Harden the heart?

[wolfshadow]

What is more important when events, personality or other factors conspire to ostracize you from the general populous? Does priority reside in conditioning oneself into accepting that the path they walk will always be that of the loner, OR, is it finding ways in which you can either eliminate or at least suppress the parts of you that highlight your anomalous characteristics?
Speaking from the heart, it's effing painful to feel shut out all of the time and, athough sometimes the issue of false asssumption can rear it's head, the child buried in each and everyone of us, can't help but to resent society for making us feel the way we do about ourselves.
Intigration seems the obvious key, but what if, despite taking every possible measure, you still just can't fit in? Surely the attempts to do so, would be like picking away at a scab with dirty fingernails.
Perhaps the only healthy and realistic alternative is that of pure acceptance that noone likes or even cares about you. Can one recover from such a revelation to live out a life of contentment?

 

[Minus]

I would think it would be difficult though probably rather satisfying to claim that a person has turned their back on the world as effectively as it seems the world has turned it's back on them. Nice claim but i doubt the reality of it. Acceptance may be an easier matter though again i would question the degree of contentment.

 

[Lonesome Crow]

There's not a silver bullet. Everyone process and react to it in different manners.
Acceptence that there's HURT and accepting life on life's terms...or it is what it is.

Life is unfair and honeysuckle happens..and life did not single you out.
Knowing this will not remove the pain...but it might help one to start processing
the grieving and lost. Talking to people that had gone through the same trial helps.
There is compassion. There is Freedom.

The healing process dosn't happen over nite and the stage of healing dosn't
nesscessary comes a particular order.

Yes, sometimes I numb the fresia out to cope...I don't even drink or us drugs.
I mentally and emotionally shut down..it's okay I don't have to take it all in one big bite.

Harden my heart or putting up a wall ? A fortress is also a sort of prison.
Eventaully one needs resourse beyound the fortress and to take out the garbage.
Sometimes...if that's what it takes then that's what it takes...honeysuckle in your own honeysuckle for a while to figure it out.

Well that's like being constipated..eventaully that's going to hurt and usually people don't
function right if they have to take a honeysuckle. Being emotionally constipated is worst becuase
it can last for months to years.

It took me 3 years to start the grieving process of the death of the twins.
I kept putting it off or ran away from the pain. In the mean time I wasn't
living a healthy life style and i had a lot of depression.
Numb and depressed. Numb and depressed. Numb and depressed.
The day i broke down and cried..was when the healing process begin.

You can only hold your breathe for so long...ya know what I'm saying.

yes..be gentle and loving to that inner child

 

[wolfshadow]

There's not a silver bullet. Everyone process and react to it in different manners.
Acceptence that there's HURT and accepting life on life's terms...or it is what it is.

Life is unfair and honeysuckle happens..and life did not single you out.
Knowing this will not remove the pain...but it might help one to start processing
the grieving and lost. Talking to people that had gone through the same trial helps.
There is compassion. There is Freedom.

The healing process dosn't happen over nite and the stage of healing dosn't
nesscessary comes a particular order.

Yes, sometimes I numb the fresia out to cope...I don't even drink or us drugs.
I mentally and emotionally shut down..it's okay I don't have to take it all in one big bite.

Harden my heart or putting up a wall ? A fortress is also a sort of prison.
Eventaully one needs resourse beyound the fortress and to take out the garbage.
Sometimes...if that's what it takes then that's what it takes...honeysuckle in your own honeysuckle for a while to figure it out.

Well that's like being constipated..eventaully that's going to hurt and usually people don't
function right if they have to take a honeysuckle. Being emotionally constipated is worst becuase
it can last for months to years.

It took me 3 years to start the grieving process of the death of the twins.
I kept putting it off or ran away from the pain. In the mean time I wasn't
living a healthy life style and i had a lot of depression.
Numb and depressed. Numb and depressed. Numb and depressed.
The day i broke down and cried..was when the healing process begin.

You can only hold your breathe for so long...ya know what I'm saying.

yes..be gentle and loving to that inner child

Emotional constipation - I don't think I've ever heard that one before but that is such an apt term, in relation to what's going on up here *points to head* that I'll have to make sure I remember it.

Although I've had my fair share of setbacks, mercifully, I've never been dealt such a singularly cruel and devastating blow as the one you describe in your post. There's nothing I can say except thank you very much indeed for sharing it because sometimes, I think that people like me need a short, sharp, reminder there are plenty who are dealt a far worse hand and they are still able to summon the intestinal fortitude to learn and grow from the bitter past.

In contrast, the second option I submitted in the original post amounts to little more than an epic sulk. It could be that we are all just meant to fight on regardless of the dilema at hand and owe it to ourselves to find the courage to make that journey possible.

One of my main problems is that I feel an enormous amount of guilt for the various failures that have undermined my adulthood. Because my character type is instant gratification, somewhere along the line, a notion has embedded itself in my subconcious that the only way I can turn the tide is with some kind of spectacular victory. That is verging on delusional, and something I know I must strive to eliminate.

Thank you for your words they have made me feel a heck of a lot better.

 

[Lonesome Crow]

Forgive yourself...Yes very, very hard at times to do this.
No sense nailing that child within ourselves to the wall anymore.

We seek instant gratification to seek relief. A tempoary fix..a bandage job
I simply stated this as a unhealthy life style.
Honestly...I had a gambling problem and sex addiction.
I numb my mind gambling and my body seeked comfort through sex.
Yeap the ultimate buzz or jackpot...lol
Which cuased more problems in my life. It wasn't so much that sex is a bad thing...
I didn't do it in moderations. I use it as a vehicle to aviod grieving.
So whatever your instant gradification of chioce is....

Yes..build a wall to live in denial that there's problems.. Of course, especailly if there's addiction involved.
Yeap...from the guilt and shame we feel in with ourselves.

Addictions are actually symtoms of our deeper problems.
Whatever that deep rooted problem is...whatever it was that cuased you great pains in your life.
Whatever painful situation you couldn't resolved or had difficulty accepting.

That why I said ...I went on a Run. It's a common ligo term when some people go on a drinking or using bindge.
Running away from our problems or pains. At the other end of the spectrum (still unhealthy)...we Isolate.
Another way of putting up walls or not facing our problems.

That's what i did last year...Jenni's death put me into a tail spin. So i bascailly just isolated.
I've been processing the pain or grieving as best I can.
People here on ALL...helped me through it.

You can try looking into support groups for whatever you instant gradifications are.
You don't have to do this alone...

 

[Unacceptance]

It's gonna suck either way. It's either compromise yourself or compromise WITH yourself.

 

[wolfshadow]

It's gonna suck either way. It's either compromise yourself or compromise WITH yourself.

Agreed but maybe in everyone some level of compromise has to made twixt being themselves and conforming.

Forgive yourself...Yes very, very hard at times to do this.
No sense nailing that child within ourselves to the wall anymore.

We seek instant gratification to seek relief. A tempoary fix..a bandage job
I simply stated this as a unhealthy life style.
Honestly...I had a gambling problem and sex addiction.
I numb my mind gambling and my body seeked comfort through sex.
Yeap the ultimate buzz or jackpot...lol
Which cuased more problems in my life. It wasn't so much that sex is a bad thing...
I didn't do it in moderations. I use it as a vehicle to aviod grieving.
So whatever your instant gradification of chioce is....

Yes..build a wall to live in denial that there's problems.. Of course, especailly if there's addiction involved.
Yeap...from the guilt and shame we feel in with ourselves.

Addictions are actually symtoms of our deeper problems.
Whatever that deep rooted problem is...whatever it was that cuased you great pains in your life.
Whatever painful situation you couldn't resolved or had difficulty accepting.

That why I said ...I went on a Run. It's a common ligo term when some people go on a drinking or using bindge.
Running away from our problems or pains. At the other end of the spectrum (still unhealthy)...we Isolate.
Another way of putting up walls or not facing our problems.

That's what i did last year...Jenni's death put me into a tail spin. So i bascailly just isolated.
I've been processing the pain or grieving as best I can.
People here on ALL...helped me through it.

You can try looking into support groups for whatever you instant gradifications are.
You don't have to do this alone...

Although ironically, addictions can sometimes present a good starting point for the process of rediscovering onesself.
As weird as it may seem, I think my primary addiction is procrastination, clinging to the vacuum between one event and the next. Afraid somehow that if I try to move foward, it will lead to another mistep. The other is tobacco.
Once again, you have hit the nail on the head, because I can't think of a single aspect of these vices (bar the actual consumption) that isn't heavily intertwined with denial. There is also (at least in my case) a perverse thrill to be had in knowing that these things are slowly destroying me - a visceral answer to self loathing.

I know that this is a stark question Lonesome, but do you actually feel a 'changed' entity in the wake of all that has happened to you?

 

[Lonesome Crow]

Honestly....Yes.
I'm still myself but a better or greater version.
Kind of like a PC getting up graded with a more powerful processor, more RAM, bigger HD, better vedio card....etc.
Yeap...it's like as if I don't have those darn glitches or freeze up as much anymore.

Yes..there's been changes. Gradual transformations.
I honestly thought about hanging myself the day I googled
"lonely"...and logged on the this site.
It was a begining of me tearing down my walls.
So many people here reached out ot me.
They luagh with me, they cried with me.
They listen to me, they talk to me...visa versa.
I then applied the same principles in my real life.

I feel free-er or releaved.
I feel peace of mind and peace in my heart.
I feel the luaghter and joy from the child within me.
I don't feel like a prisoner or stuck
I don't feel lost, empty or alone
I feel loved and capiable of love
I feel serinity
I feel WELL
I have faith or a positive attitude.
I feel I've grown up some.

I'm not perfect...I still have my moments. I still make mistakes.
They no longer keep me in bonage forever or very long, as they used too.
I know there's strength inside of me. I know there's healhty
salutions to my problems. I know how to ask for help when
I need help.

Life still throws things at me...but my perception is not
that of trial or tribulations anymore. I'm more graceful

yeap...Isolation involved a lot of sloth and lack of discipline.

 

[wolfshadow]

A wonderful anaology and all else aside, I'm personally very pleased on your behalf that you've come such a long way. To further the metaphor, my state of enlightenment is probably still pentium 1, narrowband or thereabouts, but it is reassuring to hear that upgrades can be added, if the will is good.

Your parting comment was also something that struck a deep chord because if I'm honest, both of those qualities loom very large in my little universe. As do certain forms of immaturity. I'm not going to put myself down completely, as I feel that I have a selection of core virtues that do me credit when they have the chance to surface - it's just that I don't give them the chance to come up for fresh air very often.

Your input has been greatly appreciated, especially because I realize that it must make you wince a little bit to see someone struggling with similar (although by no means identical) problems that you have already dealt with, almost like looking at an evolutionary throw back. What you have succeeded in accomplishing today is to make me think thoughts that place a greater emphisis on solutions, rather than the misery caused by my various issues. It doesn't mean I've suddenly changed or anything but it has, for the time being, made the present a little bit more valuable.

Props my friend.

 

[Lonesome Crow]

A wonderful anaology and all else aside, I'm personally very pleased on your behalf that you've come such a long way. To further the metaphor, my state of enlightenment is probably still pentium 1, narrowband or thereabouts, but it is reassuring to hear that upgrades can be added, if the will is good.

Your parting comment was also something that struck a deep chord because if I'm honest, both of those qualities loom very large in my little universe. As do certain forms of immaturity. I'm not going to put myself down completely, as I feel that I have a selection of core virtues that do me credit when they have the chance to surface - it's just that I don't give them the chance to come up for fresh air very often.

Your input has been greatly appreciated, especially because I realize that it must make you wince a little bit to see someone struggling with similar (although by no means identical) problems that you have already dealt with, almost like looking at an evolutionary throw back. What you have succeeded in accomplishing today is to make me think thoughts that place a greater emphisis on solutions, rather than the misery caused by my various issues. It doesn't mean I've suddenly changed or anything but it has, for the time being, made the present a little bit more valuable.

Props my friend.

Thank you...for helping me. Thank you for reminding me where
I came from...becuase i almost forgot what it felt like that day
I signed up on ALL.
Belive or not I been having those moments this past week.
So many people are reaching out to me and trying to help me on
here and IRL. I spoke to my sponsor this weekend .
He shared his experince, strength and hope with me....
For some reason he just started talking about some major, major issues
the he had to go through. I can hear the pains in his vioce.
But he open himself up to me...Open up some old wounds that he didn't want to deal with
anymore...But he did so just to let me know..He wasn't bullshiting me and he knows excatly
what's bother me and that he can relate. A connection...an understanding.
Yes the circumstance on the surfface were different for him a year ago...
but he knew how I felt and understood why. He listened to me cried for an hour.
I felt the love and compassion he has for me.
I bascailly made an ass out of myself this past weekend
reacting to my pains and anger inappropriately.
I bascailly called my ex-gf a freaken whore in front of everyone.
He gave me hope. He gave me salutions or got me into salutions.
Maybe it was healing for him too. He's actaully the Doc. that
had to perform the operation on my ex-gf when we lost our twins
many years ago.

 

[wolfshadow]

One of the most difficult things that I find, is the ability to connect with someone on a positive level. The few friends that I do have tend to share a negative chemistry with me. Not 'toxic friends' as such but people who find solidarity in doom and gloom. This doesn't mean that the associations are a completely bad thing but it does set firm limits on how helpful we can be to one another.

It very much sounds in your case, that you have found someone who not only understands you, but through that understanding will never judge you, and also realizes that he can trust you every bit as much as you trust him. The value of that cannot be measured.

 

[Bluey]

What is more important when events, personality or other factors conspire to ostracize you from the general populous? Does priority reside in conditioning oneself into accepting that the path they walk will always be that of the loner, OR, is it finding ways in which you can either eliminate or at least suppress the parts of you that highlight your anomalous characteristics?
Speaking from the heart, it's effing painful to feel shut out all of the time and, athough sometimes the issue of false asssumption can rear it's head, the child buried in each and everyone of us, can't help but to resent society for making us feel the way we do about ourselves.
Intigration seems the obvious key, but what if, despite taking every possible measure, you still just can't fit in? Surely the attempts to do so, would be like picking away at a scab with dirty fingernails.
Perhaps the only healthy and realistic alternative is that of pure acceptance that noone likes or even cares about you. Can one recover from such a revelation to live out a life of contentment?

I think it is easier when you have no one. What seems to happen to me is I think I have ppl that care and friends then they do honeysuckle that make me think there just being nice and don't really care all that much. Like I do have ppl to go out with and they have in the passed done me favors. But then like just over a year ago now I had an operation and could not drive for two weeks and had to move back home for my mum to take care of me as I was unable to cook for myself. In them two weeks I had one friend that I made on the Internet from india call me to ask how I was doing from my operation. So this confusers me. Its easier when you know you have no one I think. Then thinking you do then you don't and then you do. You get the idea. its just better to know where your at then you can cope better.

I mean a real friend would had lest took 30 minutes out of there week to see how there mate was no matter how busy they was would you not think. But what do you do? Hold a grudge and fresia them off then have no one at all. Are just do what I did in this instance. Get over it but still remember it happend.

 

[wolfshadow]

I think it is easier when you have no one. What seems to happen to me is I think I have ppl that care and friends then they do honeysuckle that make me think there just being nice and don't really care all that much. Like I do have ppl to go out with and they have in the passed done me favors. But then like just over a year ago now I had an operation and could not drive for two weeks and had to move back home for my mum to take care of me as I was unable to cook for myself. In them two weeks I had one friend that I made on the Internet from india call me to ask how I was doing from my operation. So this confusers me. Its easier when you know you have no one I think. Then thinking you do then you don't and then you do. You get the idea. its just better to know where your at then you can cope better.

I mean a real friend would had lest took 30 minutes out of there week to see how there mate was no matter how busy they was would you not think. But what do you do? Hold a grudge and fresia them off then have no one at all. Are just do what I did in this instance. Get over it but still remember it happend.

I'm very sorry to hear about that, it stinks when you have to find out the hard way that you aren't nearly as important to someone as you hoped you might be.
It takes me back a few years too. About thirteen years ago, my Mum's then-boyfriend was having an affair behind her back. As is often the case, she was the last to hear about it and, quite naturally, was left devastated and humiliated when the news broke. It was a very difficult time. I did the best I could to try and console her with endless cups of tea and words of support, but there came a point when what she really needed was some emotional support from her friends and also a bit of detachment from our house and everyone directly involved with the situation. Eventually she decided to visit a couple, both of whom she had been firm friends with for many years.
This wasn't the sort of thing she would have done lightly, as my Mother is a very self contained person who normally copes extremely well with adversity.
When she arrived on the doorstep of these so-called-friends, instead of a warm welcome, after explaining the reason for her visit she was treated to embarrased silence, shortly followed by a list of spontanious excuses as to why they were indisposed. After all of the drunken 'I'd-do-anything-for-you' isms over the years, they didn't want to know.
Fortunately, my Mum does have a selection of very good friends who stepped up to the plate whilst she was going through all of that but I will never, ever forget how upset and demoralized she was after being so coldly rejected.

 

[Bluey]

I think it is easier when you have no one. What seems to happen to me is I think I have ppl that care and friends then they do honeysuckle that make me think there just being nice and don't really care all that much. Like I do have ppl to go out with and they have in the passed done me favors. But then like just over a year ago now I had an operation and could not drive for two weeks and had to move back home for my mum to take care of me as I was unable to cook for myself. In them two weeks I had one friend that I made on the Internet from india call me to ask how I was doing from my operation. So this confusers me. Its easier when you know you have no one I think. Then thinking you do then you don't and then you do. You get the idea. its just better to know where your at then you can cope better.

I mean a real friend would had lest took 30 minutes out of there week to see how there mate was no matter how busy they was would you not think. But what do you do? Hold a grudge and fresia them off then have no one at all. Are just do what I did in this instance. Get over it but still remember it happend.

I'm very sorry to hear about that, it stinks when you have to find out the hard way that you aren't nearly as important to someone as you hoped you might be.
It takes me back a few years too. About thirteen years ago, my Mum's then-boyfriend was having an affair behind her back. As is often the case, she was the last to hear about it and, quite naturally, was left devastated and humiliated when the news broke. It was a very difficult time. I did the best I could to try and console her with endless cups of tea and words of support, but there came a point when what she really needed was some emotional support from her friends and also a bit of detachment from our house and everyone directly involved with the situation. Eventually she decided to visit a couple, both of whom she had been firm friends with for many years.
This wasn't the sort of thing she would have done lightly, as my Mother is a very self contained person who normally copes extremely well with adversity.
When she arrived on the doorstep of these so-called-friends, instead of a warm welcome, after explaining the reason for her visit she was treated to embarrased silence, shortly followed by a list of spontanious excuses as to why they were indisposed. After all of the drunken 'I'd-do-anything-for-you' isms over the years, they didn't want to know.
Fortunately, my Mum does have a selection of very good friends who stepped up to the plate whilst she was going through all of that but I will never, ever forget how upset and demoralized she was after being so coldly rejected.

I had a very similar thing happen with my mum. Well there was some differences but I wont go into details. But needles to say my mum had a couple turn there back on her when she most needed it. I know what you mean about consoling your mum in times like that. There is only so much you can do as her son. She like your mum was lucky has she dose have a really good friend that also stood up when needed.

Friends are like an insurance company. You never really know how good they are in-tel you really need them. Then you just have to hope there as good as the advert was when you signed up.

Anyway it dose learn you to be independent.

 

[wolfshadow]

Friends are like an insurance company. You never really know how good they are in-tel you really need them. Then you just have to hope there as good as the advert was when you signed up.

Never were truer words spoken.