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without hope


Endlessnight

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I just read the post by Goose called 'living without hope'.

The title moved me so much because I have lived for most of my life without hope. I can't really say that I 'lived' even because I didn't. 30 years of my life went by in a way that if someone asked me what I did all those years I wouldn't be able to tell them because I dont know. It's like I was in a coma or something. I ate, dressed, washed, yes....but it was being done in the way a robot might do such things. It wasn't really me. That's partly why I never even knew I was depressed until recently when I faced up to it and went for help.

No one in my family knows I went to see a psychiatrist. They wouldn't understand if I told them why I went. All my life I have been living a lie. A huge lie. How can I tell them that all I wanted was to curl up into a ball in some dark corner and never come out? How could I explain the big black ball of bitterness I felt was inside of me and had been there since I was 15 years old? ( I am 50 now) I felt like a sword was hanging over my head ready to fall on me at any moment.

Yes the medicines have helped me and I am grateful for that. I am not yet well enough to really re-connect with life but I dont cry all the time like I used to, and I dont feel quite so desperate. I know that the meds have a numbing effect, but as I said, they have helped me some.

I am no one's wife, noone's mother, no one's daughter, no one's sister.

Thank you to whoever reads this. I just need to know I am being heard by someone, anyone. All my life I have been unheard.

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Endless, why is it that they have to understand? This is how you feel.

You only get one life. Maybe it's time you made your life yours?

I'm sorry you feel so badly. I've felt (at least somewhat) depressed all my life, but I've been fighting it. Most of the time I feel fine, now. I've met people who care when I hurt, who tell me when they do, and who are willing to talk about it with me.

I hope you find a way to make that happen for you.

Welcome.

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Malign thank you for writing me.

Yes, we only get one life, and realising that is what makes me more depressed. Knowing that I have wasted mine. The meds have helped me but at the same time I now realise what a mess I have made of my life. I hate myself for that. I dont know how to take my life back.

No one here (by here I mean where i live) would understand my depression because to them it wouldn't make sense. Why would I be unhappy all this time? I have worn such a mask all my life.

There has never been anyone that I could tell everything I was feeling to. I have longed for death for so long while at the same time having such a longing for life. Life on my terms, life as I want it to be and not as others have made it without my consent. But it's too late.

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Endlessnight,

I wanted to Welcome you to the forum. And I also wanted to say that it is never to late.

As a woman who always had lots of overflowing stupid mad hope and faith I know how you feel to say that you don't have any hope.

For me its a very uncomfortable feeling and it doesn't seem real. I lived life with hope.

So I'm praying us all Hope back in our lives today. I'm aware of the reasons that my hope has gone but I'm fighting back.

Hope is good its a beautiful thing and I want you to have some. I want you to have it abundantly.

I'm sending out lots of Hope your way.

Have a Blessed Day!

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Hi again Endlessnight,

There is hope within you, because it is life and is embedded in all of our cells. While there is life there is hope... you just can't see it because the depression and regret overwhelms you.

I have a few suggestions for you, ritual to help you put the past behind you and to learn to be more hopeful about the future.

The first is a Cleansing ritual (the idea is from another thread and it is also from American indian tradition).

- over the next week, take your time, write about all the things that have caused you pain and grief in the past. Write each item down on a small piece of paper with a few words about what it did to you. Does not have to be fancy or prose. I'm certain this will bring up some difficult and sad feelings, but remain aware that you are about to cleanse yourself of these feelings so you can handle them... look at them objectively sitting there in the bowl you will use.

- As the week goes by you will be putting these papers in a bowl where you will be able to burn them. Choose a bowl that is symbolic for you, the bowl represents love....the love you have for yourself.

- Choose a moment that is calm, peaceful, where you can be alone and will not be disrupted during the process. I prefer the evening for these types of thing, but that's up to you of course. By the ocean would be wonderful as well if you are close to it...

- If you have charcoal, put some in the bowl and light it, and if you can find some put some incense in it as well. Burn the papers, burn all that pain, watch it go up in smoke and believe that a new time in your life is rising from the ashes. All that is left is your selflove when the burning is done ... thank the Great Spirit for this gift.

- During the week following this ceremony, surround yourself with books about how to love yourself, how to find hope, with things that you love, with people that you care about who will be gentle with you. During this week you will make a list of the things that you would like your life to manifest, say in the next few years. This list will become your credo, what you aim your life towards. This is your gift to yoursefl...

Life will continue afterwards, but you will have marked a change. The old self with continue to nip at your heels, life is never easy, but your goal from then on will be to look at the world as one of possibility. You operate within a certain reality, that will not change, but what can you do to make your life more pleasant for yourself? Call this forth from the universe, and listen for inspiration... It marks only a beginning, there is a journey that follows, but make hope your next learning project....

Mine is learning about self-esteem. I did this ritual a few weeks back and found it to be very eye-opening and I feel like it did make a passage. May it do the same for you!!!

I send you hugs and a gentle soothing breeze to help soothe your tired spirit. This is a new time in your life ...

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Guest ASchwartz

Hi Endlessnight,

When you have lived without hope for a long time it can become scary to think hopefully.

In addition to taking your medicines, are you talking to someone in psychotherapy? Medicine by itself is not the answer. I hope your psychiatrist referred you to a psychologist or clinical social worker.

I realize that you family would not understand about seeing a psychiatrist but, do you feel ashamed? I hope you do not. Today, it is common for people to see psychiatrists for medicine and to go for psychotherapy. Most of all, you need to know that.

By the way, no one can change the past but, you can decide to make today feel better, and tomorrow, as well.

Allan:)

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Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughts. Long ago I taught myself not to want anything or care for anything much or hope. All I hope for now is that I learn to accept my life the way it is and not keep looking into the distance hoping for something better. That's what i've done for most of my life and it has made me the mess I am now.

I do pray with you, that we all get our hope and our lives back. I just don't really think it will happen though.

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Thank you for taking the time to write to me.

I live in Saudi Arabia. I went to a psychiatrist who prescribed my medication to me.

I agree that I have too many regrets, so much bitterness and hate still in me that I know I do need help but there are no therapists, support groups or anything like that here and I know the medicine alone can't fix everything. Not that I think talking to someone about my problems will fix anything either but I have kept everything inside of me for so many years that being able to talk to someone about it would give me some kind of relief or release I suppose.

I cannot travel abroad for the simple reason that a woman is not allowed to travel without a male guardian or his consent. Besides, even if I could travel, I couldn't afford to.

Long ago I made myself learn not to want not to care not to hope because wanting, caring and hoping was too painful.

I think now that I am 50 I must face my life and learn to live it. Not the life i've dreamed of or wanted, no. But this one. The only one I have. I just wish I knew how to do that.

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I'm so sorry that you have had to push down your emotions, I know how hard that is.... the sad part is that once you push down the hard feelings, then the good feelings usually go to. I'm glad you are opening up to us here :-)...

Is there something you can do to give more purpose to your life? So many people are feeling like you are, even in Saudi Arabia I'm certain. I would imagine that many women also feel bound by the stringent rules of the society. Do you think it would be possible to start a support group of your own? It could be a bookclub, or a gathering of women who feel isolated, or a group of women who go to hospitals to offer support to patients. Sometimes finding something of the kind expands our world and helps us see that we are not alone and that we can be important to others as well. Do you think there are such possibilities where you are?

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Hello, Endlessnight, my name is Beth. I'm very sorry to hear that you are feeling so sad. :)

I am no one's wife, noone's mother, no one's daughter, no one's sister.

But you are a gift to the world. And once you begin to recognize your inner beauty and strengths of character, you may find that you cherish yourself for just being yourself.

Because the opposite of misery is hope and hope is something that makes you feel, and feeling is too painful, wanting is too painful, caring is too painful.

Hope is about the potential joys life may bring and believing in those possibilities. If want is painful, perhaps that pain is meant to push you forward into getting your needs fulfilled. Caring may also at times result in some painful feelings, but therein lies the beauty of it. We care because we're alive and we want to love and hold in our hearts what is meaningful to us. Sometimes we have to risk one to have the other. But there can be no chance of joy and love if we are so fearful of losing it that we never allow it to blossom. Fearing what may happen tomorrow robs you of today's precious moments. Every moment is precious. If we choose to live in regret of moments already lost we can only lose more.

Maybe if you talk about, recognize and understand what happened in your past you might then be able to find more freedom in the present. Do you have anyone there who can offer you support? When you feel more serenity around what has already been, hopefully you will be able to be proactive in finding what you need and want from life now.

I hope you feel better very soon.

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Hello IrmaJean. Thank you for responding to my post and thank you for your kind wishes.

There isn't anyone here that I could talk to about this. I know I have to let go of the past in order to move forward but i'm afraid to. What I see in my future isn't anything I really want. I feel as though my life is over now that I have reached 50. I have woken up finally but it's too late for me. I know a lot of people have written to me and I am so grateful for their concern. I wish I could do the things they suggest I do. Women have a hard time being active in anything here. We are not allowed to drive and public transportation is almost non existent. To go anywhere I have to go by taxi which is expensive, and I have to find someone willing to go with me. I know i make a lot of excuses, i've been doing it all my life. Part of my self hatred stems from that. I am, as someone said in reply to one of my posts, one of the 'walking dead'. Will writing down all the negative things from my past, and present help? I dont know. I do know that writing some of them here has helped me inasmuch as I have gotten replies from so many kind people like yourself. I wish all of you good lives. Thank you.

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Guest ASchwartz

Hi Endlessnight,

One way to start working to improve your present and future life is to go to our self help part of the site where you will find lots of suggestions for things you can do to help yourself feel better.

Please remember that everyone in the world has made mistakes, wishes they could have done things different and wishes they had made different decisions.

Can you or are you willing to tell us where in the middle east you live, what nation and what your life is like there, as a woman? Are you married, do you have children? What are the decisions you made that you now regret?

Allan:)

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Hi again. If you read my previous posts here and under 'New members Post Here' you will see answers to most of the questions you ask me here. I am not, and have never been married. Since I was fifteen years old my relatives have tried to make me agree to an arranged marriage and I've always said no. That is the only thing they couldn't make me do. Though now, looking back a lot of the choices I made or have not made, by default, have turned out to be cases of cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I will look for the self help site you mention. Thank you for your kindness.

M.

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I live in Saudi Arabia. The decisions I made that have affected my life were not really decisions at all. A choice wasn't given me. I trusted my mother, I trusted my father. I trusted them to be my parents. They both betrayed me in different ways. That 'decision' to trust them as children should be able to trust their parents, was what shaped what my life is now.

My mother by making me an unwilling part of her infidelities. She would sneak out at night and ask me to listen for her return, by her calling under the bedroom window to me. I would get up and open the front door for her. I didn't want my father to hear her and have them argue. That was only the start of my mother's betrayal of my trust.

My father betrayed my trust because I believed him. I believed him when he said we were going to the Middle East only for the holidays. I believed him when, every time I asked him when we would be going home to England he told me soon, as soon as he had saved up some money.

The only decision that I can really say I made was my decision to not let them marry me off to someone I didn't know or care about.

Can it be called making a 'decision' to opt out of life? I walked, talked, ate and slept, but I wasn't really alive.

There are many, many things in my life I have never told to anyone, among them what I have said about my mother, above. Things I can never ever forget. Have I forgiven them? I don't know. I say I have but they are part of the past i can't seem to get rid of.

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I walked, talked, ate and slept, but I wasn't really alive.

Endlessnight, you are very much alive, while there is breath in you, then you are alive. You are alive or you would not be writing to us ;)

My sense is that you are not engaged in life and that is making you feel like your life has no meaning. I can hear your regret, how you were placed in world that was not what you expected or wanted., and you were left with few choices.

Is there a way for you to find something that engages you? Is there a way for you to give to others as a means of finding a purpose for your life? It is not too late to make your life meaningful, there is so much need out there, even in Saudi Arabia. :cool:

You also mentionned a brother who had remained in the West. Are you still in touch with him?

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I wasn't very clear in one of my first posts when I said my brother chose my mother. He was with her almost a year then my father took him to go with us to the Middle East. He is five years younger than I am, so he was around 9 when we came here to SA.

In the following years he was taught to hate our mother, he was mad at her for doing what she did. She had left us long before she physically left us and he resented that intensely. When she was dying of cancer and asked to see us before she died he refused to go visit her in England therefore I could not go either. She died a few months after she told us about the cancer.

Anyway, he went to school here and acclimatized to living here. He got married, he has children. I live with him. I share a room with my oldest niece. We do not get along. It's been years since we said anything to each other more than the bare necessities, though we share a house.

Helping others would be something I would love to do. I feel I have so much inside me I want to give, but, as I said in an earlier post, just getting from point A to point B here is a major hassle for a woman. We depend on men to take us where we want to go and I dont really have anyone to do that for me. I know I do get discouraged easily, partly from my having disconnected with life, as you said, but I dont know if I have the ability to help anyone right now. I can't even help myself.

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I wasn't very clear in one of my first posts when I said my brother chose my mother. He was with her almost a year then my father took him to go with us to the Middle East. He is five years younger than I am, so he was around 9 when we came here to SA.

In the following years he was taught to hate our mother, he was mad at her for doing what she did. She had left us long before she physically left us and he resented that intensely. When she was dying of cancer and asked to see us before she died he refused to go visit her in England therefore I could not go either. She died a few months after she told us about the cancer.

Anyway, he went to school here and acclimatized to living here. He got married, he has children. I live with him. I share a room with my oldest niece. We do not get along. It's been years since we said anything to each other more than the bare necessities, though we share a house.

Helping others would be something I would love to do. I feel I have so much inside me I want to give, but, as I said in an earlier post, just getting from point A to point B here is a major hassle for a woman. We depend on men to take us where we want to go and I dont really have anyone to do that for me. I know I do get discouraged easily, partly from my having disconnected with life, as you said, but I dont know if I have the ability to help anyone right now. I can't even help myself.

Every night and every morn, some to misery are born

Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight

Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.

William Blake.

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I’m sorry you’re struggling. It’s a culture thing and quite difficult to understand. Do you have to stay there? Do you have to live with your brother? Do you have any friends? What are the chances of sharing a place with a friend? I’m really sorry, I don’t have much to offer.

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Hi Endlessnight, I've been thinking about you a lot today. It almost boggles my mind that women are still living in such a limiting situation, even today. When I went to Senegal, I was astounded at how our two worlds, realities were co-existing on this same small planet, at the same time. I've been thinking that your difficulty surely lies in the fact that for the first part of your life you probably lived in a much freer environment, as a girl, and you were then transplanted into a much more constricting environment. I have wondered all day how I would have lived that, with the personality I have :) I need freedom like I need air, I even have a hard time in spousal relationships because I'm so independent... I can only imagine what you have had to swallow within yourself.... thus the depression I suspect...

Anyway, I have tried to think of options given your limited possibilities, and I wonder if you have thought of writing a book. Even your name 'EndlessNight' from Blake would make a great title, if it's not taken of course :) You seem to have access to a computer, I think you have lots to say, you are a good writer. Just another one of those ideas.... I also thought that maybe you could teach something that you know well, even if it is in your home - like sewing or something. Or you could try to learn a musical instrument - like a guitar which is less annoying to the entourage :) A creative outlet might release some of the internal frustration.... I hope I'm not being too intrusive, I was just thinking about these things today.

There are many people here as well, in Canada, who also say they are not mothers, or sisters, or daughters and feel alone and surprised that their life ended up like it did. When the state takes on those things it allows families to more easily neglect their responsibilities when it comes to family. I just spent the last few years taking care of my grand-mother who lived in nursing homes, she died last May at the age of 100. She had lived alone until the age of 93, often very lonely, and was then put in a nursing home because no-one was willing to take on that much responsiblity (I did offer, but she did not want to live with my kids :-O. Most of the people in those residences are almost abandonned by family and spend 99% of their time alone. Everyone is on his own in my world, my sister would never help financially or take me into her home - unless it was for a few weeks of course. I'm on my own - I can do what I want, but when I was a single parent I really felt the weight of that! The part that is sad for you is that you lack freedom of movement. That must be difficult....

Well, I've almost written a book myself so I guess I should move on :-) Hope you are feeling better today...

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