OverFlow: I Don’t Know How to Communicate and My Ignorance Is Killing Me
Let’s begin with the obvious: I know going to therapy will help me learn how to communicate.
OverFlow is what happens when I overthink, overflow, and over-everything. When my feelings have nowhere to go, I write about them. Full disclosure: This is something I wrote on January 6, 2020. I’m still recovering from my stroke, dear reader. Let a girl rest! But I chose this piece to share with you because I’m finally going to therapy this weekend. It took a stroke to convince me to go.
Let’s begin with the obvious: I know going to therapy will help me learn how to communicate.
How do I convince myself to go, though, if I can’t bring myself to open up to a complete stranger? I can’t even talk to my closest friends and family about anything beyond niceties and shallow conversation.
It’s no longer a secret or a little-known fact about me: I have trouble speaking up and many of my relationships suffer because of this.
I know people care but I can’t bring myself to be vulnerable, particularly in real life. Writing posts that no one will read is how I process the heaviest and the most damaging of my emotions—and I don’t even do it that often.
There is a little voice that lives in my head, asking about everything I do and say: “Who cares? Why would anyone pay attention to this over the output of more talented people?” A little whisper when life is good, a deafening roar when life is unkind.
My ears are ringing, and have been ringing for months. There is a tangible weight that comes with the intrusive thoughts that keep me from communicating. I carry it with me wherever I go, suffocated by the pressure but unable to prove its presence.
It is a familiar feeling. I know I am depressed. I know I am grieving. I know I need to be honest. I know that I have no idea how to do this.
Sometimes I wonder: How much of what I observe stays between me and my senses? How much is lost to public knowledge because I don’t deem my input worthy of people’s time?
I feel physical aches and pains but share details with no one unless they’re noticed by others. Minutes stretch out and feel like months; memories distort and disappear without warning; dreamless nights visit me when I drift off, disconnect and mimic death at its sweetest.
I don’t believe I want to die, but there is a seed of doubt planted within me. Its roots grow inward.
No growth beyond what’s beneath the surface, nothing to bask in the brilliance of others, no clue to its existence at all.
How do I communicate and pierce the veil of invisibility I so carefully have crafted to protect myself? How do I ask for rain living in a desert of my choosing? How does that seed of doubt bloom into better days ahead? How do I weed out the roots that are choking what little motivation I have left to remain among the living?
I don’t know how to communicate and my ignorance is killing me.
Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash
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