I know.
For small things, I've gotten over that. It was so woven into me that when bipolar disorder kicked in on me, if I broke a nail clipping them my whole world went black. Growing up, it was like if I wasn't perfect, I was nothing.
Bipolar and it being habit. That explains it. Part of me won't understand for while I know depression, I don't know the mania that makes the depression even worse due to how it switches and how the two different states are so different yet they reinforce each other. I will try to imagine though and empathize.
I've gotten to where I can make progress -- five years ago, a crash like this would have sent me back to feeling worthless on any level, but right now I'd have no trouble going to my favorite Portland bar and interacting with people -- though my trust level would be down (that seems to happen a lot since I've been out). I guess my reaction now is more of, "He hurt me bad and I feel like a loser" instead of "He hurt me bad and I'm such a loser all men will".
Kulindahr its okay to feel pain, honestly it is. You have so trained yourself not to feel pain, that you always feel pain. Pain occurs due to stimuli in your enviroment, it needs to be dealt with/acknowledge and afterwards the pain will subsidy.
What you need to do is recognize you are hurting, but do not allow the pain to control your life. Go to the bar and have fun, be around people. You will still hurt, but its far better than moping around in your house, pretending you aren't hurting when you really are. The second option last longer and is more painful.
Early in coming out I remember a night when I arranged a hook-up (think "whore phase") only to arrive at the address and find a vacant lot. My reaction was that all gay men are evil, they don't see others as people (just 'meat'), I'm not valuable enough to deserve a real friendship/relationship/encounter. Then I started going to bars and learned that even at the ones that are serious meat markets there are gems of guys -- and that lesson has stuck; one guy treating me like something to be used or walked on doesn't generalize for me to all, or make me feel like all men feel that way. But when it's totally new territory....
You know this is complete and uttter bullshit? Well of course you know this rationally, but you need some people to repeat it too you. Your emotional mind doesn't always trust your rational mind.
That is complete and utter bullshit Kullinhdar, gay men are just like straight men and straight women. We want to be loved, appreciated, and valued. We are capable of relationships for we want these things, yet at the same time we are capable of relationships, we aren't flawed. Just because your experience so far in the past haven't been a bed of roses, doesn't mean you have the right to pain the world in a
false light.
Sorry if I was a little loud in the previous paragraphs
When it hit me I'd been on a date, I was soaring. I was in territory where not only didn't I have my feet on the ground, I wasn't sure I had feet any more, just wings. I keep trying to recall those feelings; maybe if I'd been able to get them into my blog 'before', I'd have more of an anchor here. All I can grab is that feeling of being like Icarus, riding high on wings I'd never thought I could possess... but then like Icarus, and unlike, my wings failed -- not melted, but sheered off. I'm left terrified of ever touching wings again... though unlike five years ago when I wouldn't even have felt like ever walking again, I'm grafting on new feet and, while I expect them to feel tender, planning to walk.
But anyone who comes along handing me wings is getting greeted with suspicion -- that's not a rational decision, and it may cost me, but until I can get past this all-or-nothing programming, that's how I function.
You don't need others to give you wings Kullihdahr, you have them already, you just don't realize it. Instead other people will be your instructors they will help you during your first encounters of using your wings. It is much the same as a parent is usually there to teach you how to ride a bike.
You got wings Kulindahr, you just haven't realized it yet.
Though maybe it isn't quite all-or-nothing: thinking in terms of steps, five years ago something like this would have knocked me back worse -- like, twenty steps forward, nineteen tumbled back -- but now I can look back and evaluate it as more on the order of twenty steps forward, twelve back... still crappy, but a lot better.
Yes you are doing all or nothing. You are saying I won't have a date for another 14 months. You actually say I "probably" but reading between the words it sounds like you believe in fate and predetermined destiny more than a greek audience did in one of there "Greek tragedies"
Set yourself up to fall and you will fall. Take baby steps, and when you fall back realize you fall back instead of comparing how different your maniac and your depressive sides are. They are both part of you, you can't change them over night, but realizing you are allowing your emotional swings to set your expectations make you a a prisoner to those emotional swings. If you are a prisoner you will never be happy.
Of course Kullindhar you will be happy, once you learn to stop seeing the world in such an absolute vison of I will not be happy. You are so afraid of not being happy that it defines your life, it defines you. You think you are pre-emptively preventing yourself from hurting, you are.
But in reality you are just causing yourself to suffer...
all the time
And looking at that I'm not satisfied I made sense of what I was after, at all, but there it is.
Believe it or not, it made perfect sense
Believe it or not I been there and still am dealing with it and growing.
Part of me is still playing catch up, I know in my rational mind that the world is a good place, I am a good person that has value, and is capable of being loved. Yet at the same time my emotional mind still doubts it, I have been growing a lot these last few years, my emotional mind has been catching up from so many years of neglect and abuse, yet I still have my relapses
So trust me Kulindahr it makes sense and I understand
if I could teleport myself to where you are!
