Hello Everyone!
I have been feeling very depressed lately but that is nothing unusual. I thought I would not only dump on everyone so to speak to let off some bad feelings and try to think things out loud, but try to contribute some thoughts that might do some good for others.
I am going to write about how extreme loneliness and isolation can lead to intense depression which I am sure most of us here can relate to. For myself, being alone most of the time is what is so gut wrenching to the point of near insanity. I hope you will bear with me while I write a very very long post but that is what is in my heart right now and I desperately need to release.
I have since childhood been terribly shy and nervous around people especially in social settings but also in one to one settings as well. I was born that way, my father was that way and I will always be that way undoubtedly. I have always only had one or two close friends wherever I have lived and have spent most of my life alone and as I have gotten older the isolation instead of decreasing, became increasingly much worse to the point where several years ago I tried to kill myself with an overdose of aspirin and cutting my wrists with a razor blade. Because of my tendency towards isolation I never felt comfortable with the idea of marriage though I had a number of girlfriends over the years, thus as a result, I have lived completely alone for about 17 years. You can imagine what that can do to someone. For anyone; especially a sufferer of SAD and AvPD!
I guess I am chewing things over in my mind and putting them on paper so I beg your patience and if you all are so kind as to read all of this, I would be extremely grateful for any input. I look forward to anything anyone would have to say.
Actually as a small child up until the age of 7, I was perfectly "normal' as far as social matters. I had lots of friends as a small child that I played with and was very happy. Though I had an SAD father, at that age you are not aware of such things so I was very happy and active.
At the age of 8 is when my excessive shyness and introversion began to manifest itself and began to progress in intensity even up to this day. I was sporadic in my introversion in that one day I would feel comfortable around people and be outgoing, and the next I would retreat into a completely withdrawn shell and almost never open my mouth to speak. As a child, some people who met me actually thought I was mute and unable to speak I talked so rarely.
Having an extremely distanta and cold father who rarely spoke to me did not help matters either and I eventually realized that he had the same condition as me but not nearly as bad. That only served to exacerbate my sense of worthlessness and fear of people.
My adult life has been on and off both pleasant sometimes, but mostly a prolonged nightmare of horrible loneliness and isolation. I had allowed my extreme nervousness around people to take control of my life and I increasingly became a hermit, living alone with almost no friends for years at a time. The emotional pain got so bad that I was thinking of suicide on a daily basis for years and then finally tried it a couple of times. Feeling the horrible pain of an overdose, and watching my wrists spout blood and beginning to faint was enough for me to quit any more attempts but the desire for my life to end continued. Admittedly even now I sometimes hear myself thinking about wanting to die when I am feeling agonizingly alone.
Have any of you been so alone that you want to die? Have you ever gotten to the point where your entire life seems so useless and worthless that you want to turn out the lights for good? When you have almost no one in your life, you feel like nothing you do is of any importance or appreciated since no one cares if you live or die, so what is the sense in doing anything at all?
I have occasionally had nightmares where in my dreams I am sobbing and crying --- literally wailing in tears loudly in my dream because I am utterly desolate and completely alone in this universe; in the dream I am usually alone in total blackness; and when I wake up from the dream I find that I am in fact crying and sobbing out loud and my pillow is soaked with tears - and I am all alone in my bedroom. The nightmare of a dream turns back into the nightmare of reality. That has happened a number of times.
The pain of being alone is so horrible I would not wish my pain on my worst enemy! Too many times when I am home looking at my same old walls, I get the overwhelming sensation that I am living in a coffin. The walls around me suffocate me and the inanimate objects around me; the furniture and TVs and such, haunt me because they are dead things and not living, loving people.
I apologize for being so upfront and morbid but that is what has tormented me on and off for years. I wish I could be a hermit and be content with it, but I cannot. I know what love is and I miss it. I want to be able to love and be loved again. To be human again.
I had a few signs that were quotes up in my bedroom until fairly recently. I took them down when I decided that they were only making me worse but I would like to put a couple of them here to try and relate what I have been going through. I am not trying to depress anyone; just sharing what has been in my heart. Here are two of the quotes; these are the attitudes I (we) need to fight to death; this is how terrible SAD can be; how we can feel like forgotten outsiders, cursed and abandoned by God……....
Love You All,
Chuck
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Oh, out cast of all outcasts most abandoned!
--- to the earth art thou not forever dead?
to its honors, to its flowers,
to its golden aspirations?
--- and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless,
does it not hang eternally between
thy hopes and heaven?
~~~ Edgar Allan Poe
The darkness is death -- we can speak, but we are not heard.
We can scream but they turn their backs.
It is the dream where arms and legs won't work the way
they should, and the air is too thick to breathe.
Loved ones walk a mile ahead,
forgetting to stop as we fall behind.
This is the reality of the darkness.
We are buried alive inside ourselves.
~~~ Dana-Christene Umanetz
