PERSONAL

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Without Security

7 years ago2,676 words

I'm currently in South Korea! I almost committed suicide the other day!!

So that's a long story... I am indeed in South Korea for a month-long summer school, which I enrolled in not because I liked or knew the first thing about the country, but because I wanted to challenge myself, to escape my sheltered life, to grow as a person.

The flight here was long and gruelling. Two consecutive 8+ hour flights, during which I had diarrhoea, vomited, and passed out on a toilet while my pants around my ankles. Surely more information than anyone needed to know! It was harrowing, anyway, and I was just glad to be done with it at the end.

I travelled with my often-mentioned one friend - I'll call her B - and we shared a hotel room for the first night, which seems to have been considerably more awkward for her than it was for me. I've been learning recently how one-sided our relationship is... I mean I've known for ages that it is, but the full extent of it is becoming more obvious.

She was waiting for me at the airport with her loving, not-divorced parents and sister, who she hugged and kissed affectionately as she said goodbye and thanked them. I was there alone, quietly envying her having what I've never had. She spent much of the hotel stay quietly texting her boyfriend back home, while I sat there alone, ignored. I understand this, understand why... but it was easy to feel bad about it, despite efforts to think less maladaptively, less selfishly.

We're at the university now, in separate dorms; they split males and females into different blocks of the same building.

Something I've noticed about the country is how homogenous its population is. I'm so used to modern western values of multiculturalism and inclusivity that seeing every street swarming with exclusively Koreans is quite jarring. Their media seems to be much the same. Non-Asians are very, very rare here.

The summer school I'm attending involves two classes per day for four days of each week. In the morning I'm in a class of seven people (including myself and B) learning about East Asian Civilisation, and my afternoon class (which also includes B) is learning Korean language. That class is larger and full of Americans; it's sometimes so loud that it's physically painful for me.

I'm here for social rather than academic reasons... and while I'm talking to more people than I have in ages, I'm becoming acutely aware of my social deficits and intensely damaging negative thought patterns.

In particular, I've been thinking a lot about the idea of having a singular slot in our hearts for our 'most important person', such that it's harder to care about anyone who doesn't fit that slot, and anything the person who is in that slot does affects us deeply. I don't know if this is a universal experience - I'd be surprised if it was - but it's something both B and I seem to experience, which is painful because she's the one occupying my slot while her boyfriend occupies hers. As such, other people's words or actions barely affect me, but hers do a lot... But mine barely affect her, or don't at all.

I've been talking online with an American girl for a while now, actually; I don't know if I've mentioned her before. We met on blahtherapy or 5cups or something, almost two years ago, and I helped her with her emotional issues and she's been dependent on me since then. She's young and apparently very beautiful (she's shown me photos), and seems to now love me intensely... but I don't really feel anything about her. Instead, I just find myself wishing and hoping that B would say the sorts of things to me that this girl gives so readily... and I feel so bad that I'm not able to reciprocate, that in many ways I'm being given exactly what I want yet it doesn't create so much as a spark in my heart.

Perhaps it's because we want what we don't have... so people who are challenging, who give love sparingly, are more sought, while those who spew forth loving words every time you meet them are just taken for granted? There's nothing to earn; people like things that are rare, not common. B is a tough nut to crack, and rarely says nice things... whereas I say nice things all the time, meaning I value her considerably more than she does me. Frustrating how that works.

And of course those who are single are more receptive to things than those who have their romantic slots filled. We're on the lookout for scraps of affection in a way that the taken are not. Or something. You probably all know how unrequited love works. I don't want to give or receive an explanation of the obvious, really. I know I'm trapped in a stupid position, and wouldn't be by choice. It's just that I never meet any other people who ignite a spark in my heart, and it feels like I need *someone* in that slot just to keep going. It's just unfortunate that it's a taken friend.

She's been making it clear to me recently that I'm a difficult person to deal with... which I am, because I'm jealous, possessive, scared, depressed, socially inept... We planned to go on this Korea trip together, to be 'a team' and do everything together... but now she's just cold towards me, and I can't pinpoint when this started. She used to say she loves me; now she's made it crystal clear that she doesn't, that she mostly finds me annoying. Embarrassing to be around because of my occasional social blunders. It feels like she's 'broken up' with me, yet we still spend much of our time together.

It's an awkward and emotionally taxing place to be in. I feel like the source of support I've relied on for so long has disappeared, and it hurts immensely to know that the person I care about the most doesn't care about me at all anymore.

She's struggling with her own issues and depression... I always try to understand that. But she very much pushes me away and makes me feel worthless, not by bullying me or putting me down, but by the absence of reassurances. I feel bad enough that I need them at all, but I'm hardly at a point of emotional security, and... well, it's a mess, I do realise that. I know I'm the annoying one, asking for too much from a source I shouldn't be getting it from.

Anyway. I tried to commit suicide the other day. I had a belt around my neck, lodged in a door; all I needed to do was fall to my knees and it would be over. I've never got as far as that before. I'd messaged B beforehand, not to be saved but to say goodbye, and she, another shared acquaintance of ours (I'll call her S), and a bunch of random Korean guys came pounding at my door minutes later. That was surreal.

Why did I do it? A dark cocktail of different maladaptive thoughts and feelings. Jealousy and inadequacy; a fear of abandonment. Androphobia. Fear of a hopeless future; the fact that my age means many opportunities have been lost to me. The feeling that rewiring my brain to a point where it's not hurtful to myself and others is too difficult.

This university is near South Korea's capital, Seoul, and I wanted to go and look around with B on the weekend. I was looking forward to it. However, S talked to us after class on Thursday, and invited us to go with her, another girl who I vaguely know (R), and "some American guy". My heart sank; I imploded inside.

Why? All I could imagine was going with these people, and this unknown American guy would be attractive, charming, funny, "better than me", and I'd have to watch as B "abandoned" me to pretty much 'flirt' with him as I trailed along behind, jealous and neglected. It sounds petty and stupid when written out like this - very emotionally immature - but in the moment it felt like the most overwhelmingly impossible and devastating scenario in the world, and I was certain it could be the only outcome.

It's absurd, because B has a boyfriend who I know she already likes infinitely more than me, who she sleeps with, does all kinds of things with, loves, and yet I'm jealous about her talking to other guys? Absurd.

But I think it's mostly a matter of my own feelings about myself. Though the fear of being abandoned and replaced is intense, seeing another guy be perceived and treated as clearly more desirable than me triggers the avalanche of "I'm unlovable and unappealing" thoughts that quickly grow out of control.

Especially ridiculous considering that the girl I talk to online loves me more than any other guy she's known (and that's many), she says... That the mind can't accept that, and instead focuses on the negatives and deficits and fears, is one of its many faults.

Anyway, I was convinced that B would 'abandon' me in favour of some 'better' guy, and that the emotional pain of being alone again, like I had been for so many years, would be unbearable, so I tried to hang myself. Perhaps that seems an overreaction. But when drowning in the depths of depression for many years, ridiculous things start to seem sensible.

I like an analogy that I read in an article a couple of days ago. Being suicidally depressed is like being in a burning building, and jumping from the top to escape the flames. It isn't that the jump seems appealing - it's as scary as it would be in any other situation - it's just that the thought of being burned alive slowly by those flames seems a far more terrifying fate; jumping at least makes the pain shorter and gives you control of how you go.

The future seemed to me like those flames. I didn't want to jump; I just really really didn't want to be burned up.

Anyway. I told B, and she told S and they rushed to my male dorms with three Korean guys who were staff or residents or something; they couldn't speak English. We stood at my door for ages as they spoke in Korean on the phone to someone because we were breaking the rules; girls couldn't be in my room regardless of the circumstances. That really irritated me. We instead ended up travelling to some little conference room thing in a completely different building where we could talk alone. It was awkward.

I didn't really appreciate B 'getting help'. I can understand why she did it, but the idea of having my trip ruined by being treated like a danger and quarantined or 'treated' seemed worse to me than death. Like going to prison for mind crimes, being taken away from the path you were on, missing out, losing things and people. I'd lose B, lose all emotional moorings, and no amount of hospitalisation or medication could replace what I'd been torn away from.

Thankfully that didn't happen. I don't think the Koreans knew the reason why B and S needed to come to me. Thankfully. I had to tell S about everything though, which I didn't really appreciate. I like her, and had hoped to spare her from my demons.

They just listened for about an hour as I talked about it all. It helped, at least a bit. But then B felt faint, we went to get water, and when we came back, the weight of it all had hit me and I went quiet and odd. I wanted them to ask me if I was okay, to prod and pry, but instead they started having a friendly chat right in front of me, bonding, getting to know one another. Questions about their lives, nothing to do with me or what had just happened, as I sat there with my head in my hands, right next to them, silent.

It baffled me, actually. In their position, I'd give my full attention to the one suffering, but I suppose some people have no experience in that situation and simply ignore it? B knows what it's like - she's been there from both sides - but felt too awkward, she said later, to do anything other than chat with S.

I just felt ignored, like the very thing I'd been fearing - B bonding with another better than with me, while I was psychologically 'abandoned' - was playing out right in front of me. I can't say that helped. But then I knew I was being difficult, that it was my fault. I felt like a ghost; followed them back to the halls as if I'd already died and was just drifting, unacknowledged.

I went back to my room alone, and continued panicking about the day out with the random guy...

That was yesterday. It actually went okay, to the point where I'm embarrassed that I ever feared it.

But that's largely because of the social dynamics. The guy who came along was very bubbly, loud, extroverted, and he seemed to be close to S, so those two paired up and talked almost exclusively with one another, while B, R and me trailed behind. So I mostly talked with B, and didn't have to watch her bonding with him.

I felt that she wanted to - or that she at least wanted to talk with S - but I was 'in the way', and I felt on guard or on edge the whole time, wondering when she'd pair up with him and I'd be left alone.

But I probably talked to him more than she did. He's not the type of person I'd want to be friends with - too exhausting! - but he seemed nice and friendly and I didn't dislike him.

I felt like I grew from the experience, at least a little bit. There were cringeworthy social faux pas - as always - but just being able to compare reality to my extremely distorted assumptions of how things would play out was quite enlightening. It's strange, because those distorted assumptions never feel unrealistic when they swarm around my head... They seem reasonable, inevitable, based on observations and analyses of many factors. But I suppose since I lack real world social experience, the pieces of understanding I'm building the stories out of are naive, so the stories are too. Or something.



I wrote that a week ago, but I've been quite busy and never got around to posting it. My relationship with B has been much better since then; she probably still doesn't love me, but she's been far less cold around me and we still do most things together.

I just came back from a couple of days and a night at a Buddhist temple, and over the last week I watched three seasons of BoJack Horseman, which resonated with me quite a bit. I'd like to write posts about those things soon.

For now, I'm 'better', a bit, but I still feel like I'm dancing on the edge of a cliff... Like I'm on the lookout for reasons to take the plunge. I'm just trying to take things one day at a time.

I'm well aware that tying my wellbeing to one external source is deeply unwise and doomed to end in despair when that source disappears... It's just frustrating that I don't seem to find other sources that seem to feel as desirable or reassuring to me. They just feel hollow, like I'd have to pretend or force myself to get something out of them.

(Also, the front camera on my phone isn't working, so that's really annoying! I'd include a photo if I was actually able to take any...)