?
He and I agree that he will not convert (I'm secular and atheist myself and don't want him to). But instead of laying a firm boundary when asked I deflect, change the subject, hang up, or ignore texts. I realize this is a form of avoidance but my family is intolerant both of my lifestyle and his existence, and I feel the odds of us maintaining a civil relationship, or any relationship at all, depends on keeping the door cracked a bit...at least enough for them to get to know him as a human, which I want! I want this to be an opportunity for growth for them! That's the love in me, in both of us.
The fears in me tell me I'm opening myself to painful rejection at best and a lifetime of intrusion and perhaps violence? I don't really know what lies ahead. I'm in a support group for others from Muslim families to navigate this but no one has concrete answers. Some people are just cut off or disowned, others are harassed and need to get restraining orders, and other cases are worse. I guess my question is this: are we naive to want to merge these worlds? Is this a futile attempt? Are we just opening ourselves up to pain and danger? I want to believe the best choice is to give my family the chance to rise out of their bigotry and bias but I'm also afraid. What do you think?
Thanks Heather, I live for your columns and emails. You have such a gift, and you have found your dharma for this lifetime. Thank you for taking it by the horns and sharing it.
Oh, these threads what a gift! Having just been ghosted by the guy I'd been dating for 2 months who lives 4 streets away I was feeling awful. I thought I saw him this morning and had panic attack in the parking lot. I felt so sad and discarded. Then I come here and see so many of us hurt and I think oh you lovely people! I want to help you feel better, we all care enough to share and be vulnerable. Thank you Heather for always having the best advice and opening up this space for us.
I think as I look toward winter, I'm trying to get back to taking things a day at a time, the way I tried (but mostly failed) to do in early summer. I get pretty intense seasonal affective stuff every year, and I'm so deeply not looking forward to navigating it this winter. In theory I want to be proactive about it, but I'm worried I won't have the motivation. Lately I've noticed myself trying to connect with someone, anyone online whether I know them or not, because boy has this introvert hit her limit in terms of how long she can go without human connection...it's like, you don't really know how bad you need it until you get a taste of it, and then you want the whole damn buffet, you know? While living in the day to day I'm also paradoxically trying to look ahead to when All This is over and we have something resembling normalcy again and how absolutely freaking GLORIOUS it's gonna feel every time we freely get together with a group of friends, no matter how many there are or how close we're standing to them. Big group events are going to be positively euphoric. Whenever things feel bleak again, that kind of stuff is what I want in my brain.
A few years ago I was in a long term, on again off again, toxic relationship. I thought I processed most of my feelings and learned my lessons but I haven't. Having just binged watched the latest season of The Crown, I am staggering at all of the parallels between me/my ex and Diana/Charles - the vast age difference (I was 22, he was 32), the eating disorder (I also struggled with bulimia), the ways in which he ignored and resented her, the tiny fleeting moments of joy that gave the relationship hollow promise, the way in which she was blamed for her "crazy behavior" as though she acted in a vacuum. All these new memories of his abuse come racing back into my brain with such absurd clarity that sometimes I shout "Shit!!!" out loud in my apartment and my current, wonderful boyfriend is like "??? You good???" It's been 2 years but I obviously carry so much anger. Towards the end of my relationship, my ex loved to call me "abusive" but I really feel like I wasn't, I was having a proportional bewildered and hurt reaction to the extent of his disregard and utter contempt for me: another parallel, if you've seen the penultimate and final episodes. Beyond all of this, I know I do have longstanding anger and jealousy (unworthiness and fear in relationships) issues rooted in my childhood from watching my parents interact. I am 29 and I just now realized that my mother (despite, ironically, literally having the face and figure of a bikini model) DEEPLY resents beautiful/well-dressed women and finds them shallow and ignorant, and has passed that attitude onto me. I know my experience is not unique and I would love to hear how others have fully processed their experiences and allowed themselves to feel actual happiness. I have been in therapy mostly regularly for 4 years but the things I've just described are shockingly new personal revelations for me and I'm reeling.
Wishing you good health and all the support you need, Heather. I don’t know if you’ll read this, but I started reading your column religiously during long depressive episodes in college, and I saved and memorized quotes that were especially powerful to me at the time. For someone with violent and neglectful parents who didn’t give two shits about teaching me how to be a person, your guidance was just like medicine, so thank you.
In fact, I have been trying to separate myself from my family these past 2-3 years, and it has been so. damn. hard. I thought that if I tried saving relationships that weren’t quite as bad as all the abusive treatment I’d had to endure from my parents, I wouldn’t seem as petty and “irrational” to others and would still have a chance at a family. Well, that didn’t work out, because staying in relationships with people who weren’t exactly abusing me but were also too cowardly to stand up for me or validate my experiences was somehow worse. I constantly felt confused, humiliated and numb, and being stuck in that place stopped me from ever moving on.
Last week I told my sibling, who is a total enabler and still lives for my parents’ approval, that I need a break from him and his family, even though making that decision felt like my heart would literally rupture from the pain. I’ve never felt this alone. It’s both freeing and terrifying.
I spend all days alone, working from home and occasionally texting my only friend. I barely speak to anybody most days, and I cry a lot. Mostly, though, I keep waiting for my family to come up with some way to fuck with me again, like they always did in the past. Being constantly on guard is the hardest thing, so exhausting and mostly pointless. I wish I could take a break from that as well.
Thanks for making this thread, Heather. <3 I'm starting to realize that I have this tendency to just keep chugging along without really thinking about how I am actually doing, and then I end up being mystified at all of the physiological responses my body has to all the stress and anxiety I'm carrying around. Then when I sit back and think about it, it's like, wow, okay, I actually have a lot of stressful shit in my life.
My daughter has a rare genetic disorder that requires expensive specialty medical foods to treat and prevent intellectual disability. Unfortunately since it's so rare, most insurance policies aren't really written with her needs in mind, and coverage is very difficult to obtain. When I started my job a year and a half ago, coverage was denied but I got an insurance advocate/specialist involved and we got it approved, or so we thought. I've been ordering her medical foods every month and just found out about a month ago that apparently even though they said it was approved, they actually won't cover it because it's a "plan exclusion", and the claims have been getting denied (but they never informed me of this until a year and a half into it). I've spent probably twenty or thirty hours on the phone with insurance in the last few weeks to try to fight this but they keep saying no. There are about $40K in unpaid bills for her foods, and if I lose this battle they will come after me for it. I'm trying about a million things but I am seriously so stressed out about this that I have nightmares about it, and I struggle sleeping through the night. I'm always waking up thinking about it, and my mind just turns this stuff over and over and I can't fall back asleep.
My husband re-tore his ACL for the third time recently and needs to have repair surgery again, which he has scheduled for a few days before Christmas. I am stressed about this because of 1. the expense, 2. COVID! I hate the idea of him going into a hospital and being in confined spaces with a bunch of doctors and medical staff, when the virus is so out of control right now. 3. I have this deep fear that he will somehow die in surgery because of the anesthesia, even though he's been through this before and is perfectly healthy. I swear it's like my brain is already behind the scenes planning to have to survive without him. With that said, I completely understand that this is hampering his ability to walk and live his life (he's normally very active), so I don't want to push him to wait when this is something he really needs.
He's also in college at the moment (at my urging...he was happy in his career but we moved because I hated where we lived, and the job he had isn't really a possibility in our new location, so back to school he went). He's doing amazing - he works so hard and studies all the time, all while also being an amazing dad to our toddler and not letting me carry the burden of childcare responsibilities. But...tuition is expensive, and my job is currently supporting our family. But I work in an industry that is ultimately dependent on fossil fuels, which I feel morally icky about, plus the industry is in decline so we aren't getting raises or bonuses and I also have this fear of them downsizing or laying people off. I don't think I'd get laid off because my role is pretty critical, but I am afraid of them cutting benefits. So I am utterly dependent on a job in a dying industry, that I kind of hate because of its contribution to climate change, but I can't exactly leave because my family is relying on me to carry us through this time until my husband graduates and re-establishes his career.
Also because of COVID, we have been keeping our daughter home from day care and it is nearly impossible for me to work from home and him to do his schooling from home, while she is here. I feel like I never actually *do* my job, and the stress doesn't make it any easier to focus on what I should be doing.
I am just at the point where I frequently get these feelings of intense dread, a tingling feeling in my arms/shoulders/neck, lightheadedness/tunnel vision. I often can't finish thoughts or sentences, I start saying something and then I just trail off and forget I was even talking. I think that's probably pretty normal given how much I have on my mind but I don't really see any way out. I kind of want to find a therapist so I can maybe get some Xanax or something to help me at least feel less physically on edge/in danger all the time, but the thought of trying to find someone is just one more task that I don't feel I have the mental bandwidth for.
Honestly after typing all this, I mostly just want to cry and take a nap. Life is hard. :(
It was my 37th birthday yesterday. My partner brought us home dinner from where she works after she got off early, and she kept asking me what I'd like to do after dinner. All sorts of indoor ideas. Each one felt like a weight being strapped to my body, and I felt this crushing feeling cover me. And that I couldn't even be happy when the best person was being so sweet to me was just another shitty thing I was doing.
We watched Die Hard (her choice, she'd never seen it!) and cuddled the entire time. It was great. The weight of my being trapped in life (physically and career-wise thanks to the pandemic) wasn't so bad. But as soon as it became clear she wanted to have sex and expectation entered back into things, I spiraled pretty damn bad. I guess it's depression... though I find it hard to believe that the despair over seeing half of people willingly making your state 3rd worst in the nation for a pandemic and so many easily duped by the most insane conspiracy theories is actually depression. Giving fully into despair is though.
We get one wild and precious life, thanks Mary Oliver, and while misfortune is usually like being struck by an arrow, I realize that I'm just taking that arrow and twisting or jamming it back in and out like it'll help somehow. It's funny, I hugged my therapist and ended therapy the day of the first US COVID-19 death. I said I think I've got this, I have a plan with grad school going on for a new career, a partner I can't wait to live with then marry (that prophecy at least is the only thing still going well) and I'm making the most of life. Woops.
Anyway, I don't want to keep wounding myself over and over again internally over things that I can't control. I'm a loyal and loving partner, friend, son, person. So tomorrow we're going to finish setting up my girlfriend's Etsy shop, I bought her a professional artist grade printer and both look into whether or not my insurance still pays for teletherapy visits. I think it'll be a pretty great day, but if it isn't, that's fine too.
Been dealing with in-law family drama and it's been a big emotional weight on both myself and my partner. My dad also just called me to tell me my estranged grandmother is in the hospital and he was pretty upset and started to cry on the phone, so I started to cry because I haven't heard him cry in years. It's been so weird. This week has just been weird.
Thank you for making a space, it's nice to have a place to just . . . talk? It's finals and my spouse is a teacher and so I don't see them much, even though they're right downstairs, and I spend a lot of time saying "It's fine, this is fine." But it's also true that I've leaned as hard as possible into Christmas already, I want all the lights, all the glitter, all the cookies and tea, build me a tiny house of gingerbread and pine boughs and strings of lights to shelter from the scrabbling cold darkness outside. So far it is working most days. I'm holding on.
All this time spent at home and living by myself has caused me to be in my head quite a bit this year (as I'm sure it has for all of us, regardless of our living situations!). It also caused a pretty bad OCD flareup, although the bright side is that I was finally diagnosed with it after years of only suspecting it was something I suffered from.
Learning how to manage it has been a journey, and I've had to make a lot of changes in my life. I've had to more or less say goodbye to any media that feels too negative or anxiety-inducing (with some exceptions, of course). I've also been practicing meditating every day and I'm currently trying to re-learn mindfulness.
I feel such deep gratitude for the friends I've opened up to about it. I'm always so afraid of "burdening" other people with my struggles, but now I don't know how I would have managed if I hadn't reached out about how hard a time I've been having.
I'm relieved I now have a name for what I've been struggling with, and it's been so helpful to learn more about OCD and that I'm far from alone in my struggle with it. That's the silver lining I'm trying to hang on to, but of course, it's been very hard!
I know this year has been more about surviving than thriving, but I hope everyone is doing okay!
My grandma has Alzheimer’s and I keep having to remind her who I am. One of my aunts is doing chemo for stage 4 cancer and the other one just had a stroke. My best friend called to say that her mom has cancer too. My local friends are too worried about covid to see me for the moment. I’m a single parent, lucky enough to work from home, whose fifth grader’s school is all virtual this year. And did I mention I started grad school this semester? Two weeks until exams are over.
Everything feels overwhelming and it’s true, I have no idea how or what else besides overwhelm I feel. I need a nap all the time. And I’m thankful it isn’t any worse. Thanks for giving me a space to say it all out loud.
Thank you for this! I'm really struggling and I already thought I was struggling. Yesterday my spouse told me he thinks he's addicted to porn (he spend 100s of dollars on it this month). In October around my birthday I found most of my family kept a visit between my brother and my parents (who live in different states) a secret "because of my anxiety." I'm so sad and angry and lost. I've told the one sister who I'm speaking to about my spouse and one friend who lives far away. I can't even easily research porn addiction because I get religious sites that say things like "porn is ALWAYS evil" which I don't believe and I don't even have a job to distract me. I just want to move forward but I don't know how how.
Oh god. Thank you. I'm currently navigating what is, for me, the worst possible thing that could possibly happen on planet earth. My very beloved cat is sick. She is everything to me and I have been denying her status as a mortal being for years, and now I have to look at the beyond horrifying fact that I will loose her. Maybe not right now. But it will happen. I can't stop playing out word-case-scenerios in my head. It's been a punishing week. I'm on the verge of being totally unable to cope, but have had to keep my wits about me to make the best decisions I can for her. Including switching from a dismissive vet to one who can talk me through every thing and who I can trust to really care for her. I'm stuck in a place right now of such extreme anxiety that I can barely move. I've had some very beautiful help come through, and some wonderful people enter my life as a result of this. But Jesus, life just requires ungodly amounts of bravery. I then get flooded with thinking about all the difficulty that everyone on the fucking planet is facing every single day and I just don't get how we're supposed to survive as humans with open hearts. It's just so much.
I’ve been in a toxic living environment for about 3.5 years. It was mostly manageable pre-lockdown, but now that we’re home all the time, I spend the majority of the day hiding from my roommate who treats me poorly. Things reached a fever pitch this week, and I’m finally moving out at the end of December. I am beyond sad to leave such a wonderful home I’ve created the past couple of years, and am stressed that I might not be able to afford a safe, nurturing, affordable environment during this month. I live in LA and have a full time respectable job, yet the places I’m looking at are bleak. Trying to stick out the month and have hope for a better future, but this lockdown is making me a ball of nerves. Thank you for listening. We’ll get through this as we always have- together!
Well the good news is that I've finally developed enough emotional awareness to recognize when stress is sneaking up on me, which it definitely started to do this week. The bad news is I'm still struggling to manage, especially in these circumstances.
I'm another service industry casualty, have been out of work since March (for the first time in my life) and unemployment hasn't been an option for over a month now, since I turned down a job offer that would have truly made me even more miserable than I already am. But now I'm finding that I just... don't want to get a job? I could easily live off savings and continue to be a lump on my couch all winter. I don't feel hopeful that I could even find work (useless liberal arts degree, uninspiring work history, the job market generally), and I'm scared to take any sort of "essential" job because while I'm not technically high-risk, my health history makes me think I'd be likely to end up in the hospital if I catch the virus. So I have my excuses. But the truth is, I haven't made a single effort to find something to do. I thought maybe I'd move across the country for a fresh start in the same city as some dear friends, but it seems too risky these days. I have no personal projects I want to dive into. I just want to putter and walk the dog and stay in my avoidant hole until spring. I'm not sure how to break this paralysis so I can quit flushing money down the toilet and start working again, and I'm ashamed of myself for not being more responsible and fighting harder to get motivated. I've always been a hustler, always cobbled together work and figured out how to make it happen. I thought this would be the year I broke away from that, got some stability. And now that it wasn't, I just want to lay down and give up for a while.
It's the week before finals week and all my professors have apparently forgotten that their students have other classes, and even--horror of horrors--responsibilities outside of school! I've been through this before, and I know I'm going to be fine, but it's still triggering the bi-annual "what the hell am I doing here" crisis.
I'm 22 years old and going to community college on my mother's dime. Neither of those things are inherently bad or shameful, but it's hard not to be ashamed anyway. I was supposed to follow in her and my father's footsteps--straight A's, one of the fancier state schools, then on to grad school--but I almost flunked out of high school, tried and failed to attend community college in my hometown, and sort of drifted around aimlessly until about a year ago. I can't un-break her heart or reset her expectations, but I still feel the need to become someone she can be proud of. I feel like I owe her, not just for putting me through school, but for dealing with my horrid, volatile teenage self and my manipulative father at the same time.
Thank you for creating this thread! I have been unemployed since getting laid off for the first time in my life in May due to covid. I'm nearly 27, but I feel so much older and like I'm a complete failure. It's hard not to feel hopeless and worthless right now – I was good at my last job and it became a huge part of my identity, but there isn't really much work similar to what I did before. I'm trying to make a bit of a career pivot and rejection after rejection keeps coming in. I have just been isolating because I'm so embarrassed to keep telling my friends and family that I still can't get hired anywhere. I just feel like a loser, you know? The last rejection was the worst, as the role was an amazing creative opportunity and made it feel like this whole hellish year would have been worth it. I worked for a week straight on a presentation for senior executives and the eventual rejection hit really hard. I know this is filled with intense negative self-talk, and I want to be clear – some days feel better than others. But I still can't sleep at night thinking about how hard this has been and how quickly it feels like my life has fallen apart. Unemployment and the job hunt has felt like checking off tasks that mean nothing, sending off resumes and cover letters that you spend hours on just to have no one read. I just can't help but feel so ashamed about everything and like my identity and sense of self worth has been lost in this terrible year. Thanks for being a source of light, Polly <3
You are so right! There are some seriously strange rabbit holes I find myself in when I am at a wits end. There is no telling what you’ll be reading/watching, sometimes it’s not even something that interests me! Good luck in your recovery, I appreciate you rationalizing of the human experience that is highly relatable!!
worried about spending another winter isolated in nyc. My husband lost his job in march, he had started a business in parallel but hasn’t been puttinga ton of effort into it. I work from home 8-5 while he sits on the couch 90% of the day. I talked to him a few times about how I feel like he isn’t doing his part but nothing’s changed, and I don’t want to continually feel like a nag so I constantly go from trying not to care, to feeling frustrated. I know he is depressed but I feel so overwhelmed. My family isn’t in this country and by the time I am able to see them again (safely), it will have been 2 years. Trying to be optimistic and see the silver lining but I feel so tired today.
Thanks Heather, and hi everybody <3 Lately I feel like I’m swimming in shame and loneliness. I’ve always dealt with this, but something about lockdown has really amplified it—I mean I can’t remember when I felt it in my body this way before. It’s horrible. It makes me want to crawl out of my body. I’ve started picking at my skin until it bleeds because that’s the only thing that calms me down (I do see a therapist and take medication). I feel stupid, unlovable, unremarkable. I started taking a philosophy class for fun in my spare time but it makes me feel like an idiot, it’s like my brain shuts off, and I get so preoccupied with trying to come up with something to say that I lose the thread of the conversation. The other day in class I felt so lost I wanted to cry, which is so embarrassing to admit. And when I finally mustered up the courage to say something, it was completely off topic, and my shame just magnified. Ugh, I still can’t think of it without cringing. At the same time, being in therapy and doing a lot of soul-searching (and being basically isolated for nine months) has helped me realize how much emotional (and physical) neglect I suffered as a child. I feel permanently broken by my parents’ inability to love me, I feel dissociative in friendships and my anxious/avoidant attachment style has made dating tough—I do go on dates but it never turns into anything serious, and now that I’m almost thirty I’m starting to feel hopeless. I want to believe that I don't need to be brilliant and beautiful and exceptional to have worth and deserve love, and I want to have hope that things will get better, but it's hard
Hi Polly-I had a miserable Thanksgiving. Maybe you could help put it in perspective. I'm a male, divorced 70 years old. I've been dating a widowed woman whose 66 for 4 months. I had Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Just the 2 of us. There was a Zoom meet up between us, her 93 year old father, her brother and his family, her 3 married children and their spouseIs. I was flattered to be asked to Thanksgiving and thought it indicated her growing affection for me. After the zoom and our dinner she kind of froze up and ushered me out very quickly and coldly. I called her the next night and asked her if she wanted to stop seeing me because it sure felt like it. She responded with: she wasn't happy, I wasn't fun, and she didn't love me. I guess I'm the proverbial old fool. Obviously she powerfully expressed her feelings, but I tried to make the case to myself that introducing me to her family was important to her but she'd gone too far out on a limb and freaked out. When I called her again I asked if she really wanted to end it, she gave me "no but I need some time off." Now I realize I dread seeing her and putting myself up for her scrutiny, Her insults were real "duh" and I can't see meeting her again even for coffee- we met on a dating sight. Polly, please help and old guy out with a few comforting words. I was a teenager in love and got my hopes dashed. Thank you
My partner of 15 years and I are in the process of moving from a monogamous relationship to one of consensual/ethical non-monogamy and my fucking god it has been a journey. Since this conversation started a few months ago, he and I have both been living in what feels like a pressure cooker of growth that we can't turn off. It has been intense and exhausting and probably the best thing we've ever done for ourselves individually and for our relationship. Changing up the structure of a relationship in such a foundational way like this brings all kinds of attachment issues and personal insecurity to the surface; we realized we had relied on the fact that we are married as the base of our security in the relationship instead on the actual quality of our experience together. A lightbulb the size of the goddamn sun flashed on and it has transformed our relationship into the best version of itself it has yet been--we're able to be wildly honest and vulnerable and supportive of each other and of our experiences both together and individually in ways far deeper than we've probably ever imagined. And I don't mean to imply that our relationship was awful before; we both have overwhelming felt grateful for one another and for our closeness and the relationship we had created, but this still has taken us/is taking us to a different level.
I'm at the stage right now where I'm feeling the best and most assured I have in a while, and looking back saying to myself, "Holy shit, that was horrific!" at how we both were basically sleepwalking in not only our relationship to each other but also in our relationships to ourselves and the unacknowledged (and so undealt-with) trauma and conditioning we had just unknowingly kept running in the background of our lives. I'm in therapy for me and we're in relationship therapy together. We are working toward, in our own small ways/world, loving the people in our lives in a non-possessive way, prioritizing the quality of our experiences by genuinely showing up, addressing our trauma and insecurities/securities and our socialization, committing to honest and transparent communication, diligently but kindly exploring the deep, dark corners of our interior worlds, supporting each other and the other people in our life in a way that emulates the closest thing to an unconditional love as we are able, and honoring the beauty and uniqueness in everyone's individual life and journey and story as full, autonomous human beings.
In the large urban park close to where I live, someone has written on one of the porta potties, "Covid-19 helped me dream." It has, and I'm feeling floored by it in the best kind of way.
I was already in the midst of a career upheaval at the beginning of this year and was laid off in March right after starting a brand new job. I have spent most of the year unemployed and the affect it's had on my mental health has been staggering. I have had some part time work and government assistance thankfully but the feelings of worthlessness and shame around my job and career are so deep and I hate that our society ties so much worth to what "you do". It just fucking sucks.
Thank you so much, I live alone, I'm so isolated right now and struggling so hard that I feel almost disconnected from reality. I'm also going to be unemployed soon and for the first time since graduating college I have no further plans after that. I really don't know what to do. I'm applying for jobs but there's just nothing out there right now.
Last year I somehow clawed my way into an entry level desk job in a non-profit human services setting after years in the service industry. I just turned 33, and all of my superiors are considerably younger than me with advanced degrees and I couldn't even complete an associate's, which I have tried 5 (five) times. It's clear I won't move up the ladder without further education, but I'm too poor and tired and full of shame to even try again. God, the shame. I have tried to make peace with this and focus on the positive aspects of my life: I'm housed, well fed, and in a loving relationship with someone I'm going to marry if we can ever have weddings again.
But it feels like every single time I'm making progress with myself I experience another indignity at work that completely undoes me. One of many, many examples: My "office" is in the corner of what is essentially a warehouse type area tucked away behind the elevators, and it is now under construction for the next six weeks. They are knocking out two walls, 10 and 20 feet away from my desk. It's *unbelievably* loud, dusty, and also cold, as this is upstate NY and it's winter. I have been wearing wool socks and layers beneath my business casual, with a puffy coat and hat on top, all day every day. I have to take a hot shower when I get home. I bought noise cancelling headphones I could not afford, but I can't really wear them because I have to answer the phone and listen for clients knocking on the door. My concerns for my ability to actually do my job (and not feel like a piece of shit) are repeatedly dismissed by my supervisor. As were all previous concerns.
I would leave, but where would I go? Even without Covid and millions of other people looking for jobs, I have no skills, experience, or education. Maybe it won't feel so intense and I won't feel so pathetic when work isn't the only place I've been since March. But I don't know how to accept that this is all I will ever have.
I have been living alone for nine months now and rarely see other people, and all I can think about is my ex-boyfriend. I broke up with him about two years ago and I can't stop feeling guilty for ending the relationship, feeling angry at my past self for not realizing how good I had it, feeling ashamed that I'm not over him, feeling hopeless about the future, and more than anything else, feeling desperately and completely lonely. I used to pride myself on being so independent and certain about what I want, and it feels like all of that is gone, and instead I think about this man who was great in so many ways. Who was I to think he wasn't enough? So much shame.
This has been the worst year bar none. I have a 14 yr old daughter and a 20 year old very handicapped son. Facing foreclosure, homelessness, and Christmas is upon us. My daughter asked to put the tree up and I said "Why bother this year there won't be anything under it" As soon as it left my mouth I instantly regretted it. I know she's big and doesn't believe in Santa but I feel like such a failure as a parent. The 20 yr old actually asked for a PS5 and I just looked at him. I know his mentality is that of an 11/12 year old but, like, I can't buy that. I can barely pay the power bill!!! I don't know. I love them and feel like they deserve the world, not a deadbeat dad that split and hasn't paid child support in 7 years and a Mom who loves them but is failing them, hard as I try not to. Both my parents are passed and its a lonely scary feeling. When they died I knew I had nowhere to turn anymore. Things got to get better. I have to figure this out, for them, I don't care about myself, but they deserve a home without fear of losing it, and stress free. I don't think they actually realize the seriousness of it all. That at least is a small blessing. I also still have my faith in God.
Loved a boy for a year, then he broke up with me two weeks ago. And he was SO heartbroken, like sobbing, and clearly didn't want to! I didn't want him to! But I was like, fuck, I guess we should probably break up! But I'm heartbroken and can't help but feel like, if we're both still in love and care about each other, why can't we make it work? Then he texted me a few times, and on our anniversary texted me a long paragraph about how he was thankful how I ~encouraged his dreams~ and how he was doing great and really following them! On our anniversary! Less than two weeks out! And when I was like, dude, we can't talk, he was SO apologetic. And was like I'm sorry I just still really care for you, blah blah, but I'll leave you in peace. To conclude: what the fuck! Why! There are reasons that I can think of but like, I was willing to make it work. He just cited that we were on different paths and it wouldn't be fair to either of us to go on--I would like to make clear that I have no fucking clue what path EITHER of us is on but okay! And yes all of this is kicking up my problems with like my father who died two years ago and all sorts of other things. Anyways, the only thing I'm looking forward to is my 21st in two months, which will also be disappointing because of COVID. Which is lame. All of this is fucking lame. I love him. Wish he saw what I saw in us. :/ also like this is embarrassing on so many levels and I know it reads crazy unaware of the Actual World and Actual Problems but my own little world is on fire in its own special way. God bless and keep ye.
I am a 22 year old unemployed recent graduate and it feels like I will never find a job. I have been applying to a lot but I feel like I must not be trying hard enough because all I get is rejections. I want to try harder but I am filled with fear, anger, sadness, and grief all the time it all feels so debilitating. I live with my parents who don't take it as seriously as I do so I live in constant fear that we are going to get the virus and when I try to tell them about how serious it all is they yell at me and tell me I need to get over it. I am so fortunate that no one I know has passed away from covid but yesterday I found out that one of my close friends has it so I'm scared for her. I have so much grief over all the things that were supposed to happen to me like having a real graduation ceremony and properly ending that chapter of my life. I feel like I spend all my days thinking about my life before this but I know I can't return to that. It's been 9 months but why does it still hurt so much? Why do I still cry everyday? Why can't I just get my life together? Before this I was so lost and unsure about my career goals and whatnot and I still am but now I feel like I will never figure it out and that I will just be left behind by the world. This has been the worst year of my life. This year has been so hard on all of us and it infuriates me that things have to be this way. Our government has basically left us to fend for ourselves and no one is doing anything about it. I also live in Los Angeles and things are getting so much worse but indoor malls remain open while everything else closes. Where the fuck is the sense in that???? I have so much anger inside of me it's like I'm constantly throwing an adult tantrum. I do everything I am supposed to do to regulate myself. I meditate, go on walks, journal, cook, read, listen to music, do yoga, exercise, go to virtual therapy but the pain doesn't go away. The rage doesn't go away either. I know it's not supposed to because it's a normal response to our fucked reality but I just feel like I've fallen and I'll never get back up. Thank you for opening this space for all of us to vent because we all need it. I hope there are some improvements next year.
I was dumped at the beginning of this pandemic by my long-time partner whom I thought wanted to marry me. My kids and I had to relocate (twice). It's been seven months now, and I can't do all the normal things to recover from a break up. I feel alone times alone. Online dating is bleak and weird--we FaceTime and flirt about apocalypse plans. I met another man who seemed great and then rejected me for the same reasons--because I have kids, because I live in the suburbs and not the city. Anyway, I am lucky to have a job, and great kids, and good friends. But damn, it just feels lonely and tedious and I want it to be over. I exercise, go to therapy, write, read, and drink a little too much. A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor died alone and I saw his body. He'd been in there for at least a week. Today, I have a wasp infestation in my bathroom. It just feels neverending bordering on comical. I try to allow myself space to feel sad and do less. Anyway, wishing you all well. I think everyone I know is struggling this year.
I get what you are doing here. Hell, I've done it myself for nearly 54 years. No exaggeration. I often ponder if my entire purpose in this life is to save people from themselves, even at the loss of myself and my own hopes and dreams, needs and desires, right to love and security, and SUPPORT. So, what I am asking YOU is....
HOW YA DOIN'? (Eye lock here)
What do YOU need right now?
I can feel your isolation, independence and resilience (even if it is a bit shaky) in your post, but I also know personally what it is to go through life events (or in many cases just life itself) alone. Surgeries, pain, illness, depression, anxiety, holidays (well, for me anyway), parents, siblings, friends, etc etc etc... all the things others take for granted I have either never had or I have lost due to this resilience that seems to trigger a really ugly side of 'weaker(?)' or less resilient people. Gah! Trying to explain always sounds either whiney or soapboxy. There is no win when trying to describe this to people or empathize with them. Preachy, ice cold, self-righteous, etc etc, I have heard them all. I can tell you one thing though, they NEVER tell me I am wrong. They always tell me I AM WRONG IN MY RIGHTNESS (That me as this person is wrong) but they don't deny or rather acknowledge that I was correct about my insight. They're really pissed that I hit a spot that made them feel vulnerable I believe. Exposure, even to ones self, can feel really frightening. I know this personally as well because when I started to really see my Autism a few years ago (and granted I have autistic spawn) I felt suddenly so exposed and yet totally unseen all at once. I still do but at least now "I" make more sense to ME.
Anyway, I just want to be that person that reminds you to STOP when it feels too heavy to keep reading everyone else's baggage and to acknowledge your own value just being you without carrying everyone else on your back.
I'm doing this right now myself with my mom... long story-ish. More, lifetime purpose? Whatever it is, it never really ends so I am just trying to keep the chaos in check until the next lull.
There is a fine line between helpful/loving/caring/supportive and burdening. On both sides of the coin.
Too much of even what is perceived as good, is damaging. <<<< Remember that. No matter what society says, how much emphasis is put on it's value or lack thereof, the bottom line is that too much of anything, too much imbalance, good, bad or otherwise, will always cause tension and excessive tension creates weak spots and breaks, and breaks not tended to shatter and usually once you have shattered the ability to reconstruct 'in like,' won't be possible anyway. You will have to rebuild on what's left and that won't be what once was, which is REALLY REALLY HARD. Just sayin'....
And in case you're wondering HTH I was triggered to respond to this post, it was because reading all the comments literally was draining me emotionally. Reading you responding was so heavy. You are so supportive, which is beautiful and also self destructive. I just couldn't read them anymore. It felt like watching a person drown in others waters while they let the others stand on their shoulders above water, breathing. LOL
Please don't be angry people. My brain works oddly. I am proud of that but 98% of society seems to take it personally that I think different. It isn't personal. It's just HF Autism. <3
Heather I am sorry to hear of your health struggles and am thankful for this thread where we can come together and support one another. It could not have come at a more perfect time for me.
I am struggling with taking on other's pain and grief- it is almost as if I put it on like a coat. I have had my share of difficult experiences throughout life which I believe have helped shape me into the empathetic, compassionate person that I am. For that I understand I feel things deeply. However, when I read the news and learn about a senseless death or act of crime, it is almost as if I become so wrapped up in what the victims or survivors are going through and how they must feel. I then start to mentally walk the path of how I could overcome a devastating loss if their situation were to happen to me. It gets to the point where I am gripped by fear, thinking that I would not have the strength to survive the same tragic ordeals that others have had to survive.
I understand that reading the news is not helping my mental health, but I also do not want to keep my head in the sand and not be aware of struggles that others are going through. I have already deleted a couple of apps that have recently sent me into a spiral, but I feel the bigger problem is learning how to have empathy for those who are suffering incredibly, but not to the extent where I am crippled for the rest of the day because I am so wrapped up in the horrific details of their suffering. In these current times, I want to be a member of my community that can face excruciating life events alongside one another, but mentally healthy enough to process the weight of it all.
I am torn over J K Rowling. Which doesn't make sense because she doesn't know me/my opinions don't matter, I am nobody. But somehow I am disturbed.
Even more because I kind of understand what she is trying to portray/defend. But I also understand that an already crushed minority do not need a childhood idol to not support that their existence, that will be devastating. So I am on the mid-ground and wondering if it makes me a bigot asshole.
I got laid off and I’m moving across the country in two weeks. There’s no more work for me here and it’s time to move on but I’m leaving my friends, my partner, my therapist. Now feels like a hunker down time and not a put yourself out there time. I’m scared about money and about moving, it’s just a lot
I keep returning to the idea that what I think of as maladaptive behavior in normal times, now has simply become adaptive behavior. Just doing anything to get through this hellish year. I've been running on denial and disassociation for months and months. At the beginning of the year, I had surgery (apparently, you don't actually need a gallbladder), and spent a couple of weeks recovering. I went straight from that to writing a book, which meant I confined myself to my chair day-in-day-out, while the pandemic started. I delivered my book, and two days later my father died from COVID. I spent the summer and fall burying myself in work to keep myself distracted, just going one day at a time, looking at the thing in front of me, unable to process anything else.
All throughout, I was acutely aware of this strange dislocation. Like I was aware of the trauma, and though I was unable to feel it most of the time, I knew that it was just building up to be dealt with at some undetermined future time. But hey, I was being So Productive! I was Making The Best Of A Bad Situation! That worked up until last month, when my capacity to keep working finally evaporated. But I still feel dislocated. Like none of this is real, or that sometime soon it will all be over and we'll be allowed to go back to the way it was, and my father with still be alive.
I mean, I KNOW that's not true. But it feels like my body is behaving as if it is. Perhaps it's just waiting until things feel safer before it allows me to collapse in a puddle of grief. It hasn't happened yet. I wonder sometimes if it ever will.
Thank you so much, Heather! I truly appreciate this space. First and foremost, I am so sorry you've had to deal with multiple surgeries and health concerns this year ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE. Holy smokes. That is a lot to handle and I wish you health and strength in 2021! You deserve all the good things.
This post really resonates with me because I think this has been the week that my feelings have snuck up on me all at once. Here's what's going on in my life.
This spring—after sheltering-in-place by myself for about a month 1/2— I met a wonderful man at a Zoom-based event. We were both attracted to each other and started chatting over social media. We chatted for a couple of weeks, which led to phone calls and then Zoom dates. We met up for a socially distant walk in mid-May and fast forward to now, we're officially living together. The pandemic certainly expedited the pace of things! We are both very happy and insanely grateful that we met each other this year.
I've generally felt secure in this relationship until Sunday when we had an Oh Shit Moment. Throughout the course of normal conversation, it came up that one of his exes (he had previously told me some things about her) was 11 years younger than him. So, when he was 31 (he's in his mid 30’s now and we are the same age) she was 20. At the time, he was living with another woman who was closer to his age, so he had cheated on this partner to get with the 20 year old. He had already told me about the affair, but the age gap was new information.
Honestly, hearing about how young this girl was at the time made me very uneasy. My thought was why was he drawn to someone who had that much less life experience? Then my thought was, fuck what if he leaves me for someone much younger? And then, oh shit, does this signal something about his character that I should be wary of? Have I made a mistake by moving in with someone I've only met this year?
My partner and I have talked about this extensively this week. He's listened to my concerns and shared what it was like to be in the relationship with the young gal and why he was drawn to her and why they hit it off. They were together for a year 1/2 afterwards, so I know they had a genuine connection and he wasn't just chasing a hot piece of ass. Also, in the grand scheme of things, 31 is still pretty young.
I'm reassured by the fact that he did fess up to his ex (the one he was living with at the time) shortly after he cheated and told her that the infidelity was a sign that they weren't a good fit & should split. He also described all the guilt and anxiety he went through when all of this went down and his shame about the age gap. This ex (the one he cheated on) has since married & she and my partner are on cordial/friendly terms. So all in all, there are no lingering hard feelings.
I'm ready to move past this moment and I don’t want to judge my partner for his past, but I still have some lingering anxieties about getting left behind and broken up with. Especially because I have a history of dating dudes whose words and actions haven't always aligned. I'm scared time will prove that I’ve made another bad judgment call (I have made plenty of bad judgment calls). I do think my partner is a good one, but I’m scared that something’s going to happen and it won’t work out and I’m going to have to go through a breakup for the umpteenth time. The stakes feel high to me because I’m seeking a lifelong partnership & I hope he’s it. He and I are both on the same page about that.
I should also mention that I have an anxious attachment style. So thank you for providing me with a space to share my anxieties!
I never write in to this sort of thing, but you are always so kind to people, and my anxiety is overwhelming. I'm a thirty-something who grew up in a traumatizing environment (among other things, a narcissistic and controlling mother). I finally started to get therapy in my 30s. The first therapist (who was very well-meaning!) re-traumatized me. She was trying and was trauma-informed, but she was young, and she was using an approach that just didn't work for me (very top-down, directed, structured). I switched to a new therapist who had experience with trauma and more years of practice. She encouraged me to view her as a stand-in mother figure. And I'm sure you can see where this is going...she was re-traumatizing, and things ended badly after she kept needing to be the expert on my life and my decisions (presenting me with the "correct" choices, saying that only she knew me, etc.), kept telling me not to talk about the things that were bothering me, denying my reality, and telling me that it was my fault the relationship went south. And on top of it -- as many now are -- I'm now unemployed with no work to distract myself from what feels like such a deep betrayal. I know that I need to heal, but how do you do so when the very people you seek out for help (trauma-informed therapists) are re-traumatizing?
My brain has a nice habit of doing the "It's fine, it's fine" too. Then my memories get foggy and years later it comes bubbling up "HS." Right now I am a bit numb from working too many days as a front line health care worker. The only thing that makes that part better is my funny co-workers and mostly grateful patients. My family misses me even though I am physically home each night but mentally half there. But I have a few days off to find my way back to them.
Hi Polly, thanks for sharing about your surgery. I will be having surgery across the country very likely in the next few months to come. I'm very scared and uncertain of whether or not it can heal me, all I can do is have faith and hope. I'll have to relocate for a few months for this surgery, become immobile, etc. It's such an intimidating thought, and the process will require so much paperwork and planning as well. I never thought I would undergo any type of surgery at 24, but guess the years of stress had really caught up to me. I'm praying for the best, and wishing you a smooth and well recovery. You've helped me a lot, and if anything, you sharing your story gives me the courage to fight for my own health. Thanks for sharing
I'm really sorry to hear about your surgeries. I hope this is the last one and the next year will be surgery free and lockdown free. I guess, after reading many of your columns, as you always say - we don't have to tell ourselves we are fine if we are not.
I'm not fine. I'm 33 and just had a break up this summer. And now I feel alone in this pandemic. Everything else is mostly fine, I have a job, I have friends and I live with my family and cats, so I guess I'm not really alone. But that panicking- feeling too old-wanting to settle and have family-afraid if I'll ever have it-feeling is really bothering me. Most of my friends, especially girls are in relationship and I feel stuck and lonely and I don't see how it can change in this times (the thought of using dating apps dreads me, I hate them).
So now I really want this pandemic to end.. but then even that doesn't mean I'll have what I want. I guess I really miss to have someone to kiss and hugh.. and make love.
I had many conversations with my mom, who really tries to help me and comfort me - she actually says many similar things like Polly. :D And she says that I'm still young, that I have many things (like above mentionied, friends, family, job, also hobbies), also that I'm attractive and smart and interesting, and that I should enjoy and relax, and everything will come. But I'm still scared if it will...
God y'all I'm really having a bad time and we are just going into it. I'm in somewhat frantic negotiations with my psychiatrist (get me on prozac!!! Jk I can't orgasm on that. An SNRI, perhaps? Can't wait for those side effects either. More wellbutrin! Help I'm drowning!!!!!) I've been trying to live in Peter Gabriel's music as refuge. It's a lean-to but hoping it will hold for now.
Hey there Heather and everyone else. I've never felt so low in my life and could do with any help and thoughts anyone might have. I'm almost 40 and my boyfriend (of a year or so – he is in his early 30s) broke up with me last week because he's not ready to have a baby, and so suddenly, I'm going it alone, I guess with an anonymous sperm bank donor. I knew it could go either way with him as he does want kids one day, just not yet – but we love each other. And I thought he'd say yes. I mean, who throws away a life partner?! (The only one either of us have ever found thus far, after years of fruitless searching in my case). He does, it turns out. I am so depressed. I live alone and was used to having him here, on my sofa, and I have to admit that life feels pretty pointless at the moment. Can anyone help? And yes, I definitely want a baby. Have investigated this enough to know that despite the situation I'll still go ahead and give a child all my love and the best possible life I can; that's not the issue, I've got that. Anyway – thank you!
I’ve spent the past two days stuck in my head, and after some overwhelming feelings and journaling, with a little bit of crying, I’ve come to the realisation that I hate myself. You always try to avoid that thought. Like, “no, I don’t HATE myself, I’m exaggerating, I’m just feeling a little insecure.” Well, that’s not the case. There’s insecurity there, sure. But based on all the things I put myself through the past year, the things I let slide, I absolutely hate myself. This is both a scary and freeing thought. Freeing because, finally, I don’t have to lie to myself and pretend I don’t hate myself and try to see a friend that I can’t spend more than a few hours with to lift my mood. Scary because hating yourself means, at least in my case, that you don’t care about yourself. I spent my whole life working towards grades, red numbers scribbled on a page. With this pandemic I realised that I wasted all that time with my head in a book because it didn’t lead me anywhere, and everyone else who did not studying as hard as I did, are out living the life I spent so long working for. All that left me with was a bad case of perfectionism and impostor syndrome. Everything I thought of myself feels false and I feel horrible in every way and I know I’m spiralling but I genuinely don’t know if I care that I am. I have no motivation to do what I want to do, the things I love don’t bring me joy anymore, and I just feel bad about myself. It’s even worse because I’m just EIGHTEEN. I shouldn’t be feeling like this horribly so young, should I? I just don’t know how to keep pretending like I’m okay, because I sincerely don’t know how to pick myself up again. It feels too lonely and too scary and I don’t think I care enough to try anymore.
Heather, your heart is so good it radiates through your columns and threads. Thank you for creating this space.
The world doesn't prepare you for how raw it is to be 20-25 years old, I am glad to do it only once. My mother took her life when I was thirteen years old and it's just this year I have begun to grieve in a way that feels more immediate than before. This tumultuous year marked ten years since she's been gone, a milestone that crept up on me. If there's anything I know stages of grief is misleading, it's more like cycles. I feel as if I was put in a centrifuge as a young girl and I've been spinning at varying speeds for the entirety of my life. My entire identity changed forever just as I was coming out of my girlhood. The concept of death doesn't scare me but not being able to give your love to someone who desperately needed it, does. The concept of death plays in my head almost every day, different people, different scenarios -- and this year there is so much death around us. There's not much to say from me here, just that I miss the thought of having a mom, and the thought of others losing their kindred spirit to this virus feels heavy on everyone. I don't spend my days angry at the world for not allowing me to have one more butterfly kiss from her, but more for making me a cup for others when I wish to be an ocean -- something I am slowly working on. I am just hoping to shout into the void that my heart is heavier today than most.
My mom lived in a different city than me, and five years ago I moved to that same city for university. I recently had to order her death certificate to do some paperwork, it's been a long time, and it's just a piece of paper. Reading that piece of paper felt like holding a piece of my own history. On her death certificate it says it was an accident, I thought it was purposeful? The address she lives at is on my commute to work? What is acute combined methadone, fluoexetine and amitriptyline intoxication? Did you know a dead person can cry? I didn't know... I just don't know. It all feels like I am spinning faster than usual here inside this lonely centrifuge.
The digital age and death isn't something I feel has been written enough about. In 2010 I was thirteen years old, I grew up with the rise of the internet and social media.
There is a real dissonance between death in the physical world and the eternal life of someone who existed online. On Facebook my mom is a real woman 36 years old, every year I get a notification of our friend anniversary. It feels cruel and at once comforting. There she is right trapped behind a screen, forever intangible. I'll be on the train in my Photos app & it'll look at a photo of me and ask 'Is this 'Mom?' or 'Share this with 'Mom'?. I am pulled out of my reality into one where I remember -- yes I do have a mother and I suppose now than I am twenty-three we look alike. It makes me want to shout from the rooftops - "I have a mom everyone! Remember! I do!". So I suppose this is me shouting from the rooftop.
My estranged biological father just died, and I found out via facebook messenger while eating a burrito. My nuclear family all has covid right now. My very, very beloved grandmother is dying of Parkinsons and I can tell she is uncomfortable and unhappy every day. I got 7 job rejections in the past three weeks. I have been living in many different places, often many different countries, for 3-6 months at a time to try to keep my international relationship afloat. My mother has been alienating my siblings while dumping all of the emotional fallout of that on me. I found out on Thanksgiving that my aunt secretly took my grandmother out of her nursing home for an indoors, unmasked Thanksgiving and I burst into tears of rage and helplessness.
This feels really stupid but I just put wedding invitations in the mail and I have these fleeting but heavy fears about my family collaborating to end my relationship or ruin my life somehow. We've been engaged since January and every family member I've told aside from my brothers essentially had the same response 1. Is he Muslim? 2. If not, when will he convert?
He and I agree that he will not convert (I'm secular and atheist myself and don't want him to). But instead of laying a firm boundary when asked I deflect, change the subject, hang up, or ignore texts. I realize this is a form of avoidance but my family is intolerant both of my lifestyle and his existence, and I feel the odds of us maintaining a civil relationship, or any relationship at all, depends on keeping the door cracked a bit...at least enough for them to get to know him as a human, which I want! I want this to be an opportunity for growth for them! That's the love in me, in both of us.
The fears in me tell me I'm opening myself to painful rejection at best and a lifetime of intrusion and perhaps violence? I don't really know what lies ahead. I'm in a support group for others from Muslim families to navigate this but no one has concrete answers. Some people are just cut off or disowned, others are harassed and need to get restraining orders, and other cases are worse. I guess my question is this: are we naive to want to merge these worlds? Is this a futile attempt? Are we just opening ourselves up to pain and danger? I want to believe the best choice is to give my family the chance to rise out of their bigotry and bias but I'm also afraid. What do you think?
Thanks Heather, I live for your columns and emails. You have such a gift, and you have found your dharma for this lifetime. Thank you for taking it by the horns and sharing it.
Oh, these threads what a gift! Having just been ghosted by the guy I'd been dating for 2 months who lives 4 streets away I was feeling awful. I thought I saw him this morning and had panic attack in the parking lot. I felt so sad and discarded. Then I come here and see so many of us hurt and I think oh you lovely people! I want to help you feel better, we all care enough to share and be vulnerable. Thank you Heather for always having the best advice and opening up this space for us.
Hoping for a swift recovery for you, Heather!
I think as I look toward winter, I'm trying to get back to taking things a day at a time, the way I tried (but mostly failed) to do in early summer. I get pretty intense seasonal affective stuff every year, and I'm so deeply not looking forward to navigating it this winter. In theory I want to be proactive about it, but I'm worried I won't have the motivation. Lately I've noticed myself trying to connect with someone, anyone online whether I know them or not, because boy has this introvert hit her limit in terms of how long she can go without human connection...it's like, you don't really know how bad you need it until you get a taste of it, and then you want the whole damn buffet, you know? While living in the day to day I'm also paradoxically trying to look ahead to when All This is over and we have something resembling normalcy again and how absolutely freaking GLORIOUS it's gonna feel every time we freely get together with a group of friends, no matter how many there are or how close we're standing to them. Big group events are going to be positively euphoric. Whenever things feel bleak again, that kind of stuff is what I want in my brain.
A few years ago I was in a long term, on again off again, toxic relationship. I thought I processed most of my feelings and learned my lessons but I haven't. Having just binged watched the latest season of The Crown, I am staggering at all of the parallels between me/my ex and Diana/Charles - the vast age difference (I was 22, he was 32), the eating disorder (I also struggled with bulimia), the ways in which he ignored and resented her, the tiny fleeting moments of joy that gave the relationship hollow promise, the way in which she was blamed for her "crazy behavior" as though she acted in a vacuum. All these new memories of his abuse come racing back into my brain with such absurd clarity that sometimes I shout "Shit!!!" out loud in my apartment and my current, wonderful boyfriend is like "??? You good???" It's been 2 years but I obviously carry so much anger. Towards the end of my relationship, my ex loved to call me "abusive" but I really feel like I wasn't, I was having a proportional bewildered and hurt reaction to the extent of his disregard and utter contempt for me: another parallel, if you've seen the penultimate and final episodes. Beyond all of this, I know I do have longstanding anger and jealousy (unworthiness and fear in relationships) issues rooted in my childhood from watching my parents interact. I am 29 and I just now realized that my mother (despite, ironically, literally having the face and figure of a bikini model) DEEPLY resents beautiful/well-dressed women and finds them shallow and ignorant, and has passed that attitude onto me. I know my experience is not unique and I would love to hear how others have fully processed their experiences and allowed themselves to feel actual happiness. I have been in therapy mostly regularly for 4 years but the things I've just described are shockingly new personal revelations for me and I'm reeling.
Wishing you good health and all the support you need, Heather. I don’t know if you’ll read this, but I started reading your column religiously during long depressive episodes in college, and I saved and memorized quotes that were especially powerful to me at the time. For someone with violent and neglectful parents who didn’t give two shits about teaching me how to be a person, your guidance was just like medicine, so thank you.
In fact, I have been trying to separate myself from my family these past 2-3 years, and it has been so. damn. hard. I thought that if I tried saving relationships that weren’t quite as bad as all the abusive treatment I’d had to endure from my parents, I wouldn’t seem as petty and “irrational” to others and would still have a chance at a family. Well, that didn’t work out, because staying in relationships with people who weren’t exactly abusing me but were also too cowardly to stand up for me or validate my experiences was somehow worse. I constantly felt confused, humiliated and numb, and being stuck in that place stopped me from ever moving on.
Last week I told my sibling, who is a total enabler and still lives for my parents’ approval, that I need a break from him and his family, even though making that decision felt like my heart would literally rupture from the pain. I’ve never felt this alone. It’s both freeing and terrifying.
I spend all days alone, working from home and occasionally texting my only friend. I barely speak to anybody most days, and I cry a lot. Mostly, though, I keep waiting for my family to come up with some way to fuck with me again, like they always did in the past. Being constantly on guard is the hardest thing, so exhausting and mostly pointless. I wish I could take a break from that as well.
Thanks for making this thread, Heather. <3 I'm starting to realize that I have this tendency to just keep chugging along without really thinking about how I am actually doing, and then I end up being mystified at all of the physiological responses my body has to all the stress and anxiety I'm carrying around. Then when I sit back and think about it, it's like, wow, okay, I actually have a lot of stressful shit in my life.
My daughter has a rare genetic disorder that requires expensive specialty medical foods to treat and prevent intellectual disability. Unfortunately since it's so rare, most insurance policies aren't really written with her needs in mind, and coverage is very difficult to obtain. When I started my job a year and a half ago, coverage was denied but I got an insurance advocate/specialist involved and we got it approved, or so we thought. I've been ordering her medical foods every month and just found out about a month ago that apparently even though they said it was approved, they actually won't cover it because it's a "plan exclusion", and the claims have been getting denied (but they never informed me of this until a year and a half into it). I've spent probably twenty or thirty hours on the phone with insurance in the last few weeks to try to fight this but they keep saying no. There are about $40K in unpaid bills for her foods, and if I lose this battle they will come after me for it. I'm trying about a million things but I am seriously so stressed out about this that I have nightmares about it, and I struggle sleeping through the night. I'm always waking up thinking about it, and my mind just turns this stuff over and over and I can't fall back asleep.
My husband re-tore his ACL for the third time recently and needs to have repair surgery again, which he has scheduled for a few days before Christmas. I am stressed about this because of 1. the expense, 2. COVID! I hate the idea of him going into a hospital and being in confined spaces with a bunch of doctors and medical staff, when the virus is so out of control right now. 3. I have this deep fear that he will somehow die in surgery because of the anesthesia, even though he's been through this before and is perfectly healthy. I swear it's like my brain is already behind the scenes planning to have to survive without him. With that said, I completely understand that this is hampering his ability to walk and live his life (he's normally very active), so I don't want to push him to wait when this is something he really needs.
He's also in college at the moment (at my urging...he was happy in his career but we moved because I hated where we lived, and the job he had isn't really a possibility in our new location, so back to school he went). He's doing amazing - he works so hard and studies all the time, all while also being an amazing dad to our toddler and not letting me carry the burden of childcare responsibilities. But...tuition is expensive, and my job is currently supporting our family. But I work in an industry that is ultimately dependent on fossil fuels, which I feel morally icky about, plus the industry is in decline so we aren't getting raises or bonuses and I also have this fear of them downsizing or laying people off. I don't think I'd get laid off because my role is pretty critical, but I am afraid of them cutting benefits. So I am utterly dependent on a job in a dying industry, that I kind of hate because of its contribution to climate change, but I can't exactly leave because my family is relying on me to carry us through this time until my husband graduates and re-establishes his career.
Also because of COVID, we have been keeping our daughter home from day care and it is nearly impossible for me to work from home and him to do his schooling from home, while she is here. I feel like I never actually *do* my job, and the stress doesn't make it any easier to focus on what I should be doing.
I am just at the point where I frequently get these feelings of intense dread, a tingling feeling in my arms/shoulders/neck, lightheadedness/tunnel vision. I often can't finish thoughts or sentences, I start saying something and then I just trail off and forget I was even talking. I think that's probably pretty normal given how much I have on my mind but I don't really see any way out. I kind of want to find a therapist so I can maybe get some Xanax or something to help me at least feel less physically on edge/in danger all the time, but the thought of trying to find someone is just one more task that I don't feel I have the mental bandwidth for.
Honestly after typing all this, I mostly just want to cry and take a nap. Life is hard. :(
It was my 37th birthday yesterday. My partner brought us home dinner from where she works after she got off early, and she kept asking me what I'd like to do after dinner. All sorts of indoor ideas. Each one felt like a weight being strapped to my body, and I felt this crushing feeling cover me. And that I couldn't even be happy when the best person was being so sweet to me was just another shitty thing I was doing.
We watched Die Hard (her choice, she'd never seen it!) and cuddled the entire time. It was great. The weight of my being trapped in life (physically and career-wise thanks to the pandemic) wasn't so bad. But as soon as it became clear she wanted to have sex and expectation entered back into things, I spiraled pretty damn bad. I guess it's depression... though I find it hard to believe that the despair over seeing half of people willingly making your state 3rd worst in the nation for a pandemic and so many easily duped by the most insane conspiracy theories is actually depression. Giving fully into despair is though.
We get one wild and precious life, thanks Mary Oliver, and while misfortune is usually like being struck by an arrow, I realize that I'm just taking that arrow and twisting or jamming it back in and out like it'll help somehow. It's funny, I hugged my therapist and ended therapy the day of the first US COVID-19 death. I said I think I've got this, I have a plan with grad school going on for a new career, a partner I can't wait to live with then marry (that prophecy at least is the only thing still going well) and I'm making the most of life. Woops.
Anyway, I don't want to keep wounding myself over and over again internally over things that I can't control. I'm a loyal and loving partner, friend, son, person. So tomorrow we're going to finish setting up my girlfriend's Etsy shop, I bought her a professional artist grade printer and both look into whether or not my insurance still pays for teletherapy visits. I think it'll be a pretty great day, but if it isn't, that's fine too.
Been dealing with in-law family drama and it's been a big emotional weight on both myself and my partner. My dad also just called me to tell me my estranged grandmother is in the hospital and he was pretty upset and started to cry on the phone, so I started to cry because I haven't heard him cry in years. It's been so weird. This week has just been weird.
Thank you for making a space, it's nice to have a place to just . . . talk? It's finals and my spouse is a teacher and so I don't see them much, even though they're right downstairs, and I spend a lot of time saying "It's fine, this is fine." But it's also true that I've leaned as hard as possible into Christmas already, I want all the lights, all the glitter, all the cookies and tea, build me a tiny house of gingerbread and pine boughs and strings of lights to shelter from the scrabbling cold darkness outside. So far it is working most days. I'm holding on.
All this time spent at home and living by myself has caused me to be in my head quite a bit this year (as I'm sure it has for all of us, regardless of our living situations!). It also caused a pretty bad OCD flareup, although the bright side is that I was finally diagnosed with it after years of only suspecting it was something I suffered from.
Learning how to manage it has been a journey, and I've had to make a lot of changes in my life. I've had to more or less say goodbye to any media that feels too negative or anxiety-inducing (with some exceptions, of course). I've also been practicing meditating every day and I'm currently trying to re-learn mindfulness.
I feel such deep gratitude for the friends I've opened up to about it. I'm always so afraid of "burdening" other people with my struggles, but now I don't know how I would have managed if I hadn't reached out about how hard a time I've been having.
I'm relieved I now have a name for what I've been struggling with, and it's been so helpful to learn more about OCD and that I'm far from alone in my struggle with it. That's the silver lining I'm trying to hang on to, but of course, it's been very hard!
I know this year has been more about surviving than thriving, but I hope everyone is doing okay!
My grandma has Alzheimer’s and I keep having to remind her who I am. One of my aunts is doing chemo for stage 4 cancer and the other one just had a stroke. My best friend called to say that her mom has cancer too. My local friends are too worried about covid to see me for the moment. I’m a single parent, lucky enough to work from home, whose fifth grader’s school is all virtual this year. And did I mention I started grad school this semester? Two weeks until exams are over.
Everything feels overwhelming and it’s true, I have no idea how or what else besides overwhelm I feel. I need a nap all the time. And I’m thankful it isn’t any worse. Thanks for giving me a space to say it all out loud.
Thank you for this! I'm really struggling and I already thought I was struggling. Yesterday my spouse told me he thinks he's addicted to porn (he spend 100s of dollars on it this month). In October around my birthday I found most of my family kept a visit between my brother and my parents (who live in different states) a secret "because of my anxiety." I'm so sad and angry and lost. I've told the one sister who I'm speaking to about my spouse and one friend who lives far away. I can't even easily research porn addiction because I get religious sites that say things like "porn is ALWAYS evil" which I don't believe and I don't even have a job to distract me. I just want to move forward but I don't know how how.
Oh god. Thank you. I'm currently navigating what is, for me, the worst possible thing that could possibly happen on planet earth. My very beloved cat is sick. She is everything to me and I have been denying her status as a mortal being for years, and now I have to look at the beyond horrifying fact that I will loose her. Maybe not right now. But it will happen. I can't stop playing out word-case-scenerios in my head. It's been a punishing week. I'm on the verge of being totally unable to cope, but have had to keep my wits about me to make the best decisions I can for her. Including switching from a dismissive vet to one who can talk me through every thing and who I can trust to really care for her. I'm stuck in a place right now of such extreme anxiety that I can barely move. I've had some very beautiful help come through, and some wonderful people enter my life as a result of this. But Jesus, life just requires ungodly amounts of bravery. I then get flooded with thinking about all the difficulty that everyone on the fucking planet is facing every single day and I just don't get how we're supposed to survive as humans with open hearts. It's just so much.
I’ve been in a toxic living environment for about 3.5 years. It was mostly manageable pre-lockdown, but now that we’re home all the time, I spend the majority of the day hiding from my roommate who treats me poorly. Things reached a fever pitch this week, and I’m finally moving out at the end of December. I am beyond sad to leave such a wonderful home I’ve created the past couple of years, and am stressed that I might not be able to afford a safe, nurturing, affordable environment during this month. I live in LA and have a full time respectable job, yet the places I’m looking at are bleak. Trying to stick out the month and have hope for a better future, but this lockdown is making me a ball of nerves. Thank you for listening. We’ll get through this as we always have- together!
Love you Heather! That’s all for me today. ❤️
Well the good news is that I've finally developed enough emotional awareness to recognize when stress is sneaking up on me, which it definitely started to do this week. The bad news is I'm still struggling to manage, especially in these circumstances.
I'm another service industry casualty, have been out of work since March (for the first time in my life) and unemployment hasn't been an option for over a month now, since I turned down a job offer that would have truly made me even more miserable than I already am. But now I'm finding that I just... don't want to get a job? I could easily live off savings and continue to be a lump on my couch all winter. I don't feel hopeful that I could even find work (useless liberal arts degree, uninspiring work history, the job market generally), and I'm scared to take any sort of "essential" job because while I'm not technically high-risk, my health history makes me think I'd be likely to end up in the hospital if I catch the virus. So I have my excuses. But the truth is, I haven't made a single effort to find something to do. I thought maybe I'd move across the country for a fresh start in the same city as some dear friends, but it seems too risky these days. I have no personal projects I want to dive into. I just want to putter and walk the dog and stay in my avoidant hole until spring. I'm not sure how to break this paralysis so I can quit flushing money down the toilet and start working again, and I'm ashamed of myself for not being more responsible and fighting harder to get motivated. I've always been a hustler, always cobbled together work and figured out how to make it happen. I thought this would be the year I broke away from that, got some stability. And now that it wasn't, I just want to lay down and give up for a while.
It's the week before finals week and all my professors have apparently forgotten that their students have other classes, and even--horror of horrors--responsibilities outside of school! I've been through this before, and I know I'm going to be fine, but it's still triggering the bi-annual "what the hell am I doing here" crisis.
I'm 22 years old and going to community college on my mother's dime. Neither of those things are inherently bad or shameful, but it's hard not to be ashamed anyway. I was supposed to follow in her and my father's footsteps--straight A's, one of the fancier state schools, then on to grad school--but I almost flunked out of high school, tried and failed to attend community college in my hometown, and sort of drifted around aimlessly until about a year ago. I can't un-break her heart or reset her expectations, but I still feel the need to become someone she can be proud of. I feel like I owe her, not just for putting me through school, but for dealing with my horrid, volatile teenage self and my manipulative father at the same time.
Thank you for creating this thread! I have been unemployed since getting laid off for the first time in my life in May due to covid. I'm nearly 27, but I feel so much older and like I'm a complete failure. It's hard not to feel hopeless and worthless right now – I was good at my last job and it became a huge part of my identity, but there isn't really much work similar to what I did before. I'm trying to make a bit of a career pivot and rejection after rejection keeps coming in. I have just been isolating because I'm so embarrassed to keep telling my friends and family that I still can't get hired anywhere. I just feel like a loser, you know? The last rejection was the worst, as the role was an amazing creative opportunity and made it feel like this whole hellish year would have been worth it. I worked for a week straight on a presentation for senior executives and the eventual rejection hit really hard. I know this is filled with intense negative self-talk, and I want to be clear – some days feel better than others. But I still can't sleep at night thinking about how hard this has been and how quickly it feels like my life has fallen apart. Unemployment and the job hunt has felt like checking off tasks that mean nothing, sending off resumes and cover letters that you spend hours on just to have no one read. I just can't help but feel so ashamed about everything and like my identity and sense of self worth has been lost in this terrible year. Thanks for being a source of light, Polly <3
You are so right! There are some seriously strange rabbit holes I find myself in when I am at a wits end. There is no telling what you’ll be reading/watching, sometimes it’s not even something that interests me! Good luck in your recovery, I appreciate you rationalizing of the human experience that is highly relatable!!
Thank you for creating this thread!
There have been ups and downs, and I am
worried about spending another winter isolated in nyc. My husband lost his job in march, he had started a business in parallel but hasn’t been puttinga ton of effort into it. I work from home 8-5 while he sits on the couch 90% of the day. I talked to him a few times about how I feel like he isn’t doing his part but nothing’s changed, and I don’t want to continually feel like a nag so I constantly go from trying not to care, to feeling frustrated. I know he is depressed but I feel so overwhelmed. My family isn’t in this country and by the time I am able to see them again (safely), it will have been 2 years. Trying to be optimistic and see the silver lining but I feel so tired today.
Get well soon. Understand that there are people who have followed your “wry sense of humor mixed with profound insight” since SUCK.COM.
These last few months your writing has helped me deal with the impotent rage that the pandemic has inspired in all of us.
Peace.
Thanks Heather, and hi everybody <3 Lately I feel like I’m swimming in shame and loneliness. I’ve always dealt with this, but something about lockdown has really amplified it—I mean I can’t remember when I felt it in my body this way before. It’s horrible. It makes me want to crawl out of my body. I’ve started picking at my skin until it bleeds because that’s the only thing that calms me down (I do see a therapist and take medication). I feel stupid, unlovable, unremarkable. I started taking a philosophy class for fun in my spare time but it makes me feel like an idiot, it’s like my brain shuts off, and I get so preoccupied with trying to come up with something to say that I lose the thread of the conversation. The other day in class I felt so lost I wanted to cry, which is so embarrassing to admit. And when I finally mustered up the courage to say something, it was completely off topic, and my shame just magnified. Ugh, I still can’t think of it without cringing. At the same time, being in therapy and doing a lot of soul-searching (and being basically isolated for nine months) has helped me realize how much emotional (and physical) neglect I suffered as a child. I feel permanently broken by my parents’ inability to love me, I feel dissociative in friendships and my anxious/avoidant attachment style has made dating tough—I do go on dates but it never turns into anything serious, and now that I’m almost thirty I’m starting to feel hopeless. I want to believe that I don't need to be brilliant and beautiful and exceptional to have worth and deserve love, and I want to have hope that things will get better, but it's hard
Hi Polly-I had a miserable Thanksgiving. Maybe you could help put it in perspective. I'm a male, divorced 70 years old. I've been dating a widowed woman whose 66 for 4 months. I had Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Just the 2 of us. There was a Zoom meet up between us, her 93 year old father, her brother and his family, her 3 married children and their spouseIs. I was flattered to be asked to Thanksgiving and thought it indicated her growing affection for me. After the zoom and our dinner she kind of froze up and ushered me out very quickly and coldly. I called her the next night and asked her if she wanted to stop seeing me because it sure felt like it. She responded with: she wasn't happy, I wasn't fun, and she didn't love me. I guess I'm the proverbial old fool. Obviously she powerfully expressed her feelings, but I tried to make the case to myself that introducing me to her family was important to her but she'd gone too far out on a limb and freaked out. When I called her again I asked if she really wanted to end it, she gave me "no but I need some time off." Now I realize I dread seeing her and putting myself up for her scrutiny, Her insults were real "duh" and I can't see meeting her again even for coffee- we met on a dating sight. Polly, please help and old guy out with a few comforting words. I was a teenager in love and got my hopes dashed. Thank you
My partner of 15 years and I are in the process of moving from a monogamous relationship to one of consensual/ethical non-monogamy and my fucking god it has been a journey. Since this conversation started a few months ago, he and I have both been living in what feels like a pressure cooker of growth that we can't turn off. It has been intense and exhausting and probably the best thing we've ever done for ourselves individually and for our relationship. Changing up the structure of a relationship in such a foundational way like this brings all kinds of attachment issues and personal insecurity to the surface; we realized we had relied on the fact that we are married as the base of our security in the relationship instead on the actual quality of our experience together. A lightbulb the size of the goddamn sun flashed on and it has transformed our relationship into the best version of itself it has yet been--we're able to be wildly honest and vulnerable and supportive of each other and of our experiences both together and individually in ways far deeper than we've probably ever imagined. And I don't mean to imply that our relationship was awful before; we both have overwhelming felt grateful for one another and for our closeness and the relationship we had created, but this still has taken us/is taking us to a different level.
I'm at the stage right now where I'm feeling the best and most assured I have in a while, and looking back saying to myself, "Holy shit, that was horrific!" at how we both were basically sleepwalking in not only our relationship to each other but also in our relationships to ourselves and the unacknowledged (and so undealt-with) trauma and conditioning we had just unknowingly kept running in the background of our lives. I'm in therapy for me and we're in relationship therapy together. We are working toward, in our own small ways/world, loving the people in our lives in a non-possessive way, prioritizing the quality of our experiences by genuinely showing up, addressing our trauma and insecurities/securities and our socialization, committing to honest and transparent communication, diligently but kindly exploring the deep, dark corners of our interior worlds, supporting each other and the other people in our life in a way that emulates the closest thing to an unconditional love as we are able, and honoring the beauty and uniqueness in everyone's individual life and journey and story as full, autonomous human beings.
In the large urban park close to where I live, someone has written on one of the porta potties, "Covid-19 helped me dream." It has, and I'm feeling floored by it in the best kind of way.
I was already in the midst of a career upheaval at the beginning of this year and was laid off in March right after starting a brand new job. I have spent most of the year unemployed and the affect it's had on my mental health has been staggering. I have had some part time work and government assistance thankfully but the feelings of worthlessness and shame around my job and career are so deep and I hate that our society ties so much worth to what "you do". It just fucking sucks.
Thank you so much, I live alone, I'm so isolated right now and struggling so hard that I feel almost disconnected from reality. I'm also going to be unemployed soon and for the first time since graduating college I have no further plans after that. I really don't know what to do. I'm applying for jobs but there's just nothing out there right now.
Last year I somehow clawed my way into an entry level desk job in a non-profit human services setting after years in the service industry. I just turned 33, and all of my superiors are considerably younger than me with advanced degrees and I couldn't even complete an associate's, which I have tried 5 (five) times. It's clear I won't move up the ladder without further education, but I'm too poor and tired and full of shame to even try again. God, the shame. I have tried to make peace with this and focus on the positive aspects of my life: I'm housed, well fed, and in a loving relationship with someone I'm going to marry if we can ever have weddings again.
But it feels like every single time I'm making progress with myself I experience another indignity at work that completely undoes me. One of many, many examples: My "office" is in the corner of what is essentially a warehouse type area tucked away behind the elevators, and it is now under construction for the next six weeks. They are knocking out two walls, 10 and 20 feet away from my desk. It's *unbelievably* loud, dusty, and also cold, as this is upstate NY and it's winter. I have been wearing wool socks and layers beneath my business casual, with a puffy coat and hat on top, all day every day. I have to take a hot shower when I get home. I bought noise cancelling headphones I could not afford, but I can't really wear them because I have to answer the phone and listen for clients knocking on the door. My concerns for my ability to actually do my job (and not feel like a piece of shit) are repeatedly dismissed by my supervisor. As were all previous concerns.
I would leave, but where would I go? Even without Covid and millions of other people looking for jobs, I have no skills, experience, or education. Maybe it won't feel so intense and I won't feel so pathetic when work isn't the only place I've been since March. But I don't know how to accept that this is all I will ever have.
I have been living alone for nine months now and rarely see other people, and all I can think about is my ex-boyfriend. I broke up with him about two years ago and I can't stop feeling guilty for ending the relationship, feeling angry at my past self for not realizing how good I had it, feeling ashamed that I'm not over him, feeling hopeless about the future, and more than anything else, feeling desperately and completely lonely. I used to pride myself on being so independent and certain about what I want, and it feels like all of that is gone, and instead I think about this man who was great in so many ways. Who was I to think he wasn't enough? So much shame.
This has been the worst year bar none. I have a 14 yr old daughter and a 20 year old very handicapped son. Facing foreclosure, homelessness, and Christmas is upon us. My daughter asked to put the tree up and I said "Why bother this year there won't be anything under it" As soon as it left my mouth I instantly regretted it. I know she's big and doesn't believe in Santa but I feel like such a failure as a parent. The 20 yr old actually asked for a PS5 and I just looked at him. I know his mentality is that of an 11/12 year old but, like, I can't buy that. I can barely pay the power bill!!! I don't know. I love them and feel like they deserve the world, not a deadbeat dad that split and hasn't paid child support in 7 years and a Mom who loves them but is failing them, hard as I try not to. Both my parents are passed and its a lonely scary feeling. When they died I knew I had nowhere to turn anymore. Things got to get better. I have to figure this out, for them, I don't care about myself, but they deserve a home without fear of losing it, and stress free. I don't think they actually realize the seriousness of it all. That at least is a small blessing. I also still have my faith in God.
Loved a boy for a year, then he broke up with me two weeks ago. And he was SO heartbroken, like sobbing, and clearly didn't want to! I didn't want him to! But I was like, fuck, I guess we should probably break up! But I'm heartbroken and can't help but feel like, if we're both still in love and care about each other, why can't we make it work? Then he texted me a few times, and on our anniversary texted me a long paragraph about how he was thankful how I ~encouraged his dreams~ and how he was doing great and really following them! On our anniversary! Less than two weeks out! And when I was like, dude, we can't talk, he was SO apologetic. And was like I'm sorry I just still really care for you, blah blah, but I'll leave you in peace. To conclude: what the fuck! Why! There are reasons that I can think of but like, I was willing to make it work. He just cited that we were on different paths and it wouldn't be fair to either of us to go on--I would like to make clear that I have no fucking clue what path EITHER of us is on but okay! And yes all of this is kicking up my problems with like my father who died two years ago and all sorts of other things. Anyways, the only thing I'm looking forward to is my 21st in two months, which will also be disappointing because of COVID. Which is lame. All of this is fucking lame. I love him. Wish he saw what I saw in us. :/ also like this is embarrassing on so many levels and I know it reads crazy unaware of the Actual World and Actual Problems but my own little world is on fire in its own special way. God bless and keep ye.
I am a 22 year old unemployed recent graduate and it feels like I will never find a job. I have been applying to a lot but I feel like I must not be trying hard enough because all I get is rejections. I want to try harder but I am filled with fear, anger, sadness, and grief all the time it all feels so debilitating. I live with my parents who don't take it as seriously as I do so I live in constant fear that we are going to get the virus and when I try to tell them about how serious it all is they yell at me and tell me I need to get over it. I am so fortunate that no one I know has passed away from covid but yesterday I found out that one of my close friends has it so I'm scared for her. I have so much grief over all the things that were supposed to happen to me like having a real graduation ceremony and properly ending that chapter of my life. I feel like I spend all my days thinking about my life before this but I know I can't return to that. It's been 9 months but why does it still hurt so much? Why do I still cry everyday? Why can't I just get my life together? Before this I was so lost and unsure about my career goals and whatnot and I still am but now I feel like I will never figure it out and that I will just be left behind by the world. This has been the worst year of my life. This year has been so hard on all of us and it infuriates me that things have to be this way. Our government has basically left us to fend for ourselves and no one is doing anything about it. I also live in Los Angeles and things are getting so much worse but indoor malls remain open while everything else closes. Where the fuck is the sense in that???? I have so much anger inside of me it's like I'm constantly throwing an adult tantrum. I do everything I am supposed to do to regulate myself. I meditate, go on walks, journal, cook, read, listen to music, do yoga, exercise, go to virtual therapy but the pain doesn't go away. The rage doesn't go away either. I know it's not supposed to because it's a normal response to our fucked reality but I just feel like I've fallen and I'll never get back up. Thank you for opening this space for all of us to vent because we all need it. I hope there are some improvements next year.
I was dumped at the beginning of this pandemic by my long-time partner whom I thought wanted to marry me. My kids and I had to relocate (twice). It's been seven months now, and I can't do all the normal things to recover from a break up. I feel alone times alone. Online dating is bleak and weird--we FaceTime and flirt about apocalypse plans. I met another man who seemed great and then rejected me for the same reasons--because I have kids, because I live in the suburbs and not the city. Anyway, I am lucky to have a job, and great kids, and good friends. But damn, it just feels lonely and tedious and I want it to be over. I exercise, go to therapy, write, read, and drink a little too much. A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor died alone and I saw his body. He'd been in there for at least a week. Today, I have a wasp infestation in my bathroom. It just feels neverending bordering on comical. I try to allow myself space to feel sad and do less. Anyway, wishing you all well. I think everyone I know is struggling this year.
I get what you are doing here. Hell, I've done it myself for nearly 54 years. No exaggeration. I often ponder if my entire purpose in this life is to save people from themselves, even at the loss of myself and my own hopes and dreams, needs and desires, right to love and security, and SUPPORT. So, what I am asking YOU is....
HOW YA DOIN'? (Eye lock here)
What do YOU need right now?
I can feel your isolation, independence and resilience (even if it is a bit shaky) in your post, but I also know personally what it is to go through life events (or in many cases just life itself) alone. Surgeries, pain, illness, depression, anxiety, holidays (well, for me anyway), parents, siblings, friends, etc etc etc... all the things others take for granted I have either never had or I have lost due to this resilience that seems to trigger a really ugly side of 'weaker(?)' or less resilient people. Gah! Trying to explain always sounds either whiney or soapboxy. There is no win when trying to describe this to people or empathize with them. Preachy, ice cold, self-righteous, etc etc, I have heard them all. I can tell you one thing though, they NEVER tell me I am wrong. They always tell me I AM WRONG IN MY RIGHTNESS (That me as this person is wrong) but they don't deny or rather acknowledge that I was correct about my insight. They're really pissed that I hit a spot that made them feel vulnerable I believe. Exposure, even to ones self, can feel really frightening. I know this personally as well because when I started to really see my Autism a few years ago (and granted I have autistic spawn) I felt suddenly so exposed and yet totally unseen all at once. I still do but at least now "I" make more sense to ME.
Anyway, I just want to be that person that reminds you to STOP when it feels too heavy to keep reading everyone else's baggage and to acknowledge your own value just being you without carrying everyone else on your back.
I'm doing this right now myself with my mom... long story-ish. More, lifetime purpose? Whatever it is, it never really ends so I am just trying to keep the chaos in check until the next lull.
There is a fine line between helpful/loving/caring/supportive and burdening. On both sides of the coin.
Too much of even what is perceived as good, is damaging. <<<< Remember that. No matter what society says, how much emphasis is put on it's value or lack thereof, the bottom line is that too much of anything, too much imbalance, good, bad or otherwise, will always cause tension and excessive tension creates weak spots and breaks, and breaks not tended to shatter and usually once you have shattered the ability to reconstruct 'in like,' won't be possible anyway. You will have to rebuild on what's left and that won't be what once was, which is REALLY REALLY HARD. Just sayin'....
And in case you're wondering HTH I was triggered to respond to this post, it was because reading all the comments literally was draining me emotionally. Reading you responding was so heavy. You are so supportive, which is beautiful and also self destructive. I just couldn't read them anymore. It felt like watching a person drown in others waters while they let the others stand on their shoulders above water, breathing. LOL
Please don't be angry people. My brain works oddly. I am proud of that but 98% of society seems to take it personally that I think different. It isn't personal. It's just HF Autism. <3
Heather I am sorry to hear of your health struggles and am thankful for this thread where we can come together and support one another. It could not have come at a more perfect time for me.
I am struggling with taking on other's pain and grief- it is almost as if I put it on like a coat. I have had my share of difficult experiences throughout life which I believe have helped shape me into the empathetic, compassionate person that I am. For that I understand I feel things deeply. However, when I read the news and learn about a senseless death or act of crime, it is almost as if I become so wrapped up in what the victims or survivors are going through and how they must feel. I then start to mentally walk the path of how I could overcome a devastating loss if their situation were to happen to me. It gets to the point where I am gripped by fear, thinking that I would not have the strength to survive the same tragic ordeals that others have had to survive.
I understand that reading the news is not helping my mental health, but I also do not want to keep my head in the sand and not be aware of struggles that others are going through. I have already deleted a couple of apps that have recently sent me into a spiral, but I feel the bigger problem is learning how to have empathy for those who are suffering incredibly, but not to the extent where I am crippled for the rest of the day because I am so wrapped up in the horrific details of their suffering. In these current times, I want to be a member of my community that can face excruciating life events alongside one another, but mentally healthy enough to process the weight of it all.
I am torn over J K Rowling. Which doesn't make sense because she doesn't know me/my opinions don't matter, I am nobody. But somehow I am disturbed.
Even more because I kind of understand what she is trying to portray/defend. But I also understand that an already crushed minority do not need a childhood idol to not support that their existence, that will be devastating. So I am on the mid-ground and wondering if it makes me a bigot asshole.
I got laid off and I’m moving across the country in two weeks. There’s no more work for me here and it’s time to move on but I’m leaving my friends, my partner, my therapist. Now feels like a hunker down time and not a put yourself out there time. I’m scared about money and about moving, it’s just a lot
I keep returning to the idea that what I think of as maladaptive behavior in normal times, now has simply become adaptive behavior. Just doing anything to get through this hellish year. I've been running on denial and disassociation for months and months. At the beginning of the year, I had surgery (apparently, you don't actually need a gallbladder), and spent a couple of weeks recovering. I went straight from that to writing a book, which meant I confined myself to my chair day-in-day-out, while the pandemic started. I delivered my book, and two days later my father died from COVID. I spent the summer and fall burying myself in work to keep myself distracted, just going one day at a time, looking at the thing in front of me, unable to process anything else.
All throughout, I was acutely aware of this strange dislocation. Like I was aware of the trauma, and though I was unable to feel it most of the time, I knew that it was just building up to be dealt with at some undetermined future time. But hey, I was being So Productive! I was Making The Best Of A Bad Situation! That worked up until last month, when my capacity to keep working finally evaporated. But I still feel dislocated. Like none of this is real, or that sometime soon it will all be over and we'll be allowed to go back to the way it was, and my father with still be alive.
I mean, I KNOW that's not true. But it feels like my body is behaving as if it is. Perhaps it's just waiting until things feel safer before it allows me to collapse in a puddle of grief. It hasn't happened yet. I wonder sometimes if it ever will.
Thank you so much, Heather! I truly appreciate this space. First and foremost, I am so sorry you've had to deal with multiple surgeries and health concerns this year ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE. Holy smokes. That is a lot to handle and I wish you health and strength in 2021! You deserve all the good things.
This post really resonates with me because I think this has been the week that my feelings have snuck up on me all at once. Here's what's going on in my life.
This spring—after sheltering-in-place by myself for about a month 1/2— I met a wonderful man at a Zoom-based event. We were both attracted to each other and started chatting over social media. We chatted for a couple of weeks, which led to phone calls and then Zoom dates. We met up for a socially distant walk in mid-May and fast forward to now, we're officially living together. The pandemic certainly expedited the pace of things! We are both very happy and insanely grateful that we met each other this year.
I've generally felt secure in this relationship until Sunday when we had an Oh Shit Moment. Throughout the course of normal conversation, it came up that one of his exes (he had previously told me some things about her) was 11 years younger than him. So, when he was 31 (he's in his mid 30’s now and we are the same age) she was 20. At the time, he was living with another woman who was closer to his age, so he had cheated on this partner to get with the 20 year old. He had already told me about the affair, but the age gap was new information.
Honestly, hearing about how young this girl was at the time made me very uneasy. My thought was why was he drawn to someone who had that much less life experience? Then my thought was, fuck what if he leaves me for someone much younger? And then, oh shit, does this signal something about his character that I should be wary of? Have I made a mistake by moving in with someone I've only met this year?
My partner and I have talked about this extensively this week. He's listened to my concerns and shared what it was like to be in the relationship with the young gal and why he was drawn to her and why they hit it off. They were together for a year 1/2 afterwards, so I know they had a genuine connection and he wasn't just chasing a hot piece of ass. Also, in the grand scheme of things, 31 is still pretty young.
I'm reassured by the fact that he did fess up to his ex (the one he was living with at the time) shortly after he cheated and told her that the infidelity was a sign that they weren't a good fit & should split. He also described all the guilt and anxiety he went through when all of this went down and his shame about the age gap. This ex (the one he cheated on) has since married & she and my partner are on cordial/friendly terms. So all in all, there are no lingering hard feelings.
I'm ready to move past this moment and I don’t want to judge my partner for his past, but I still have some lingering anxieties about getting left behind and broken up with. Especially because I have a history of dating dudes whose words and actions haven't always aligned. I'm scared time will prove that I’ve made another bad judgment call (I have made plenty of bad judgment calls). I do think my partner is a good one, but I’m scared that something’s going to happen and it won’t work out and I’m going to have to go through a breakup for the umpteenth time. The stakes feel high to me because I’m seeking a lifelong partnership & I hope he’s it. He and I are both on the same page about that.
I should also mention that I have an anxious attachment style. So thank you for providing me with a space to share my anxieties!
I never write in to this sort of thing, but you are always so kind to people, and my anxiety is overwhelming. I'm a thirty-something who grew up in a traumatizing environment (among other things, a narcissistic and controlling mother). I finally started to get therapy in my 30s. The first therapist (who was very well-meaning!) re-traumatized me. She was trying and was trauma-informed, but she was young, and she was using an approach that just didn't work for me (very top-down, directed, structured). I switched to a new therapist who had experience with trauma and more years of practice. She encouraged me to view her as a stand-in mother figure. And I'm sure you can see where this is going...she was re-traumatizing, and things ended badly after she kept needing to be the expert on my life and my decisions (presenting me with the "correct" choices, saying that only she knew me, etc.), kept telling me not to talk about the things that were bothering me, denying my reality, and telling me that it was my fault the relationship went south. And on top of it -- as many now are -- I'm now unemployed with no work to distract myself from what feels like such a deep betrayal. I know that I need to heal, but how do you do so when the very people you seek out for help (trauma-informed therapists) are re-traumatizing?
My brain has a nice habit of doing the "It's fine, it's fine" too. Then my memories get foggy and years later it comes bubbling up "HS." Right now I am a bit numb from working too many days as a front line health care worker. The only thing that makes that part better is my funny co-workers and mostly grateful patients. My family misses me even though I am physically home each night but mentally half there. But I have a few days off to find my way back to them.
Hi Polly, thanks for sharing about your surgery. I will be having surgery across the country very likely in the next few months to come. I'm very scared and uncertain of whether or not it can heal me, all I can do is have faith and hope. I'll have to relocate for a few months for this surgery, become immobile, etc. It's such an intimidating thought, and the process will require so much paperwork and planning as well. I never thought I would undergo any type of surgery at 24, but guess the years of stress had really caught up to me. I'm praying for the best, and wishing you a smooth and well recovery. You've helped me a lot, and if anything, you sharing your story gives me the courage to fight for my own health. Thanks for sharing
Hello.
I'm really sorry to hear about your surgeries. I hope this is the last one and the next year will be surgery free and lockdown free. I guess, after reading many of your columns, as you always say - we don't have to tell ourselves we are fine if we are not.
I'm not fine. I'm 33 and just had a break up this summer. And now I feel alone in this pandemic. Everything else is mostly fine, I have a job, I have friends and I live with my family and cats, so I guess I'm not really alone. But that panicking- feeling too old-wanting to settle and have family-afraid if I'll ever have it-feeling is really bothering me. Most of my friends, especially girls are in relationship and I feel stuck and lonely and I don't see how it can change in this times (the thought of using dating apps dreads me, I hate them).
So now I really want this pandemic to end.. but then even that doesn't mean I'll have what I want. I guess I really miss to have someone to kiss and hugh.. and make love.
I had many conversations with my mom, who really tries to help me and comfort me - she actually says many similar things like Polly. :D And she says that I'm still young, that I have many things (like above mentionied, friends, family, job, also hobbies), also that I'm attractive and smart and interesting, and that I should enjoy and relax, and everything will come. But I'm still scared if it will...
God y'all I'm really having a bad time and we are just going into it. I'm in somewhat frantic negotiations with my psychiatrist (get me on prozac!!! Jk I can't orgasm on that. An SNRI, perhaps? Can't wait for those side effects either. More wellbutrin! Help I'm drowning!!!!!) I've been trying to live in Peter Gabriel's music as refuge. It's a lean-to but hoping it will hold for now.