With Defectiveness, you feel inwardly flawed and defective. You believe that you would be fundamentally unlovable to anyone who got close enough to really know you. Your defectiveness would be exposed.
As a child, you did not feel respected for who you were in your family. Instead, you were criticized for your “flaws.” You blamed yourself — you felt unworthy of love. As an adult, you are afraid of love. You find it difficult to believe that people close to you value you, so you expect rejection.
Depression is something I’ve struggled with my whole life. I have so much baggage. So many mental issues. It makes me wonder, “Who would want to be with me?” I can’t see how anyone would want to deal with it all if they truly knew what goes through my head. The thought of it makes me more depressed, which makes me feel more damaged, which makes me more depressed, and everything gets worse and worse.
I’m trying to break the cycle, but I feel incapable of loving myself. It’s so much easier to love other people. And when I can’t love myself, I can’t see how anyone else could love me either.
I don’t know. I feel the same way, and I know for the most part, there is a remarkable amount of self-hatred in me. Yet at the end of the day, I guess I was lucky enough to have someone take interest in me enough for the other parts of me, the parts that were not the emotional baggage, but the parts that were defined by me carrying an emotional baggage.
At the end, I owed it to her to do whatever I could to not burden her fully with what I held inside, so I did what I could to hold it back. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t know, but it means that I never took it out on her. She eventually accepted, even if she couldn’t understand.
That itself helped even me control the episodes better. Help me retain some shred of focus enough to pull myself up. She knows enough now to not take it personally if I lash out but that knowledge came with time. Time enough to understand that the emotional baggage isn’t me, but it’s only another part of me.
I know you can find someone who sees that too and when you do, give yourself a reason to focus on holding back the dark, just for a bit. Give yourself a reason to say why not try and be a little happy for the sake of loving another?
It makes a difference, that much I know.
Lately, I’ve felt as if I need someone else to love me first, to put some faith in me before I could realize it for myself. But then I realized that I have had that kind of love before and it didn’t help. I need to fix myself before I can let someone love me. I’m sure that going through this with your girlfriend has made you appreciate her all the more.
I guess it goes back to the way we define loving ourselves. I know I don’t have the resources to fix myself. I am damaged and I will always be. What I can do is deal with the problems that come from being damaged. I’ve accepted that, doesn’t mean I love who I am, it means I won’t deny or fight those impulses that make me the damaged little soul. I ride it out with some pride and dignity.
But I do understand your need to feel loved first and with my girlfriend, that’s what happened, but not because I love myself either, but because I wasn’t afraid to take risks, knowing exactly where my limits were by accepting and not fighting who I knew I was. It made her appreciate me, and in doing so, made me love her all the more.
Edrei hits the nail on the head： “I’ve accepted that, doesn’t mean I love who I am, it means I won’t deny or fight those impulses that make me the damaged little soul. I ride it out with some pride and dignity.”
“…knowing exactly where my limits were by accepting and not fighting who I knew I was. It made her appreciate me…”
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. It’s an acceptance of one’s problems instead of a “struggle”, which falls in line with my Taoist beliefs. I should keep this in mind. I can only hope that I’ll be strong enough to live that way eventually.
Hey!!
What the hell has been going on on this site for the past few days? lol
I’m not sure how to comment on all this.. all I can say is that I often feel the exact same way… Being and wanting to be so self aware that all these ‘flaws’ that I see in myself begin to surface.. it just seems like there is so much shit about myself that I want and need to change …
I’ve been through thoughts of suicide multiple times in my life and remember that blank and uneasy feeling when you hit that wall in your head trying to justify living.. such a scary feeling…
I’m so glad that you’re rational enough to go through such detail and post such things on this public site so that all your concerned readers and friends can see and help you through… Just hang on a bit sir.. spring and summer is just around the corner!! Wtf is Dolly gonna do without you anyways? Dolly would be depressed if she had to live with me and the crazy one
Sorry I haven’t checked your blog lately, but if you ever need someone to talk to or write to I’m here. I understand what you’re going through and I know it’s a struggle and sometimes you don’t even understand it yourself. I lost a friend to suicide late last year, and I had really really wished that I knew about his depression but it seemed like it was hidden from most people. At least you’re open about it, I know you’ll find a way to overcome it. Sometimes it is chemical, sometimes it isn’t, but it would be a good idea to make sure it’s not a serious chemical imbalance first.
At this point, I’m suspecting it was a combination of things, including the season and what I was going through at the time. I’m not that open about the whole thing actually. I never told any of my friends. The only people who knew were the ones who read this blog, and I wrote about it here so I could sort out my thoughts and feelings. I think it helped a lot.