I sit in her office on one of those gloomy Thursday mornings with my rigid in control posture. Tightness in the neck, shoulders, back, and slightly in the jaw that makes relaxation almost impossible and the wrong person giving me a massage creates more pain that I wish that I would just fall through the floor and die. There I am, sitting on the brown couch with my therapist across from me in her comfy looking chair staring at me, seeing beneath the façade that I put up. She is always impressed with the honesty and openness I bring to the sessions, but the way I maintain control over my emotions seems to impress her even more because I at times it almost seems that she is expecting me to breakdown and cry. There are moments when tears could be a possibility, but I am in too much control for that.
“I feel that I am not going to make it. There are moments when I find myself silently sobbing so that Derek won’t hear it. And in those moments I feel on the verge of losing myself to something bad, to letting those dark thoughts take over. It just seems like it’s too much and that I’m about to break.”
She sits there in her chair, silent after I finished speaking. I stare at her for only moment and then look away because I could see her eyes looking at me, almost in that cliché sort of way, seeing through the façade and seeing right into the soul. Then she finally speaks these words that will echo through my mind, “But you’re still here.”
I give her some look of confusion. “You’re still here Luis. You have not broken. Just when you say you’re about to break, you never do. You’re stronger than you think.”
She is right. In all those moments where I’ve found myself lying on the floor, with a bottle of pills, or a blade to my wrist I have stopped. At some point rationality kicks in and I remember who I am. Yet it still scares me. It scares me that I reach that point, and admittedly have almost reached that point a lot more frequently.
This journey, this internal struggle, is exhausting and frustrating. I am becoming less tolerable of person, finding excuses and blaming others for my actions. I find myself no longer having to push people away because they’re already walking away on their own. And I let them. I let them walk away because they have every right to. Please, don’t give up on my yet. I love you and I am sorry. I know that you are frustrated. I know that it’s my fault, but please, please don’t leave me.
I find it slightly cruel and humorous, right as I start to go through all of this, someone enters my life that could have the potential of being something more, and it scares the hell out of me that now is the time that I am really fighting like hell to stay above water. Just another one of God’s cruel jokes, right along with always being surrounded by beautiful women and straight men. Outside of the therapist’s office, I was told “focus on building your relationship with this potential new guy.” But if I am struggling on making my friendships last through all of this, how the hell am I suppose to make a relationship work? And why do that I have to come into my life when I seem to be at my lowest?
Now once again, I find myself here on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, and waiting for that sense of rationality. I know that I am stronger than this. I know that eventually I am going to pick myself up from the floor, put the knife down, set the bottle of pills aside, and go on living. But that isn’t enough. In every one of those instances where I’ve stopped, nothing has changed and it’s only a matter of time before I find myself once again down on my knees praying to God that rationality kicks in before it’s too late. It’s hard, this struggle, this fight, it’s hard. I feel that I am not progressing. I am stuck and I need help. This time I need help. I know I am strong, but I can’t do it alone, not this time. I can’t bring myself to get up because there is no point if I am just going to end up on the floor again. I need my friends. I don’t have very many of you, and please, I need you.
