I don’t want to be alone because then I have to think and deal with my pain

Being alone is emotionally challenging for me. Sometimes I love having time by myself. It helps to reset my introvert brain. Other times, when I’m anxious or panicking, I don’t want to be alone. I’ll look for ways to be around people, so I don’t have to feel those intense emotions. Anxiety can be frightening. There are many times that I don’t want to be alone because when I’m by myself, I have to deal with my emotional pain. I’ll do anything to distract myself from how I feel. “Call a friend.” That’s what I think when I start to hurt; when I feel my heart physically hurt. It feels like it’s bleeding from the inside, but that’s not what’s happening. It feels like I’m dying inside. When I am alone, and I start to feel that hurt inside of me, I begin to panic. The panic makes me shake, sweat, and feel scared. I don’t want to be frightened and alone. I don’t think anyone would choose to be scared and by themselves.

Fighting feelings

I know that I have to fight those feelings and the only way that I know how to cope is to distract myself, so I call one of my close friends, hoping they’ll pick up the phone. If they do I’m relieved; thank god that I don’t have to deal with these feelings myself. Thank the Lord above that I am not alone and that I can tell my feelings to someone who cares someone who loves me, I don’t want to deal with them because I don’t know how to handle pain. And I hate being in pain. And I hate the fact that my mind won’t stop and that it swirls it’s tiny little shards of glass and hurts me, cuts me deep. If I can hang on until I make it to therapy, I’ll be okay, but sometimes that’s a long wait.

I can’t handle being myself

I can’t handle being me sometimes because being me isn’t sustainable for 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days a year and from there on into the universe when I am an alien because no one understands how much I hurt inside if I sit with my emotions. They say in DBT that mindfulness is the key to distress tolerance – sitting with your feelings, breathe through them, don’t try to change your feelings. Well, you know what? Fuck that shit; I don’t want to feel them, I hate them, I don’t want them, I don’t want them to leave, I don’t want to feel sometimes because those shards of glass are so painful that I want to sleep.

Brain overtime

I want a day off from my brain, but the only break that I have is to call somebody on the phone, and maybe I don’t even talk about my pain, I talk about something that happened to them that day, because it’s a distraction and I know that being alone is the last thing that I want to do. Whether that’s healthy or not, I don’t give a fuck because I want not to feel sometimes. Call a friend.

Call a friend

Call a friend if you need to call them because you don’t have to feel that hurt all the time. It’s okay to ask for help, and it’s undoubtedly acceptable to give yourself an emotional break because living with depression and anxiety and any other kind of mental illness is brutal, and don’t let anyone tell you differently, because you deserve relief, just like me.