My journey through pain - 23. Chapter 23 - Patience

It’s hard to be patient. As days turn into weeks which turn into months and still there are times, morning times particularly, when I wake up literally shaking with fear brought on by a nightmare or a random thought, it’s hard to be patient. The anxiety never leaves me entirely. It is always there, whispering, or sometimes shouting. It goes with me everywhere I go. It casts a shadow over my day. I fight it, of course. I have even won some battles against it, but when I feel like I do right now, terrified of nothing in particular and of everything at the same time, it’s like I can’t really remember how it was that I could have felt victorious, ever.

Maybe I’m speaking in circles – I think I am. There is no linear narrative to my journey like there would be in a story, with a beginning, a crisis, a resolution, and an ending. This is more like a tangled web of crises and partial victories, of two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes two steps back. The process is complex and many-faceted. I feel trapped in the middle of it all and it’s scary to know that sometimes the panic attacks will threaten to come even if the previous day was okay, simply because of a bad dream.

Last night I had one such dream. It was about loss – the loss of a relationship which lasted so long and which I thought would last for a lifetime. I have been working through the horrible way in which my relationship, my marriage, ended so suddenly, but I have not been able to yet work through everything else. My life has changed in so many ways, permanently. I live in a different place now. I have a different job. I rebuild my life as a single man for the first time ever, since my relationship lasted for the entirety of my adult life up until it ended a few months ago. My ex was my first love, my first boyfriend, my first everything, really. My life and his were intertwined so deeply, so thoroughly, that even now I still feel adrift sometimes, as though I had lost an incredibly important part of myself that there is no way of ever getting back. I feel my own loss, but worse, sometimes I feel his, what it must be like, and it kills me to know he must also be in terrible emotional pain. He has tried, again and again, to seek me out somehow, be it only a phone call – but I can’t. I can’t talk to him or go back to that relationship even though sometimes I wish I could, because it was not good for either of us. It was hurting us, particularly me. As part of the terrible fear I felt of being alone and of ending the only romantic relationship I had ever known, I allowed many bad things to happen. I allowed our conflicts to escalate, I allowed us to grow apart, and I allowed actual violence to take place on both sides…

There is so much regret. There is so much longing. A little while ago, as I woke up from the dream, I blinked in the darkness and tried not to scream. Negative emotions swirl around in my head and they chased themselves in circles just like my thoughts. I’m finding it hard to rebuild my life, my days, and my own self-image while fighting all the time against the mental issues that hinder me so. Some of the evenings during this week I have felt almost calm, which is something for which there are not enough words of gratitude for me to express my thanks. But most mornings I still feel, to a greater or lesser degree, just like I feel today – trapped in a maze of fear and depression and memory and sadness and confusion. I have no control over my dreams, and so, it’s horrible to think that I am essentially helpless against the random vagaries of my mind, which might create dreams like I had last night with no warning, interrupting my sleep, making the beginning of my day such a painful one. What to do? I do what I can – I follow my emergency plan for mornings, I write in my journal. I tell myself that time is on my side, that every day it hurts just a little bit less even if I can’t see the change from moment to moment or from day to day. But the problem is that sometimes I grow desperate. Sometimes, knowing that all I can do is wait it out both terrifies and infuriates me. If only there was a quick and surefire way of dealing with all of this emotional instability for good, I would do it, no matter how hard. But there are no quick solutions, there is only steady effort, progress… And patience.

When something hurts, all I want is to make the hurt go away as fast as I can. If I have a headache I take an aspirin. But there are no aspirins for a broken heart. This last Valentine’s Day was awful because not only was I constantly reminded of the fact that I did not have a relationship anymore, which in itself is not something intrinsically negative, but what really hurt was the fact that I realized with great sadness that over the last few years, I had barely even celebrated the day with my ex. It’s like our relationship had already been over for some time, only neither of us had wanted to admit it, and had that horrible night of violence not happened, forcing me to leave… Would I still be there, with him? Would I be happy, or even more miserable than I am now? I am told by friends and family that I am better off now, on my own, away from physical and emotional abuse. I know this to be true, but sometimes the inpatient and childlike part of my mind which wants everything right away asks, then why do I still feel like crap? Why do I have these horrible dreams that make me feel so sad, both for myself and for my ex? Why can’t I fix this quickly?

I need to be patient. I need to take one day at a time. I need to learn to let go and I need to truly trust that time is my friend. It’s hard, though ☹