After a three-hour hike I came home with heavy legs but the rest of my body felt like none of it happened, as if I haven’t just spent three hours outside hiking hills up and down. At some point during my hike I stopped to enjoy the view and simply be in nature but I couldn’t experience any of it. For years I have been trapped in unreality. An invisible shield keeps me from connecting to nature, to life, as if I was caught in a dream from which I just won’t wake up, to an unbearably painful reality. Time is passing by a distant observer, paralyzed, unnoticed, locked up in the waiting room of life.
It’s been years since the last conversation, the last hug. I terribly miss being around someone familiar, someone reliable and trustworthy, someone who is there without any conditions I’d have to fulfill so that I am not rejected. Someone who would ask with genuine interest about my well-being. Time and time again people withdraw passively or actively when their expectations and demands aren’t met.
Words can’t describe the pain of loss and loneliness.
Thank you for sharing this, @crea. Your post touched me. If you don’t mind me saying, there’s something kind of hauntingly beautiful about seeing something you’ve felt but haven’t expressed laid out so clearly and plainly. I’m struck by your openness and I appreciate it.
I’ve also experienced derealisation, albeit in spells, when I’ve felt entirely disjointed from my body and surroundings. For me it was like watching someone else live my life for me. It’s totally unsettling, or at least it is in retrospect. In that moment the recognition that you feel no more part of your own body than anyone else’s comes just like any other benign fact. I say all this to show that I think I know to some small extent how you feel. I cannot imagine coping with it for years. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You don’t at all deserve it. This post is marked as a journal so I won’t probe or ask about therapy, but I hope that this small show of support eases your burdens by some slight amount.
I relate to your comments on loneliness a lot. It is a huge loss not to be able to express yourself openly to someone who you know will accept you without condition. It’s such a core part of being human that not having it is almost like not having a part of yourself. You deserve that conversation and hug. If you’d like, I’m here to listen more and to talk. I know that I’m merely text on a screen, but there’s a real person sitting in front of my monitor who is thinking of you and hoping that you’ll find what you need.
Sending lots of love, friend. Thank you again for sharing.
My heart hurts for you so much at this moment. I think we all have experienced this moment at LEAST one time in our lives. I wish I could hug you right now. I think the last few years have roughed us all up a bit & taken the small things away that we took for granted. I am proud of you for reaching out here on HeartSupport, so we can encourage you. Have you stopped going to therapy? I read your last post that you were going. Would it help to start going again, if you stopped going?
One thing that I am continuing to learn, you have to search for your people & when you find them…add them to your circle. I know for me…I would rather have a small circle of good, amazing friends over having a massive circle with a ton of blah, eh kind of friends. It might take some work, but it will be worth it. If you are part of the Heart Support discord, my DMs are always open to you.
You are amazing. You are strong. You are valid. You are enough. You matter.
Hi Friend, Thank you for your beautiful post, your words were so touching, you have a gift for expression. Loneliness is something that touches so many for a variety of reasons and yet i think it tend to hit us all in the same way and its truly unpleasant. I am sorry that you are feeling this way, I want you to know that here we do genuinely care about you and when we ask after your welbeing its asked with love and genuine heartfelt interest. Have you been to any of our streams on Twitch? they are great for getting to mix with other people that also care about oneanother, its an amazing community of loving individuals that all want to support eachother. I will put a link under this post for you. I would love to see you in chat there. Did you stay in therapy by the way? did you end up getting anything from it at all? I hope your life does begin to move forward and improve because you deserve love and happiness. Much Love Lisa x
You write about your experience so beautifully, even though what you write is so painful. I think many who have suffered with depression would recognise that feeling of dissociation from reality. There’s also that secondary feeling of guilt or shame that you didn’t take pleasure in an activity that you think you should have got some pleasure from. It’s one in of the many ways depression can be very cruel to us.
From my experience of feeling guilt for things I “should” have felt, I think you have to question why you think you should of felt something from your experience. There’s no rulebook to say that in certain situations you have to feel a certain way; there’s no failure in that. Some days you feel far away and that’s a perfectly valid way to feel.
Another cruel thing about depression is it makes us want to push people away and yet it still makes us feel lonely and uncared for. It’s a horrible cycle to experience. I hope that by writing here you find some of the unconditional care that you’re looking for my friend. You are not alone x
