How Can Life be Rebuilt After Mental Illness
First off, it's not mental illness, it's exhaustion. And has nothing to do with positivity.
By not thinking positive, but diving into the pain. Not only that, but remembering who you were before the pain started.
I learned to read people long ago, way before I even knew I could do it. I learned to listen to the subtle cues in peoples voice, their tone/demeanor, the discrepancies in what they, meant by what they didn’t say. I got good at obeying to manipulation.
My childhood revolved around that for a false sense of peace, a pretend if you will. It’s when I grew older is when what felt like insanity, or mental illness, as this question asks, began to take over.
It came out through dating toxic women, rage, anger, binge eating, binge drinking, spending money, making money, traveling, not being able to sit still. All while confusing it all with madness. Madness isn’t insanity, it’s exhaustion, and it’s exactly where I am.
Positivity wears a mask that healing will never compete with.
To heal you have to feel, and if you feel right, there is nothing positive about it. I’m so fucking tired of people telling me to think positive. Half the people who say it are the most miserable mother fuckers out there. And the scary shit is, many are blind to it. They are just a “puppet” and a damn good one at that.
I’ve recently came out of a relationship where I honestly thought this girl understood me, it was new level deceit.
Some very horrific shit happened to her that hurt me dearly, I believe I felt it more than she did. I could feel her pain from her phone call that morning. I could feel it in the quiver of her voice, and with each hyperventilating gasp she took. It was god fucking awful, but words don’t do it justice. She was using me again, but she was damn good. Better than the others.
My body felt what my ears and mind were trying to ignore, but being forced to process. It went numb, just like the times as a little boy when my dad would yell, or I’d wait in fear for him to get home. The body knows what the mind can’t handle. And when trauma gets too much, the body breaks/reacts, due to what the mind is in overload with.
That’s not mental illness, it’s exhaustion.
It’s years of pretending, years of faking, years of saying yes when you meant no. Years of hiding behind a mask reading people knowing exactly what they need while ignoring what you do. It’s a horrific way to live. It results in a life of complete self destruction. It’s leads to a life of isolation, and mustering up whatever energy you have left to make it through each day.
But each day brings a new challenge, one where what used to help you cope, no longer works, It’s here the madness, albeit exhaustion, really sets in. The self destruction gets so bad the collapse happens, this is a form of hell about 50,000 Americans a year die from, and it’s self inflicted. It takes a special kind of mental torture to be in to pull that off.
That last relationship did something to me. I didn’t listen to what I knew, once again. I didn’t listen to what my “people reading” skills taught me as a little boy. I was in denial. I was doing the same exact thing I did at 5 years old, but now I’m 50. I wore the mask, and kept trying to prove, beg, and hope for what I never got as a child.
All I want is genuine love, approval, validation, and attention. My problem is I try and extract it from those who are incapable of giving it. And those who are capable, I shove them away. I learned from the best. Perform, or you aren’t worthy. Give, or you are a bad boy.
The only way to heal trauma is to bring the subconscious to conscious, and it isn’t a pretty site by no means. There is no positivity there.
There is anger, hate, resentment , rage, pain, confusion, and so much more. So much that it will drive those who don’t know what’s happening to self destruction, and possibly insanity. Trauma doesn’t heal, it hides until the opportune time to attack.
I’m beginning to see why I write.
I’m beginning to see why some of my writings seem cynical, hard to read, morbid, and complete off the rocker. It’s not. It’s me processing years of childhood abuse, and torture. And it’s a form of torture that didn’t just happen in home, it carried into elementary, middle and high school. Abusers know how to pick out the vulnerable, and pained. It’s embarrassing, but it picked me, and still is today.
It’s all beginning to make sense after this last girl.
The writing on the wall was there long before I was able to see it, I just took my glasses off. Denial it it’s rarest form.
I surround myself with people who make me feel confused, and when I overthink the confusion, or TRUTH, I can’t handle it and drink, eat, escape, or do whatever to NOT feel. It’s my only sense of silence, although it is laced in desperation.
Life is rebuilt first by taking labels off the table. Mental health goes way beyond a label. So much that most therapist just treat the label, and not the underlying person under it all. Each “label” is a traumatized person.
That’s the real tragedy of life, being supposedly, “heard,” but never being understood. So we fake it.
Life’s just easier that way isn’t it?
Society is so good at it, but I’m not, I just can’t.
I need a drink.