I saw this meme quote thing the other day.

It said something to the extent that trauma can make someone feel that they need to isolate.

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week.

I even talked about in therapy.

Well, cried about it in therapy.

I used to be so outgoing.

I spent decades living my life on the outside of myself.

I would spark up a conversation with anyone.

Nowadays I dread people talking to me when I go outside.

Maybe that’s because the voices berate me when I’m outside pretty much every time I step out.

It’s rarely safe outside, from anyone.

But the last few years I’ve flipped for sure.

I’m more introverted than ever and I realized the traumas of my psychosis episodes do make me feel like I want to isolate.

And it’s deeper than just feeling like isolating.

I currently have zero desire to be around people.

And I don’t know if that feeling will ever return, thanks to psychosis.

I long for a relationship, friendships and the like, but at the same time dread the thoughts of them.

And two things can be true at the same time, so I’m trying to not be too hard on myself.

I want to want to be around people.

But I also want to stop pressuring myself to go out and make friends, or have relationships, because all people do is leave when life gets really hard anyway.

Everything and everyone around me left while in psychosis a few years ago – except for my parents, they’re the only people who stayed in my life, besides my extended family.

I lost everything at a time I was at my most vulnerable.

No one stuck around.

And no one came back around to see how I ended up.

It’s hard to trust people after that.

It’s difficult to be able to open up to new folks again when I deal with such stigmatized symptoms.

People just don’t fucking get it, and they don’t want to.

And it’s extremely hard to want to open up to people again, when I’ve just been abandoned time and time again by people who told me they cared about me.

Because I hit rock bottom again a few years ago, and had very little support.

How many fucking times do I have to hit rock bottom in this lifetime?

This last time was really bad though.

It was below the bottom of the rock bottom for me.

I lost my apartment and everyone and everything that was around me.

Got moved to a different state.

All while I wasn’t lucid.

My therapist told me I need to grieve this time frame some more.

The time and people and things that I lost.

That she doesn’t think I’m done with it quite yet, and I don’t think I am either.

I’m at a much better place with accepting that I live here than I was a year ago even.

But I haven’t fully accepted it yet.

It’s just hard.

I feel so lost some days.

I wasn’t ever planning on leaving Denver.

The years of the big, long psychosis episode I had from around 2018-2022 was extremely traumatic.

I didn’t know I was in psychosis for my entire life, not till Jan of 2021, and even then it didn’t click for almost another full year after.

I was put on Paliperidone in the fall of 2021, that’s when I started clearing up for real.

I knew I was slowly losing touch with reality back in 2018 – and even before then, but I was alienating myself simultaneously so people were dropping like flies around me anyway.

I couldn’t tell if it was me or them until it was too late.

It was me.

In case you were curious.

I spent so many years of my life bending who I am to fit into the mold of what other people wanted and liked.

My personality was me, but I would hide or stuff away parts of myself when someone who I wanted to be friends with didn’t laugh at my joke, or shrugged off my comment.

I remember there was a time I cracked a joke around my ex husband when we were still dating, he was surrounded by a few friends and no one laughed, well they laughed at me and my stupid comment, not with me, and he did too, and I never said a joke like that again.

And I used to crack jokes like that all the time, all the time.

And I just… stopped.

And even up till recently I still haven’t said a joke like that because I just noticed this week that I had still stifled that part of myself for the last ten to twelve years.

I’ve lost little pieces of myself like that over the years, and I never let them shine again.

I had a “best friend” since middle school who was the only person I was my true self around and she rejected me constantly. 

We lost touch for decades as adults and she popped back up in my life just to ditch me again as I was in a really tough spot.

It was 2018.

She just randomly blocked me everywhere after we hung out one night.

We didn’t get in a fight, no argument, no nothing.

I was using at the time and she didn’t approve but had actually used with me that night and didn’t say anything to me about being concerned about it or anything.

She acted like everything was normal then completely cut me off the next day from everywhere.

Facebook, phone, instagram, everywhere.

I was blocked instantly for no fucking reason.

No communication.

This is another reason why I don’t trust people anymore.

I let these people into my life on a deep level for decades then when I’m vulnerable they run all over me then leave, and I let them.

They abandon me.

And I’m left alone again to deal with the mess we created, by myself.

She was a horrible, shitty friend and I kept begging her for attention.

Why did I do that?

I even messaged her last year before I blocked her on Facebook. 

I wanted answers more than anything, but realized I had opened up pandora’s box.

So I closed off communication this time.

Permanently.

I know now she is not worthy of my friendship.

If she were to try to reach out to me, I would reject her.

Every time.

Fuck that bitch.

It’s hard thinking about this stuff.

Remembering the painful moments.

I need to work on my ability to trust people again.

Because situations like that have really strained my relationship potential.

It’s terrible to trust a friend to only have them ditch you at a vulnerable point in life.

And I had that happen with two supposed “best friends” (that I had for over fifteen years each), within a few months of each other and I still didn’t think the voices were a problem, and I still couldn’t see what the issue was me, and I still couldn’t remember anything that had happened the day before.

What kills me is they didn’t see my behavior as being abnormal.

That my randomness, my psychotic personality, was typical for me.

Fucking tragic.

I’ve been feeling detached this week.

Maybe it’s from all the walking after my vein ablation.

I’ve still been walking for 10 minutes every hour this week, and I have to for two weeks after each of the four procedures I need to have.

It doesn’t leave much room for anything else but a short read or watching something between walks.

It’s been keeping my mind busy.

-Keren