Persistence (the Bad Kind)

The Dream is coming back, stronger than ever.

I got let go from my job back in December, and while I've never looked back, I've been unemployed for far too long now. I've piled up more debt. I'm hiding from several people. And in times like this, I turn to my fantasy of running away.

I haven't checked my email in a long time. I opened the browser window to find the most recent one when I applied for state health insurance and saw that I had over 160 unread emails, and I just don't have the willpower to go through them. I don't have the strength to be berated by CapitalOne for not making my payments and my credit score going down as a consequence. I don't have the mental capacity to visualize exactly how far overdrawn my checking account is from bills I had set up to auto-pay. I just can't.

My excuse is, I can't "right now". But It's been like that for a month, and I don't know when "right now" is going to end, or if it ever will. In fact, my need to run away is making me consider setting up an entirely new email account just to get out from under it.

Suicidal ideation is a product of a very bad mixture of currently-untreated mental illness and current events. I wouldn't have to deal with this if I were dead.

That part scares people when I mention it. I've been shamed into keeping those thoughts to myself. When, really, if I don't talk about them in a casual setting, it makes me feel worse about having them at all. I'm never going to act on them. One could argue, however, that there's no point in bringing it up if they don't affect you to the point of consideration.

That being said, consideration and desire are two very different things to my OCD. Is it true that death is technically a way out of hardship? Yes. Do I want to kill myself? Absolutely not. Ultimately, my want to live is greater than my want to die, and the cons otherwise heavily outweigh the pros. I love my family too much to nonconsensually dump the consequences of my shitty decision-making on them. But the obsessive-compulsive part of me has to consider every option for some kind of debate. And I always have to have plans A-Z prepared, just in case mania strikes and I do something stupid and harmful and act on some random impulse that crosses my monkey brain.

One of these days, I'm sure I'll learn how to face my problems like a real adult, but right now, turning to the fantasy of flight is immensely comforting when I need it the most.

I've been looking at places I could trade my car in for a cargo van.

Self-Heartbreak

I have this really bad habit of holding in my feelings when they're about other people. A worse habit is falling in love with people who actually don't know I exist.

I can be deeply in love with and desperately pining for somebody on the inside, but the way I end up expressing that is by running away, and avoiding any and all interpersonal contact with that person until the feeling hopefully wears off.

However, by myself, without them around, my mind ends up creating complex dream scenarios where the subject and I are together, in a healthy, happy relationship, and they are in love with me just as much as I am in love with them.

This method helps me bypass harsh realities. It's a coping mechanism to avoid heartbreak at the hands of this person. Because I know that I am capable of feeling and showing an astronomical amount of love, and it's possible that it can push someone away.

My love doesn't die easily. I know that consciously, and so when I realize fully that I don't just have a crush on this person, and that I actually am in love with them, it's probably just as painful. Because I know my habits, I know my behaviors, and the pattern shows that this will inevitably end in heartbreak.

There is another flaw with this, one that I guess I forget: These people about which I feel this way also feel love and affection... for other people.

Jealousy is all too familiar to me. More than once, I've avoided the object of my feelings until they start dating someone else.

The worst part is when they're so incredibly happy together, and I can see the fantasy that I've built up in my head for so long being acted out in front of me, but by somebody else.

And then I can feel the envy crawling around inside me like I swallowed a centipede whole, eating me from the inside out - taking a bite out of my lungs when I see she's more attractive than I am, my intestines when she's more successful, my stomach when they look at each other and smile because they can't help it. She has what I don't. What I couldn't have because of myself.

That hurts more, I think.

My feelings of inadequacy all come crashing down at once. Not only that I'm not as good as she is, as beautiful, or as talented; but also because I'm too much of a coward to go achieve this for myself. I've only been rejected once, because I've only ever tried once. And I think I probably still blame that one time for all the subsequent heartbreaks I've brought upon myself, because he made me too scared to try again.

More inadequacy attacks from the sides as the fact sneaks up on me that I hate that I feel this way in the first place. I really do love him, and I want him to be happy. I want the very best for him in every situation. So then I feel like a shitty person for being jealous, because in this case, she's the best for him. But then it becomes a cycle. Why couldn't I be the best for him?

Feelings-wise, things look grim for the immediate future. Because I know that I'll continue to torture myself by looking at pictures of them together and imagining myself in her position. I'll continue to write speculative fiction, I'll continue to seethe and writhe and melt away in a vat of my own self-pity because I don't know how to cope with such an intense amount of jealousy. And I'll hate every single moment of it.