Dialogue

This might be a bit of a controversial post. I apologize in advance if it offends anyone.

A friend of mine recently told me that since her relationship fell apart, she's struggling to suppress the urge to take painkillers to numb herself. She seemed embarrassed yet relieved to be able to admit to such a thing. But I don't think she's an exception. I think this happens more often than people are willing to admit.

Some people seem perfectly capable of placing their emotions on a manageable platform: if everything around them comes crashing down, they can keep functioning. I'm not sure how they do it. I suspect they simply take some distance. But how one achieves this distance is beyond me.

The other type of people, they crash when everything else does. There's no more levels to it than that: they simply are their emotions. I know for a fact that I am part of this latter group. Everything comes to a halt and you just have to let yourself fall into whatever safety net you can find. I'm lucky. I have a tremendously patient, understanding and constructively supportive family and group of friends. Whenever I've been faced with situations I couldn't cope with, I've had a place to fall. A place to simply stop "being", for a little while.

But even then, I completely understand my friend's urges. It is ridiculously tempting to just numb yourself at times, to drown out your emotions. If you're one of those people who needs to go to the depths of their emotions to be able to resurface full strength, then a bit of numbing every now and then is very welcome. There's so many tempting external ways to help you take a break when your emotions can't give you one.

Alcohol is probably the most socially accepted form of numbing. I know quite a few people who are clearly purposefully sedating themselves on a regular basis, but no one ever comments, because drinking is socially acceptable in a lot of circumstances. Painkillers are less visible, but easy to get. Drugs, more dangerous and less socially accepted, but highly effective.

I rarely drink. My number of units a month probably amounts to no more than 8. If that. I have taken class A-type drugs on no more than maybe a dozen occasions. But in retrospect, it is quite obvious that when I did drink lots or did take drugs, it was at times where I felt emotionally unstable. I'm fortunate in that I am aware of this. I know what and why I am doing such things, when I am doing them. And this keeps me from falling into a destructive pattern at those times. It enables me to make those moments a rarity.

I think it should be socially acceptable for people to give themselves a breather before facing their issues head on. And I really don't think my friend had any reason to be embarrassed about admitting such a thing. If anything, an open conversation will make her feel less alone. But I also think society should be more tuned into dependencies. If people continue to sedate themselves with latent societally accepted aids, then they simply uphold a status quo. Nothing ever improves. We don't question enough. And so there is no dialogue. The threshold to admit to problems still seems insurmountably high for some people. And others still feel shame at admitting a very human problem.

People often ask me why I am as direct as I am, in my communications with others. It's because I want dialogue. I don't want to worry about stuff I needn't worry about. Things are complicated enough as they are. I have an incredible need to be open about things. To get feedback off others so I can put myself and what goes on in and around me, in the proper perspective. I don't want to second guess other people's actions. I don't want to hide emotions. Directness might make people uncomfortable, but everyone will know exactly where I am at and where they are with me. I'm sure that's the reason my friend chose to tell me about her worries. Openness breeds openness. We're all drawing the same line here, after all. We're all just as fallible as the next person.