Creed's Corner: A Collection of the Morbid, Mysterious, and Mrandom

[Violet]

Uuuuummmmmm yes please!!!!!!!!!


CD can we get one of these? Pretty please?

LOL

Oh wait, not enough places for tie-y things.

You can screw hooks in behind the bedframe, or drill out a decorative pattern by which you could attach rope or cloth loops to, or you could tie around the legs of the bed.

Depravity finds a way

[Jackalope]

Ah, hell, I have a nice four-poster bed. Plenty of ropey tiey attachment points there. :p

[Kitty Galore]

True story.

[Creed of Heresy]

Now just decorate that bad boy like the one in the image and bam you guys are golden. Or blackened. Either way. :>

[Creed of Heresy]

Time to use this thread as my little area for bitching.

Me and my girlfriend broke up on Friday. It had only lasted a couple months, but it's hitting me extremely hard.

See, this particular woman was my friend, and we'd been friends for around seven or eight years. I figured if anyone could tolerate being in a relationship with me, it would be someone who has known me for a long time and has tolerated being a friend with me. Quite amicably, too.

She knew all my personality flaws, all the things I know about that make things difficult; my quietness, my tendency to withdraw from others, especially towards someone I am in an amorous relationship with, at least at first. Told her I don't tend to call because I never know what to say. I don't know how to initiate conversation with others; I wasn't raised in an environment that was what I would call constructive towards building social skills. I'm not a participant in society; I'm an observer of it. I don't know what to do with people. I can interact with people....if they come to me. It's not a matter of confidence, it's a matter of competence. I'm not socially competent. I can listen better than almost anyone. But when it comes to talking, I have no idea what to do.

I told her I would try to work on that. I told her it would take some time, though. I told her it wasn't going to be immediate, that it wasn't something that just went away if I really, really gave it a lot of effort. It was something I would need her help with.

When I told her "it would take some time," I meant it would mean, at the very least, a year if she could help me. I think she heard "a couple months." We had "the talk" on Friday, and basically she told me she was fed up with my supposed "lack of attention." I'd tried. I'd started some conversations. I'd reached out to her. But whenever I did, she barely said anything. When I brought this up, she got pissed at me, saying it was because she wanted me to "say something other than what everyone else said." So I asked her what the fuck she wanted from me, and when you stripped away the increasingly hostile vitriol going back and forth, it basically boiled down to "I'm tired of waiting for you to improve, are you going to improve?" "I'm trying but you're not helping." "My dad has cancer and I need you to be more present." "I've said all the things I can think of to say, I follow the FB page you started to keep everyone updated on his health, I listen when you tell me about him, what do you want from me? You know what I am like, you knew when we started this, I told you, I warned you, I gave you every advance warning." "That was before my dad got cancer." "He had failing kidneys before and his health was already failing, his cancer hasn't spread to his lymph nodes, and he seems to be in good care, why does this change anything? I still don't know what the fuck to say, I told you I was going to struggle with that. You can reach out to me, you can talk to me, I'll listen, but I don't know what the fuck to say." "I told you I don't want to be the only one talking." "And I told you it would take a while before I got that fixed and that I needed your help to do it." "My ex from eight years ago is more present than you are." "Then go and get back with him."

It all went to hell from there. So, I broke up with my girlfriend of two months, and ended a friendship of eight years, and I was taught a valuable lesson...

No matter what people say, even if they are your closest friends, they never actually understand.

[Violet]

Never...? I don't think you give people enough credit, but hell... what could I know. Wishing you easier breathing, Creed of Heresy.

[rexbeccarox]

I'm sorry Creed

[Norman Humann]

I really have no idea what to say. That sucks.

But like Violet says, it's not always like that. There are probably many people who won't understand you, that's given. And they may outnumber those who do, but they don't matter. I know how hard it is to find people who can understand just what you're talking about, let alone relate -- I hadn't found anyone who I could talk to about anything related to my problems or emotions before I came on this board. I know it's probably very difficult right now to see the upside to anything, but try to focus on the people that do understand you. Feeding the negative is a guaranteed one way ticket to emotional hell.

I know what you mean, with not being capable of talking to people. I feel that way, too. I'm terrified of speaking to strangers and even friends if I'm alone with them, I never seem to get the right words, so I don't say anything even when I probably should. Being isolated and not having anyone understand you is hell, first hand experience here.

You seem like a really cool guy, Creed. Hang in there.

[robvalue]

I'm very sorry to hear about this Creed It sounds to me like you gave it your all.

[Creed of Heresy]

It's difficult to explain what I mean "never understand." Taken broadly, that sounds like I'm saying I simply cannot be understood. That's not entirely it.

It's...a relationship thing. An intimacy thing.

Since I bare my...soul, for lack of a better word, on this board so freely, I guess I might as well expound on that a bit.

See...one of the most overwhelming longings I have is for companionship. Romantic companionship, intimacy, affection. I fear abandonment and pervasive loneliness. I'm TERRIFIED of them, in fact. So powerful are these two parts of my personality that once I am in a relationship, my mentality switches over to one of fear. Once I am in a relationship, I don't know what to do with it. In turn, I become afraid that because I don't know what I'm doing, so much so that I become afraid I'm actually doing it wrong, or will be doing it wrong. I become convinced [and can you really blame me?] that I'm going to fuck it up [or that I already am] and lose what I have. I mean "convinced" in a very literal sense, to the extent that I will work to distance myself from my partner, to "dull the blow," as it were. Sometimes, if I particularly like the person I am with, I will try to push them away, to hasten the break-up that I am so sure is inevitable, so that they will not hurt as much when they leave me; if they hate me, they won't feel as sad or unhappy. It's not so painful, hating someone, but feeling abandoned and left behind? That very much is. Better for them to hate me than to feel abandoned by me.

I want love so much that when I have it, the thought of losing it is terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that I am sure that it will happen. So all I can do is control how I lose it.

When I can manage to avoid that, I still feel terrified of the loss. I withdraw, I distance myself. That way, if/when the break-up happens, I'll be insulated from the blow to some extent.

Think of it like an abused dog; it wants to trust you, but its past and its experiences have taught it to bite at any hand that comes close to it. You may love it, and want to show that, and it may want to acknowledge it, but it's indoctrinated to fear your affections.

That's basically me when it comes to romance and affection.

I don't expect to be understood. I know better. And what's worse is that I know that this will sabotage any relationship I try to get into. It's been doing it all my life up to this point, and I don't see it changing any time soon. I'm not getting younger. Almost everyone my age that I know is getting married, starting families. Meanwhile I haven't been in a relationship that's lasted more than three months since I was 17. Ten years ago.

It's really hard to see anything but the negatives. I really wish I could see the positives, but, if they're there, I can't see them. And goodness help me but I've been looking. Now this. One of my closest friends couldn't even understand me, couldn't work with me on this for more than a couple months.

That fear of abandonment has exploded into paralyzing terror. That fear of loneliness has exploded into screaming despair. I don't think I have it in me to try again. I don't think I can survive another try. And I've done this experiment enough times now that the hypothesis has become theory; every attempt is going to result in me being abandoned, hurt, and discarded.

I can take a hint. I'm not worth the trouble. Not every story has a happy ending. And not every person finds the love of their life.

Maybe this sounds like I'm moping and feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I am. I feel helpless, hopeless, and defeated. Nothing's working, nothing's going right. It's getting harder and harder just to get out of bed. Every day drifts by in a hazy, colorless blur, with no passage of time noted or remarked upon. I go to sleep lonely and afraid. And all the words of encouragement others give me comes through as if spoken underwater. I feel everything closing in on me, I feel myself shutting down slowly and I don't know how to stop it. I'm at the point where now I feel like if I got into a relationship, it would be out of pity from the other rather than out of any genuine affection for me.

The idea of therapy doesn't appeal at all, either. I'm a severe case of borderline personality disorder. My prognosis is a <10% success rate for remission beginning within five years of therapy, and only a 50% chance at the eight-year mark, with a high risk of relapse (~70%) within four years of initial remission.

My history with the odds and chances and luck is basically one of "just don't bother." Ask anyone who knows me personally and they will tell you, if it can go wrong for me, it will/does. I can't catch a break no matter what I do, no matter how hard I fight. I've spent most of my live struggling just to survive and exist. The concept of actually living is foreign to me.

I don't know what else to say. I'm even losing the ability to express myself these days.

I don't know. I just don't know. About anything. About myself, about my life. About who I am, what I'm doing, where I'm going, what I want... I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't fucking know. I'm losing my mind, I feel myself slipping away and I can't connect with anything or anyone anymore. I don't know what to do. I'm scared and resigned, in pain and numb all at once. I don't know what I'm feeling. I want to express myself. I can't do it adequately. I want to put my thoughts to words but it's all coming out insufficient, lackluster, half-correct but with so much missing. I feel like I have no mouth, but I want to scream. I need to scream. I have to scream. But I can't. I don't know how. Like I'm trying to describe color to a creature with no eyes. Or I'm blind and trying to understand color as explained to me by the croaking of a bullfrog.

I want out of this. I don't know how to get out of this. I know of only one way. I don't want to go that way.