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The Shadows are Full of Shit

By Steven Alexander Mailer

By Veris MarockPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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The Shadows are Full of Shit
Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

TWs: Mental Health, depression, anxiety, isolation, bullying & abandonment.

(This was primarily written as a vent so I apologise if my tone is perhaps less than professional)

Most of my writings revolve around horror and violence, I'm taking a step away from that, momentarily, to talk about something else. Mental Health is a buzzword at the minute. The Pandemic has made us all uniquely aware of just how important it is to be aware of our mental state. To be looking after ourselves not just at a physical level but at a more vulnerable emotional level as well. We've had to deal with fear, dread, loss, confusion and it's easy to be caught up in the isolated maelstrom of it all and swallowed up by the negative thoughts. Even now as we come towards the end of an exceedingly difficult era in modern history, there are those who are suffering.

My mental health has always been something I have struggled with, severe bullying and abuse in my teenage years screwed me up. It left me with life-long scars that I've learned to deal with over years of practice and personally challenging myself to break out of perceived comfort zones and toxic cycles and patterns. This took years of my life, I am nearly twenty- seven years old now and still struggling with this but for a good long while I was in a zone where I felt like I had a handle on things, I was pushing my boundaries, I was trying to be a person and not just a frightened cat curled up in the corner till someone cared enough to try and coax me out with a fresh pizza. I was making headway. I started college in 2018, got an A tier pass in my HNC, and then proceeded to move along to what seemed impossible to my 16-year-old self. I went to University and began work on a 4-year honours degree in English, Creative Writing & Journalism. I met new friends, friends I adore. I began advancing in my social bubble, even had a sex life for a brief time. I was about to finish my first year and start my second when the world ended. Everything I felt I'd achieved got reset back to 0.

My experience with the COVID-19 Pandemic was one of privelege. I live on an isolated Scottish Peninsula far away from the nightmare that I assume more urban habitation must have been. I kept my head down during my 2nd year of Uni, attended to my online studies and just generally tried to deal with things as best I could, knowing there wasn't much I could do about the situation other than following the rules and waiting for a vaccine to arrive. I understood the science and I knew it could take years. Luckily technology advanced to the stage that it cut that time in half but not before I suffered a debilitating breakdown at the beginning of 2021.

My anxiety and depression took a nosedive in January 2020. The computer I use for my studies flatlined due to faulty hardware I couldn't afford to repair, I needed emergency dental treatment I couldn't afford. I had no more coping mechanisms to speak of. I fell into a spiral that paralyzed me and has persisted all year. In May I sought out mental help via my GP (Personal NHS Doctor for you Americans, do you have GPs? Maybe you do. I don't know.) I had to sit down with this woman and explain that my mental health had deteriorated so severely that I physically couldn't cope with it anymore. I stopped writing for my own enjoyment, I stopped...well I don't have much else beyond writing if I'm honest with you.

I felt overwhelmed, trapped, like I was in a sinking ship and nothing I could do could hope to halt its descent. I did manage to rectify my computer situation (it's fucked again now yay) and through offering smut writing commissions on twitter I managed to pay for my dental treatment (need new treatment now YAY) and I now have a therapist who is bringing me through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but this long-winded sad little story brings me to an important revelation.

My creativity is ESSENTIAL to my being. It's not only my way of coping but it is my solution to every problem. I got out of money troubles by finding new ways to sell my writing, I fixed my computer without knowing what I was doing by just being creative with the workarounds I had at my finger tips. I managed to drag myself out of a hole and though it wasn't easy, it was an important lesson. I CAN fix things. I CAN find solutions and though my anxiety makes every new challenge look like a leviathan. I actually DO have the ingenuity and intelligence to face these things head-on and try SOMETHING to get past it. This isn't a brag blog, my therapist is helping me to understand that part of my problem is that I hold myself to so impossibly high a standard that I cannot possibly meet them. I can't be proud of myself. I chronically fail to believe in my own abilities. I'm more or less convinced I'm some kind of professional amateur who is just really REALLY good at swindling and fooling people into thinking I'm some kind of graceful, intelligent creature when in actuality I'm some form of astonishingly verbose gibbon hammering at a typewriter till something vaguely sensical pops out.

I do not believe I am capable of fixing things, of doing much of anything right and that's down to the people who hammered that into my young developing brain when I was a child. I had positive influences too, some really wonderful teachers and other adult voices but as a human, I am surprisingly social. Selective, but social. I want to befriend everything and everyone. So when I try that, by being myself, by being the most genuine form of myself and I get rejected or mocked or shut down, it tends to wound me deeper than it perhaps ought to because there's a part of me that just doesn't understand what I did wrong. I don't relate well to people. I miss cues, I can't keep eye contact. I miss the things that other people take for granted. I can't really...I struggle. So when I feel like I'm doing everything right and someone shouts at me, or laughs, or mocks, or hits me, as was the reality of those times, it's beyond upsetting. It's devastating to me.

End result of that is that not only do I not believe in my own abilities to overcome and cope with issues and challenges but I routinely lose faith in the relationships I've forged. My brain is still locked in survival mode from those years where I spent a good deal of time bitter and alone. I cannot join my friends doing anything unless EXPLICITLY invited. I can’t do the inviting myself partycrashing thing. I need to be invited or I will not come. Even if I really really want to. My brain has me convinced I’m not wanted and merely tolerated. So the idea of just showing up when my friends are playing a game together or whatever terrifies me because I’m afraid I’m going to annoy them or make them mad and they’ll leave me behind. I don’t want to upset or inconvenience people.

I know it’s stupid and I shouldn’t feel this way but I can’t help it. I can fight so many of my demons except that one because the risk is just too high. Abandonment and rejection really upset and frighten me. So my brain just shuts down and then all the other thoughts come pouring in like a deluge. There’s a very real, very hurt part of me that’s still very much a sad, lonely little boy who is entirely convinced that he’s unworthy of love of any sort and trying to convince that wounded child that there isn’t actually anything wrong with him has been a lifelong crusade. I think that the worst part of this is that I know my friends love me. I do, coz they show it all the time but I can’t accept it. I want to but I can’t so I just sit here and cry because someone a long time ago told me no one could ever love me. Plenty of people do. Just not me. I can't. I'm trying to. I really am but it's a challenge I struggle to face.

I'd like to say there's a happy ending to this story but I'm still working on that, it's not been written just yet. I channel these feelings into my work, my characters, my poetry. I don't know how to tell myself that I'm worthwhile. So maybe I can write a young character who saves the world with his best friends and live vicariously? Maybe, but I feel it's the little things, learning to forgive myself for failing to meet the standards of others. Learning not to value myself by what I produce or what I achieve and allowing the things I DO achieve to actually settle in my heart, to be proud of them. Accepting compliments and not taking criticism personally.

My therapist showed me a CBT (The therapy not the kink!) theory called the Vicious Cycle. She told me that thoughts create feelings create behaviours. I'm trying to take things a step at a time. Mindfulness, rational contemplation and hopefully from there being kinder to myself. It's kinda like living in a really messy house. Think about it, if you live in a real messy house and you can't move for all the filth and rubbish and junk you're not going to be in a good mood most of the time are you? Your actions that day when you go out are going to be affected by your crappy mood. It's the same with bad thoughts. You, as a being, exist inside your own mind. That's your messy house. So if your brain is all full of hurtful words and scorn then you're going to feel like rubbish aren't you? That's what I'm trying to do, I think, opening a window, letting some fresh air in. (Figuratively speaking.) filling my head with positive thoughts and affirmations. Taking out the trash and trying to stop myself from digesting junk thoughts and making them part of me.

An idea I'm finding helpful is taking my issues and transplanting onto a hypothetical person, let's call him Gary. What would you say to Gary, if he was your mate and he told you he felt worthless and unloved even though he's been your best buddy for 27 years? I imagine you'd be a lot kinder than you'd be to yourself when you start telling yourself these things. It's important to understand that though we go through a lot of changes between childhood and adulthood. The person you are, your essence, the pure being you are exists in the same way as a child as they do as an adult. That inner child exists and if they're hurt or wounded, so are you. Sometimes you gotta be the parent and take the kid aside and dry their eyes and buy them a fortnite card and say "Hey, maybe more people care about us than we thought and maybe the world isn't quite so scary after all?"

The wounds we suffer are long-lasting, regardless of how strong you are. Given time those wounds become shadows. Haunted memories that lash out and scream and choke and snarl. Those shadows lie. If you remember nothing else, remember this. Those shadows are full of shit! You are worth more than they tell you and more than you let yourself believe.

coping
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About the Creator

Veris Marock

I've been a writer since I was a child. I had my first story published in 2019 in a short horror story collection and I've been working to expand my horizons since then. My primary interests are horror and fantasy.

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