Lessons learned from today

I'm exhausted of sorts.

I went to bed and woke up depressed this morning and it's been a real battle--the last couple months have been a battle--the last few years have been a battle and I broke down and hit that depressed point.

Right now, I feel fine--minus the mental/physical/emotional drain that depression has on a person, but I'm back to normal now. I know this. I'm back to normal and it's a good feeling.


But since I'm looking at this now in terms of being a battle, a battle that I ultimately won, I want to point out a few things I learned/realized from today and the last couple of weeks when it has been its worst:
1. The war isn't over. This is a battle, and victory came to me in terms of gaining greater understanding. To win the war, I'm gonna have to make some changes or at least position myself to where I can catch some "naturally falling fruit"
2. I'm not so crazy after all, because a few other people have admitted to me that they are this way as well. And it hit me that there are serveral songs that basically say exactly what I've been thinking today.
3. I have problems--but not really. My problems are insignificant. I'm a pretty cool cat, have my life in order--pay all my bills, have control over myself, don't have serious baggage (I can only think of two things people might say are my baggage, and this is one of them). I'm not being an idiot, I'm not over dramatic, I'm just acting the way any natural human being would.
4. And not only do I have very minor problems, I have a lot to offer people--if only people knew!
5. Here it is: My depression has been caused by my desire to love and be loved. Since I don't have control over the "to be loved" part, that's fine, I can accept that. But I OUGHT to have control over my loving others right? --wrong. That's why it's such a huge conflict for me.
6. I can't love people the way I want to love them because of the boundaries they put up. When I want to express my love for someone, I have to do it in a way that is socially acceptable. I have to do it in a way that that individual won't be hurt by my loving them. I even have to do it in a way that won't scare them.
7. People are often scared of me and repelled by me because I love them freely. It sucks, it's something to complain about, but I don't want it to affect my life. It works like this: people aren't used to being loved the way that I love them--they're used to people loving them conditionally and even when the conditions are right, they don't always benefit from it. But then I come along and I flat out make up excuses to love them. I make up reasons why I think they deserve a hug or why I think I should spend time with them or why I should give them a gift, or why I talk to them or help them with things.
8. Yes. I literally have to make up excuses, because people aren't comfortable with me just doing it because I want to do it.
9. For those people who aren't scared of me in the above sense, there are others who go into self-loathing because I love them. They have never been treated so well and they think they don't deserve it. They beat themselves up because they make comparisons between the way I treat them and the way they treat me, or comparisons between the way I treat them and the way they think they deserve to be treated. And suddenly they associate me with a low self-esteem.
10. Some people even go as far as to associate their low sense of self around me with my confident nature (and I think this explains why sometimes people think I'm arrogant, but I don't know for sure. )
11. For everyone else, let's call them the opportunists, they see me as a means to an end. They use me on account of my niceness.
12. They use me because I benefit them. And I'm okay with this--in fact, I prefer this to them being repelled by me (which is why I put up with such shitty friends sometimes). But I'd just as soon not have this--and I think this is the point that started my spiral into depression last week or so.
13. Spawning out of the three things that people do because I'm a loving person (put up walls and barriers because they aren't used to it and expect the other shoe to drop any second now and for there to be conditions behind it, or drifting into self-hate because they don't think they deserve my love and friendship, or straight up use me for their own gains), I boiled this down to a spectrum: On one hand I remain nice, on the other I become selfish.
14. If I continue to be nice, I should expect more of the same; people repelled by me or using me. It's a heart breaking experience to love someone who doesn't love you back, and to face the scorn of society as they question "why does he still hang around them if they treat him that way," and at times it's heart breaking to see someone use you as an excuse to hate themselves.
15. I don't like it when I am an excuse for others' pain, and I don't like facing heartbreak after heartbreak myself.
16. If I shift gears and become selfish, then I have to face the reality of isolation. I have to accept that no one is going to want to be around me and I have to face the unknown of how to meet those needs associated with loving and connecting to people--and I don't know that it is even possible.
17. I've been down both paths--I've been selfish and refused to give my love and I know it was miserable, so I left there long ago--it was miserable because not only was I not getting my needs met, but I also hated the person I had become.
18. I've been nice lately and I don't hate who I am. I hate how other people react to how I am. Which I think is improvement.
19. Sometimes the anticipation of becoming that self-centered bastard scares me into depression.
20. I do NOT want to be that self-centered bastard. So I need to lean more towards the nice side.
21. So the question becomes: how do I cope and balance a life of loving others with the obnoxious side of people putting up barriers and not letting me love them?

And that is where I need to take this so that the next battle I face, I come prepared and won't sweat bullets and hate life for being me--the unrestrained lover.