You know how everyone and everything changes? Well, that is indeed a very well known fact. What’s not that common though is when something changes REALLY quickly, when something unexpected happens and it takes a while just for you to snap out of the shock. I mean like when you lose someone in a matter of minutes. Or when you win the chance to move to another continent. Or when the underground attacks happen. Something which shakes the world, or just YOUR world. It wouldn’t matter which one it is actually, cause if your own world is confusing to you, you cannot understand the outside world either.
So yeah, when your own world becomes a confusing and foreign place, you go through the five stages that I think a lot of people know already, and these are:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
These of course are not 100% likely to happen, for example someone may skip the Anger part or the Bargaining, or the stages may be encountered in a different order.. The time it takes for you to overcome them does not depend on time at all actually. You can be stuck in denial for years. And this is my case. 6 months now, still in denial. They say the first step is recognizing the problem and deciding to do anything to solve it.
Thing is though, I cannot decide whether I want to change it or be stuck in it forever. The shock I experienced was way too much for me to overcome and be like ‘shit happens’. Shit like that is not supposed to happen. But anyway, looking back now I realize I would rather this hadn’t happened – at all. I would rather I hadn’t met that person at all. My mind got utterly messed up and I had no choice in the matter, I just observed how it all happened: memories fading, thoughts being modified, pictures changing and everything just falling apart really. I witnessed my brain being sorta drunk, trying to figure itself out. I have changed a lot since then – I don’t mean it like in, I talk differently or anything on the surface. Just that deep down, I feel quite broken.
I feel there’s something very wrong with my judgement, with the way I feel about other people I meet and talk to. And what really bothers me is that he has no idea what a horrible thing he did..
PS: I wish you would accept that bloody request, I wish I could talk to you. I wish I wish I wish… you weren’t such a twat.
These two years that have passed (since the summer of 2009) I have encountered the highest highs and the lowest lows of all the eighteen years I have lived, and I believe it’s fairly righteous to say I’ve learnt quite a few things. To be honest, I think it’s an amazing feeling to be able to look back upon a certain time of your life and realize that you have discovered something, that you are a bit wiser and know a tiny bit more about the complexity of human beings and relationships. It makes you feel not useless.
Now, I don’t know if what I learnt is universally true, I don’t even know if it is mildly true, but this is how it worked for me, and I have a feeling my life’s not different than everyone else’s.. So here it goes:
1. People are not the same, and sure as hell people are not equal.
2. If you want summin to be done right you’ve got to do it yourself.
3. The feeling that you cannot be hurt (morally) is immense.
4. Appearances are extremely deceitful.
5. Money is way easier to spend when it belongs to someone else.
6. Words mean fuck all and are just a way to distract people from the truth.
7. When you are sick, your whole universe crumbles down.
8. The best and most intense love is the one which ends too soon.
9. No one can be trusted.
10. We never learn, we never change.
Alright, this is it. I must say I have gone through some serious damage to figure these things out on my own and I am well proud of myself. Two years, my bloody decalogue (not meant to be 10, it must be some kinda magic). As I said, I don’t know if they apply to anyone else, but that’s what my experiences made me believe so far.. If anyone has any objections, I would love to hear them.
Sometimes I wonder how much it takes for someone to crack up. Eckhart Tolle, a man who has been a great inspiration to me, got to be the wonderful, blissful person he is now specifically cause of suffering too much. After having a horrible life as a teenager, he said the change came in one day. That’s all it took.. Cause he felt he had had enough. He just couldn’t take it anymore, so he made it different once and for all. He believes people will suffer until the pain is literally too much to take, in which case they either end their life or change it completely.
My question is, when do people have enough? Well, of course it’s not a general answer to that but.. what does it take? Illness, problems or.. memories? In my opinion, memories could do it easily, especially cause if your mind is messed up it affects your body as well and you end up being sick. The reason I’m curious about that is that my mental health is going to hell more and more each day, cause of memories and stress. I guess that’s what happens when you let your past take over your life.
I am trying to convince myself that I don’t need counseling, that it will just go away, but I’m not so sure about it now. Instead of getting better I end up bothering nice people with it and RANTING? Honestly, I’m not this person, I hate complaining and telling ‘stories’ about myself, but yesterday was just too much, and I hate how the other people involved in this reacted. I saw no point in taking revenge on him, although I can honestly say I was the most affected by the whole thing.
This is like the biggest paradox I had to face : I call myself a future psychologist and I was not able to accept the idea of someone suffering from a severe mental disorder. Some would see it like a warning, maybe this job will affect me more in the future, but I want to do it anyway. In a weird, sick way, I feel I owe this to him. There were times when I could’ve acted differently but I didn’t and in fact I may have influenced his illness a lot more than I’m aware of, and I pity him.
I would have appreciated if it hadn’t fucked with my brain so much though. That’s the only thing I regret.. The panic attacks, paranoia and the incredibly weird dreams. Oh, and being such a mess that I make people around me sad.. And disappoint them. Way to go, Alex. Way to screw things up again and again and again and congratulations for trusting your amazingly accurate female intuition that almost got you in a mental hospital as well. Preferably other than the Bethlem Royal Hospital though, I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing what I did in the past two years.
For some unknown reasons I turned on the telly today only to see the most awful thing I’ve seen in ages. It switched on to BBC News and I saw some video about a war.. in which the USA was involved, obviously.
I’ll just say what I saw.. not what I believe, or how I feel about this whole thing as it’s irrelevant. I’ll just say that I saw a group of black, poorly dressed people yelling and burning stuff. They carried guns and behind them was a demoralizing, miserable land – all dusty, pieces of clothing everywhere, stones, food. Oh, and some fairly devastated small buildings which I believe were their houses. That was the background.
The people were yelling something, and one of them was no older than 12 years old and I put the telly on mute and just looked at them, sitting on my comfortable bed, in my cosy house, drinking some Diet Coke. Then a feeling hit me – it didn’t last more than a few seconds but it was horrible. I felt so sorry for those men as they stood there with their guns, fighting for life, I had no clue what they were saying, what was that thing they kept screaming for probably a long time, but I knew they were hurting, a lot. Looking at the screen for just one second would have been enough for anyone, and I mean anyone, to imagine what kind of pain they must have experienced.. I just wanted to find a way to talk to them, let them know I’m that horrible Big Brother watching them with my Diet Coke from my comfortable bed, and that I feel sorry for them. So sorry it hurt, so sorry I wished I understood their language and desires.
They were just images to me, just some people somewhere far far away, having problems. Some people dying.. eventually. I remember a character’s words from a book: he said geography, history, whatever happens on the planet right now, is not OUR reality. We know about it but we cannot experience it so the 7 billion people on Earth are actually just numbers – one could never meet them all so they’re not real. Well it’s funny cause I subscribed to that idea, but when I saw those images the people in them were as real as that cold can of Diet Coke I was holding. It was like a movie, but in real -time. You know how movies affect us more when they’re based on true stories? Well imagine a true story made as a film. Cause they were being filmed and all..
I wanted nothing but to talk to them. If I’d had a chance, this is what I would’ve said :
‘I am no more of a human than you are and you should not go through this. Please drop your guns cause they won’t help you. You can do fuck all to stop the Americans or anyone actually, your people is a poor and sick one, and you will eventually die.. You could not possibly understand why this will happen, although there IS an explanation, a very absurd one indeed. I know it’s not fair and I’m ashamed of people like me who don’t give a shit, and I’m ashamed of those who planned it all. I know that you will die sooner or later. You and other hundreds of thousands, but that doesn’t matter. Your life is the most important .. for you. Just how everyone’s life is. And you will lose yours cause of this sick masterplan. Being from a ‘developed’ country wouldn’t help either. I am at least glad to let you know that I could die as unexpected as you after all, cause no one could ever stand up to it. The rules have been made and the only point where your life went wrong was the moment you were born – blame the place where you were born. Not yourself. I don’t know you, I don’t know what’s that you’re saying or what’s written on that board you’re carrying, I don’t even know what language you speak. But you are a human being, and therefore you are amazing. And I feel sorry for you and for me and for us all. Rest in peace.’
Squeaky Voices and Creaking Floors 