Five Minute Friday: Alone

This is my contribution, done in however many minutes it actually takes me, to the Five Minute Friday community. I don't do it by the rules, but if you want to, go check it out at Kate Motaung's blog, Heading Home. Just click the link at the top for Five Minute Friday to find out what it's all about. This week's prompt is....

ALONE

I am a naturally gregarious person and thrive when surrounded by friends and family that I love. I even thrive, to a lesser extent, when I'm in new situations with new people. I love getting to know people. I wouldn't say that I'm "the life of the party" but I would say that I definitely know how to mix and mingle in the crowd.

Given those aspects of my personality, you might think that I never feel alone, but I have and I do.

I know I talk about it a lot, but one of the things that makes depression feel so bad sometimes is that quite often, you feel alone in going through it. Obviously, this is the disease lying to you, but it is such a crafty and convincing liar, that you wind up believing it and that can be very bad. If depression can convince you that you are alone and no one else is struggling with it, then it makes it all the easier for depression's malicious twin to settle in whose name is despair.

Everyone feels alone sometimes, but when you feel desperately alone, it can cloud your judgment to the point that your ability to make good decisions is impaired. This is especially true of depression and feeling alone. People who feel that level of desperate loneliness while depressed often wind up wondering why they bother fighting the disease at all and those thoughts may lead to thoughts of suicide or a suicide attempt. People who survive a suicide attempt or a near-attempt quite often express the feelings that led up to that moment as hopeless, despondent, and alone. Hopeless and despondent are hard enough, but combine loneliness on top of it and it's a recipe for a very bad situation. 

While I have felt alone at many times in my life, I've never felt so alone as I did on July 10, 2013. Because I felt so utterly alone, I made a decision that irrevocably changed the course of my fight with depression and my life in the process. It was such an intense feeling of being absolutely and totally alone and with no one who was willing to hear me, see me, or believe me that I simply gave up. I gave into the pressure of a very bad situation and allowed myself to be bullied into something I never wanted to do. The end result was that when it was over, I was so much worse off than I would have been had I felt some kind of support and presence of another person who had my back.

I have looked back on that day many times and asked myself what I could have done differently. There are things I've come up with, but the reality is that I was all alone and, in addition, was very emotionally weak and vulnerable. The reality is that being alone and vulnerable made me collapse when I would have normally stood strong, fold when I would have fought, and allow myself to be manipulated by a big corporate machine when, under any other circumstances, I would have told them where to stick it and walked out. The loneliness of that moment led to me making the worst decision of my life and having to live with the consequences of that decision even some two years later.

Being alone has its positives too. I am largely quite an extrovert. That means that I tend to feel energized when around others. That is true in some respects, but I have a suspicion that my extrovertedness falls very close to the line between extrovert and introvert, because I also feel renewed in energy when I spend some time alone. This is particularly true if I have been spending a lot of time around a lot of people or a lot of time with people who, for lack of a better way to put it, drain me emotionally. When I get away from those situations, I feel a sense of relief and need some time alone or just hanging out with Gray or my bestie Sif to recharge my batteries. A true introvert would probably need to be totally alone, but I'm alone enough with one or two people in a relatively quiet environment. One place that I enjoy being totally alone is in the shower. It's nice to just relax under the hot water and I find that I do some of my best thinking as I'm shampooing my hair and washing the sweat and dirt off the rest of me.

Lately, I've really enjoyed alone time with Jesus. When I go to visit Fr. B for spiritual direction, he almost always hears my confession and then for my penance tells me to spend some time in the church before Jesus in the tabernacle. The first time I did it, I figured I'd spend 10-15 minutes and then leave. I wound up being there an hour and a half. I was amazed as I had no idea that I'd been there that long talking with Jesus and allowing Him to speak to my heart. I prayed and sang and cried and prayed and cried some more. I spent a good long time prostrate on my face crying amidst my prayers.

An hour and a half later as I was leaving I felt like I had left a huge weight there with Him. Even my body felt lighter. I also wound up having one of the most restful, peaceful naps that I've had in ages which was something that I dearly needed as I'd been up most of the previous week or two with nightmares every night and horrible insomnia. Thereafter, every time I go for confession with Fr. B, I spend a good hour at least, if not more, alone with Jesus. I think it might be healing something. I don't know. I would like to think it's helping some.

This way of doing Five Minute Friday is all new to me and I think I like it. I think it is going to work much better for me -- even if I wind up doing it this way, my way, all alone.