Horror Head

Disclaimer: If you're not a fan of self-pity (and you'd be smart not to be), stay the fuck away from this post.

I don't even know how to write what I want to say.

I want to talk about being completely alone in struggling with something, and how hard that is. I want to talk about shame, and what it feels like when it's eating you alive, from the inside out.

I have no words for these things, which is only making me feel worse, because it means I'm an utter failure at even the one thing I'm supposed to do well.

I'm not good at allowing myself to be vulnerable. My greatest fear is I'll let someone know my weak spots, and they'll use the knowledge to destroy me. That they'll treat me like a subhuman speck of filth.

I revealed something today, said something out loud in the presence of others, that I'd never said to anyone, and that I thought would help me. I think I thought it would free me, bring me release. And maybe, as a secondary impulse, I thought sharing it would somehow make me feel less alone in struggling with it. Maybe I also secretly thought my bravery in revealing it was going to get me points and draw people to me out of admiration. I don't know.

It didn't work. Instead, what it ended up doing was make me feel even more utterly alone than I'd felt before I'd said it.

And then I had to walk away from this group, alone on my little path of shame and humiliation. Or rather, they absorbed themselves with each other so they conveniently didn't have to notice what I was doing, so I had no choice but to walk away, or stand there alone and ignored, like an idiot. So I walked. No one said goodbye. I was avoided. I felt like a big, hulking monster. Quasimoda. The Elephant Girl. Repulsive.

I went home, completely mortified, and cried the way you do when you're four. That loud, wave-after-wave body-wracking kind of crying--the way you do before you've learned it's not okay to cry like that anymore. That kind where every time you stop, you can't catch your breath before another wave is smacking you. I haven't cried like that in years. I thought maybe that would give me some kind of release. But it doesn't.

And I thought, I need to talk to someone; call someone. I just need one person out there to let me give them the full-on blast of my humiliated misery, the depth of who I am with all my flaws and disgustingness (and goodness), and have them love me anyway. Tell me I'm good and pure and that I light up their life.

And I just had no one to call who'd be able to do that for me. I mean there are people, but none of them can give me what I need in this particular situation. Or, I just can't bring myself to subject them to what I need. And anyway, if I tell them what I need, then it won't count. They'll be saying it to make me feel better, but they won't mean it. They'll just be doing it because I asked.

I don't know.

I've never been in this situation before. What do you do when there's no one you can turn to?

I guess you write a sorry-ass, non-specific, completely loserish post like this one. Because at this point, this is all I've got left.

Which makes me feel ashamed in and of itself.

If anyone out there has anything genuinely positive to say opinion-wise that would help me to see that this whole enterprise I call myself isn't completely useless, now would be the time to say it. As ashamed as I am to ask for this, again, it's all I've got.

But for god's sake, no pity comments.