working title

Journal, November 9, 2011

As I took a walk today, I thought about pain. I was feeling some stiffness and soreness from yesterday’s four-mile run, so I was feeling some physical pain, but as I loosened up, I thought more about emotional pain.

I don’t deal with pain very well. Physical pain, sure. That’s nothing. I can push through physical pain with some effort. I’ve had two of the worst pains to deal with (outside of labor) – back pain and tooth pain. Both can be excruciating and there’s very little you can do to stop it. You just have to push through and/or wait it out. So physical pain? Yeah, I can deal with it.

Emotional pain is much different. I don’t deal with rejection very well, and my lows can get very low.

People often ask me why I don’t want to have kids, and I usually have a generic response, or I don’t go into too much detail. I don’t think people really want to hear my real reasons, so I say things like, “I’m just not into kids,” or “Because both sides of our family have a history of pretty serious illness, we wouldn’t want to risk passing that along.” The second one is closer to the truth than the second.

Life isn’t just painful, it is pain, to me. In simple terms, I couldn’t give that to someone.

Sure, like has its joys, and overall, I’m happy to be alive. Still, life is very, very hard. I feel like I’m constantly up against rejection and judgment and conflict. I try to stay positive, and as many times that life kicks me down, I’ll get back up and push harder, but I won’t lie – it’s a constant struggle and it can be exhausting. Shaun and I have both battled depression since our childhoods, which I think helps us connect with each other. I mean, in all honestly, we were both dealing with depression in elementary school. We were already disappointed with the world at that point.

I can’t see putting someone else through that. I don’t think it’s worth it. Do I think it would have been better if I had never been born? Sometimes I do. But you know what? I am here, so I’m dealing with that the best that I can. Taking myself out of the world is NOT an option for me, so I focus on the positive as best as I can.

I’ve lost so many people in my life. I’ve lost jobs, and yes, that hurts, but losing people is the worst. All of my grandparents are gone and this past year, I lost a brother-in-law unexpectedly. I think that’s why it’s hard for me to open up to people and to let people get close to me, because I’m just afraid of losing those people. That probably hurts me in the end, not letting people get close, but at the same time, I feel like I’m sparing myself from the hurt of losing them. It’s another defense mechanism for me to deal with (or not deal with) emotional pain.

This is part of the reason job hunting is such a big deal for me, why it can be so hard for me. It’s like a constant rejection. As soon as I see a job posting that I qualify for, I get excited for a few seconds, then the dread sets in. I submit my resume and start waiting for the rejection. It’s like every new job posting is another opportunity for me to feel unwanted and unqualified. Getting an interview is just about the same way. When I started working, though, I almost always got the job I interviewed at, so I used to think as long as I got an interview, there was a good chance I’d get the job.

I thought I was likable and that I impressed interviewers upon meeting them. Now I’m questioning that, because I’ve had a few pretty bad interviews. I’m not good at thinking on my feet, as they call it. I try not to rehearse answers to possible questions too much because I want to be genuine. But then I might come across as unprepared. The whole thing just makes me feel uncomfortable and my self-esteem just drops. It feels like there’s this perfect formula out there for being chosen for a job, and I have no idea what it is.