I am also grateful that I appear to have recovered from my own chronic dysphoria. To be honest, I have seldom thought of it, lately. I can't even remember when or how I recovered. I do recall once, twenty years ago, while taking an excruciatingly long urban hike, that I felt like a complete social outsider. I would notice people around me, or in cafes and restaurants and they all seemed to have such normal, safe, comfortable and well-insulated lives. I felt none of those things. We seemed so different. I felt that I was visiting from a different time, or rather, dimension. This experience was very common for me then.
I began thinking of this today, following a chat with one of our clients in one of the sites where I work. It turns out that this individual is living with a similar condition, though it appears to be more entrenched with him. I admitted to him that I had been through something similar. I also disclosed that I could not remember how or when I got over it.
I think extreme poverty helped reinforce this experience. I was gravely underemployed and couldn't even afford bus fare, making it necessary for me to walk, sometimes up to twenty miles a day, if I wanted to see my handful of clients when I was still doing home support work. I had also been through six to seven years of a very intense experience of Christian community, street ministry and spiritual warfare. I really did not feel like I belonged. Anywhere.
I was not aware that at that time I was also becoming ill. I had been through my first major breakdown in recent months. I felt persecuted by others (not delusional, by the way, there were people in powerful positions who were against me then) and was suicidal. I was getting zero therapeutic support, for the simple reason that I didn't know I was ill and I had no idea where to look for help even if I did know.
I soon became homeless, in the couch-surfing sense, and got even sicker thanks to the stress I was living under. I was threatened and harmed by people who had been in positions of trust with me, and I went through, during those ten and a half months, two more breakdowns.
There were still friends there to help me get through this difficult time. I found housing, not very safe or stable, but it helped, and for three years I simply coped. I was on welfare, unable to hold down a job (I was looking, but I didn't realize then that I was not well enough to work). I avoided people as much as possible, outside of my few trusted friends, and tried to paint and promote my artwork. During this period I suffered through four more breakdowns.
When I started seeing a psychiatrist I felt like I belonged to some other species rather different from human and not of this planet or dimension. This was not a delusion, since I didn't believe this, but merely a personal feeling that I had trouble shaking off. I soon found affordable housing, then long term employment.
I don't know when things started to change for me but gradually I have lost this sense of being different from others. Aging seems to have helped. I really feel a lot lighter than I used to, as though things just don't matter as much as they used to. I also feel connected to others and integrated in society. Nothing really has changed that much. I think my work in mental health peer support has been particularly helpful. All this time I spend with others, listening to their stories, and walking with them towards wellness, I find that I am not as strange as I thought I was. Many others suffer much as I suffer, and many more suffer worse.
Becoming fluent in Spanish and befriending and interacting with many native speakers of the language of the angels from diverse countries and cultures appears to have also had an impact, along with almost ten years of international travel. I find that the more I interact and adapt to other cultures, the less strange I feel.
To conclude, I think that making an effort to care for others, to show friendship, interest and to be helpful wherever possible, has really pulled my head out of my heiny and left me with a powerful impression that really, everyone feels isolated and alienated from others, each in their own way. There is something about the failure to connect with others that leaves us feeling lonely and unwanted, and like a strange, unwelcome species. My way of life has not become any more conventional or socially correct. I am still what would be considered by others to be very eccentric and individualistic. By the same token, I am really no different than you, Gentle Reader, because under our skin we are all very much the same, and we are all very much different.
We need one another and the more we accept and try to meaningfully touch one another`s lives, the more tolerable our own lives, and the more beautiful our journey across this earth.
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