It's been a while and it hasn't really gotten better. I have brief stretches of nothingness surrounded by cold waves that crash down on my chest. It feels almost cruel how having a chance to breathe is such a soft, passive thing while starting to drown is incredibly violent.
I think a schedules helped me a lot, but I still feel like I'm moving through honey. Things that used to make me happy now become a viscous barrier I have to force myself through. I wake up and I feel like I'm chained to something every time I move. If I don't force myself, I end up passing hours just rotting in the same place, doing nothing. I feel horrible, tired, and hopeless.
I also have a belt constrained around my lungs. I'm paralyzed by this feeling of dread – almost like a train crawling to a stop towards me, and I'm standing there frozen on the tracks. All I can see is this impending doom, and I'm powerless to move out of its way. It feels ironic how I'm more afraid of a small inconvenience compared to the idea of not existing anymore.
I was in a Costco line waiting to pick up my dogs medication, and I just felt an overwhelming desire to cry. The worst part is I knew I couldn't. Things have been fucking rough lately, and I just don't have a way to put any of this weight down. I talked with my dad about trying other experimental treatments, and that's somewhat fizzled out. I feel resigned to my fate – I don't have the energy to try to change things. I was sitting in the gym today waiting for something I didn't know before starting my set. The weight was almost comically light, and I knew it. But I still was just paralyzed by something I couldn't figure out. I permanently feel in the state of having just enough energy to sit down and never enough to get back up. I think if I didn't have routine I wouldn't be able to do anything. Hell, without Hash I don't think I'd wake up or get out of bed.
I'm tired. I really am. I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired. God gave me everything I asked for and I'm still in pain. I've started thinking about God more recently, I think I need to believe there's someone there for me who has a plan. Because I can't really see anything for myself in the future. I can't even see myself in an hour. I'm trying I really am, but I feel myself losing slowly, piece by piece I'm being whittled down.
I talked with my therapist more today about handling different people’s interpersonal issues. I think it’s fairly natural for everyone to have their quirks and difficulties – but it doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve thought about these sorts of things a lot, and I think universal communication is the only way to bridge these gaps. I also think that this needs to be proper communication – which is an unnatural thing I think in the first place. It’s pretty hard to put aside your predispositions to try to accommodate someone else’s viewpoint, and I’m still trying to figure out when/if it’s ever appropriate to be natural with communication.
I struggle with emotions when I’m frustrated or sad, as I tend to dilute them to make them more palatable. I pretty easily concede speaking about me being upset or hurt when faced with any opposition – which is an unhealthy thing that I’m aware of. I guess the inner child in me constantly sees the situations where I’ve had to bottle up emotions to appease a parent. I’m fairly tired, and relatively lucid due to my medication, and I feel that fear of consequences slipping away. I don’t feel as afraid to say things that are abrasive or damaging.
I’m a bit worried, the things I want to say right now are things that would set off some bad things.
AAAAND I’ve just hit them with the “Your turn” after being interrupted. I’m pretty tired of this, and I don’t really think I’ll get a chance to speak or have any meaningful thoughts or feelings acknowledged let alone addressed. I feel pretty fuckin hurt. I remember why I don’t bring up things anymore, it’s almost a curse how Adderall lowers my activation energy to tasks. The very thing I’m prescribed it for ends up biting me back for it. Oh well. Maybe they’re all right.
Someone reached out to me on Discord, sending a very sweet message mentioning how they actually read this blog a bit and enjoyed seeing an “honest down-to-earth blog”. It was a real ‘small world’ moment because they saw one of my solutions on Reddit for Advent of Code, and they noticed afterward it was me! It's pretty surreal how things like that happen, especially with how big the internet is, but it was a very cool interaction and something that felt almost like divine intervention to me.
Literally an hour before, I was thinking about my blog while in the shower. I was thinking about how much it’s devolved from the original posts I had, and how low-effort it’s become. I was fairly disappointed in it, and I also constantly have the disparaging feeling that it’s not worth the potential shame or consequence of someone reading it and making fun of this. It’s more or less something I’ve decided I want to show to myself I don’t care about, as I can’t really live a life of fear of my actions – or at least I don’t think that’s a good life. I want to be cringe, do cringe things, and lead the life I think is best in the current moment. This may include making lame videos to post on relatively anonymous social media, writing shit down on this blog, or uploading silly little videos to my youtube channel for (hopefully) no one to see.
I guess it almost feels like I’m being encouraged by God or some higher power to continue down this path of doing stupid shit. I wouldn’t have met a close friend if I didn’t have this blog attached to my discord, and I’ve had a lot of meaningful interactions because of the things I do. I think if I didn’t do anything that I could potentially be shamed for, I would never really be able to connect to anyone anyways. I’m glad I do the things I do. Thank you to the person who sent me that kind message, I really cannot stress enough how happy it made me ♥
One goal I made was to try doing more creative projects occasionally—these range from serious things to just small silly TikToks. I got somewhat taken aback because one friend reacted very supportively, and another person kinda ignored it. With one friend I had mentioned twice now how I had an idea and was going to make a silly video and put multiple different lures pointing out that I had done it – all short of directly saying “Hey, could you look at this thing I made?”. I get while writing this now that it’s a somewhat childish game, but from my POV with this person, I already feel like things are on thin ice as I keep getting constant reinforcement that they don’t want to be close friends anymore. I can’t help but see the pattern in their behavior. Either that or they just don’t understand that they’ve been a pretty disheartening friend for a while, but also they have mentioned this and have acknowledged it without anything changing. I don’t really know which case this is but it ends up with the same behavior from me regardless.
With the other friend, when I briefly mentioned it, they enthusiastically supported me and asked to see it. They followed up and took the time to screenshot a comment and mention it. I realized how much I felt like this person cares about me, and has a genuine interest in my activities. I don’t really feel that with the other person. I feel like with the new friends I’ve been making and the old friends that have consistently been there for me, I find myself tired of having to put in extra effort or constantly make excuses for consistent behavior.
I have a mental ultimatum for something that if it happens I should hold myself accountable and stop interacting even more. If that thing happens, I can’t help but believe that they don’t care about how I’d feel, and their selfish motivations would trump my well-being. I guess might as well write it down here as an “I told you so” for future me:
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Honestly, there are a lot of things in my life that I don’t know how they’re going to turn out. There are a lot of immediate things and a lot of long-term things which I’m afraid for. I didn’t know whether to write afraid of or for – as a lot of these fears are things not working out. I feel like I’m permanently not doing enough for a lot of things, and that constant sense of anxiety really ruins my quality of life. I guess that’s probably because I have anxiety. I wonder how other people go through life, without that constant crushing feeling in their chest whenever something is wrong.
I decided to myself that I’m going to try to lifemaxx again, so I started setting out some criteria of things I want to do. I started using the app Habitica to hopefully keep track of these things a bit better, and also incentivize myself. I still need to fix my sleep schedule, but I have a couple of other things I’m hoping will improve my quality of life. I don’t really have a new-year’s resolution, as I feel like I don’t need some big event to decide to commit to something like that. But I guess this ends up lining up around that time anyway. I also decided I want to try taking my medication more frequently, as I heard some studies about it actually teaching your brain to properly regulate the chemicals better, so here’s to hoping that works.
I think I realized why I’m still feeling hurt is because my thoughts don’t line up with my actions. I tell myself that I don’t consider them a close friend anymore, but I think mentally I didn’t fully adapt that yet. They mentioned something that made me upset in a way that only would happen if I cared about them a lot, and that served as a mini wake-up call. I think I need to really embody what I say I think, but also it might not even be worth it at this point. I’m still in this weird little limbo I’ve been forced into, not something I would inherently do – but also I may just attach too much to people. I think this is an interesting experience regardless to better understand where I should lay on that spectrum of decisions.
Its 1 AM, and I bought a few friends Pico Park so we could all play it. It was a nightmare in the best way possible. I’ve been laughing so hard that no sound has been coming out, and my ab has fully cramped.
This ad is something I feel everyone's seen at some point in their life. It popped up again for me and I watched it, and God damn it hit again.
I always seem to lose sight of this, but I really do feel like radical love is one of the most fulfilling ways to live life. One goal I've had for a while now is to do something nice for no recognition every day, and it's devolved a lot since then. It defeats the purpose if I mention what I do, but I think I've lost sight of why I want to do that. It's been a while, I think I'm gonna try to log onto TFM and pay it forward again this year.
I am a firm believer that only love can overcome hate. I think stuff like right-wing vs left-wing is a great example of this. I don’t know how anyone expects the other group to communicate if they are both constantly villanizing each other. But I’m also saying this because I was in the wrong today. I realized I did something bad; the worst part was that I didn’t understand why it was bad mentally. Since I know myself relatively well, I feel confident saying that I don’t have any ill intentions – but rather the mistake I made was a shortcoming that I think a lot of men particularly fall victim to. Since I’m talking in vague terms I can’t exactly go more into depth on that part of it, but I ended up applying some REBT techniques and did some research to bridge the gap between my actions and intentions.
I think that most people won’t do stuff like this – and I realized that a lot of things seem obvious to people when it upsets them, but we always forget what it’s like to not know something. In an ideal world, everyone would learn healthy communication and comfortably help each other grow, but instead in practice, I think that there’s always the fear of someone judging you and ruining your perception.
In an extreme example – which is worse. Imagine if your friend was a straight-up neonazi. Or at least they made a joke or comment that aligns with that. Which would you think better of? The person who just immediately apologizes, or the person who apologizes and then asks several follow-up questions to understand why it’s bad. I think most people would prefer the former, as it gives the benefit of the doubt to a miscommunication. But in both situations, they’re the same person: just one person doesn’t end up changing their beliefs and rather just adapts their behavior in certain situations, namely interacting with you. I think it’s best for everyone if the second case happens, where you genuinely talk in a non-aggressive way about why certain things are problems. But at the same time, if people don’t see things the way I do, the hypothetical neonazi is incentivized to not change their behavior in order to not damage their relationship. Isn’t that a weird, counterintuitive result?
Or who knows, maybe I’m just rambling. God knows if what I type is even coherent, it’s 3 am in the morning and I’m covered in brain fog.
Ever since I was young, I would always have great moments overshadowed by immediate bad moments. Usually, they were consequences of reckless actions or just unfortunate luck. I later realized in therapy how this is a fallacy – good moments must be succeeded by bad moments, as things can never stay good forever they must eventually end and bad moments will happen. I then tried to convince myself to focus on the counterpoint: good things will follow bad moments. I’ve had some very very bad moments in my life that are followed by amazing moments – and so I call this the rainbow after the storm for me.
I felt happy for the first time in a while today, and yesterday night also. There are a lot of things that I’m stressed about and terrified about – but I can’t control them too much at this point. I had a good workout, and I danced in the car on the drive home to some high-BPM music. Music sounded good again, and I enjoyed it. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve enjoyed music like that. I hope I’m back for at least a while more.