Enclosed

To say the past few days have been difficult would be an understatement. It's been an uncomfortable replay of last year. Feeling rejected, drowning in silence, tears and feeling invisible. I told a classmate of mine earlier that I could feel myself almost wishing someone would bump into me so I could just feel someone else. Be acknowledged if even by accident. I likened myself to Mr. Magorium's Sock Monkey. The difficult part and the part people keep telling me (I hear you, please stop) is that it will all work out. I am worthy I am enough I matter blah blah blah. Sometimes even the most well meaning mentions feel like bullshit. Because you're not in a place where you can FEEL utopia, why the hell do I want to see a postcard? That's how I feel right now.

It's so incredibly difficult, still, for me to ask for help. It is even more difficult when you can't ask for a thing. It's not a specific favor not an exchange of anything tangible. How do you ask someone to just love you? Love you gently because you're feeling raw? Be tender with me. Ask me how I'm doing and be prepared for any combination of words tears and silence. Ask anyway. Hold my hand. Hug me like you mean it and don't pull back until you've given me all you think I need. Rub my back. Sleep with me. Literally if you can, figuratively if you can't. Include me in your prayers, I feel that warmth. Be my friend.

Is it that simple? I try in my own quiet way. Reaching out, but never feeling I have the right words. Peculiar problem for a writer. I gather up all the gumption I have left and ask for time. Usually, the people who know me best know what that means. But there are others. With whom I wish I were closer to...with whom I want to have deeper connections...But they don't speak the language of my silences. So they miss the meaning in my words.

Still I reach. And on nights like tonight, human after human...the thing I remember most about depression was how isolated it made you feel. Everyone felt so far from reach, like you could see and hear everyone around you but you just couldn't touch them. As if you were enclosed in thick glass. It was sadistic. To reach every time sharply shooting your hand outward towards an open hand only to have your knuckles cracked by the pane.

But I relied on the connections I do have. In my way, I gave my Hurt voice. I still struggle to share. Be bare. To not just name it and speak of it as separate from me but to own it as a part of me, and squared up. Because I can't say what I need, I simply asked for time and maybe that IS exactly what I need. Intentional, quality time.