On personal deficiency

[Pyotr]

I'm 22 years of age, and I've probably had a hundred-fifty or so days in the last ten years in which I did not lay awake at night for hours wanting to die*. I feel that I am, at best, a burden on those around me-that I just get in the way. I feel so very alone, and, moreover, that that is how I should be-that I don't deserve better. That, even if I did deserve better, playing a role in someone else's life would make their life worse and therefore should not happen.

I feel like so many are gifted with compassion, empathy, and the capacity to love those around them-their family, friends, significant others, etc. Where many of you probably feel such things, I feel empty, cold, dead. I feel a complete lack of any real connections to anyone. I feel that I am so fundamentally different from everyone else, and in such purely negative ways, that I am not really an actual person-that I'm something less, something worse, something that shouldn't exist. I feel so very alone. So very, very alone, and that everyone would be better off without me.

There was one time I felt differently though-I felt that I had established a connection with someone, and even felt like I might even be a normal human being (and this was the source of most of the 150-ish days mentioned earlier during which I felt a bit better). I had met a rather nice young woman, and, within a few weeks of meeting, we were downright enamored with each other. It is because of this time that I actually know what it's like to be happy.

However, after a while, a mutual acquaintance of ours (a decent fellow, by the way) went through some sort of breakup with his high school sweetheart with whom he'd been in a long-distance relationship for a few years. When I saw the way my girlfriend-the one person I felt a connection with, the one person whose life I felt I was actually able to bring joy and happiness into-interacted with him and acted around him, and thought about their traits, quirks, etc., I could only come to one conclusion: that she'd be far happier and better off with him than with me. I didn't want to lose the one person who had ever made me actually want to live to see a new day, but I also wanted what was best for her.

I told her that I thought she'd be happier with him, and she vehemently disagreed with me. The seed of doubt had been planted in her mind, though, and it grew for a few months until she realized that I was right; the rose-colored glasses of new couple-hood were lifted and she came to notice and chafe at my myriad flaws. She left me, I arranged things such that it'd be easier for her to express her feelings for this fellow, and I provided encouragement. Within two weeks, the two of them were together, and I was largely out of her life. I kept away so their relationship could grow without her worrying about the entire ordeal's effect on me (she knew about my issues), and I have lost that connection with her. They have been the happiest couple I'm aware of for well over a year now, but I lost the one person I'd ever made happy, the one person who'd ever made my life worth living.

The time leading up to our breakup taught me a few things about myself, though. When she started to recognize and resent many of my flaws, I started to see ones I'd never noticed before. I came to realize that they are problems that no one should be subjected to, and that no one could tolerate long-term. And, in conjunction with these flaws, the end of the one connection I felt I'd ever experienced showed me that it wasn't actually a real connection, and that a real connection between me and someone else couldn't really happen

*not that it's much different during the day.

[Alaska1958]

It's certainly been my experience that myself and other depresives I've known feel a keen sense of personal deficiency and inadequacy. In that you have plenty of company. On an intellectual level I hope most of us know that, while that is how we feel, those feelings arise in large part from our depression and not from reality. Not that that has been any great comfort to me.

It's hard to know what to think of your former relationship. On the one hand you gave up the best thing you had going. I understand why, but almost any human being can look at themselves and say "I don't deserve this" or "I'll only let her down". I do think that we all need to be a little selfish and cut ourselves some slack. On the other hand I am getting divorced after 18 years of marriage. My wife and I spent much of that time resenting each other. I stayed with her partly because I was terrified of being alone and because I thought, I hoped that I was needed. Being needed, wanted and feeling useful are all very important to me.

She stayed with me because I supported her. She built up a reasonably successful small business during those years and once she didn't need my support anymore she started looking for the love and sex that she wasn't getting from me, somewhere else. It may well be true that I was always incapable of truly loving another, I recently told a therapist that. But I also told her that I knew that I was capable of caring for another. And I'm not sure that that might not be good enough if I found the right partner.

So you have a point and I might be an example of an older version of the kind of person you are, though I hope not.

I will tell you this, I have two wonderful boys and while the relationship between my wife and I might always have been more about mutual need rather than true love, but it was in it's own way pretty successful. We were not abusive to each other and our boys are happy and fairly well socialized. I worried that they'd be too much like me, but while they share traits of their parents, they are their own unique selves.

Take some chances my friend, lighten up on yourself (yes I know how hard that is) and take a stab at happiness.

[Frame]

I had just responded to your earlier post Pyotr; then I found this one. I don't like to use extreme modifiers like totally, never or always; Wow, I know exactly how you feel. That's my life in relationships. The excitement, the weird connection / dis-connection, the ultimate action of my pushing someone away. I was going to say the intellectual connection, emotional disconnection; but that's not really it, at least not for me.

It's more like I make a deep insightful connection on many levels very quickly. But then I hit a wall a relationship can't grow through. For me, in reality (as much as it hurts to say) I loose interest. I'm distracted by another part of my life and never really get back to where I was in the relationship. I try to come back but I'm a different person. Not being able to explain what's happening ruins a relationship. I've grown accustom to gently nudging a person away before that happens. It's painful but less painful, and safer.

I'm 52 now and I could say I've tried to to understand why this happens. The most insight I've found is that, for me, it's not about laziness or even relationships. I think it has something to do with finding meaning. And I think it means what everybody has always said is true; that I'm special. I hate being special. It's not fun. And it's not like you get a break. Well sometimes you do. OK, I'll stop rambling.