Hello everyone,
I am new here and I am unsure about how and where to start. I have a question, but I wanted to explain a bit where it came from, and I ended up writing too much. Feel free to jump to the last sentence though, if you wish to answer directly :)
Let me specify first that English isn't my mother tongue, so I'm sorry for any mistakes that could hinder reading comprehension. Also, as I was writing this I got carried away, and so my text might not be very straightforward. I am sorry for this. I hope you can still find the patience and kindness to read my words - words that I have never said to people in my life (or, at least, never to people who could have understood them fully). I would be very grateful for it.
I am a young adult feeling extremely, overwhelmingly lost. I do not have a sense of self, of identity. I feel like I have always navigated this life as an imposter, and I knew very early on (as a kid) that I wasn't meant to remain on earth for very long. To be fair, I didn't even think I would make it to my current age (early 20s), and even on my most optimistic days the furthest I ever imagined getting to was 30.
I grew up in a 1 person household (my mom raised me on her own), without any other family member under the sky. They all either died in quite miserable circumstances (mostly suicide) prior to me being born or I never met them as they did not wish to know me as a kid. Being so lonely from the very start, I have always felt like a leftover, an anomaly that was not meant to be born, and that was just sitting there in the corner of everyone else's existence. The world, with its joy, complexity, myriad of social networks and dynamics, always felt out of reach to me. Sure, it has its share of injustice, of ugliness, of selfishness. Yet I never despised it. I longed for it, looking at it with curiosity, from afar. As if I was stuck being a glass wall.
One image that describes this feeling best and often comes to my mind is actually from a scene I experienced during my early years of university.
At the time, I was studying in a new city. I had just made many new friends (mainly due to the fact that I have always pushed myself to be (artificially) extroverted and to befriend people, in order to conjure my initial, existential isolation), but there was no one I had know for long enough to rely on. One day, during the winter, I injured my leg and had to go to the hospital to get it checked ; I went, spent the whole day waiting for a scanner. In the end, they found it needed a cast for a few weeks. I was a bit upset : I had a lot of uni exams coming up, already felt completely drained, and wondered how I was gonna take care of myself for the upcoming weeks. Yet I braced myself, as usual. Seeing that it was nighttime, rainy and cold outside, that I was just a teenager and that I obviously couldn't walk properly on my own, the nurses asked me who they could call to come pick me up from the ward. I said there was no one, that I was okay going on my own. They insisted in disbelief, quite aggressively : no one ?? not even your parents ? Your dad ? (I don't have one) Your mom ?
At that point, I burst into tears : my mom, despite being the only person I have, is herself a heavily traumatized person, who grew up being hated, exploited and beaten by her own parents. So, when her time came to become a mother, which she had never expected to be (she never wanted to have kids), she obviously reproduced abusive behaviors from her parents, despite trying not to. As far as I can remember (which is approximately around when I was 6yo), she has always belittled be, hit me, insulted me, threatened to have me handled to social services, to abandon me, to kill herself. She has a smart and loving side, but she's utterly broken, completely isolated, and unable to control herself. Most people would just describe her as 'crazy'. Growing up with her was so frightening : in the house, it was always just me and her, and the space was filled with nothing but the sound of her shoutings, meltdowns, crying, threats, sometimes even manic laughter. She was always fixated on me, obsessed by what I was doing, and she always disappointed by what she saw : a 'little bitch', a 'piece of shit', a 'pathetic trash' that couldn't be the perfect, respectful kid she wanted. (Sorry for getting carried away a bit here, and it's a bit embarrassing to complain about my lil mommy issues, but I felt like the context was needed). Anyway, I won't give you all the details about our painful relationship over the past two decades, but as you can guess she's not someone I can rely on. Even though we sometimes manage to be in touch in a somewhat normal manner, very regularly she cuts contact with me, on the grounds that I did this or that that proved I was a disgusting piece of shit who deserves to be abandoned.
That day, in the hospital, was in the middle of such a period. So when the nurses pressed me to give her contact, I cried, mostly out of tiredness, but also because it sucked to admit out loud that no, not even my mom was someone I could call to tell her I was injured. No one cared I was in the hospital, and it was just fine. So I left, slowly walking under the rain with that stupid cast and a plastic bag wrapped around it, to find the nearest subway station. But one of my new friends lived a few streets from there. While walking at a snail speed, empty and tired, I found myself next to her house. Her family is pretty wealthy, and the house was very beautiful. All the windows were lit. A warm, nice yellowish light filtered through it, in the pitch dark garden. Inside, I saw her : she was sitting at the kitchen table with her sisters and parents. They were all laughing. It was truly such a beautiful view. I stayed there for a few minutes, peaking at them. I did not feel envy. Rather, I felt relieved that such a place of happiness existed. Nothing crazy, not heaven nor an ideal family, I knew it, but just a place where people belonged to each other, for a warm moment in the winter night. And me, I belonged to the street, to the cold darkness, and I could disappear in it without anyone batting an eye. It was fine. I was there, but I could also not be, and nothing, no one, would be affected.
This image has stuck to me ever since. It is there when I go out, when I meet new people, when I feel good or when I hit rock bottom, planning to ctb. No matter what's happening in my little life, I know my spot is, like that day, on the sidewalk, the periphery of other people's life.
I am in a way reassured by my insignificance, but also quite suffocated by it : since I cannot feel a sense of belonging anywhere, I don't have any direction, ambition or anything. I have always put on a mask and cosplayed as a normal human, but unfortunately I have no reason to do so deep down, so I always end up being so drained by it. I can never put on the act for very long. And every year, it becomes harder to keep going with it.
At some point in my life, I managed to make close friends around these first uni years and imagined things could change. But life went on, and my friends moved away to other cities, pursuing studies or career in different fields.
For the past few years now, I have been back to complete isolation, to the state I grew up in. I have returned to my original state of nothingness, floating around like a dry autumn leaf in the wind.
I am exhausted.
I won't talk here about all the contingencies of my life that make me so exhausted : the constant poverty, the traumas, the psychological & cognitive disorders, etc; they are not the point, even if they are very heavy. One thing though : they always bring me to getting acquainted with people sharing similar struggles.
Like on this forum, ironically.
But as much as I crave mutual understanding, and as I feel empathy for all the people like us, I don't think we can build anything positive together. It feels like - plus - will never amount to +. I grew up next to a deeply miserable person, who was also brought up by miserable people, and so on. The curse never ends. It seems like miserable people never find a way back to normality, because they don't know how it looks like. They just drift far apart from others, like in that winter night.
So my only question is : do you know (from firsthand experience) or have you heard of people that were isolated from the start and yet managed to find a place in this world, e.g. to create a happy life next to lighthearted people ? Do you think it can happen ?
I am new here and I am unsure about how and where to start. I have a question, but I wanted to explain a bit where it came from, and I ended up writing too much. Feel free to jump to the last sentence though, if you wish to answer directly :)
Let me specify first that English isn't my mother tongue, so I'm sorry for any mistakes that could hinder reading comprehension. Also, as I was writing this I got carried away, and so my text might not be very straightforward. I am sorry for this. I hope you can still find the patience and kindness to read my words - words that I have never said to people in my life (or, at least, never to people who could have understood them fully). I would be very grateful for it.
I am a young adult feeling extremely, overwhelmingly lost. I do not have a sense of self, of identity. I feel like I have always navigated this life as an imposter, and I knew very early on (as a kid) that I wasn't meant to remain on earth for very long. To be fair, I didn't even think I would make it to my current age (early 20s), and even on my most optimistic days the furthest I ever imagined getting to was 30.
I grew up in a 1 person household (my mom raised me on her own), without any other family member under the sky. They all either died in quite miserable circumstances (mostly suicide) prior to me being born or I never met them as they did not wish to know me as a kid. Being so lonely from the very start, I have always felt like a leftover, an anomaly that was not meant to be born, and that was just sitting there in the corner of everyone else's existence. The world, with its joy, complexity, myriad of social networks and dynamics, always felt out of reach to me. Sure, it has its share of injustice, of ugliness, of selfishness. Yet I never despised it. I longed for it, looking at it with curiosity, from afar. As if I was stuck being a glass wall.
One image that describes this feeling best and often comes to my mind is actually from a scene I experienced during my early years of university.
At the time, I was studying in a new city. I had just made many new friends (mainly due to the fact that I have always pushed myself to be (artificially) extroverted and to befriend people, in order to conjure my initial, existential isolation), but there was no one I had know for long enough to rely on. One day, during the winter, I injured my leg and had to go to the hospital to get it checked ; I went, spent the whole day waiting for a scanner. In the end, they found it needed a cast for a few weeks. I was a bit upset : I had a lot of uni exams coming up, already felt completely drained, and wondered how I was gonna take care of myself for the upcoming weeks. Yet I braced myself, as usual. Seeing that it was nighttime, rainy and cold outside, that I was just a teenager and that I obviously couldn't walk properly on my own, the nurses asked me who they could call to come pick me up from the ward. I said there was no one, that I was okay going on my own. They insisted in disbelief, quite aggressively : no one ?? not even your parents ? Your dad ? (I don't have one) Your mom ?
At that point, I burst into tears : my mom, despite being the only person I have, is herself a heavily traumatized person, who grew up being hated, exploited and beaten by her own parents. So, when her time came to become a mother, which she had never expected to be (she never wanted to have kids), she obviously reproduced abusive behaviors from her parents, despite trying not to. As far as I can remember (which is approximately around when I was 6yo), she has always belittled be, hit me, insulted me, threatened to have me handled to social services, to abandon me, to kill herself. She has a smart and loving side, but she's utterly broken, completely isolated, and unable to control herself. Most people would just describe her as 'crazy'. Growing up with her was so frightening : in the house, it was always just me and her, and the space was filled with nothing but the sound of her shoutings, meltdowns, crying, threats, sometimes even manic laughter. She was always fixated on me, obsessed by what I was doing, and she always disappointed by what she saw : a 'little bitch', a 'piece of shit', a 'pathetic trash' that couldn't be the perfect, respectful kid she wanted. (Sorry for getting carried away a bit here, and it's a bit embarrassing to complain about my lil mommy issues, but I felt like the context was needed). Anyway, I won't give you all the details about our painful relationship over the past two decades, but as you can guess she's not someone I can rely on. Even though we sometimes manage to be in touch in a somewhat normal manner, very regularly she cuts contact with me, on the grounds that I did this or that that proved I was a disgusting piece of shit who deserves to be abandoned.
That day, in the hospital, was in the middle of such a period. So when the nurses pressed me to give her contact, I cried, mostly out of tiredness, but also because it sucked to admit out loud that no, not even my mom was someone I could call to tell her I was injured. No one cared I was in the hospital, and it was just fine. So I left, slowly walking under the rain with that stupid cast and a plastic bag wrapped around it, to find the nearest subway station. But one of my new friends lived a few streets from there. While walking at a snail speed, empty and tired, I found myself next to her house. Her family is pretty wealthy, and the house was very beautiful. All the windows were lit. A warm, nice yellowish light filtered through it, in the pitch dark garden. Inside, I saw her : she was sitting at the kitchen table with her sisters and parents. They were all laughing. It was truly such a beautiful view. I stayed there for a few minutes, peaking at them. I did not feel envy. Rather, I felt relieved that such a place of happiness existed. Nothing crazy, not heaven nor an ideal family, I knew it, but just a place where people belonged to each other, for a warm moment in the winter night. And me, I belonged to the street, to the cold darkness, and I could disappear in it without anyone batting an eye. It was fine. I was there, but I could also not be, and nothing, no one, would be affected.
This image has stuck to me ever since. It is there when I go out, when I meet new people, when I feel good or when I hit rock bottom, planning to ctb. No matter what's happening in my little life, I know my spot is, like that day, on the sidewalk, the periphery of other people's life.
I am in a way reassured by my insignificance, but also quite suffocated by it : since I cannot feel a sense of belonging anywhere, I don't have any direction, ambition or anything. I have always put on a mask and cosplayed as a normal human, but unfortunately I have no reason to do so deep down, so I always end up being so drained by it. I can never put on the act for very long. And every year, it becomes harder to keep going with it.
At some point in my life, I managed to make close friends around these first uni years and imagined things could change. But life went on, and my friends moved away to other cities, pursuing studies or career in different fields.
For the past few years now, I have been back to complete isolation, to the state I grew up in. I have returned to my original state of nothingness, floating around like a dry autumn leaf in the wind.
I am exhausted.
I won't talk here about all the contingencies of my life that make me so exhausted : the constant poverty, the traumas, the psychological & cognitive disorders, etc; they are not the point, even if they are very heavy. One thing though : they always bring me to getting acquainted with people sharing similar struggles.
Like on this forum, ironically.
But as much as I crave mutual understanding, and as I feel empathy for all the people like us, I don't think we can build anything positive together. It feels like - plus - will never amount to +. I grew up next to a deeply miserable person, who was also brought up by miserable people, and so on. The curse never ends. It seems like miserable people never find a way back to normality, because they don't know how it looks like. They just drift far apart from others, like in that winter night.
So my only question is : do you know (from firsthand experience) or have you heard of people that were isolated from the start and yet managed to find a place in this world, e.g. to create a happy life next to lighthearted people ? Do you think it can happen ?
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