I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to write, what the point of this is, if there’s a point at all, where this will even start, or end.
All I know is that it feels like my lungs and heart are slowly being compressed in a vice grip I can’t shake. I can’t stop crying. But I can’t seem to start breathing. Every time I almost get a breath in my lungs, the vice grip clamps down even harder. My body feels like it’s slowly dying, and I actually know what that feels like. Though, I know this time it’s just emotional pain corporally manifesting rather than internal organ failure. I’ll take one over the other, and it’s not the one I’m struggling with right now.
My pain is so interwoven with one another. Start pulling on one string of pain, and all the rest start to twinge. Trauma. Survivor. PTSD. Love. Anxiety. Failure. Depression. Abandonment. Worth. I can handle them all. I’ve done it over and over and over again for so many reasons. I fight those demons daily, and I’m still here. I’ll be okay, but I’m crumbling right now.
I can’t sleep. And food, just, yeah. I’ve been exercising like my life depends on it. In a way maybe it does. The mind needs sleep more than the body, but both have learned how to survive on all but none. I run and do yoga every day. I never stop moving, trying to find something to take my mind off of this pain. Pushing myself past boundaries I hadn’t known existed so the physical pain can, at least, match the emotional.
I couldn’t sleep last night. So I took to the woods at 3:00 am with my dog to run until my legs couldn’t go on. Truly. I ran until my legs couldn’t, so I sat down and cried. I focused on my heart beat. Feeling my heart condition being pushed to its most extreme limits so my heart would feel like it could explode at any moment because the physical pain made the fact my heart is imploding on itself over and over again a little less poignant. I crawled back in bed and never found sleep. So I laid on the bathroom floor and sobbed until the sun came up.
I left my room and chose to use my rare free time to chase happiness, doing things that bring me joy. REI, the zoo, a carousel ride, walking Hermann Park, a train ride, dinosaurs at the Science Museum, art at the MFA, more walking, writing at one of my favorite coffee shops. I’ve managed to make my feet cover 26 miles in the last sixteen hours. Yet I’m not tired. I’m not happy. Nothing I do allows me to breathe or dry my tears.
I’ve been told my entire life I’m horrible at being vulnerable. Vulnerability has always been dangerous. Surviving doesn’t allow any room for weakness, mistakes, failure. I can. With a chosen few… The few who chose themselves to put in the work, to push. To not take ‘no’ for an answer.
It’s the common complaint from friends and partners. They don’t know me because I don’t show them the parts I’m scared of. I’m scared because I can’t change them. I have no control over them. I’ve been met with callous cruelty far more than loving empathy. I make jokes to distract from the agony of so many things. If I make them laugh, they won’t see the silent desperation in my eyes or the tremble in my voice or the way my body language gives nothing away. I have no problem putting down these feelings here, sharing it with the world. Ask me to crumble in front of my people, I can’t.
I can, but they have to push. They have to demand, leave me with no other option. They have to keep showing up and saying they want the broken parts. They have to see the shine in my eyes and the stoicism take over. An absence of feeling usually means only one thing: They’re on to something. I’m not okay. I’m falling apart. Quickly. I will leave and disintegrate if they don’t just ask the one question: “Why?” Then make me answer it, no matter what. Don’t try to dry my eyes or let me make jokes. Don’t even try to hold me or make it better because they can’t. Not until it’s come out. Then simply exist with me as I lose it.
The moment I know something is off, wrong, different, emotional, I steal myself. Compartmentalizing every single feeling except kindness and empathy far away from the surface so I can be there for them without needing a single thing in return. I’m a great friend, but I’ve had a hard time letting others be friends to me. So they’re left wondering if I ever felt anything at all.
I’ve been told I have no feelings; computer programs have more emotions than I do; psychopathic tendencies; cruelly unfeeling. Surviving meant keeping emotions at bay until there was an appropriately solitary moment to deal with them, the shower, before holding my chin up to keep on keeping on. The truth is, I feel everything. All the time. So deeply. So viscerally. I take everything personally. Over-analyzing every conversation and interaction to find out what I did wrong, what I could have done better, how I could have been better. I just don’t show it.
Someone spent eleven years loving me without knowing I’m sensitive.
I compartmentalize to survive. I hurt people with my compartmentalization, which only makes me hurt more.
The fact is, my inability to be vulnerable means I have so few people in my life. I know this to be true. I’ve known it for a long time. But people keep leaving without ever trying to push past a single boundary I’ve erected purely for self-preservation. I can give help without ever asking for what I need.
So I’m thirty and broken.
I’m going through it.
I know I’ll get used to this new vice grip in my chest, and I’ll breathe again. I don’t know when. I know because I have a few I’m already used to, but this one feels different. Bigger. More real.
