In the past couple of months I’ve been spiraling down a bit as you might notice from the past couple of posts. The last month in particular I went through 4.5 weeks without any major interactions that wasn’t a work small-talk or a brief exchange, in certain days I actually didn’t talk to anyone at all.

I don’t like being alone and not talking to anyone. And I find extremly hard to be real, say what I’m feeling. But then, when I’m at my lowest, which is often, it becomes really painful to keep the facade up and fake being alright, even though faking is the only way I know how to communicate, cracking jokes and desperately painting a certain picture of me. I don’t want to make jokes, I want to cry, I want to feel someone close, someone that can accept how I am and goes out of their way to breach my walls, because I just can’t change these pattern of behaviors by myself. Why is it so hard to be real for once and just puke everything out to someone willing to listen? I think, in some way, I must be afraid to be vulnerable, in 28 years I’ve survived by closing myself completely off, and breaking the shell, risking hurting myself must be scaring me.

I have managed to be more open and elaborate a bit more over the “I’m depressed” to a couple of friends. The first time, all of this was almost ripped off me by force, and I am so much thankful that someone considered me enough to force me to do it because they wanted to understand me. It felt a bit liberating, good, and I felt someone wanting to be close to me for the first time in my life. The other time, I tried to share by my volition.

While trying to give shape to all these feelings, I keep worrying, “Am I being understood?”, “I am expressing myself so badly, am I?”. After sharing the first time, I brought up again that I wasn’t good - more as a reply to a felt “how are you” rather than me introducing the topic. But here I start to doubt again. Nothing has changed, I am the same “bad” as before, it’s the same feelings, the same worthlessness. So I feel a some resistance to share, as I have nothing different, new, to say about my condition, it’s the same heaviness, the same hope and wish repeated every time before sleeping, to just stop existing altogether. Am I worrying that people might get tired of hearing the same things? Am I expecting something from these people, and am I trying to go back into my shell because I’m not receiving it? And what am I expecting, care? Consideration? Warmth? Time? Help? Maybe I am, but why should I be supposed to receive these things? Am I part of their life? People have their worries, their lives, how can someone like me pretend to carve some space out of them. And, ironically, I realize at the same time how all of the above sounds, victimizing, self-deprecating, how it’s self-serving crying over myself, how this is something that someone else might feel about me opening up, and that becomes an additional anchor, a kick back into my shell that stops me from trying to open.

I actually started writing this post with the idea of trying to be slightly more positive, and talking about how I might be giving people conflicting signals when I message or talk to them, me wanting people to be closer to me but at the same time distancing them by my replies, a topic I was discussing with my therapist, but writing this down made me just enter in the spiral once again. Honestly not so sure anymore writing these posts is helping that much.