Dissolution
People ask me about things and tell me things about the world and goings-on, looking for thoughts or opinions. Well, I haven’t any.
I don’t feel like an individual anymore. I feel like a manifestation of the intended fulfilment of everyone’s needs. And failure is a loss of identity.
I go to church, but I don’t actually go to church anymore. I stay in the hall during the service, then I go outside or to the classrooms afterward, when the hall fills with people for coffee hour.
I cannot abide people anymore. More people – more noise, more confusion. More needs, more demands. Too much.
The house is growing smaller for me. Fewer and fewer spaces I can bear to be in. I lost the fight with the bathroom today. So many things and all of them necessary – they’ve been driven out of other spaces by the unnecessary. They are so tumbledown and so crowded and so thick – in furstration I slammed open the door that is continually closing on me, injuring me, over and over. I slammed it open and wedged a tube of some foolish hair gel – whose? – under it to brace it open.
Later it transpired that this wedging bent the towel bar behind and caused the doorknob to make a hole in the drywall.
In a rental, this is disastrous.
I lose more and more habitable space. I’m down to just the living and dining room now. Sometimes I can sleep in the bedroom, but I can’t tell how much of a horror the children are being, removed so far. In any case, I can’t walk in there.
I can’t turn around in the kitchen. I can barely wedge myself into the office. I injure my feet in the kids’ room. Their bathroom makes me retch. There is too much traffic in the stairwell.
That’s the whole house.
The spaces that have been mine are obliterated. No desk, no computer. I am perpetually disoriented. All the files are gone, the programs are gone, the sites, the designs, the addresses, the images, all gone.
Everything is shared, and shared so heavily. When finally my turn comes, I don’t even know how to make use of it. Too many priorities, all at once. I seek escape. I read, a lot these days. I have lost track of time. Movies, always more movies and more books. The known and the knowable.
I can’t even think anymore. An I’m supposed to be the one to do things. I am supposed to make the phone calls and look things up and write things and email things, and remember everything and prepare everything.
I am failing.
I love. I love a lot of people, family and friends. I don’t want to let anyone down. I don’t want to botch it for anyone. I love so much my precious beautiful family.
What am I going to do?
We want to buy a house. I cannot make the phone calls. Every day I decide to and then recoil in fear. The opportunities are going to melt away, and I cannot bear to pick up the phone. It’s all I can do to answer it when it rings.
I keep getting drafted, and I keep volunteering because I seem to have become the only capable one. Prolem is, I’m not capable anymore.
I’m eroding into dysfunctionality. I will be useless soon.
Comments(12)
I don’t want to let anyone down.
It’s not possible. You’re amazing, even if you do feel disoriented and bereft at the moment.
::hug::
Remember to breathe. I don’t have much more to offer in the way of advice and platitudes, but if you ever need someone to lean on, you know where to find me.
I know how you feel, and I know that sometimes recoiling is all you can do to stay sane. You have soo much going on that it is hard to start any one thing because everything has such high priority. You need to cut some stuff from the picture. Being drafted is one thing but volunteering is another. Don’t feel obligated because you may be the most qualified one for a job. The small living space thing would definately drive me crazy too and that is something that needs to be dealt with, not just by you but with Wlfoie and Sean too.
The three of you need to collaborate and EQUALLY divide the work load, otherwise you are just going to snap. It may seem like you’re failing, but your not. Everything hasn’t necessarily changed, your just under a higher work load so it seems like everything is changing. I don’t want you to feel like this. I care about you and want to help you, I just don’t know how. I don’t have the best advice to give, or the best support to lend. But I am here for your Spring, and I am always here if you need someone to lean on or just talk, rant, and/or bitch to. ::hugs:: Send me an e-mail if I can help.
I have felt like that all weekend. I fully understand on a periphery level. No one can truly understand, that’s what makes us individuals. Just know that you are not alone in that and it will get better. For what that’s worth.
Loudly, resounding Ditto..
Spring if you need any people’s to talk to, I am here. {tight hug}
Ask for help. No–demand help.
Make Napalm and Wlofie help you. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that you feel like they’ll be mad at you if you ask for their help. Lemmie tell you something: they are there to support you just as much as you support them.
Let them know what bothers you. Make them give you what you need. If an un-cluttered house is what you need, and you’ve been doing without it for far too long, demand an un-cluttered house. A relationship is a give and take–don’t just let them take from you. Make them give something back.
You may fight. So be it. But you can’t do everything yourself, nor should you be expected to. If they love you, they’ll help you when you ask for it instead of letting you shoulder everything yourself.
Lay down the law, Spring.
And stop volunteering. All it does is eat the time–which, I read, you have less and less of–that you need for other things. Help yourself first. When you’re all better, then you can resume helping others, if that twirls your beanie.
I could be off-base, or out of line, or totally wrong.
But I also could be right.
I don’t believe I know you….and of course, with that, I don’t believe you know me…
But damn….this hits like a ton of bricks. Personally, I believe you’re right…to me, Spring has always seemed like a caring, giving person. I believe myself to be the same. I do for others, and forget about myself. There are times when this self-sacrifice is good…not enough people do it, so when you find someone that is willing to give up themselves, entirely, it’s a rare event.
Spring, you NEED to take care of yourself. You NEED to put yourself first…if only for a little while. You cannot go on helping other people if you feel that you are lost, or that you are “dying”. When you help someone, you are giving them a little piece of yourself. To me, it sounds like you are out of pieces to give…you need to regenerate. You need time to build those pieces back up.
I came to that realization about myself a few months back, and I’ve been recovering since. Because of my actions with that realization, I lost everything. I let it go too far. I gave too much of myself, without getting anything in return. I gave pieces of myself that should never have been given. Pieces of my core. My soul. *MY* soul. I was lost. I had nothing left, so I left everything that was there, that nothingness that I felt, behind. I lost everything because I didn’t take care of myself. I am realizing now that it’s a good thing, that I wouldn’t have had the support group, even if I HAD asked for help, but in my view, you DO have that support group.
To that effect, I offer a piece of myself to you, Spring. It’s a special piece, it can do anything you want it to do, you just have to ask me to make it happen, and I will make it perform for you. I’ve had time to recover myself. I’ve had time to regenerate my pieces, and I want to help someone I feel is closer in spirit to the way I was, and the way I will be again. I want to help someone to NOT lose thier core.
E-mail me. I’ll give you my number…and I’ll order you to lean on me for at least one thing.
*squeeze* Thank you sweetheart.
I appreciate that. I hope you are re-coalescing – I’m making some progress.
*hugs* Thank you. They do give, they do help, and they’ll do anything I ask – no demands necessary. They don’t always perceive, though, and so it falls to me to see what needs doing and give direction and impetus.
I’m seeing that all around me, at work, at church, everywhere. And then when someone -does- perceive a need, nobody will step up. It’s frustrating that no one will commit to anything and then follow through. That’s more about work and church than home.
Anyway, you’re right. And thank you.
*squeeze* Thank you, man. It sounds like it’s been a really hard time for you. You are right, and in a front-brain way I’ve known these things all along. I have to figure out how to make that fit within the passions about the things that matter so much to me.
I am in awe and gratitude at what you offer. I’ve gotten the immediate help that I needed, but I’ll email you anyway, if the address I have hasn’t changed.
*hugs*
*hugs* Thank you sweetie. I’m getting there.
*hugs* Thank you, cutie. The guys are helping me get it together, and I’m feeling a lot better.