Hello again, everyone.
I'm sitting here trying to think of a good start and there's nothing. I don't know where to begin.
It's the age of comebacks. We come and go. But we come back. With so many that lately seem to have emerged from the oblivion, I thought the time has come to stop lurking from the dark and stick my head through the curtain to the unsuspecting crowd. This place has given me so much the trite words of gratitude for all the ways in which it has embellished my life feel bereft and long overdue.
Well ... Some of you may remember me, most of you probably don't. I predate most of the join dates I see around here these days, so it feels like the proper opening phrase should really have been „hello“ rather than „hello again“.
It's been just over a year since I took a stab at the L word in the unending glebe of Google results and the long hours of the night and the flaky stroke of luck lead me to this place (it was popping up very low on the results page back then). I joined determined to make myself useful and stick around and my hopes were running high, unfortunately history will take a different course and I will leave without having left much of an imprint.
Come to think of it, I didn't leave any imprint at all. I made a couple of jokes, raised a few issues, proffed a few bits of support and fell back into my hazardous habit of fretting over things I can't change all too easily.
I was all geared up to make amends, but work started getting heavy and along with that a few other things creeped their way into my life and I drifted back into the unknown and haven't been back until a couple of months ago when I began reading the forum again.
As one of the toughest years of my life draws to a close, I look back with the profound sense of gratitude to the bestial ways of the crumbling cookie for opening my eyes once again to the real truth of the human kind.
My life took a drastic turn this spring when I got attached to the wrong people and by the time I became aware what a huge mistake I had made, it was too late. I had passed the point of no return and the only way back was to go around the dark side of the moon.
I became suicidal. For the first time ever I was serious about taking my life. The last stand of sense came crumbling down before my eyes and when the dust settled all that seemed to be left was an unending horizon of nothing after nothing. Everything turned gray, the world seemed frozen in time. I was walking around lost, disoriented, trying to figure out how I could have let it come to this, feeling like my life started with the love that I once again developed for people who were all but deserving. Like there was nothing before it.
I used to say I have no heart left to break. Once and for all I learned there is no such thing. There will always be one remaining piece.
It wasn't the first time it happened, but it had never been that bad. The way I used to deal with it was to just bury myself in work and let it run its course and I couldn't even do that. I had a project coming up in June and I was lucky to have opted out or I would have probably been sued for thousands of dollars.
For the first time in my life I was genuinely ready to go. I didn't think it could ever happen to me, but there I was, set up and all systems go.
It was like slipping into a warm tub. I wandered through the frozen steppes naked, shaking from the cold running down my spine as I watched the last chunks of self slipping away into the slumbers of antiquity and just before I am to take my last breath I see a cloud of steam merging with the mist. A geyser bubbling from the gush ascending to the surface, ready to take me in and give warmth to my body before it pops me up for one last fall.
Chilly bliss came over me. What is a geyser doing in an open steppe? Everything fell into place.
But then, like a pair of defibrillator paddles that zap me for one final attempt as they yell “clear”, something brought me back. Somehow my heart, that little remaining piece was working again and with it that tiny little piece of tissue usually referred to as “the brain”. I chose to take a chance and see if using it might actually do something to help. The switch had been in the off position for months and I almost got electrocuted when I flipped it back on.
I tried to remember my life before all this began. What it felt like to feel … normal. What it felt like to feel anything.
It was like falling into a hypnotic state. I felt like an abduction victim going in for hypnotherapy twice a week because there is no other way to remember how he ended up with an implant in the back of his neck. I tried to remember what it was that made life meaningful. Anything.
But I couldn’t do it alone. Walls are wonderful listeners, but more often than not you end up with an awkward silence.
So … I resorted to the unthinkable and turned to my “friends”. For the first time I am going to expose my underbelly for all that I am, all the weaknesses and the unbearable.
I did it and, well, it turned out I had grown attached to more wrong people than I ever could have thought.
My “friends”, people I loved and cared for in ways they will never understand, one after another turned around and left. I have to say I’ve never quite believed the stories until now that I have one to tell myself. I couldn’t wrap my head around how someone could just turn and leave if all you need is to just have them talk you through your straits. Can you possibly ask for less. If love was legal tender my friends would be my total investment.
Well, I’m definitely not a skeptic anymore. Of course they all had their reasons and most of it came wrapped with a red bow on top. Some of them didn’t even care to spend on the wrapping, what’s the point if we’re never going to see each other again. Some actually slammed me down for having gotten myself in that position, if you can believe that (I know you can, but remember, I’m new at this). Some of them never said anything, they just left and I haven’t heard from them since. It was hard to see how easily forgotten fell the love that they had been given and all the sacrifices they were so quick to ask me to undertake for them, but I had been there plenty of times before, so I was already like a pro.
But the feeling … I thought I knew what it feels like to be ditched. That I had reached the point where it cannot possibly get any more painful. Boy, did I have no idea.
I had just surfaced from the dead and I had to die all over again. I’ve learned that the way it plays out is that even when you know they are going to leave they will still never give it to you straight. So after a while it’s like a tumor with a 50 percent death rate. It’s just as likely to happen as it is not and the suspense is deafening. And there we are, back once again to the heart story.
And then, the strangest thing happened. It was like warmth building up inside me. I woke up and could feel blood pumping through my numb arm as I began to regain sense. I didn’t know what was going on. It was the first time in months that I felt anything. I was alive again, feeling, thinking and everything. I would open my eyes in the morning and actually care about how my day is going to go. I stood in front of a mirror and a smile stared back at me. There were no more excuses, it was clear. For some reason what they did to me made me want to live again.
Live in spite. Live in defiance. All that I had loved inspired me all over again. I would flip through my memories for hours trying to comprehend and end up right back where I started. Revolt had never tasted as sweet. My friends made my pain seem like a slow day at a desk job. There was nothing but defiance. I hold on to it tight to the point of breakage and look back at my former friends in pity and forgiveness, for all they make themselves out to be and are everything but.
And here I am, eight months after it all started. I’m alive. When all is said, I guess it’s what counts. Once more I am reminded that sometimes the only route to health is by way of the bitter pill. In a way which is hard to understand even for me, I will always be grateful for all the ways in which I have been enlightened. The pain that I have been exposed to make me wonder about the true extents of my imagination.
I wish I could say I have fully recovered, unfortunately that is far from the truth. I have a new normal now and I don’t think I will ever be able to bounce back. But the dark of the tunnel is broken by the frisky sparkle of the lining lights, flashing, faint, but showing me the way. I will never go back, but one day I may just come out on the other side.
I have since been diagnosed with Depressive Personality Disorder (I understand the thing is still rather new and has sparked some controversies, but it feels pretty genuine) and social phobia (which I’ve had since I was a child, so I’ve long learned to cope with it and you’d never tell, but I just now made it official) and all signs indicate a moderate case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although I haven’t had that one officially diagnosed yet and I don’t really care one way or the other.
So what is left? When the storm rides out and the dust clears, what is left standing? What is the pass that clears us across all borders? If there is growth beyond the confines of the matter, what do we bring with us?
I may not take anything with me, but I know what I carry around. The core possession that no one can heist from my hands, no size can belittle and no blow can shatter. So let me share with you its bits in hope that someday staring in the face of challenge you will not make my mistake.
Be careful who you give your love to, my friends. A person is not defined by how many friends they have but by how few. You have only one life to waste. Don’t get tricked by their smil(i)es. Beware their self-flattery. The worst riders are the highest on their horse. Their act may be as false as the hope that they instill. They will spit you out when you become too big to chew and leave you wanting back the love that you have lost. But guess what, there’s no return policy.
You can be a “great friend” one moment and a former friend the other. “Great friend” can mean anything. People will generally do and tell you whatever they feel you need to be told and “great friend” pretty much runs the gamut. Think back to any past rejections and abandonment you may have had. Chances are as the means to maintain the relationship you have repeatedly suspended rational thinking and were no longer ready to continue with that practice. Muster up the courage to say no, come around on an issue or have an opinion they happen to disagree with. Somebody better call the change police before more egos get hurt.
It is a time when ‘friend’ all too often comes with a quotation mark. Could it be rightfully so? Are we so unfair to expect what is likewise expected from us?
You can find a thousand arguments to ditch a friend and only one not to. And should you find yourself shy of chance, like a smile over beans below your feet, all you can do is forgive.
How did this forum make a difference in my life if the total sum of my time on barely even amounts to hours, you may ask. Well, this brings me to the reason why I’ve decided to come back and start this thread in the first place. They find their way in even when the window is closed and sprinkle dust that makes you fly. I extend once more my sincerest thank you to those few personal angels who stuck with my through my ordeal, through my lows and my lowests. Some of whom never would have endowed me with their friendship had it not been for A Lonely Life. You provided the tools to refurbish my life when I was empty-handed and for that I shall stay indebt to you forever. You know who you are, so no names will be named.
I have missed this forum so much. In these past few months since I began visiting again some of you have grown close to my heart even though we have never spoken before. I walk around with my head bowed because this room is crowded with heroes. Each and every day you open my eyes to the simple truth that no river is too deep to bridge and the growing numbers in which you converge stands as but a statement to the world that is as small as our grasp that makes it big, shrinking with each new soul left behind in the barren fields of disregard.
I wish there was a way to extend my reach across the seas and hold you all tightly in my embrace. But who knows, maybe someday someway we will collide and nibble on our rations of luck as we war talk in the trenches.
Until then, all I can offer is a firm clasp of brackets, ten for each arm.
((((((((((ALL))))))))))
(This actually *was* brief …)
I'm sitting here trying to think of a good start and there's nothing. I don't know where to begin.
It's the age of comebacks. We come and go. But we come back. With so many that lately seem to have emerged from the oblivion, I thought the time has come to stop lurking from the dark and stick my head through the curtain to the unsuspecting crowd. This place has given me so much the trite words of gratitude for all the ways in which it has embellished my life feel bereft and long overdue.
Well ... Some of you may remember me, most of you probably don't. I predate most of the join dates I see around here these days, so it feels like the proper opening phrase should really have been „hello“ rather than „hello again“.
It's been just over a year since I took a stab at the L word in the unending glebe of Google results and the long hours of the night and the flaky stroke of luck lead me to this place (it was popping up very low on the results page back then). I joined determined to make myself useful and stick around and my hopes were running high, unfortunately history will take a different course and I will leave without having left much of an imprint.
Come to think of it, I didn't leave any imprint at all. I made a couple of jokes, raised a few issues, proffed a few bits of support and fell back into my hazardous habit of fretting over things I can't change all too easily.
I was all geared up to make amends, but work started getting heavy and along with that a few other things creeped their way into my life and I drifted back into the unknown and haven't been back until a couple of months ago when I began reading the forum again.
As one of the toughest years of my life draws to a close, I look back with the profound sense of gratitude to the bestial ways of the crumbling cookie for opening my eyes once again to the real truth of the human kind.
My life took a drastic turn this spring when I got attached to the wrong people and by the time I became aware what a huge mistake I had made, it was too late. I had passed the point of no return and the only way back was to go around the dark side of the moon.
I became suicidal. For the first time ever I was serious about taking my life. The last stand of sense came crumbling down before my eyes and when the dust settled all that seemed to be left was an unending horizon of nothing after nothing. Everything turned gray, the world seemed frozen in time. I was walking around lost, disoriented, trying to figure out how I could have let it come to this, feeling like my life started with the love that I once again developed for people who were all but deserving. Like there was nothing before it.
I used to say I have no heart left to break. Once and for all I learned there is no such thing. There will always be one remaining piece.
It wasn't the first time it happened, but it had never been that bad. The way I used to deal with it was to just bury myself in work and let it run its course and I couldn't even do that. I had a project coming up in June and I was lucky to have opted out or I would have probably been sued for thousands of dollars.
For the first time in my life I was genuinely ready to go. I didn't think it could ever happen to me, but there I was, set up and all systems go.
It was like slipping into a warm tub. I wandered through the frozen steppes naked, shaking from the cold running down my spine as I watched the last chunks of self slipping away into the slumbers of antiquity and just before I am to take my last breath I see a cloud of steam merging with the mist. A geyser bubbling from the gush ascending to the surface, ready to take me in and give warmth to my body before it pops me up for one last fall.
Chilly bliss came over me. What is a geyser doing in an open steppe? Everything fell into place.
But then, like a pair of defibrillator paddles that zap me for one final attempt as they yell “clear”, something brought me back. Somehow my heart, that little remaining piece was working again and with it that tiny little piece of tissue usually referred to as “the brain”. I chose to take a chance and see if using it might actually do something to help. The switch had been in the off position for months and I almost got electrocuted when I flipped it back on.
I tried to remember my life before all this began. What it felt like to feel … normal. What it felt like to feel anything.
It was like falling into a hypnotic state. I felt like an abduction victim going in for hypnotherapy twice a week because there is no other way to remember how he ended up with an implant in the back of his neck. I tried to remember what it was that made life meaningful. Anything.
But I couldn’t do it alone. Walls are wonderful listeners, but more often than not you end up with an awkward silence.
So … I resorted to the unthinkable and turned to my “friends”. For the first time I am going to expose my underbelly for all that I am, all the weaknesses and the unbearable.
I did it and, well, it turned out I had grown attached to more wrong people than I ever could have thought.
My “friends”, people I loved and cared for in ways they will never understand, one after another turned around and left. I have to say I’ve never quite believed the stories until now that I have one to tell myself. I couldn’t wrap my head around how someone could just turn and leave if all you need is to just have them talk you through your straits. Can you possibly ask for less. If love was legal tender my friends would be my total investment.
Well, I’m definitely not a skeptic anymore. Of course they all had their reasons and most of it came wrapped with a red bow on top. Some of them didn’t even care to spend on the wrapping, what’s the point if we’re never going to see each other again. Some actually slammed me down for having gotten myself in that position, if you can believe that (I know you can, but remember, I’m new at this). Some of them never said anything, they just left and I haven’t heard from them since. It was hard to see how easily forgotten fell the love that they had been given and all the sacrifices they were so quick to ask me to undertake for them, but I had been there plenty of times before, so I was already like a pro.
But the feeling … I thought I knew what it feels like to be ditched. That I had reached the point where it cannot possibly get any more painful. Boy, did I have no idea.
I had just surfaced from the dead and I had to die all over again. I’ve learned that the way it plays out is that even when you know they are going to leave they will still never give it to you straight. So after a while it’s like a tumor with a 50 percent death rate. It’s just as likely to happen as it is not and the suspense is deafening. And there we are, back once again to the heart story.
And then, the strangest thing happened. It was like warmth building up inside me. I woke up and could feel blood pumping through my numb arm as I began to regain sense. I didn’t know what was going on. It was the first time in months that I felt anything. I was alive again, feeling, thinking and everything. I would open my eyes in the morning and actually care about how my day is going to go. I stood in front of a mirror and a smile stared back at me. There were no more excuses, it was clear. For some reason what they did to me made me want to live again.
Live in spite. Live in defiance. All that I had loved inspired me all over again. I would flip through my memories for hours trying to comprehend and end up right back where I started. Revolt had never tasted as sweet. My friends made my pain seem like a slow day at a desk job. There was nothing but defiance. I hold on to it tight to the point of breakage and look back at my former friends in pity and forgiveness, for all they make themselves out to be and are everything but.
And here I am, eight months after it all started. I’m alive. When all is said, I guess it’s what counts. Once more I am reminded that sometimes the only route to health is by way of the bitter pill. In a way which is hard to understand even for me, I will always be grateful for all the ways in which I have been enlightened. The pain that I have been exposed to make me wonder about the true extents of my imagination.
I wish I could say I have fully recovered, unfortunately that is far from the truth. I have a new normal now and I don’t think I will ever be able to bounce back. But the dark of the tunnel is broken by the frisky sparkle of the lining lights, flashing, faint, but showing me the way. I will never go back, but one day I may just come out on the other side.
I have since been diagnosed with Depressive Personality Disorder (I understand the thing is still rather new and has sparked some controversies, but it feels pretty genuine) and social phobia (which I’ve had since I was a child, so I’ve long learned to cope with it and you’d never tell, but I just now made it official) and all signs indicate a moderate case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although I haven’t had that one officially diagnosed yet and I don’t really care one way or the other.
So what is left? When the storm rides out and the dust clears, what is left standing? What is the pass that clears us across all borders? If there is growth beyond the confines of the matter, what do we bring with us?
I may not take anything with me, but I know what I carry around. The core possession that no one can heist from my hands, no size can belittle and no blow can shatter. So let me share with you its bits in hope that someday staring in the face of challenge you will not make my mistake.
Be careful who you give your love to, my friends. A person is not defined by how many friends they have but by how few. You have only one life to waste. Don’t get tricked by their smil(i)es. Beware their self-flattery. The worst riders are the highest on their horse. Their act may be as false as the hope that they instill. They will spit you out when you become too big to chew and leave you wanting back the love that you have lost. But guess what, there’s no return policy.
You can be a “great friend” one moment and a former friend the other. “Great friend” can mean anything. People will generally do and tell you whatever they feel you need to be told and “great friend” pretty much runs the gamut. Think back to any past rejections and abandonment you may have had. Chances are as the means to maintain the relationship you have repeatedly suspended rational thinking and were no longer ready to continue with that practice. Muster up the courage to say no, come around on an issue or have an opinion they happen to disagree with. Somebody better call the change police before more egos get hurt.
It is a time when ‘friend’ all too often comes with a quotation mark. Could it be rightfully so? Are we so unfair to expect what is likewise expected from us?
You can find a thousand arguments to ditch a friend and only one not to. And should you find yourself shy of chance, like a smile over beans below your feet, all you can do is forgive.
How did this forum make a difference in my life if the total sum of my time on barely even amounts to hours, you may ask. Well, this brings me to the reason why I’ve decided to come back and start this thread in the first place. They find their way in even when the window is closed and sprinkle dust that makes you fly. I extend once more my sincerest thank you to those few personal angels who stuck with my through my ordeal, through my lows and my lowests. Some of whom never would have endowed me with their friendship had it not been for A Lonely Life. You provided the tools to refurbish my life when I was empty-handed and for that I shall stay indebt to you forever. You know who you are, so no names will be named.
I have missed this forum so much. In these past few months since I began visiting again some of you have grown close to my heart even though we have never spoken before. I walk around with my head bowed because this room is crowded with heroes. Each and every day you open my eyes to the simple truth that no river is too deep to bridge and the growing numbers in which you converge stands as but a statement to the world that is as small as our grasp that makes it big, shrinking with each new soul left behind in the barren fields of disregard.
I wish there was a way to extend my reach across the seas and hold you all tightly in my embrace. But who knows, maybe someday someway we will collide and nibble on our rations of luck as we war talk in the trenches.
Until then, all I can offer is a firm clasp of brackets, ten for each arm.
((((((((((ALL))))))))))
(This actually *was* brief …)
![Thomas]](https://cdn.imagearchive.com/alonelylife/data/avatars/s/14/14186.jpg?1631136400){kind=avatar}
