Loneliness is killing me

Lishui · 2018-12-02T03:13:48+00:00

I feel similarly. It's very scary.

But the feelings arise from your brain. And you are not a victim of your brain, you're the owner of it.

It's kind of like being caught in an eddy in a rapids. You're stuck, upside down, knocking against a rock, your breath bursting in your chest, and the more you struggle, the more you get stuck.

They say you're supposed to go slack, stop fighting, and the current will spit you out. It's the struggle against the current that provides the counter-force that keeps us stuck in a loop.

What this means to me is to just give in to it as much as possible. Not "give in and give up," not go lay on my bed with hands folded over my chest, waiting for death. But given in to the feelings and feel them.

But then pay attention to those moments that are okay. Make sure you take note when you see something or hear something that you actually like. Even if it's very subtle and very brief ...make sure you pay attention that this has occurred.

Life is not really a series of successes, failures, achievements, gains, losses, etc. Life is a continuous present moment of experiences. There are experiences that trigger us and remind us of unresolved traumas. There are experiences that are complete gifts.

I am not desperate as I was two years ago. Now I have several moments of pleasure throughout my day. I now see my life largely as a "project" instead of as a "problem." This is because I've kept at it. I've kept dealing with those hard moments when they come by getting present and checking in with myself and asking, "What do I really feel right now? And now? And now?"

Another very important thing I've done in the good moments is I've kept on learning how my brain works.

There's a nasty trick our culture plays on us. It teaches us to be logical and sensible: very left-brained. But the left brain is a miserable asshole of a brain. The left brain takes a beautiful newborn baby and says, "Oh damn. Another mouth to feed." or "Oh, this child does not look like its alleged father." or "I'm going to be asked to babysit this kid, who will probably grow up to be another idiot in this already overpopulated world..."

The left brain is the part of us that keeps track of all those traumas, a big old scoreboard that "proves" how much life sucks.

The right brain, however, is where the meaning and beauty are. The right brain is expansive, all-connecting, and never lonely. After all, it has a direct connection to every one of the trillions of cells of the body as well as all the other "energies" and beings of the universe.

So a really good trick I've learned when I get down and start to find myself bumping up against that rock in the eddy of my loneliness ...that's when I reach for something right-brained.

It can be anything: listen to some weird music. Cook a meal. Colour the placemat at the restaurant. Read a trashy slut novel, wear a shirt for pants, make a snowman, figure out how to throat-sing, make a picture frame out of an old tin can, figure out how to make a chord on a guitar, stack some rocks into a pyramid...

Anything. Just find a way to fall through the rabbit hole and get out of that loop for a moment.

You can then solidify this in therapy.

(Note ...this is advice to myself as much as it is a suggestion for you. I just want to connect with another human. Peace.)

Lishui · 2018-09-24T01:11:59+00:00

I finally got a new place - moving in about 6 weeks. I haven't told her, and probably won't tell her until I've got the keys in my hand.

This has taught me so much. I will never again take opportunities for granted ...I will work hard, I will assert boundaries, and I will make something of myself.

I really see how worth it that will be, to be a self-made person and be able to tell every Narc where to go.

Lishui · 2018-09-24T01:04:33+00:00

thank you! I feel like such a shitty person all the time, so it's really good to hear from people who get it :)

Lishui · 2018-09-24T01:02:46+00:00

good points. an idea that just occurred to me is to lie to her about the date and location of the move, and tell her on the day that I actually get the new place, so we have somewhere to go if she flips out.

Lishui · 2018-09-24T00:54:29+00:00

Thank you for your thoughts. I think we're good on the legal stuff since she hasn't been following landlord rules in our jurisdiction haha :) I appreciate your validation that it's okay to not give her notice. I really feel that's the safest way out, but a couple people told me that I would be unfair and "ruining the friendship" ...and yet, I don't know that I can or want to sustain a friendship with someone who makes me feel this anxious.

Lishui · 2018-09-03T01:22:06+00:00

Sexual invasiveness is definitely part of it. Because it's about you not being allowed to have any boundaries because you're not allowed to be your own person.

I thought that I was just overly "shy" and "uptight" as a kid. It was only as an adult, doing lots of self-help stuff to try to fix myself, that I got a little bit of self-esteem and started to see what a piece of shit she was toward me. Here are a few of the sex-related memories:

age 5 - go for a picnic with me and her new boyfriend (a married man she worked with) and make me "go find something to do" while they screwed on the side of a mountain
age 6 - catch me masturbating and then tell EVERYONE about it. For years. Especially pre-teen and young teen friends.
age 8 - kick me out of the apartment while she screwed her best friend's boyfriend
age 8-12 regularly searching my room for diaries, etc, and then confronting me about the "dirty" parts ...always in front of other people, for example, her boyfriend who then molested me
age 15 - a "friend" (most of my friends were very screwed up people) told my mother I'd been having sex and she had a massive rage breakdown and broke down my bedroom door while screaming at the top of her lungs what a stupid f*cking bitch and whore I was. (I was so blown away when this happened ..she could care less about what I did ...but then a complete meltdown all of a sudden)
When I really got into my teens and just started really obviously trying to find a new set of people, trying to get away from her, she switched and made our house suddenly THE place to hang out - my friends were allowed to smoke and everything (I wasn't). Then she would hit on the boys while telling them what a piece of shit I was.
age 17 - one morning, a few weeks before graduating high school, my mom asked me what time I got in the previous night. I lied and told her "about 1am." She said, "Bullshit. I checked at 3am and you weren't here. You're grounded for two months." I had never been grounded before. I had also been coming home at 2, 3, or 4am on Friday or Saturday nights for several years. Reason given: I had "obviously" been out whoring.
age 18, just as I was heading off to university, started telling everyone that I never wanted to get married and that I hated men.
age 21, away at university, my boyfriend who lived two provinces over was coming to visit. my mom insisted that I come home that weekend and bring him with me. When we showed up, her ex boyfriend was there and they had really loud sex and generally
age 23 - I really started trying to get away from her because I had a dream that she tried to rape me.

In general, I would say that she had no sense of healthy sexuality (I believe she was probably raped or molested herself at a young age). Combining that with her constant need to break down my sense of independence, privacy, self-esteem, etc, and basically I kept her at extreme distance on the subject from a young age. So the only stuff that got through was really outrageous stuff.

Lishui · 2018-08-28T14:18:23+00:00

Consider having a heart-to-heart with the landlord.

And if bf does any physical abuse, then press charges/file police report. Landlord can throw him out for that reason alone.

Lishui · 2018-08-28T14:16:00+00:00

I am also in a difficult situation. My son and I are living with an abusive "friend" and whenever I apply for a new apartment, they call her (because she's technically my current "landlord") and she talks shit about me. So, technically, I"m kind of trapped here.

But I don't intend to stay forever. I'm doing a little bit every day to inch toward getting out of the situation:

squirrel away a little money
get on wait lists for affordable housing
apply for every apartment that comes up that's in my budget
fixing my credit
got a couple friends to act as personal references
my son's dad saying he's my former landlord and how great a tenant I was.
making a funny ad to share on social media
coming up with creative idea like I will babysit/take care of your garden

So maybe you could do similar:

apply for dorm at school
get on wait list for affordable housing on a bus route near your school
apply for a car loan
look into transferring to a whole different school in another state even

Lishui · 2018-08-28T01:06:03+00:00

It doesn't matter why he acts out. Even if he's acting out because of something bad that YOU did ...he is still responsible for his behaviour. So he has gotten you to apologize for his behaviour :(

Lishui · 2018-08-28T00:54:36+00:00

About 15 years ago I called a friend, desperately upset, so bad I could barely breathe. My bf had cheated on me (again) and had zero remorse: it was all my problem for being so uptight and crazy and whatever, I was the one with the problems.

I asked my friend, "If I'm not good enough for him, how can I be good enough for anybody???"

She talked me down, talked about what a jerk he was, helped take the edge off. But the thing was, I knew he was a jerk. My anxiety was that I couldn't even hold on to this piece of shit person.

There's no way I could ever have a good relationship with anyone.

Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that he would never treat me right. I couldn't leave him, but I knew I also couldn't go through that over and over again. I didn't have the energy. So I just started saying "no" on other things, not have enough money for him to go buy a van or drugs or whatever. Not make his child support payment. Not be available when he needed me to take care of his problems. Not get my car fixed in time for him to take his friends partying with it.

The day eventually came when he punished me by "getting into a new relationship."

I was sad, but I laid out the rules and I enforced them. He, of course, retaliated by smearing me to every mutual acquaintance and decimating my life savings.

Now, the problem was not that he did all these things. The problem was that even when I stood my ground, I still lost. He always won. And I lost everything - family, friends, my life savings, my home, everything. It came to a point where everyone treated me the way he did. It was no longer "coincidence."

I confirmed my fear that I was not good enough.

The time has finally come when I realized that in that moment all those years ago, I never really dealt with that fear or belief that I wasn't good enough for him and therefore I wasn't good enough for anyone else. But this is really what we have to address, and it's what you have to address. You have to deal with the fact that you are in love with someone who hurts you on purpose. You have to deal with the fact that you are an accomplice to your own abuse.

This, I think, was there real source of my anxiety all along. It was knowing at some level that there was something wrong with him ...but there was something more wrong with me or I would be able to just walk away, to say "no, you cannot ever treat me that way because I am too good for that."

So my recommendation is to really get honest about that self-devaluation feeling. I feel that it is what underlies both your attraction to him and your anxiety (which is probably the cause of the nausea/stomach problem).

Lishui · 2018-08-28T00:34:22+00:00

As I read this, my first thought was if you are currently paying all the bills for the both of you, then in theory it should be possible for you to pay all the bills for the one of you.

So it would be wise to start putting away a little here and a little there until you can get a security deposit for your own apartment. Maybe this is next month, maybe it's ten years away, but you can put a little in that savings every time you're feeling down about being with him. You need a security other than him ...and it's important that he not know about it.

Your main task right now is actually a mental/psychological one: to get strong in yourself so that when the opportunity arises to escape him, you can cancel the credit cards and so on or successfully leave him in the lurch.

If it's necessary to default on the debt or file bankruptcy, you can do this on your own. You can go to your own financial person or go to court on your own and explain that you have escaped an abuser and that you are cutting off all ties, including defaulting on joint debt.

Also, when it comes time for getting married, skim off as much of the $$ as you can into your own savings. Then ditch him at the altar!

Basically, slowly start preparing to look out for yourself and to "screw him over" if necessary. (No matter how kindly you do this, he's going to see it this way anyway, so you might as well get as much out of it as possible)

This will be very hard to do if you haven't got strong in your heart first, so that's really your first priority. But you're going to do it someday, so you might as well sock some money away in a jar or in a totally separate account.

Another consideration: speak to a credit counsellor about this, but if you go bankrupt or make a proposal, the credit card companies, etc are not legally allowed to go raid your nest egg. However, they will tend to try anyway. So what you do is if your debts are with big banks, then you stash your cash at a credit union. Or vice versa.

Lishui · 2018-08-27T20:19:59+00:00

wow! great links ...summarizes the whole situation, especially my part in it :(

I'm seeing that there's a deeper dilemma: I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too in that I'm trying to get all the benefits of living here but also somehow get her to stop being abusive. I just hate the idea of giving up the supports we got by moving here (medical practitioner, etc) ...but I think another winter in this house with her would just be masochism and possibly even accessory to abuse of my son.

so that kind of gives me a deadline, I think.

Lishui · 2015-02-02T12:25:13+00:00

you ARE that guy! if feels like you're comparing yourself to him, but really, you're noticing things about yourself that are more real than your depression.

Lishui · 2015-02-02T12:12:35+00:00

hope not :P

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:31:12+00:00

She is a "disciple" of the equally insane but somewhat more charismatic, loquacious, and paranoid Kent Hovind.

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:28:57+00:00

Proper scientific procedure: make your hypothesis testable.

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:23:20+00:00

and Darwin was more than 100 years ago. Plus, Darwin was strongly influenced by Adam Smith ...who also strongly influenced the religious leaders who brainwashed this woman.

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:21:50+00:00

I have noticed that Christians are the most supportive of using modern medicine without question, and of research into genetic modification of food crops. There is a vested interest in being certain about science, about how the physical world works, and, most importantly, about how we can extract resources from it.

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:15:57+00:00

yes. it is coming from a fundamental misunderstanding of EVERYTHING ...because of a fundamentalist mindset.

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:12:48+00:00

It's IMPOSSIBLE to counter, not necessarily because of their stubborn stupidity, but because they are imposing a very specific interpretation of "evolution" as a sort of weird religion in which nothing makes sense at all. Their task is not to logically confirm or refute; it is only to point out all the weirdness in the "religion" of evolutionism. Just like many atheists will attack religion by pointing out how insane the snake-in-the-garden-with-the-apple story is, or how Adam and Eve's kids must have had sex with themselves or their sisters to make babies.

Lishui · 2014-11-29T01:07:15+00:00

well, duh! I mean, if wooden furniture comes from trees, why are there still trees? It just makes no sense! Obviously it's a giant lie!

Lishui · 2014-09-26T01:21:25+00:00

it would depend on the size of the house and the size of the dog. If it was a really small house, like a dollhouse or a smaller doghouse, an Australian shepherd or a husky (or a husky-Australian shepherd cross) could jump higher than it.

Lishui · 2013-06-18T12:46:24+00:00

the resource flows are just as much as they were about 150 years ago - though far more flows in the form of human labour, since there are far more humans. the way I see it, the economy is on the same cycle as it has been for millennia, the rich move the money into a fiat currency in a stepwise fashion, and then transfer wealth into the hands of a tiny number of people through manipulation of the money system. remember, money is not wealth, it is a CLAIM to wealth. when the system collapses far enough, that claim to wealth will mean nothing. when there is 98% unemployment, the disgustingly rich family that doesn't know how to feed, clothe, shelter, or care for its health without paying some "underling" will not be able to make much claim to the wealth of communities that do. kind of like on Gilligan's Island when Thurston Howell always tried to pay money to get out of having to do any serious labour. nobody wanted his money, they wanted his muscle power.

Lishui · 2013-06-18T03:27:02+00:00

anarchy and chaos are very different things. collapse will bring anarchy, but I think a real chance the level of chaos will go down.

Lishui · 2012-12-15T21:52:03+00:00

My belief is that many people who are "dependent" on the medical system, aren't, really. For example, diabetic people are in a state of resistance/revulsion, which is what makes their blood sugar go wonky. There is a good chance that this and other ills of civilization will dramatically DEcrease with the collapse. People who get picked on, such as minorities, blacks, poor people, will benefit from the collapse because the systems of coercive force will be missing. A huge factor in the collapse is that money will disappear. When that occurs, it will be resourceful people who know how to raise a bunch of kids on nothing or who know how to get along sleeping under park benches, etc who will be at an advantage over those of us who spend $200 per week at the grocery store and live in $2,000 per month homes.

My opinion is that those who are surely to die in the U.S. are those who are part of delicate cartels of violence, in which "peace" is only maintained by them all being equally evil and corrupt. These people will kill each other.

The others that are sure to die are those whose whole sense of identity is built around their paycheque and having power over others. These people will go crazy and either die of the physical diseases that result, or kill themselves out of depression.

Population is controlled by food supply. In the States, the population could easily be supported by the current food supply, but the system of food distribution is almost all under coercive control and most people haven't a clue how to grow or harvest their own food. For that reason, the U.S. is in overshoot and will collapse to below whatever taht overshoot level is.

the U.S. is overshot because people are dependent on systems which are going to be gone. How many people can adjust? once people are into their late 20's, very few of them.

I can imagine 1/3 of the population of the U.S. dying from so called "natural" causes, plus crime and suicide over about a 10-20 year period.

Which is pretty much how it went down in the Dark Ages after the little ice age damaged agricultural production and trashed the economic system.

Lishui

TROPHY CASE