48 Hours Blackout

Some of you may have noticed that I have been pretty quiet for the last few days; none of my normal chatter on Twitter, commenting and reading posts, no #40dayblogging tweets, retweets, conversations or even writing my own posts.

The truth is I have been struggling.

It’s not easy for me to open up to people or even to talk when I am struggling. I have no idea if this is a man thing, a D.P.D thing or just a general mental health thing; but what I do know is that I have a habit of doing it.

I know there are certain characteristic traits to my D.P.D that shine through, as I mentioned in a post earlier this week, mainly that I close off from the world and only let a few people in; usually people that I feel comfortable confiding in.

That does sound like a lot of responsibility and I know at times that it is; I hate that it is.

On Tuesday a few things happened that made my self-esteem hit rock bottom; it plummeted lower than I was comfortable with. I felt worthless, isolated and truly horrible. Everything that I knew was true ended up feeling muddled; the only way I can describe it is like looking into a mirror but the reflection that you see back isn’t the person you though were looking into the mirror in the first place. I couldn’t seem to find something to hold on to and felt very lost.

I immediately started disliking myself too as the post that day was a very positive one; a post about finding and knowing who you are when negative comments hit you. How hypocritical did I feel writing a list of my good traits, my positives, when in truth I couldn’t even see them? Felt, very much so, that I was putting a false me out to the public domain, when in reality I was feeling terrible

I detested myself and in doing so I hid; I felt, and still do, worthless, isolated, belittled and rejected.

This meant one thing: My D.P.D was definitely flaring; I was struggling to function, to do everyday things without knowing what the best course of action was: Do I hide? Do I Talk? Do I write? What should I wear? What should I eat?

I just didn’t know.

My anxiety was racing; every decision was a strain, so ultimately I hid and decided the best thing to do was try and block everything and everyone out. Only letting people in that I thought, wholeheartedly, would understand.  It happens though that within the two days I only had contact with two people; one: someone who I have regular contact with and if more than anything I wouldn’t want them to worry and the second: someone asking after me that I knew would understand if I said that I am struggling. For the rest of the world, and my apologies for this, I was shut off.

It’s difficult though because this is something that is meant to be good for me; closing me off and forcibly isolating myself is the complete opposite to what my D.P.D wants me to do. It wants me to seek others and not deal with things alone; yet if I can cope with the deafening sound of isolation and become productive through it then that’s a massive positive in the fight against it. However; the sound of nothing is extremely deafening.

Distraction techniques and patterns that I knew would help in self-worth were difficult and didn’t seem to work; the path was clear, waiting it out until I felt I could do something. So after forcing myself off to work this evening I came back and thought that writing this might be a start to rebuilding and having another go at knowing my positives and more importantly knowing who I am again.

So, I am sorry if it seemed liked I disappeared for a few days but this is why; I might not even be that productive and spring back into things but one day at a time.