Broken spirit
September 18, 2023
Mood: Papers Please Death Theme
I went no contact with the girl I loved and "stayed friends with" a week ago now, after one last conversation where it became clear she wouldn't ever put in effort to repair things. I considered myself ghosted after two weeks and a half without any sort of communication. Our bare minimum was once a week. I reached out once to ask how she was around the week and a half mark, but deleted my messages after a few hours without any reply, because it raised my anxiety to an alarming level. It wouldn’t have been the first time I reach out and get ignored for days or get a distant reply, but it was so unpredictable that I was apprehensive of reaching out, even as I’m trying to be less stressed about such things. My body was saying no.
I hate that I told her, on our last conversation, that I wasn't about to abandon her. But that day when I cut her off, I just felt my gut telling me that I had to get out. The idea of her coming back was giving me the willies. The idea she would come back after a while probably acting like nothing at all happened, or give a bullshit excuse and that I’d feel confused about my own anxiety, or worse, pretty much say it was my fault, made me nauseous. I couldn't do this anymore. I had a feeling that she had already hooked someone new or existing anyway, but I never had her social media so I can't see if it's true, and can't say I care either. I never even looked her socials up for the year we were in each other's lives, and even if I do find her profiles (I know her to have TikTok and Instagram at least), there's nothing remotely interesting in somebody's social media profile. Also, if I'm being entirely honest, I find that those things are a perfect way to tempt the devil in a situation like this. Don't tempt Old Nick. You give him a finger and he bites off your whole arm. Nope, Nick. You don’t get to eat Aral’s arm.
By blocking her and cutting her off, I did to her exactly what she would do to me all the time: say one thing and do the opposite, and I hate myself for it despite knowing she had absolutely no qualms trampling over my needs and refusing to make any effort to repair things, or doing it half-assedly once and then considering it done, or shutting down anytime I called her out on her bullshit, gaslighting me, and saying some things that seemed innocent-ish, but felt strange in the moment, and that I now find abject looking back.
I did the right thing, I even probably gave her a taste of her own medicine, but... I feel like shit about it still. I hate doing that. I hate breaking a promise, even if it wasn’t explicitely one. She had expressed fearing losing me, despite acting in a way that would make me, in the end, leave, or at least think of it. Looking back I think it's not much that she was afraid to lose me, Aral, she was simply afraid to lose the supply I was giving her. But does that matter anyway? If she ghosted, that probably means she found a new supply and I was no longer of interest, especially since it became crystal clear that I wouldn't budge on "you need to make an effort if you want this to get better, I did enough already". As expected, everything fell apart when I stopped making so much effort. I think I should've left as soon as I started feeling this way. I can think of many moments where I could and SHOULD have left, but didn’t. I was caught up in this mess, knew intuitively that it was no good, but was too afraid to leave, of the pain I’d feel when I’d finally say no and walk away. I was afraid of her doing the deed, abandoning me, but I think I was even more afraid of doing it, myself, because in my mind, it’s okay if I’m hurt. I have this thing of feeling like how I feel doesn’t matter so much, just don’t hurt others, because then I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Now, well. I find myself craving a bond like this again, as horrible as it sounds, but it wouldn't be wise for me to find someone else right now, first, and second, this was pretty damn toxic, as much as I didn't want to admit it until the end, and it's not much another person I would crave, it's that weird kind of addiction that a narcissistic relationship creates. A tragically common thing in people who have gone through this. I feel an urge to unblock her already, talk to her again, apologize profusely, expose myself as this horrible, horrible person who made a mistake and regrets it, but at the same time, the idea of doing so just feels wrong. I feel like an awful person, but still, I can’t come back and get hurt again. I have to stick to my decision, and if I come back when I'm already damaged like this, how much more damage am I going to suffer in say, another year, or six months, after another cycle like this? And what if the next one is going to be just the same? Someone who just takes me for granted? What if I get abused? What if I just cannot attract a healthy person, or worse, what if I'm too broken for any person in her right mind to love, value and want to be with? No, I shouldn’t, not now. I have to heal however long it takes.
This double-bind just kills me. I still cannot touch anything creative. I want to play my dombra, I want to draw, to write, but every time I get at it, I feel a surge of anxiety, or I feel really tired, and I give up after ten minutes max. I can read books, play games, listen to music and browse the internet, but I can't do anything productive. I was able to write at work, maybe because this was my work computer and I had left my phone at home, also mentally leaving my stuff there, so I could pretty much let my creativity run wild, but here, in my room, I can't. I'm distracted by things. I don't even have ADHD, but I'm so all over the place and unstable right now that I just get carried away by anything that catches my attention, which I hate. I like to be able to focus on one thing at a time. I hate being pulled in 50 directions and being scatterbrained.
I lost my will to live, pretty much, and this idea that whether I stay where I am or come back to this girl I'm going to be fucked regardless is unbearable. I feel I have nothing to live for. It's like I was drained dry of whatever life force I had. I've never had something do that much of a number on me in the past, and I'm not exaggerating saying that. In the past at least I kept my hobbies, even at my worst. Some of my best art pieces were drawn when I was in absolute mental hell. I've never felt so much like... I was so devoid of anything of personality, of direction, of whatever else made me myself. It’s like I endured so much, time after time, that now, there’s just nothing of Aral left. It’s just some bones. It’s not a desert in the place of a sea, it’s deader than that.
If I can't access my creativity, who am I? If all I can do is indulge in this information addiction, read, listen to music and play games, in other words consume rather than create, who am I? If I can't even learn a new language, as I can't even touch Portuguese right now, who am I? Who am I now that I lost my passion for things I used to enjoy? The worst of it all: who am I if I can't even see a future for myself anymore? If you had asked me a year and half ago where I'd be in 10 years, I would've replied Kazakhstan, I would've said I made it as a writer, that I made a valuable contribution to the world. That maybe I launched a new literary current that is spiritually focused, or that my work has a bit of a niche cult following that I know well and exchange with on a regular basis, some readers being closer than others. I would've talked about my inner world.
Now? Where do I see myself in 10 years? I don't know. I just know I might be okay, but I'm afraid my old dreams and ambitions are dead, and that on top of that, I was deluded about my capabilities. That in 10 years, I'll be alone, forgotten, will have forgotten my foreign languages, that I will not have made it as a writer, that 10 years will have passed by while I drowned in alcohol addiction (which I don't have, just to reassure you, reader), dissociated into the internet, and did nothing. 10 years is a tad exaggerated here as I'll most likely be over this by then, but it's to illustrate how I just have no ambition anymore, how empty I feel, how I feel like a shell of my former self.
The system I had created for characterization, my zodiac, the historical Kazakhs tied to each animal and each expressing an aspect of themselves in a story, quite literally aspecting each other, while I, the thirteenth non-existent yet essential sign that brought everyone together, whose character was here to trigger the story and then died or disappeared, leaving the protagonist to their evolution, gone. Left behind. My spirit guide is the only one who remains, even if I haven't really talked to them lately (not a bad thing, we sometimes spend a while without communicating). My channeling, gone. Aral's spirit, gone God knows where.
I don't know if I'll get better. I will, most likely, but at what cost? It feels like my life has been derailed. There's the boat, but what if, you know... what if this, also, has no future, what if the owner never replies to my email, doesn’t even sell her off to anybody else and leaves her to rot just like I'm rotting, myself, what if I can't plan the financial cost of her reparations with the savings I've got if there's any serious damage that I can't fix myself, what if I have no future with anything except a miserable existence where I can neither write, nor draw, nor play music like I used to.
Where has all of this gone? Why was I so productive as a teenager with texts and drawings but now can't touch it? I don't think I outgrew it, but I feel so utterly pained that I never managed to get to the end of novel writing process, and that I drew only one piece in 2023, one, in February, that I don't even like that much. Rather I like the background, but I feel like I failed to represent the person on it.
I'm just afraid of the time it will take me to be me again, or if there was even a "me" to begin with, if I was ever somebody, or if I'll ever be the same again. I miss my enthusiasm for the future, my ambitious side, my desire to leave a mark on the world, my desire to be someone who gives a valuable contribution to society... but was it all a lie, in the end?
That's the extent to which I feel broken right now.