restingjedi

[restingjedi]

Grief.

(TW : Grief, friendships ending, heartbreak, suicidal ideations, cognitive dissonance and dissociation)

A friendship of mine... Of 20 years came to an end, it feels like a divorce. Really. None of the boy breakups nearly hurt as much... Sigh. It's also true that my longest 'purely romantic' relationship has lasted 5 years. So the bois breakups didn't stand a fighting chance to win the pain-olympics with this one hehe, sigh.

It also came at the worst possible time for me.Not that there is a 'good time' for relationships falling apart. But at least, if I was in a more emotionally stable place, I would have had more resources and grounding to deal with it.

I had just gone through a romantic break up, hardly 2 months before this friend decided to dump me. Yes, I am using the word dump because she didn't care what state I was in and just decided to rain down all her complaints of months together on me, which started out with a reparation that she had to do for me. I wasn't ready for it, I didn't expect it and got blindsided.

I realised it was over for me also, when she put down my ADHD the way she did.

As a person who is just coming to accept her neurodivergence, unmasking intentionally yet getting hurt by people around (got disrespected and bullied by a few classmates just last month) and is just beginning to take up space as a neurodivergent person, this was extremely hard. I might appear strong and confident to the world. But inside I am still raw and very fragile about my identity. The long held voices of shame though a bit quieter continue to live rent free in my head, questioning my self worth based on how the world accepts me still is very real to me. The only safe space I find is amongst my friends where I can unmask, not walk on egghsells and not be judged. But this ex friend of mine was opposite of feeling safe and if anything reaffirmed the shaming voices in my head.

One thing, I have struggled with over the years, are emneshed voices. So her voice becomes my voice vv easily. And mannnn did that voice get strong over the last two weeks. I started questioning everything, felt like I didnt know myself anymore and felt like an imposter wrt to being a friend, a facilitator and even a 'good' human being. I felt like everything I am doing, did were performances and her harsh voice was the only true voice. I guess that's what happens when you don't self preserve in long term unsafe relationships.

Not having therapy in the meantime as my therapist was on leave, losing a dog I loved dearly, meeting my ex in consequence only further deepened this pit of darkness.

And I guess in the process of it, I lost the will to live. I was exhausted. It didn't seem like there was a point to my living.

I repeatedly reached out to some of my safest people ,begging them almost to give me reasons to stay alive. And help came in various forms... from daily check ins, holding space for me to rant, validating my pain and anger, making jokes on death (yes it helps me lol, reduces the pressure on intensity a bit).

Finally when I went into therapy, I was just lost. I had 'made sense' of the whole break up, but the grief felt overwhelming. It felt like I was drowning repeatedly, I felt like I bobbed my head up sometimes, but over and over again I would go under again. My therapist caught on to this passing metaphor I made and thank god to her! She gave me the homework of putting down two facts about myself as I was experiencing cognitive dissonance max. I just broke down the moment she said that, saying I didn't know anything about myself anymore. Seven years of therapy, seven years of focused self work and suddenly I felt like I was right where I started. Actually worse than that, because I had some semblance of self back then.

It felt scary AF.

I thankfully was able to do three things in this moment.

1. Get myself to my psychiatric appointment the next day.

2. Ask my loved friends the facts they knew about me.

3. Go to sensory deprivation tank experience, where I would float in water instead of drown.

That slowly helped. It was not an immediate dramatic change. But just floating naked in that water while regulating myself, the repeated passionate reassurances and affirmations from friends and my talk with chill psychiatrist, getting prescribed for a new anti depressant, is slowly making me see specs of sunlight...in what has felt like a ONE LONG DYSTOPIAN GLOOMY DAY. It's very slow, but it's happening.

I can very slowly and cautiously see my energy returning to me. I have laughed quantitatively more in the last two days than I did in this whole month. I was even able to (creatively and indirectly hehe) get participants in my facilitation rooms to share insights about my work that would validate my facilitator self. The sanity, cognitive consonance and sense of safety within me still feels super fragile but it's there. I can feel it. It's there. Deep breathe. It's coming back. It's there. Sigh. It's there.

I write this as a documentation to remind myself that I am surviving this with resilience at this moment... Sometimes gentle resilience, sometimes the pig headed one.

I write this as a reminder to myself that over the years I have been able to come up with novel ideas to survive, stay alive.

I write this as a reminder to myself that my community is around me, to hold me in my darkest times. That I am not alone.

Because on those darkest days, it is so so easy to forget.