It's all tumbling down and I don't want it to stop

But I would like to know how to navigate it in a way that leads to healing, and growth, and maybe even emotional maturity

Last week, I told you I’m starving myself because I’m so distraught over my recent breakup with my friend. I’m afraid not much has changed since then. (Except I’ve probably lost a pound or two…)

I’m still horribly distraught. And I’m still not eating.

I’m not sleeping well, either. I can’t get to sleep when I lay down at night, so I sit up until 2 or 3, listening to music and playing games on my tablet, and then I wind up sleeping until noon or later…

So… yeah… I’m still hurting a lot.

But I’m also sorting some things out, and that’s good for me, because the last time I sorted anything like this was probably 1993. That’s about the time I tried to stop feeling.

I was 16, and awkward, and lived in a home where nobody talked about their feelings… and so I kept everything bottled up… and tried like hell to keep it from ever spilling out.

I was still doing “okay” at 16. I was going to school — and occasionally, even going to class! (Kidding. Not kidding.)

I was making friends… writing poetry and short stories… playing the guitar (really badly, I might add, but I took lessons for like a year before I decided it wasn’t for me… or, at least, it wasn’t the right time yet.)

And I was in love.

My first true love.

And she was fantastic. I always liked girls — like, literally always liked girls — but being in love with one was magnificent.

I was ridiculously popular… much more than I should’ve been, for all the effort I didn’t put into it…

Things were good when I was 16, only… underneath it all, I was anxious, depressed, and afraid… and I knew that at any moment my whole life could come tumbling down and it would all be over… and I was so scared that I was gonna ruin things.

I had crafted a particular image that I wanted everybody around me to see… and I was convinced that my friends only liked me because of the image I portrayed.

Nobody could ever like awkward, depressed, anxious me… so that version of myself had to be locked away where no one would ever find it…

Not even me.

The problem is, though, that was who I really was underneath the persona I presented to everyone around me.

I was lonely, anxious, awkward, depressed, confused and frightened.

And I was convinced I could never let anybody find that out.

So I shut down. I avoided my problems. I kept everything to myself. I refused to tell another living soul any time I was hurting, or lonely, or afraid.

I thought if I just continued to ignore all those feelings, eventually they would go away.

Surprise.

They’re all still with me today. Every. Single. One.

And this breakup is bringing every one of them to the surface, slapping me in the face, kicking me in the teeth, whatever worn-out cliche you wanna use, I’m feeling it this week.

As I mourn the loss of my current friendship, I’m also — for the first time in my life — mourning the loss of friends and girlfriends from high school… and all the friends I made in the Navy… and in massage school… basically everyone who’s ever come into my life and then gone away, leaving me alone…

I’m mourning them all now as I try to work through this one present-day breakup, which, by itself, is heavy enough. But now I miss everybody I ever knew, and allowed to drift away because I didn’t want to deal with my own difficult emotions, and they reminded me of the things I was trying to run away from… trying to escape…

I feel so empty.

Actually, that’s not true. I’m not empty… what I am is angry, and bitter, and afraid… and confused.

I’ve spent my whole life avoiding my feelings. So it’s not a surprise that now, I don’t know how to make sense of them all. It’s so hard! I honestly don’t know how people manage to get out of bed every morning, go to work, pay all their bills, raise a family… I can’t do all that.

I can’t even tell if I’m angry at my present-day friend, or if it’s residual anger for all the things I’ve never dealt with before… and it hurts, and it frightens me because what if I lose control and what if I say something really awful to my current friends and I push them away because I don’t know how to handle being angry?

What if I’m just stuck like this for the rest of my life now?

What if I’ve been this way for so long, it’s impossible for me to change?

I don’t know how to deal with my feelings. Except, apparently, to deny myself the right to eat… but that’s not gonna lead to the lifestyle I’m trying to create for myself.

I wish I would’ve dealt with all this stuff when it happened.

I wish somebody would’ve told teenage me, that I need to talk about my problems, that I need to get help to understand my feelings, and that I need to let other people in. I feel like my life today would be so different if just once, I had actually opened up to a friend or family member and told them what I was going through and persisted until I got the help I needed.

But I didn’t know how. Hell, I didn’t even know that a person could get real help for their problems. I didn’t have anybody in my immediate environment who dealt with their problems, in any way, shape, or form.

Nobody ever told me I could change. Nobody ever told me I could live my life differently from what was becoming my default: avoid, deny, hide from, omit, abdicate, and generally just try to outrun, and hope that you can keep running long enough that you’ll die before your problems ever catch up with you.

Now, today, I know nobody else is to blame for the way I live my life today.

But scared, confused, anxious, upset, sixteen-year-old emotional me, sure does wish I could hold someone else accountable for how my life has turned out.

But deep inside, I know it’s not anybody’s fault. Not even mine, honestly. Because how can I be blamed for letting things get so out of control, when I didn’t consciously know that’s what I was making happen?

It’s not my fault that I’m 48 years old and I hate so many things about me.

But if I ever, ever want to be any different than what I am today… it is my responsibility to do something about it.

I just wish I knew what to do.

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