An Open Letter

Today was a really difficult day if I’m being honest. I was super stressed and tired from trying to organize the IRL Minecraft Lan party, And when people finally came the people that said they would come earlier to help me showed up late, and a lot of things weren’t working. My home network ended up breaking, and I spent so much time trying to debug it running upstairs and downstairs and things ended up breaking my existing home network set up, so my home lab went off-line, so my discord bought my servers all the other processes running there and it’s been a while since I’ve had to do any kind of maintenance and so it was a nightmare trying to do that while my computer isn’t even working. I was really overwhelmed and tired trying to do all of that, and eventually we all said let’s take a break and get some food. We went altogether and I brought Hash, and we got pizza and I started to feel a little bit better being able to take a break and just joke around a little bit. When we got home, I went upstairs, and my bathroom was flooded because someone left the faucet open. The counters were covered, the floor was covered, and apparently it leaked through all of my cabinets, and then my friends downstairs told me that the light fixture was leaking. There was a good amount of water falling from the ceiling downstairs because the leak had gotten that big, and the next few hours were me and my friends helping thankfully, trying to do as much damage control as possible. We ended up unscrewing the light fixture to let a lot of the water drain, and trying to deal with all of the things that were damaged. I remember, I was super exhausted and honestly depressed this week, and I just wanted a break, and with the whole networking and home Internet fiasco, and the devices breaking, I just wanted to end, and then I came home to an even bigger crisis. eventually, though, when we dealt with most of the things to the point where all of the immediate issues were addressed, we ended up at least playing Mario party, which was fun. We also watched a movie before that. I then had to go and clean up some more stuff and deal with some more damage control, and I decided to go to the gym. I was exhausted and my new block just started and I didn’t think that I would be able to do all of the things programed and so I instead just treated it as a fuck around day where I could just do whatever. At some point at the gym, I realized, however, that all of the things that I am stressed or overwhelmed with, they are not things that I have to do, but rather things that I get to do. This is directly from the book, nonviolent, communication, and when I applied it here, I realized how many things I have to be grateful for. My home network breaking was stressful, and I was exhausted trying to get everything working, because I had friends over at my place to play Minecraft as a lan party. That sounds like a fucking dream, and I can think of more times in my life than not that I would’ve prayed. I would be able to do something like that. I’ve always wanted to do a Lan party. And on top of it, having to reset my network was painful because of all of the other devices and things in the house that would require reconfiguration. Trying to debug the home server, or make sure that the backup NAS doesn’t break, but all of these things are stuff that I was super excited to get and I still am excited to have. I remember how I wanted these things for a while, and I wanted to save up for them, and I ended up being able to get them from my dad. I have a little server rack. And I’m grateful that I have all of these things that I get to reconfigure. And the fact that I’m so stressed about water being trapped in between floors is only there because I have a fucking house with two floors. That is so incredibly lucky and I cannot think of anyone else that has something like that, and I will be able to fix it and learn from this. I was also able to call my dad and ask him for help and he picked up immediately, and he offered to come over even though it’s not necessary, and he is coming over tomorrow. I have a dad that I can call and rely on for things like this, and that is near me and accessible. And I came home to this massive mess that happened because I had friends over that feel comfortable enough to use my things, and we came back from all getting food together. I remember when I was a kid I would go to sleep and try to dream about just looking through the window of an apartment and seeing me with like three other friends just hanging out casually. I went and got food with four friends. And I remember I used to pray and look at myself in the future and think about how beautiful it is that I can take that for granted. That would mean I’m not afraid of losing it, and I wouldn’t think that this is something worthy of a dream, just an average Saturday. And honestly, I’ve started to cry a little bit while using voice to text to say this. I remember when I would struggle to make new friends when I moved here or when my life got fucked over from my last breakup, and having to push myself hard to try to make all of these things again, and telling myself how this is one of those situations where you plant the seed now for the fruit later. I remember how lonely I would feel and how anxious and worried I was about how I couldn’t control it directly, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to find my people, and all of the times where I tried and it didn’t work, and I would feel more and more afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find friends. And now I can take it for granted. And when I think about the fact that I went and got pizza and a McDonald’s drink with friends with my dog with me, I can’t help, but to think that in one of the worst days I’ve had in a while, younger me would be so fucking excited. I can type this now while walking around my bedroom with my dog happily licking his paws on the bed getting ready for sleep. And my friends know my dog. And all I can do is think back to all the different points in my life where I have dreamed of such innocent goals like this. I would close my eyes and daydream and try to convince myself that things would be better in the future, and it would be finally right. And I have gotten so comfortable with this relative heaven. It makes me cry and these tears are of happiness. I know that life has its way of giving everyone their fair share of misery, but I’m so incredibly fortunate to have these stresses. And even though I feel exhausted and stressed and scared and overwhelmed, if I think about younger me, seeing this, I don’t think I would be able to hide my excitement out of thinking my dreams would come true. I really really am grateful for these blessings. And I’m so thankful to myself for being strong and working towards these things even though they felt so incredibly impossible.

This is one of those moments where I think that depression is a blessing in disguise. If I did not have this chronic obstacle to joy or any kind of willingness to live, I have been forced to learn and develop these skills and intentional ways of living, such as this exercise of gratitude. And it is these practices that I’m required to constantly do in order to manage my mental illness, and while that is exhausting, it also gives me this incredible resilience to difficulties in life. The same situations that would cause more Neurotypical people to struggle end up being the same amount of difficulty regular life hands me, and so I have enough familiarity and experience with pulling myself out of it. A marathon is not as painful if you run every day, as opposed to only during the marathon.