Life Inside Panic

Yet again I can’t sleep. I am stressed about my life, my job, my future, my present, I can’t seem to let go of my past. Nothing is certain. I find no comfort in anything. So here I find myself staring at a months worth of Xanax, Lexipro, and Lamictal and wondering. What if the answer is that simple? What if since everything I touch will always turn to ash I should just shut myself down completely? What if my purpose was to figure out that I have none. Is it really even a life when it’s filled with nothing but disappointment, betrayal, loneliness, and agonizing pain? Feelings that make every day seem less like waking up for. I don’t want to feel anymore. I want to go back to the way I was when all that mattered was who was paying my bar tab and how I was getting home. Why did he have to change me so much that I can’t go back? Why did he have to make me want a life that I can’t have and at the same time make me despise everything that I was before? Why can’t I erase the pain and just remember the good? And why does he get to pretend as though nothing happened just because he can shut off his emotions like a switch? I want him to feel it, every bit of it. I want him to cry every night the way he did before. I want him to feel even for one day the pain I feel and not be able to just push it down and ignore it. I want him to feel it or me to not feel it ever again.

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I have been looking for the key, a magical answer to make it all go away and just let me forget. But I’ve come to realize there isn’t one. I think everything I’m going through is a part of of my healing and instead of trying to turn it off I have to allow myself to feel it. The fear, doubt, anger, sadness, guilt, worry, worthlessness, the unanswered questions that are never ending. Some days are good, some days are ok, some days are not so good, and some days are just unbearable. The feeling of “this is not the right thing” clashes with the feeling of “it has to be the right thing” because it’s the only thing. My past, present, and future are in question, and my dreams and nightmares have begun to blend together. I’m starting to wonder what is worse, the dreams that I know are no longer true or the nightmares that are. The sleepless nights spent lying in my bed alone, feeling so utterly lost, have become such a habit I no longer try to fight them. Then I look in the mirror and think how did I allow myself to end up like this? How will I ever love again, how will I ever trust again? Who will ever love me again? I listen to people tell me I’m strong, I deserve better, I will be ok, but it doesn’t stop my fears or hurt.  I believe the only way forward is day by day, baby steps into a new world. Learn to be confident and to smile again. There is no date on the calendar that I can look at to know when I will be happy again. It is an uncertain path I must walk down. When the sun shines and I feel its warmth, when I feel safe, when I feel comfortable, when my head stops swimming with the questions, then I will know I am finally on the way to being truly me again. Time is a great healer but I must fight through my wilderness of loss first. I have to face all of these emotions and then I will be ready to begin to live again. I will find myself again, it will just take time, and I’m sure there will come a day when I look in the mirror and see the girl looking back at me that has been lost for so long now. This will be one of the hardest journeys of my life but I will not let it break me. Life will ultimately lead me in the right direction but for now I need to allow myself time to just feel it all.

So for all of you waiting for me to figure it out, there it is. You have to allow yourself to take it all in, to feel everything you want to ignore, and to find a way to cope. You have to know that there will be days it doesn’t feel worth it but there will be a day when you will look back and say I am a better and stronger person after what I went through. Just keep moving forward until the day comes that you no longer want to look back.

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How do you make the hardest decision of your life knowing that either way will lead to heartbreak. If you go down one path you will willingly break your own heart but if you go down the other what’s broken will break again because it will be you admitting there really is no hope. I try everyday to celebrate the life I have and be grateful for my blessings but I still mourn what I lost. I grieve for what never will be and wonder what is the point of replacing a fantasy come to life with a facade. If I feel broken and hollow what do I really have to offer someone and is it fair to accept from them what I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly return? The only thing I am certain of is I don’t want this. This life, this place, these things. I feel like I’m surrounded by ghosts and lies. I want to be somewhere else, do something new, be someone different. I want a life filled with love and happiness, dreams and hopes. A life of possibilities. I just have to decide what way to go to find that. I have to let go of my past and move forward and to do that I need to truly figure out what my priorities are. I need to figure out exactly which dreams I can make realities and which ones are just going to bring me more pain. I need to stop holding on to phantoms and start looking for the truth in my life.

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I don’t even know what to do anymore. My head is spinning so fast that I can’t even make out all thoughts rushing around. The love of my life has moved to Romania and my heart is screaming at me to follow him. But I also have this voice that is rambling on about all my fears. If I do go I will be with D although not in the way I want and I will be giving up ever getting married or having kids. But I only wanted to get married and have kids with him, so who knows if I will ever want that again with anyone else anyway. I know right now I don’t want to be with anyone else at all. I would be happier spending the rest of my life next to him as a friend then settling for someone I will never love the way I love him. And what happens if he starts to date someone else; I could never bear to see that. Then there is the fact that I have to give up being close to my family, at least for now. But he is my family also so does that even count? And I have to think about the dogs. I know I could place Zoe and Athos no problem but what about Kenya and Merlin? And Hope is such a neurotic little mess. But they are just dogs and would forget about me as soon as they settled with a new family. All I do is cry all the time. Every time I see anything that even slightly reminds me of him I break down. Every time the phone rings or there is a new message in my inbox my heart starts to race and I hope it’s him. Then when it’s not I begin to cry. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I’ve been forcing down a turkey sandwich during lunch and it’s made me sick every time and I heat up dinner and it sits there while I fall asleep. At least the dogs have been eating well. I can’t even stomach chocolate and I had my first cup of coffee today and even that wasn’t enjoyable. It’s like all of the color and the joy in my life drained away when he left. I hate being in this big empty house and seeing all of the things he left behind but I can’t bring myself to move anything of his. I feel like if I move it then that makes it real that he’s gone. It’s just so final. I keep praying that he will call and say he is coming home but I know that is not going to happen. Even if he would just say that he still loves me then all of this pain and doubt would go away and I would know without a doubt what I need to do. I just want us to be the way we were and I don’t care where we have to be for that to happen because that is the only way anything will ever be right again. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life mourning for what should have been and regretting losing the love of my life.

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It’s time for me to fill everyone in on D. I always had this image as a little girl of the guy I would end up with. He would be smart, funny, outgoing, strong, tall, with dark hair and eyes, mysterious, and from another place that I knew nothing about. I met D in a bar (not exactly my fantasy) and he was everything I had dreamed of; standing about 6 foot (I’m 5′3 3/4″ so that’s tall for me), black hair, dark brown eyes, olive skin. He was also extremely opinionated, intelligent, and had a brutal honesty about him. He made me feel truly safe for the first time in I don’t know how long. All I had to do was look into his eyes and I knew everything in the world was as it should be. He used to do these little things that would make my heart flutter, like running his hand down my cheek as he walked past me or dancing with me in the dining room. I loved him more every second we spent together. After about 6 months things started to change, He suddenly became very critical and would fly off the handle for no reason. His drinking had always been extreme but now it was even worse. I had to drag him off the floor and to bed most every night after he had passed out. Through all of this my love never faded. There were a couple of occasions where he drank so much he became violent but never when he was sober. When something would go wrong I would always end up begging for his forgiveness, no matter who was at fault, because I loved him so completely. I knew that the things that were happening were not him but the anger and pain that surfaced after he had too much to drink. All I wanted to do was hold him and swear that everything would be ok in the hope that he would believe me. I tried. I held on as hard as I could and he still ripped free of my embrace and continued down his path of self-destruction. Our relationship had a lot of hurdles due to cultural differences but I could have compromised if he would have done the same. He is 11 years older than me and that was always his excuse as to why he wouldn’t budge. He believes a woman’s responsibility is her home and family and I agree unless both people are providing equally for the household. If you share the traditional “man role’ (ie bringing in money) than the traditional “woman role” (ie housework) should also be shared. And if it goes to the other extreme and the woman is sole provider for whatever reason then the man should take care of the house. This is not acceptable for a Romanian man. The house is the woman’s to maintain, period. And the decisions are made by the man. So here is what I have learned if you would like to sustain a relationship with this sort of old world man….

1. His word is final. If he wants the tv hooked up a certain way, let it be.

2. Keep up your house. If it is a mess then he will not be embarrassed about the mess but rather of you.

3. Most of these men will treat you as queens but only if you act as their servant. (I know this doesn’t make much sense but it will if you find yourself in this situation.)

4. Never second guess anything he is trying to fix/build/adjust. Just like asking for directions they would rather spend 4 hours figuring it out than 10 minutes reading instructions and it’s a major blow to their manhood if you figure it out first. Offer support not direction.

5. Most of these men will give you anything you ask (within their means), as long as you ask in a way that makes them feel like a man providing for their woman.

6. Respect them as not just your man but a man. Old world men need to know that you respect their position in the family. This is probably the most important thing to remember.

I tried to change him and ended up losing him. He is still here as a roommate and I hope everyday that we spend together that it will be the day he realizes that we are not wrong for each other. I cry myself to sleep every night that I sleep alone. I pray for the day he can end my suffering and I can fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat as opposed to the sound of my sobs.

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