Reality or Illusion

  • Thread starter Thread starter-
  • Start date Start date
Reality or Illusion

Is everyone like this? I wish that I could be inside another person for a day. Someone that had a happy, healthy life. Can they turn their brain off? How do they feel? What are their thoughts?

Am I different? Or does everyone feel bad. I can't come to grips with the thought of having to think through every memory or feeling the rest of my life. Is everyone like this or am I different. Why can't I just let feelings come and go...accept the memories and move on. Why do I have to think, think, think about everything. Is it possible just to accept?

Am I insane? Why can't I turn my brain off. Can anyone? Do the happy people have a secret? Or are they really not happy. Is everyone just an actor? Am I just a bad actor? Or unwilling to accept that I have to act. Does true happiness and peace exist? Or is this a quest doomed to fail. If happiness and peace are illusions, I wish someone would let me know, so that I can quit wasting time and energy.

I view myself as not normal...what if I am...and this is as good as it gets. I could probably accept that, but no one will admit that it can't get better. Why can no one be honest. Am I looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that doesn't really exist? Maybe suffering and pain is our natural condition. Most people accept that and just live...why can't I. Why do I believe that that there is happiness? Why do I think I can achieve it? I've seen no evidence that it exists. So, why do I believe it exists.

I hear from people that it gets better. Better than what? The same people that tell me that feel like shit too. Are they just perpetuating a myth?...that happiness exists. I would like to be inside of a happy person to figure out once and for all if it is reality or illusion.
 
There isn't much to say to your post except (((HUG))) and Everyone is now or has been in the same boat.

Even Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Bill Custer. Big Bills.
 
Will, can't answer your question about everyone being happy or unhappy, but I'm pretty sure in my old age that no one gets through life unscathed. Some I think may have it a bit easier than others, but I'm not sure even of that since I've only been me. I have decided, however, that everyone is injured in some way. Everyone has had heart break/heart ache/terrible loss...all of that, somewhere in their lives. I know everyone I know falls into that category. That realization hasn't changed any of my anguish or pain, as anyone can tell by reading the things I write here. What it has changed is the way I speak to other people. Everyone I see now, I try to remember, is a fragile soul who has had to overcome some awful, painful thing in his/her life. It changes how I treat them. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't evil people out there...we all know that all to well.
We all have pain and we all are coping with that pain the best way we can and I can't presume to judge in any way how you're coping with yours and hope that you in turn won't judge how I'm coping with mine, but as long as we realize that we are all coping in some way, we'll be kind and supportive and caring and a little more tolerant of one another.
Walt Disney, among others, has taught us that "A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down" and that Sleeping Beauty always wakes up in the end. Tain't necessarily so. There's always that horrible after taste, sugar or no sugar, and sometimes Sleeping Beauty just dies. On good days, when I really do think I can see an end to this thing, I see me finally understanding what has happened to me, getting my little boy to come out in the open again and integrating with him, coming to peace with all of that horrible stuff, and getting on with a realistic view of life. I've always believed that life was tough and you enjoyed your happiness when and where you could find it...not the other way around...that life was wonderful and when tragedy and unhappiness struck, it was unfair and horrible and shouldn't have happened to you.
None of this takes away the pain and anguish of our SA. That was not pain inflicted upon us randomly by life, but by individuals who felt it necessary to inflict their pain on innocent children. What they did to us wasn't fair...wasn't random at all, and was evil beyond all imagination. I can accept random acts of awfulness strewn here and there by life much more than I can deal with the fact that someone decided that for some perverted reason, I should be his victim.
There is happiness, Will. That's why we're all here. Deep down we know that there is happiness and that we deserve some of it...not all the time happiness...but some real good laugh out loud, cry out loud, dance around the room happiness that we can think about when the bad times come. Much of my happiness these days comes from the fact that there are men here who care about me and what I'm going through and that I care equally about them and that I thought I could never have that kind of relationship with a man...ever...not after what he did to me. Also that most men are just like me and that I was just too afraid of them to notice. Of course, I still can't do that in "real life". I've still got my protective walls up. But I'm hoping that knowing good men here will allow me to lower the walls little by little on the outside.
No one is lying about happiness, Will. It's just that no one knows any more than you do. We're all just guessing here. Happiness is not an illusion. I know that. I've felt it. I feel some of it every day. And some day "with a little help from my friends", I'm going to dig out of this pit and be happy most of the time.
 
Will I understand how you feel I feel the same I feel like it's driving me more CRazy then I already feel and will anyone belive me?
 
Will - I think what you're going through is common for survivors. My mind seemd to be spinning at 1,000,000 mph when I first started to come to terms with my abuse. There were layers of thoughts that had no rhyme or reason, the just kept spinning and spinning.

You say that others tell you it will get better but they are in the same boat. I can tell you that I am no longer there. It DOES get better. But it takes time, patience and hard work to sort it all out. Like a big basket of laundry sitting on the floor, it has no structure or place to be. But as you pull out each piece, fold it and place it in a pile, then in a drawer, the basket begins to empty and, sooner or later, it will be empty and all the clothes will be in their place. May not be the best analogy, but I hope I got the idea across.

When I was where you are now, I wrote a poem. I am copying it here so that you know you are not alone and so that you can have hope that it does not stay this way. I promise!!

My mind is racing, racing, racing,
Toward a finish line that keeps,
Moving a little further away.

Always racing, racing, racing,
Full of words I cannot say.

It never fucking stops.
Not for a second.
Not in my sleep.
Racing, racing, racing.
I think, I feel, I judge, I help,
I hurt, I drink, I smoke, I love,
I live, I hate, I cry,
I cringe.
I cant stop racing.

- John
 
Will, I too have felt as you do, so know you're not alone.
Everyone else's responses have been great, so I will only say that anger was very important for my process. Many therapists think depression and this kind of mind racing is anger focused inward.
Get angry! Play contact sports or learn to box! Don't get violent out of the context of a sport with rules, but a release might help. I played sports with an intesity that's hard to imagine now, but it was very important then.
 
I went through life trying NOT to be normal. But I decided that no one is normal.

Every one has their cross to bear. If you believe in Karma, then maybe we are to learn a valuable lesson from what happened to us. I don't know. All I can do is make decisions for myself. I decided to learn integrity. It is MY choice and I am going to be honest no matter what. That is the lesson I am working on.

Gotta run, but it is very important that we all learn what WE need as individuals AND as a group.

BTW, martials arts is a good way to learn to let go your agression and anger. We are meant to learn to overcome, not give in.

I hope this makes sense. God knows I was lost for 40 years until I was forced to look into that mirror that none of us want to look into.
 
Will,
I can tell you it does get better. It does take some time and definitely takes effort but it will get better and is worth the effort. I don't hurt anything like I did several years ago and do enjoy a lot of things in life that I once wondered if I ever could. I still have occasional bad days but everyone has there bad days. Some disguise them better than others.
Understand where you are, Will. You are not alone. There are a lot of guys on here that care too.
Hang in there and keep up the good work.
Gary
 
WillIP, I often wonder what it like to be the proud owner of an unbroken mind.
I wonder how long these people who have seemingly good minds, could live inside mine?
An hour, a day, a week? Who knows.

I learned to live with my mind, I have to regulate things, and just find time to be me, and listen to music and stuff that calms me down.

When I first went through this stuff as a kid, my mind was like a nuclear bomb waiting to explode.
Sometimes, I feel like screaming out to people, just how much I really hurt.

We function in life through the various masks we wear, to fool people into thinking things are not so bad.

I think it is so much harder for us to express our true emotions, because they were broken or humiliated in the past.

It is not impossible to live with it, but you need to talk about it, and not keep it in,

ste
 
I hear from people that it gets better. Better than what? The same people that tell me that feel like shit too. Are they just perpetuating a myth?
Click to expand...
That's funny. Kinda like the line on "Liar, Liar" when the kid tells his dad that true beauty is on the inside. Dad says, "Oh that's just something ugly people say." All of us depressed guys are quick to chime in and say "It gets better!"

Dispite the fact that I have asphalt all over my face, I do believe life improves the more we do this work. Hope wanes on my bad days, but the fact is, I am having bad DAYS instead of bad months or years. I actually had a couple of pretty good months before this week. If you'd told me 10 years ago that I would good months, I'd a cried in your face. Yeah, right. Months. Whatever. Yeah, yeah, light, tunnel, whatever. But it did get better. I do have a life now. It's a life as a damaged survivor of SA, but it's a life. On the plus side is I have an empathy for people that is sadly lacking among non-survivors. On the negative, I have bad days.

I don't even want one bad day. I don't like starting over, feeling like I'm starting from scratch every time I land face first on the pavement of life. I don't want to be a survivor, and I wish I never had to come to this place. So I have an emotional handicap of sorts. I can't do what the "normal" guys do. But would I rather live in complete denial and keep playing my family's games and live this fake life where I'm happy, no really, I am happy, no REALLY, I'm happy. I don't think so. The choices stink, but the only way I can survive is by doing my work, by going inside, by coming here and saying "I was SA by my uncle. I was beaten by my father. I was emotionally deprived by a mother who didn't protect me."

I've come to the conclusion that I'll never be able to run emotional marathons with the "normal" guys. But I do the best I can. I pick myself up and walk, no matter how much of a limp I may have. And if I can walk and keep from falling down and maybe help some other guy who's also limping along the way, it's a good day.
 
I would sit in class and watch the other kids, and think about what it may be like at their house. Like if their moms make them snacks and their dad plays catch with them outside and stuff like that.

I'd think about how great it would be to be in the families like the ones on TV. Where everything works out, no one stays mad at one another for very long, ect.

I agree with Forever Fighting, I'll prolly never be normal like everyone else but I'll try.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top