I Feel Haunted By The Ghost Of A Normal Life

[Mallaky]

All day, every day, I feel so close to the place I want to be. I just can't get there. Like Tantalus is unable to reach the fruit and drink the water, I am incapable of reaching out to myself.
I feel haunted by the person who I should have been.
There is that feeling that a better version of myself is constantly disappointed by my actual self. I just can't break through the wall that is standing between me and where I need to be.

I have spend too long a time thinking that maybe, maybe, tomorrow will be a better day. That better day has never come. Who is to say it will ever? Who is to say it will never?
I sometimes wonder if the beautiful dream of my potential is just a nightmare in disguise, terrorizing the part of me that is still asleep.
But what I fear is where I will be without my dreams and hopes. It hurts to hold on to them, but not everything that hurts is bad for you. Anyone who knows how I feel about brussels sprouts knows that's the truth. Then again, maybe I am just in love with someone I will never be. Maybe I am deceived by a narrative of others, who never saw me for who I was.

There is that scene that is stuck in my head for days now. Someone says: "You can't see me, can you? You look at me, and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like? I'm right here, standing in front of you. Please, just, just see me."
I have been thinking about that scene for some time now, and I still cant tell, which part of me is talking and which part is listening.
Confusion wins again. I am still stuck in my place, between the fruits and the water, and I am dying of hunger and thirst, and like Tantalus I just can't reach out.

But wait... Maybe I am stuck because the answers I seek can be found at exactly the place I am stuck at. Maybe my mistake was thinking it was either one or the other. I was attributing that quote to one part of me, but what if both parts form the whole?

Maybe I will make progress when all of me learns to acknowledge all of me. Maybe its time to stop thinking about different sides for me, and go look for the whole. Maybe I find what I am looking for when I search what lies between the two extremes. I wonder what I will find.

I look down and see the person I fear I am, and I look up and see what I always hoped and wished to be.
But who is looking?

 

[sun seeker]

Maybe I will make progress when all of me learns to acknowledge all of me. Maybe its time to stop thinking about different sides for me, and go look for the whole.

I think that is the answer, yes. And it's a process with lots of setbacks and plateaus. Give yourself credit for each step you take.

You've expressed eloquently some of how I've felt and haven't found a way to say. Thank you for that.

You are a good writer. As I read what you wrote above, I kept thinking this would make a good plot for a short story. Might that be something that would help you as you explore this, to write out your thoughts and experiences metaphorically?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

It sounds to me like you are experiencing an identity crises of discovering the real you. I also have an ideal self where I fall short so I can sort of understand what you are saying.

It is a journey to discover your true self. Humans are complex and emotional among so many other things and we keep on growing and changing on our journey if we are aware.

For me it began with what do I need and want? I had no idea. What will be it for you?

 

[Changing4Best]

I don't know that we ever totally achieve our dreams and hopes. Also, there is that old saying that goes something like "Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it." If you don't believe in prayer, just say hope instead.

I have had plenty of unfulfilled dreams and hopes. I am in my mid 60s in age, so you can imagine that I know I will never achieve some of these things, like having children. My body just was not able to have them and by the time that we understood this, it was too old to adopt.

None the less, I have in a small way adopted a younger friend as a kind of daughter figure to me. This is as close as I will get. I made her my Power of Attorney and the executor of my will. I have a niece and nephew, thankfully. I am not close with the nephew, but quite close with the niece.

I had a dream of travelling all around the world when I was young. I never got very far with that, but belonging to National Geographic online and having once owned a motel where folks came to be my guests from lots of other countries helped me with the fact that I did not really make that dream come true. I feel I came close enough in some ways. That is good enough for me.

 

[City Slicker]

I remember once hearing a line in a song that said 'take another picture'.

The significance for me was that I was experiencing confusion about what was happening, who I was, who I thought I was, who I became, and how it all happened.

The picture I had in my head was not what reality was and a lot of my distress came because I was locked into comparing myself to the picture I had in my head. All my expectations, hopes, dreams, conversations, reality, jobs. relationships, beliefs etc were all seemingly wrapped up in the picture I had taken long ago as a result of trauma where I put all my hopes and dreams into that one image.

Years later the distress I realized was that I wasn't wrong, the picture was. I needed to take a new one. When I was able to start thinking about taking another picture - or taking several pictures, I was able to start breaking down the minute details in my world to see that I was creating something that was uniquely mine. I was pretty tied up in the picture that I couldn't see my day to day accomplishments because nothing matched how I thought I should be feeling.

Take many pictures and as others have said, remember to 'see ' you and acknowledge even the tiny pixels that make up your successes or who you are. Those pixels are what make up the new picture.

Best wishes to you and I hope you find the things that bring you peace.

 

[Tinyflame]

That's beautiful @City Slicker .

 

[ladee]

While reading your post, I realized I have never had a 'picture' of who or where I should be. There is a deep crease between my eyes, as to how I could have never had any idea where I should be or who I should be. Being 'programmed' in 12 steps to stay in the here and now, man, I am so confused right now. But this is a good kind of confusion, the kind that makes me look harder , or maybe more gentle, at myself... thanks for posting this. Another piece of my puzzle. Sending you gentle hugs if you accept.

 

[Mallaky]

Thank you so much yall! I took so long to answer because the wonderful responses overwhelmed me. Needed time to breath.

You are a good writer. As I read what you wrote above, I kept thinking this would make a good plot for a short story. Might that be something that would help you as you explore this, to write out your thoughts and experiences metaphorically?

I cried reading your response. It meant a lot to me.
I really want to write. Stories, books. I just cant. The focus is not there. Its terrible. Its the one thing I hope I can achieve with therapy and medication. When I can't even sit down to watch one episode of my favorite show or play half an hour of my favorite game, let alone read a book, writing is a distant dream. To get to a point where I can read and write again, that is the goal. I have several outlines written, short stories and quarters of books, but I don't dare reading anything I have ever written. Havent written anything for a few months now, as life got stressful again.
Someday soon my 40hour a week therapy will start, and I already brought it up in the first meeting with the doctors, and their positive reaction to that made me decide it was the right place for me.
Even though I can't write, writing is still what gets me through the day. I think about it all the time, come up with ideas, learn about structure and all the technical aspects, everything I watch or read or play I analyze to death and when, not if, I am able to sit down and focus I hope it will pay off. Fiction saved me when I was a kid, and its still my biggest asset. On bad days I try to "consume" at least one story a day, which helps a lot. I have never opened up about this, I think, so thank you for giving me the opportunity. Feels weird. Also I am slightly dyslexic, but hey, so is John Irving and Agatha Christie.
Vulnerability hangover, here I come.

@gizmo You are right. I like to think of it as the beginning of the end of a lifelong identity crisis, which sounds pretty grand. But it seems the last months I have come further in discovering myself then I ever had.

I don't know that we ever totally achieve our dreams and hopes.

I am young enough to still believe I just might. Then again, "totally" is a big word. I am not even 30, and my dreams are modest, in that they don't require luck or money, just time. Well, "just". There are just some certain activities, that I hope I can still bring myself to do. They fuel my motivation to get better. It seems you never let go of your dreams, but just made your peace with what you got, which seems the way to go. Thank you for advice, good stuff.

Junebug is right, @City Slicker. Thats beautiful. Fantastic food for thought. I hope that this is exactly the process I am in right now. Is it supposed to hurt?

Sending you gentle hugs if you accept.

Hug accepted and reciprocated with gratitude! Have you come to a conclusion? I am not certain that not having that picture is a bad thing, or if its worse then having one that causes distress.

 

[RedKey707hp]

Approximately 5 weeks after my trauma, I was feeling very low and my support system is almost non-existent. I called the Crisis Hotline for the first time and one of the things the young woman I spoke to really stuck with me.

We can't take back our trauma and have to accept that we will never be the same people that we were prior to our traumas. We have every right to grieve and mourn the "death" of who we once were, and then the process of discovering your new self can truly begin since you have that sense of closure.