Posted by zinya on July 24, 2003, at 1:11:01
In reply to Re: Effexor - what do u mean by imposter? » mercedes, posted by Daphnis on July 23, 2003, at 23:05:40
Hi Daph,
hope you don't mind if i chime in here too... I had been prompted to ask you if you felt like talking about this more too, but i saw that Mercedes already had so i didn't want to bombard you but i am inspired to say a few things to your brave and honest post here.In some ways, face to face communication is always best, but i think there's a special role for cybercommunication and, ironically, even more so with people we don't "know" in a group like this, which can liberate us to 'test the waters' of voicing things that sometimes we feel silly or awkward or embarrassed to tell even a close friend - sometimes just because like in that great quote you cited -- even our close friends and family - we can easily come to compare their "outsides" to our "insides" (i really liked that - thanks!)
We have some interesting things in common - we're the same age. And i too went back to grad school the lasted through my 40's practically. My dad too was alcoholic, and i too didn't really come to realize it til i was mid adulthood. He had quit drinking when i was 3, when mom gave him an ultimatum, but as you know, an alcoholic is always an alcoholic and there are certain key "personality traits" of alcoholism that persist, and they leave strong messages/imprints on kids.
I had divorced much younger than you did and don't have children (but some great god-children) so obviously there are differences too
But i can certainly relate to your sense of not fitting in, being different. I had some very distinctive differences about myself growing up that made my childhood esp. from age 6 on feel very much "on my own to figure out life" with a sense of being loved but not a lot of daily support for "who i really was" but instead feeling just enough of that need to please and a sense of expectations. I was outwardly fairly social but had an inner life that was completely at odds and one in which i felt absolutely like i didn't fit.
I think the biggest thing that has helped me -- and only since my divorce (after a marriage that exponentially worsened my sense of self, daily critiqued and belittled) -- has been to decide both that nobody really fits in (kind of like your quote) but also a sort of sense or motto almost that "weird is good" :)) ... But that doesn't always 'work' as a mental strategy by a long shot and certainly not while depressed and anxious.
It took a long time (including the last 15 years of periodic trials with anti-deps that never worked) to really finally think that maybe i have been dealing with depression for a long time, maybe since a car accident when i was 6 even that totally disrupted my life... And I increasingly think my dad was dealing with depression all his life too, never treated except by the false treatment of his alcoholic years... So maybe it's even genetic.
Who knows. But it took coming to a sort of rock bottom after i lost my mom this last year, and i sunk into quicksand that became eventually paralyzing and suffocating at times. So here i am.
Sometimes i babble on here ad nauseum, like now. Other times, i lapse out cuz i have zero energy even to write. But i am here and welcoming you sincerely and always open -- well i think i am, I try to be anyway -- to sharing such explorations of what it is that stymies us. Already i've found what an irreplaceable place this site is.
with warm good wishes, Daph,
zinya
poster:zinya
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030723/msgs/244754.html