When the nights get especially dark, it’s one of my last, and most desperate, survival instincts to reach out.
My friends know that if they hear from me later at night, I’m usually very not okay.
I had the kind of bad night that often ends with people not seeing the morning. I’m trying to be okay, but I’m not. I want to reach out to people, but I can’t.
I always feel like too much of a burden, that I’m bothering them, or that they’ll hate me. And I know I’ll hate myself for it the next day too.
It was the kind of night that’s bad enough to where I very badly wanted to send my therapist a message. Things haven’t been great with us lately, and I honestly think that’s a decently sized part of why I’m feeling so….dead inside. Therapy is one of the very few only good things that I have. And without that serving as a positive presence in my life…well…the bad just feels exactly as it does. Without the buffer, without the hope. Feeling less supported, and more alone, during a period in my life with increasing difficulty and pain….it obviously is less than ideal.
These were the unorganized thoughts I had rattling around in my head last night as the tears were uncontrollably coming from my face:
Can it just be okay that I’m not okay right now? Can it just be okay that I need you, that I need things to be good and okay, just for a little while? I’m having such an extremely hard time right now, and I just need something to be okay. I need us to be okay, and I need someone and somewhere to be safe again just for a minute. Just long enough so that I can catch my breath again.
Even though I wanted to, and felt like I needed to, I didn’t send that message. I was worried she wouldn’t care, or wouldn’t answer, or worse, would answer, but whatever she said would hurt, or that it would push her away even more.
This morning my eyes are swollen and I have a headache. An emotional hangover. I feel just as dead and numb inside. I don’t want to move, I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to exist. All I feel capable of doing is hiding, withdrawing, and ceasing to exist in any meaningful way.
If I weren’t pregnant, it’s honestly questionable if I would’ve survived a night like last night. I’m just not okay right now, and I don’t know how else to put it.
I am tired of fighting. I’m tired of fighting alone. But I’m afraid that I’ll scare people away with my brokenness.