Day 1 - an overview, part 1

21092012

Today I was looking at my life so far as a whole and asked myself the question: What has been my point of stability? What have I used to “stabilize” myself with as I have been unstable and looking for some kind of compensation?

When I was 15-16 years old I was lost. I had pretty much no people I could rely on (I was not accepting and allowing myself to rely on anyone) and what I though of myself and how I saw myself was a confused mess. I felt like a void. It was an identity crisis of sorts where I didn't know how to define myself or where to go. As throughout my life I have lived in cycles in which I end up losing my circle of friends or “friends” (this has happened five times now), I have each time had to find a new stability point. I have been reliant on the people around me (=addicted) to define myself for me as the environment that gives me feedback and acceptance. When I was 15-16 I was again at such a point, and then I found a new way to “belong”: become depressed. Now, it was never a “real” depression, as I decided to wear it to be accepted into the “cool” group of depressed and messed up people I found interesting. Becoming them to please them, to belong somewhere. I had had depressed thoughts earlier, even as early as 10-11 years old when I contemplated suicide and revelled in my visions of friends and family suffering over my death, but those thoughts were to entertain myself, to find an escape from my situation. I used “depression” as escapism. I of course believed it all. I defined myself to be depressed when I was 16, and ever since I've thought I really was. I now see and realize I was never depressed. I was bored and anxious and vengeful and looking for new ways to make myself “special” and “more” to be above those who “made” me “less”, to finally be the “winner” over those who “made” me a “loser”. I had energy and frustration and fatigue I wanted to express, and being “insane” and “wanting to die” was a new way to channel it, especially now that I had people to share with and who'd accept me and not contradict me. As a result I created myself actual panic and anxiety disorders.

So I have always tried to adapt to be accepted, even with such extreme means. This is probably a result of my bullying, where my free expression as a child was judged and laughed at, and as a result the other kids isolated me (I let myself be isolated). My reaction to being bullied was to retreat, invert, hide and isolate myself. Eventually I made that introversion into a character that was “cool” and “mysterious” and thus “more” than others; I justified my primary reaction and its consequences by seeing solitude (=isolation) as something “more respectable”, “less judgable”.

As I tried to compensate for my feeling of being “less”, I created ideals, standards and goals I ought to reach as a point of stability. This is where I started to idolize my sister and father, and to balance out I created a polarity of my mother and younger brother through demonizing. (Did I? I did.) I was embarrassed of my mother and my younger brother annoyed the hell out of me, and both relationships lead to agonizing conflict. My older brother was pretty nonexistant in my life even though I was fond of him, but I do recognize there might be more to my relationship with him than I now realize. He has probably affected my preprogrammed “taste in men” greatly and may even be a symbol of all my romantic encounters. Had I followed the life laid out in front of me, I would have “chosen” someone I could “save”, a nice and completely unfrightening man I could easily feel superior to, similar to my perception of my brother. (Had I become really messed up, I may have even limited myself to women only, just to avoid facing scary men.) And the cycle would have continued.

Yesterday I had a realization about my family. I was able to pinpoint the roles they've had as examples as I was growing up.

Mother = how to be

Father = how to act

Sister / siblings = the world (I'm about to face)

Each contains points I need to open up individually and with plenty of writing and will take time. This serves now as an overview of what I've come to realize so far. Self-forgiveness on what I wrote here is to come.