We are all a little fucked up and broken

The other day one of my good friends thought he was in the Truman Show. Not just speculating a what-if scenario, mind you; he literally thought that I and everyone else he knew was a paid actor and his whole life was an orchestrated fabrication.

I love this friend dearly, because he's smart and compassionate and funny and a really, really great guy. He also has a host of mental health issues, like bipolar and Asperger's and God only knows what else. Apparently, he woke up with Truman Show Delusion the other day. It's not in the DSM, but enough people have shared the experience for it to have a name.

So I sent him a link to the Wikipedia article in the hopes that he would see that this is a thing that other people have and he's not the only broken person to have what he was experiencing. He instead told me that I was only trying to appease him because I was "one of them". I replied that if I was really a paid actor in his life, then someone owed me for some serious backpay, so please complain the the show's producer when he had the chance, please and thank you.

Man, you cannot talk someone out of Truman Show Delusion when they're in crisis mode.

He's not the only one, though, which brings me to my point: we're all a little fucked up, but the good news is we're all in it together. Even when it feels like we're alone in our struggle, there's someone out there who understands and has been through exactly the same thing; we just have to seek them out.

When I was going through divorce, 99% of my friends didn't really want to hear about it. They put up with a level of my bitching, but then they started drawing away. One night I was having a crisis breakdown. I called three different people and all of them basically said "We don't want to hear about it; you need to get over it already". By the end of that night, I wasn't even upset about my divorce; I was upset because I felt had nobody left to turn to. It was a huge relief when I discovered the Surviving Divorce Podcast and found someone who understood. I remember one episode specifically where the host was talking about the fear of being alone after divorce and I was like this guy gets EXACTLY what I'm feeling right now! I later found a DivorceCare support group where I was able to meet others going through similar circumstances. It's the only support group I've ever gone to, and it was amazingly helpful. There was also a therapist, and an online support group, and a lot of shit to wade through, but the help was there. I had to reach out and find it though. That was the hard part, the reaching out.

Around that same time, I also had one of the most fortuitous chance-encounters of my life so far. My ten year high school reunion was a mere week after my now-ex-husband told me he was leaving me. I was heartbroken and depressed. So obviously at the reunion I. Got. FUCKING SHITFACED!!! Of course, at a reunion you're reconnecting with people, so we were all sending Facebook friend requests to each other. I was drunkenly hitting "Accept...Accept" on my phone and in my mindless state, once I got through accepting everything, I accidentally started sending out friend requests to strangers Facebook was "suggesting" for me. I was like oh fuck how long have I been sending out random friend requests? Time to put the phone away! and left it at that for the night.

A couple people actually accepted my drunk requests though. One of them was posting a bunch of inspirational quotes every day, so I messaged her like "Hey, I don't know you and just randomly friended you and this is super-awkward, but I'm kinda going through some shit right now and the stuff you're posting is really speaking to me, so thanks."

Through the conversation that ensued, I learned that she had recently broken up with an abusive narcissist, which is exactly what I had just done, and the more we talked the more I realized she totally understood the pain that I was going through. I still have not met her in person but I consider her a very good online friend because she was able to support me through a time in my life when my "real-life" friends weren't able to. It was the best drunk friend-request ever made.

So no matter how fucked up you are, there's someone just as fucked up, in the same way, and you're not alone. You're never alone, even if it feels like it. We're all broken in our own ways and we're all careening through life together. So go find that other fucked up person who matches you and talk it out. It'll help. I promise.