Because of my severe depression and burnout after being diagnosed with a hearing disability, my functioning completely shut down and I lost all my friendships, my romantic relationship and my academic career. I was simply holding so much pain and internalized self-hatred and feelings of worthlessness, that I had no energy to nurture my connections or even take proper care of myself. Messages went unanswered, I quietly disappeared from people’s lives like a ghost, unable to get out of bed, struck down with a complete inability to function like a normal human being. I was carrying the thought of how much I wanted to disappear every second of every day, knowing I would never act on it and take my own life because even in my darkest moments, I knew it would make other people’s life harder. Day by day, I somehow managed to survive, with therapy, lots of self-reflection, and space to think about things. I am in the middle of healing and rebuilding, and reaching out to friends and trying to continue my career seems so overwhelming. My blood turns to ice when I think about everyone rejecting me, upset with me for not keeping in touch. I am a bit better at putting what happened to me into words, but I’m still terrified my truth won’t be enough. Explaining to everyone that my mind simply shut down on me, unable to bear the toxic self-image I had, the people-pleasing, the mask of a well-adjusted person who just wanted to disappear. How difficult it’s been to find joy, self-love and nurture my self-worth, to realize I’m worthy of life just because I exist, and that’s enough. How every day is a fight not to give up, how often I have to remind myself how far I’ve come in terms healing and processing. I have had to accept the fact that I will never hear properly again, went broke two times paying for my hearing aids, went through a time when I had to decide between food and rent, moved back in with family because I had nowhere to go, went through an awful living situation in which I slept, ate and worked in a corner of my dad’s kitchen with no privacy to even cry in bed (to this day I cry completely silently as a remnant of that trauma). I’ve come quite far in terms of accepting myself a little bit better, worked my ass off to earn enough to be financially stable and independent again and move away from the bad living situation, and now I finally feel ready to start rebuilding my friendships and career again, but I’m terrified. What if after all the work on myself I’m still unable to find words for what happened to me, speak my truth clearly enough for people to understand and move past the initial hurt of “you didn’t reach out to me”? Will I spend the rest of my life still surviving instead of thriving? Will I ever know joy that isn’t burdened by the shadow of what I’ve had to survive? Will there be even one friend left who will say “I am so glad you are here and I want to be your friend again” and not “you are a disgustingly selfish ***** for leaving me”? What would you do if someone disappeared from your life and came back and told you they went through what I have gone through?
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You post is so honest and so raw that it’s hard to know what to say.
From experience, some relationships will change and others will be lost. But that will not be because you failed in some way to explain yourself. It is unrealistic to expect yourself to find an explantation that will rectify things in a way that brings everything back to pre-breakdown. So let yourself off the hook on that.
There are people who will understand, those who pretend to understand, those who cannot understand, and those who refuse to understand. You cannot be responsible for the inner working of another person.
Say what you want to say and leave the rest. People get frightened of the dark places we go and try to preserve themselves from it by avoiding us. And that is okay. That is what works for them and they have a right to leave, avoid, or change the relationship for their own reasons. In no way is it an accurate reflection of your value or worthiness of being loved.
It sounds like you have come a long, long way. Wishing you continue to make strides. It’s not easy until it finally is less difficult.