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[Content Warning: Depression, Despair]
I've been feeling really empty the past few months. Like there's nobody inside. It reminds me of Dorothy Colleen's story The Dead Kid, but there's no Beth and no mother who misses the kid. Or the Bradbury story mentioned there ("There Will Come Soft Rains.") I feel like the real "me" (my soul?) died 55 years ago, and what's left is a body just doing what it was programmed to do a long time ago; like it hasn't yet realized it's dead. Today when I was walking into the village, the sentence "there's no me left" kept running through my mind. I've lived without hope for so long, and taken a perverse pride in being able to force myself to keep moving forward anyway, but now it's like whatever it was that kept me moving is running out.
I asked myself, why am I bothering to stay alive, and the only answer I have is that I have two children (ages 27 and 30, but they have so far "failed to launch") who need me. Abandoning them is somehow impossible. But I have this longing for rest; a longing to stop struggling to keep my head above the waves and let myself sink into the ocean; a longing to just let my mind and my body drift away to wherever my soul went. But I lack the ability to actually do it.
Comments
Hugs...
Sweet Hugs
Big Hugs
Peace and Love tmf
Launching
I have four kids. Three have launched quite nicely. The fourth is a free spirit who may never "launch."
It was easier fifty years ago when I launched. The first job I got was with an insurance company who gave me a brochure on my first day on the job. It listed my priorities as 1.) My God, 2.) My Country, 3.) My Employer, 4.) My Family, and 5.) Me. In 1970, that was how things were meant to be. Everything was laid out. Get a job. Keep your nose clean. Get married. Have kids. Everything will fall into place for you.
I was too much of a child of the 60s to buy into that Bull. I kept my eyes wide open and noted that several of the people who had full-time career jobs in the first office I was assigned to during my training -- were on food-stamp programs. Nonetheless, I worked for that corporation six years before moving on.
They gave me a good start, but I had student loan debt equal to about $70,000 in today's dollars and felt trapped. It took me almost fifteen years to start my own business. Within eighteen months of starting my own business, I had 45 employees. I told my people that I expected them to establish their own priorities -- but that I didn't expect them to put their job ahead of their family or their own interests. This seemed to work for enough of them to allow my business to run successfully.
Today, kids coming into the workplace seem to be really struggling. Employers also seem to be struggling. Friends of mine who work for corporations complain about being expected to answer emails at all hours of the day. Those working from home are forced to participate in Zoom and Team meetings ad naseum. Whereas my generation expected to experience a great deal of upward mobility -- I certainly did having grown up in a house without plumbing or reliable electricity -- today's young workers have far lower expectations. Homeownership seems beyond the realm of possibilities for many.
Your purpose in life seems well-placed. Your children need you. I hope you can find satisfaction in helping them. It is an admirable task.
It is not easy for me when my son whines about his chosen life. I'm sure it's hard for you as well. But. . ..
Good luck.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Asche, you must seek help
There is so many services and online help. You need to get in touch with one of them. If you can't or won't then please email me, or DM me and let's visit. I used to have contacts all over the U.S. but have lost most of them. Confide in a friend, share your burden with them or me.
Hugs Asche
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Fear not
Fear not, I've been seeing a therapist with a specialization in trauma treatment for a number of years now.
I write, not because I need advice or to be "fixed," but to overcome my early training to not say anything and, if I'm lucky, to have the unaccustomed experience of being heard. What I want and need is just for people to hear me and know what is going on for me.
In childhood, I was trained not to say anything about what I going on inside me or what I was feeling. If I ever tried, I was punished and/or instructed that I was a crybaby, that I didn't know what I was talking about, that I was being rude, unfair, and hateful to the adults in my life. Most of what goes on inside me I have no words for, because how do you learn to express something if you are never allowed to express it to anyone? (You don't need words if the only person you can talk to is yourself.) I suppose the goal was to erase all the parts of me that were inconvenient for the people around me, but instead I learned to put up a firewall between the inner me and the outer me and my inner me learned to function entirely non-verbally and spend as much time as possible dissociated. For a long time, anything I said or wrote could only come from the false self (the outer me) that was constructed to present the outside world whatever gibberish it required to leave me in peace. (And to prevent me from saying anything that would get me into trouble.)
huggles, hon
I hope you find life again soon