December and January are also the loneliest times of the year for me as an individual. Certainly you can all see from my other online presences that I have lots of friends. Actually the definition of friends is really a misnomer for online presences as this only ever indicate people you have accepted to view and share experiences online with. There can be lots of friends, but few real friends.
I am on the whole a reserved and shy individual. My anxiety keeps me from going places I have not been to before and my family and the few friends I have suffer from my phobias. I attend a local game club where I can mix with my peers and find a few moments of happiness. To say I am jealous of other people’s greater social circles and gatherings is not inaccurate. It hurts me no end that my attempts to be included in social activities with my peers on the whole has been unsuccessful. It seems to be I’m a nice enough chap to know if met at a venue, but not one whom one would seek out at other times. Some people have invited me out, but my whole anxiety and phobia mentality mean that as often as not I pull out at the last moment finding some convenient lie to hide behind to mask my distress. This attitude on my behalf has contributed to why people have probably given up asking me places. I am flawed and it hurts.
As you can see the anxiety and fear feeds the depression and my destructive impulses. I can hide my true personality very well from people. To be honest no one has ever seen who I really am. I’ve had a life time of practice. My family (parents) were a very unloving lot; their expectations of what I was to achieve in life meant that I was never good enough in their eyes. What I wanted to do was creative and expressive, my family wanted ambition, success and social standing.
I will be indeed fortunate that a few people will take the time and effort to keep in contact and socialise with me over this period. My treating specialist has suggested I join other groups in areas where I have interests. Yes I agree that this has merit, I certainly never considered it. Would I be able to do this, most likely not. Going to anything new leaves me vulnerable to the world I fear. The amount of hurt I have suffered over the years from those I trusted or respected outweighs the good that I have encountered. I trust very few people these days, I want to trust but deep down I know that eventually I will be let down and I will suffer yet again, and it will always be a greater pain than that suffered before.
My life has always been dictated to by my family. The family I grew up in and the family I started. People have said to me that I cannot own the problems of others. Yet when the problems of others always impact on your life it is impossible to disassociate from the source. I cannot walk away from my family, no matter how it might relieve me of the hurt I constantly suffer. I am too old to start afresh; I have had a sheltered life, removed of many of the responsibilities that others have encountered in their life. I don’t handle change very well.
I know that my situation is not unique. Everyone struggles with life. For me, the struggle is at times overwhelming to the point of suicide. I have been on more medications than I can remember the names of. My problem with medication is that it is a great crutch when a crisis appears, but if your mental intellect has not been impaired then no amount of medication is going to change how you look at the world. Being pumped up with enthusiasm and optimism will not change a bad situation into a good one. Whatever has gone wrong will not magically disappear, relationships won’t repair themselves, and hurts will not heal.
The older I get the less people I seem to have around me. Should I be lucky enough to reach retirement then I can’t say there will be much to look forward to. Who will want to play games with a 70 year old? The age gap between me and many of the people I socialise with is slowly growing; in some cases I am old enough to be their father or even grandfather. I’m not worried about the difference, but younger people don’t always want to be seen hanging out with oldies. It’s just not cool.
Where am I going with this? Oh I guess it’s just another inner monologue with myself which I’ll post online just because I can. I’d like to think I’m beyond caring what people think of me these days, but that’s probably not true. My moods and personalities run the whole spectrum, and my mental health isn’t going to change for the better. One day it will get the better of me and then I will be free of all the burdens that life on this miserable plane of existence entails. I suffer from mental illness, I cope as best I can, yet it would be nice if people can include me in their lives and activities. After all it could be you at any point in your life.
