For the past four years, I’ve made a post on January 5. The first two were unintentionally on the same day. The third was intentional, and the fourth wasn’t completely intentional. This post is intentional, and, fittingly, it’s my three-hundred-fiftieth post. This post will be similar to 2023’s post: a reflection of what happened since the previous year’s post.
Content warning: mentions of suicidal ideation
Uncertainty
The Future
After a lot of back and forth and anxiety and overwhelm and trying to get answers, I did the thing I’d been fearing last year, four months after that January 5th’s post. After a year of having considered it, I’ve been glad that I did it.
Despite the seemingly common good outcomes of my decisions, I can still fear the future. Including currently. The unknown can get to me–it’s why I often like feedback. As an example (or even a metaphor), if I send someone a text message or email and don’t get a reply, I might wonder if the message was read or received, how it might have impacted the recipient, whether they disliked it or were okay with it, if maybe I said something wrong, if they didn’t reply because I’m freaking weird… and on and on.
Five to six months after starting the aforementioned thing I’d been fearing, I met a friend. About two weeks ago, I thought my friendship was over after the two months it had lasted, that I had ended it with my avoidance. Rift was written four days after a disagreement we’d had–or really a one-sided disagreement because I simply stopped replying without explaining anything. In Friendgredients, I’d said that I valued openness and clear communication, yet it seems I still needed to work on that. I recently got past the avoidance, though (initially egged on by concern for making the friend concerned), and now we’ve reconnected.
In the time between my rift with the friend and our reuniting, my suicidal ideation had intensified. In addition to considering ketamine treatment, I started an intensive outpatient therapy program on my own accord. With fifteen hours a week of group therapy sessions, I hate it. Haha. (At least I get to do it from home.)
Upon reuniting with the friend, though, my ideation went out the window, and in that time, I wrote Salvation, in which I wrote that I was grateful to have had the help to not end my life. When the ideation returned after several days (and less intensely) since talking to the friend again, it was due to fear of the future.
The idea of the future can scare me because it’s an unknown, because I can’t be sure of what’s going to happen. And so the ideation can arise as an idea of escape, as an idea of safety from any bad things that may be lurking in the future when I’m more or less on my own.
Honesty
I’d felt profoundly happy since my friendship reconnection. During my avoidance, in addition to thinking the relationship might have ended because of me, I’d been wondering if I’d ruined the openness. Would we be as open with each other as we’d been before? Would they hold back so as to avoid triggering my rejection sensitivity and subsequent avoidance? And would I hold back to avoid feelings of rejection?
Thus far, that hasn’t been the case. In fact, I’d say I’ve been even more open and honest.
In addition to the openness and honesty already present in the friendship, I think a recent group session about providing and receiving honest feedback has also influenced me to be honest even when the truth might be difficult to hear. Learning to be more honest, more open. Learning to say, “No, actually,” rather than simply nodding along or going along with something or not speaking up about it.
Authenticity–wanting others to see me for what I am. Perhaps fueled by my seeming identity dysphoria, when I can think, That’s not me. Several hours after an appointment about two weeks ago–after which I kept thinking/saying to myself, I’m not real, while also wishing I didn’t exist–I seemed to be able to articulate one particular reason that interacting with others could bother me so much. In addition to feeling overwhelmed, I figured that perhaps a reason I don’t like to interact with people is that, when I interact with someone, there’s a version of me that’s being materialized by that person’s perspective of me. And then I can think or feel, That isn’t me. These fragments of me that are just other people’s perspectives of me. (Never mind that I can also feel/think, There is no me.) (And as I wrote, “Makes me think of Serial Experiments Lain; perhaps that’s even where I’ve gotten the idea from.”)
And so I’ve wanted to be open, honest, authentic. Perhaps being so won’t form a completely “correct” or “accurate” perspective of me, but I think that perspective will be closer than not.
Honesty has been a value that I’ve wanted to strengthen, when it’s seemed that I’d been more honest in the past. And yet there is fear that comes with being honest. Is there being too honest? Is there a such thing as too much feedback? How might the way I go about being honest affect a relationship? Might I hurt the person, discourage them? Would I seem contrarian? I suppose I can just be honest and see what happens. I don’t want false pretenses in important relationships. I want to be able to be honest and I want the other person to be able to be honest with me. It’s possible that could result in hurt feelings, self-doubt, and personal insecurities, but I think I’d prefer if we work through those–be raw and real and try to show each other who we really are–rather than tell untruths to uphold an illusion. That can sound scary, but I would think the realness is worth it.
I’ve been afraid of the intensity of my emotions and of the potential of the friendship, and it seems such honesty and openness could intensify that even more, but maybe I’m willing to see how much deeper this could go.
In the End
I’m currently in a lot of therapy, working on rejection sensitivity, my avoidance, and suicidal ideation. I don’t know about trying to act on the latter. I mean, the intensive outpatient program will call the cops for a wellness check if I don’t attend a group session and they can’t contact me, and do I want a cop showing up at my door? Um, no.
In regard to the future and honesty and the unknown in general… I feel that I’ve come out fine in the end after every January 5 post I’ve made. I suppose that, sure, this streak might not always last. Regardless of cops showing up at my door, death is an uncertainty as well. I think death can provide an illusion of certainty. But, at least for me, death is an unknown, and so I’d really be trying to escape from the unknown into the unknown. And what when I’ve felt that I’ve killed myself before and that I’ve come back again and again, to repeat my life again, to perhaps, in the end, stop killing myself?
My friend and I have a lot in common.
I will feel the fear and do this anyway.
Previous January 5 posts:
- 2021: Feariosity – after my dad’s death and fearing (while also being curious about) the future
- 2022: Frightened – at the start of my mom’s serious illness and fearing what might happen
- 2023: 2 5ths – reflecting on where I’d been since my parents’ deaths
- 2024: PMM: Entry 75 – fear of trying something new
Currently Untitled 