I Can’t be Everything, for Everyone, All the Time

Contrary to what most of my haters believe, I’ve been an active participant in therapy since 2023. I’ve spent plenty of time in session dissecting and discussing why it is that I attract people into my orbit who expect me, to be everything for them, all the time, but never seem to give me reciprocity back in my own time of need.

I feel like a chameleon, a mirrorball, a boomerang. I can be exactly what anyone needs, at any time, but when it’s time for the people I’ve dedicated my time, life, and love to, I fall on deaf ears and silence.

The silence is my biggest trigger. I try so incredibly hard to be good for the people that I love. I am only human, so I’m not perfect, but any time I’ve attempted to peacefully confront my feelings and emotions, I’m met with the same thing: silence.

The silence has a clinical term: Stonewalling.

From Google: Stonewalling is refusing to communicate, engage, or cooperate during a conflict or discussion.

The effects of stonewalling are everlasting and detrimental to a victim’s mental health, causing extreme anxiety, distress, an erosion of self esteem. Long term, being stonewalled results in PTSD like symptoms, identity fragmentation, and depressive symptoms. I can attest, I live with these things each day.

I use running, writing, and caring for Milo in an effort to cope with the effects of being stonewalled, but I am really struggling. I can’t seem to pinpoint a moment in time where my behavior in the last 30 years would’ve warranted such a harsh punishment from the people I’ve been close with. When I started to speak out against the abuse, you know, because none of the people I’ve attempted to rectify conflict with ever answered my pleas for resolution, I was met with lawsuits claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for.. emotional distress.

How can that be? How can my story of someone else’s abuse towards me, be so mentally damaging towards them, that I could ever owe them money that doesn’t exist? I have no idea. I don’t even know what the point is in writing this today, except I have to get it out. I’ve been everything for these people, for this person, and when I was no longer needed to support their own narrative of what success looks like, I was discarded and stonewalled into believing I was the problem. Maybe I am- I am the common denominator in my own story lines, after all. Maybe I am the one person on planet earth who deserves such a harsh treatment from the people I once trusted to care for me, not just physically, but emotionally.

I feel so broken, and I’m not even sure how to pick up the pieces anymore.

Thank you for reading.