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ah, crap.

yeah so I think I figured something out a little bit ago. kind of while I was half-dozing. I'm exhausted lately. Everything tears me up.

"Resilience is generally thought of as a "positive adaptation" after a stressful or adverse situation. In other words, resilience is one's ability to bounce back from a negative experience. The Children Institute explains that "resilience research is focused on studying those who engage in life with hope and humor despite devastating losses". It is important to note that resilience is not only about overcoming a deeply stressful situation, but also coming out of the said situation with "competent functioning". Resiliency allows a person to rebound from adversity as a strengthened and more resourceful person. "[wikipedia]

um. I mean, basically. I've always known that resilience has inherently been a personal strength [not just my observation] and I've worked to build upon it as like, a necessary survival technique almost.

I've lately been feeling a little better physically. Not that everything is perfect or anything. But I'm at a point where I can step back from focusing ONLY on pain every day all day. I can do a little here and there.

So i can step back from "pain, pain, pain". What I see is not good. I've gained nothing from the last year or two. Nothing. it's all been a waste. On top of that, all my personal space in my apartment is just destroyed- it's a complete wreck. I have to sort through it all.

I've been trying to figure out what is so different this time about kind of picking up all my pieces where I left off and trying to get going again. It's not that novel of an experience for me. I've actually done it several times before. Funny. But not funny... but yeah, funny.

I don't feel like me, exactly.
I don't have that bounce back. I feel terrible. Not just that... I've lost a lot of time. I'm hugely affected by everything around me. By the cruelty of the world, by how everything is just terrible. I'm having a really really hard time turning toward the positive of everything. While I do have a lot of experience with depression that is not my personality. So even when I'm depressed I, as in myself, still often think about things outside of that depression.

This period of depression will be over. Or ok, I folded three shirts. So that's better than nothing. I took a shower! Like, it's little stuff but I rarely struggle to find SOMETHING positive.

But... it's so rarely there now. I'm not me.
I had this like... epiphany. I think my 'bottomless pit of resilience' finally just about dried up.

I know a lot of the effects of that. Like how that can eventually really wreak havoc on my life- not just because of my need to adjust or how I need to figure out how to build it up again. Other people literally just constantly think that I've pulled through before, so i'll pull through again. because so often that is the case. With pretty much everything. Not only do I count on that much of the time. Everyone else does too. i take it for granted. Everyone does most of the time.

I don't know what to do at this point. I'm not sure what to do when I'm really upset at what i recognize are realities of the world and are things I have recognized as such since I was very very young. I used to just kind of accept these things and simply do what I could as an individual.

I feel really beat up this time. Like any time I'm upset I'm just like "ok so maybe I don't want to be here". That's... NOT ME. That has never ever been a "go to". And it's just like a reaction to being completely distraught.

Not a serious reaction, but it's an escape thought. Also I'm getting really distraught constantly. I don't understand that either.

This isn't how I deal with life and I feel like it's just sucked me dry at this point. I just feel destroyed. This is unlike anything I've experienced internally even though the situation- in terms of putting life on hold, is sort of similar to other times in my life.

I feel totally melodramatic.

Comments

Oh, Laz (breathed in the tone of one who isn't you and doesn't know how it feels to be you, but who has a clue about the been-hit-by-two-trucks-going-in-opposite-directions thing, and then kept getting run over by them until she became One with the Asphalt, paint lines and all).

Unlike the Disney cartoons, I never could just pick myself up, as if it were as simple as hooking a finger and thumb around the remains of my self and blowing the dust off. Wile E. Coyote notwithstanding.

Can you think that if you'd just had even half as much "good" time coming up as you've had bad time behind you, that you'd feel a bit more like you, and at home in your skin?

A year from now, it won't be all what you remember, probably? More like, oh, is that bit permanent?

It's not melodramatic to recognize a strange new bad-feeling feeling and be...upset, as you say. Like, you care enough to feel, a bit. You're still shouting back at it. If the driver doesn't hear you this time, you might just stick a nail in the tire. Two nails. I'd be careful if I were he.

Crap, do you have any notion of how astonishing it is that you're still posting? Still getting up when you can? Still thinking about getting up when you can't? Still dishing defiance? Still offering a blend of strength-and-solace to the rest of us, when you think the only thing you're doing is being melodramatic?

Do you know how rare you are? Of course you don't (except when you're lonely and can't forget). Resilient is only one of the things you've had to be, lately--perhaps not the greatest thing. I only know what I understand of what you write about. Not everything you go through.

I'm gonna claim this bad time is a relapse, which happens during slow recoveries. It feels like backsliding, and maybe it is. Or maybe it's just you've nearly exhausted your ration of miserably bad luck, real pain, poor timing, and local jerkitude. The random hurts that an indifferent Universe flung without evening noticing you were in the flight path maybe, reluctantly, are helping you sort the difference between who you are (sort of permanent) and where you are going next (sort of temporary)?

Not trying to be Pollyanna, or Dr. this-is-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds Pangloss, either. Just recalling that sometimes, being realistic isn't limited to what's true right now, that feelings are awfully persuasive about their permanency.

And remembering the friend who delivered something like this speech to me, a half-year ago, and in remembrance, I'm passing my own version of it on to you. With love, in all its awkwardness and invincibility, still a thing that bends steel, cuts diamonds, and outburns suns.
 

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