diaries-of-a-shut-in

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

I’ve been too scared to write, so I decided to face my fears

TW for depression: It’s not very explicit, more just vaguely heartbreaking.

The skies are splattered in all kinds of shades, clouds, times of days, and many, many moons. It all hits the eye like a pane of broken glass, each lethal fragment a window into its own universe, or a canvass of some great artistic vision of which I can only see the tiniest, most insignificant piece. And I’m just looking up at it all from my tiny little rooftop at the outskirts of suburbia, gazing upon all the different fragments, gazing at it all like one grand, apocalyptic tapestry of time and space crashing into itself in a thousand different directions.

If you’re foolish enough to look down, you’ll see people going about their day. Dads walking the dog, children playing on the lawn, and the occasional car driving by, like none of it matters. Like the end of the world isn’t so terrifyingly beautiful. But etched into the harsh, ugly asphalt is the thousand different lights etched into its harsh crevices, making blue, purple, orange, and red, from its soul-sucking gray. Welcome to my world. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember.

“Hey, John! Dinner’s ready!” My dad calls out to me. It’s time to retreat back inside and hide from these strange worlds and their soft whispers.

It’s meatloaf. And Mashed potatoes. And green beans. And the light from 12 different sunsets pour in from one window, all at different angles. 7 different sunrises poke their way through the window at the opposite end of the house. The whispers aren’t gone, just quiet, while my parents are talking about the baseball game that’s happening tomorrow, and the funny thing that happened to my mom at work, and I’m staring into my mashed potatoes looking for some kind of intoxication within its gravy swirls and minuscule trails of steam. There’s something there, but it’s not enough.

A couple hours later, it’s time for sleep, where I dream of a deep purple sky with a thick blanket of stars that cast the faintest of shadows upon the trees outside, as the earth churns so, so slowly, until the hints of twilight peak out, and you forget that the sky was ever darker than it is now, but you keep watching, and the edge of the horizon glints with a white sky in the making. The sun pokes out and its first rays hit my face, where I wake up. I look outside, and it’s the same impossible sky. Just tiny glimpses of a whole that make their way through the hostile and lethal of that damned broken window pane. But it’s so, so beautiful.

I just can’t figure out why it hurts so much.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

I Rant About Pizza for Several Paragraphs

Pizza. You know it. You love it. Sauce. Cheese. Bread. The whole damn package. There’s other ways to prepare sauce, cheese and bread, sure. But pizza, there’s nothing like it. If you’re white and in the United States, chances are it was one of the first unhealthy foods you were allowed to eat, right up there with ice cream and pancakes as something that’s been with you you’re whole life you don’t even remember when you started eating it. My adult culinary life is complex and ever-changing, but it could easily be reduced to when I allow myself to eat pizza, and when I tell myself I have to eat something else because I need to eat something other than sauce, cheese, and white bread every day.  But no other dish provides the same comfort. Sure, the Thai place on the main road is always delicious. That burger joint just on the edge of town never fails to hit the spot. But PIZZA? That is the ultimate satisfaction. It’s the kind of food reserved for birthday parties. It’s food of kings; The food that you would constantly beg your parents to let you eat that night when you were little whenever you thought there was even the TINIEST possibility of success. Nothing was better than when you did succeed, either because your parents were too worn down to argue with you, didn’t have time or energy to argue with you, or when they realized that they wanted pizza just as much as you do. Whatever the reason, it was pizza time baby. Even if it was bad pizza, it still reminded you of how good the good pizza tasted.

I ate so much fucking pizza when I was little. Whenever I had pizza in front of me, I would inhale as much as possible. I swear, I could eat 3/4ths of a large pizza and still manage not to throw up most of the time, a skill that has enabled me to continue the self-destructive practice of inhaling a whole day of food in one sitting. It would always taste so good. But afterward, I would also feel really uncomfortable. Yeah, I would be gassy, but my stomach also felt like it was in pain. Like the feeling of being upset was distilled into a physical sensation throughout my stomach. Which of course, made me upset. Which made me act out. I didn’t know what was going on. I was a kid. I didn’t know what was happening and I wasn’t good communicating. That was hard on my parents. They had no idea why I was acting out after they gave me the treat that every kid coveted. This went on for years, and probably went on before I could remember it happening.

Eventually, my mom somehow managed to track down a specialist, who ran some blood tests. It turns out my gut was sensitive to gluten, a protein found in wheat bread. The bread would irritate my gut, which would mess with my head and overall ability to function. Bummer. I was also sensitive to Casein, which is a protein found in dairy products, such as milk and cheese. Double bummer. I had to stop eating both of them. That meant no pizza. Not just that, no ice cream, no grilled cheese sandwiches, no muffins, no cakes, no pancakes, no brownies, no chicken fingers(which were coated in bread), no burgers with the bun, etc. etc. Imagine telling a 9-year old they had to say goodbye to the foods they found so much joy in. It wasn’t easy for me, and it wasn’t easy for my mom to have to enforce it.

My mom worked her ass off to make sure I wasn’t left out of that joy. She made fudge, would find flourless chocolate cakes at the bakery, as well as gluten free cake mixes, gluten free bread, gluten free pancake mix, the whole shebang. Obviously, it wasn’t easy to adjust. I still couldn’t eat the sweets at the school, the gluten free bread just tasted weird,and would crumble instantly if it wasn’t toasted. But the gluten free pancake mix was just as good as the real thing, the gluten free brownie mix were tasty, and my mom managed to make gluten free/dairy free cakes that ended up being some of my favorite.

The casein was nowhere near as destructive as gluten, but I still needed to give up milk in cheese. For cows, anyway. It turned out though, that goat’s milk and goat’s cheese was lower in casein, and there were this super pretentious grocery store in the next town over that sold stuff like goat Gouda, and gluten free pizza crusts made from egg and tapioca starch(and apparently milk but we didn’t see the ingredients when we first tried it out) that crust paired together with goat gouda ended up becoming my favorite pizza, and it ended up being one of the first things I learned how to make growing up.

As I grew up, being gluten free eventually became more and more ubiquitous until practically every store and restaurant has gluten free options or alternatives. my local pizza shop has gluten free pizza, and the crust is pretty good, though nothing will really hold up to my own homemade recipe. But I still frequent it every week and a half or so, and have eaten there on and off ever since it’s been open for business. As I eat there, I’ve made more attempts to make the pizza healthier. It started with green peppers, then progressed to cashew nut cheese so I wouldn’t overload on dairy. What a foolish endeavor it all has been. Pizza is pizza because it’s so unhealthy that it takes a special occasion to justify having some and  feel the joy of unbridled indulgence, even if it does make you feel kinda worse the next morning. You can do stuff to make it healthier, sure. Give it an olive base. Put spinach on it, maybe even broccoli if you have no soul. But then it stops being pizza. Not the one from your childhood, anyway. It’s  just a version bread, sauce and cheese that you sometimes treat yourself too when it’s been a long day and you’re not really in the mood for making dinner. It’s still pleasant, sure. The same way Thai food or burgers are pleasant. But it’s not pizza.

Growing up, you’ve gotta make difficult choices, and a lot of those involve making sure you eat healthy, and making sure you don’t overdo it even when you do decide to treat yourself. I’ll still have the same kind of pizza from my childhood, but I live my life right, it’ll mean allowing myself that childhood joy far less frequently than the child in me begs me to. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still make sure I feel that joy occasionally. Besides, even if I do make my pizza kinda healthy half the time, it’ll still remind me of what real pizza is, right?

P.S. To whoever’s reading this, PLEASE don’t be one of those people that eats Caprese pizzas, okay? I tried one, and I lost respect for myself for letting myself eat most of it. It’s like someone dumped a salad on your pizza, vinagrette included. Just order the salad separately. You’re lying to yourself if you think you can have it both ways by mixing the indulgence of childhood and the healthfulness of adulthood. Just don’t.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

Having a bit of a rough time

trigger warnings: discussion of anxiety, depression, and trauma.

So my sleep cycle is fucked up. I woke up at 2 in the afternoon yesterday after only getting 3 hours of sleep during the night and falling asleep well into the morning. This has been happening multiple times in the past week, and has predictably affected my mental health in a rather... unique way.

A far cry from the paranoia and hyper vigilance, I am now experiencing some kind of anxiety/depression headache that makes me shut down while simultaneously feeling like I could crack at any moment. And so I’ve been feeling very non-functional which feeds into the anxiety/depression. Of course, this is probably only a challenge in the first place because I feel well enough to want to wake up in the morning and start my day right, rather than being too scared or depressed by life to even bother attempting to wake up before 11 am. It is simultaneously an encouraging sign and incredibly inconvenient and just... frustrating.

What I’ve been doing is defaulting to playing competitive pokemon online or youtube, which obviously isn’t healthy, serving as a mere surface level distraction from the pain while simultaneously slowly intensifying it over time. So as I seem to gear up for another round of sleep cycle shenanigans in this early morning on 2 hours of sleep, I’m trying other stuff. Reminding myself it’s a beautiful day and that I love myself helps. So does music. listened to Joe Hisaishi while I couldn’t fall asleep, and the lo fi beats I listen to as I write this are really coming in clutch. Is that a proper use of the phrase? Ah, who cares.

If you could give ecstasy a color, what would it be? For some reason, my mind hops toward a deep violet. Is yours different? Is your ecstasy different from my own? Or do we just define the same sweet relief differently? In true bullshitter fashion, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. But it’s a pleasant question to think about. Maybe because I want to know what ecstasy feels like, or at least remember what it’s like. Then again, it’s an open question as to whether or not I ever felt it. I had a rough childhood. Depressed parents and a gaslighting extended family don’t make for good living conditions.

I vaguely remember how my mom used to tell me I could laugh at anything, or find the joy in anything. I do remember laughing a lot, like how I’d stay up until 4 am during sleepovers with my new friend laughing my goddamn ass off because blowing up the cars in Call of Duty in an explosive suicide was endlessly hilarious while my friend tried to actually play the game. Of course, I was new to the game and could never be as good at it as he was, and am still not as good at games as he is, so it was more fun to me to find all the ways I could kill myself in the game, and trying to do it before he could get to me first.

When I was a toddler, I’d constantly stare in front of the mirror, making faces to myself, and studying myself to see what I could learn about that figure that seemed to look exactly like me. Not sure how that’s relevant, but it feels relevant.

So I guess I did know ecstasy at one point, despite all the childhood pain and trauma. There’s still 20 minutes on the timer. I’m not sure how long I can keep up with this thought, since I really want to rewatch the little pickle town animatics on youtube. they’re simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting, depicting trauma, pain, loss, anxiety, and depression, and showing a series of disparate characters managing to find each other and help each other overcome their own pain with empathy and unconditional acts of kindness. I don’t usually cry, but I swear I’m brought close to tears every time I watch it, as I see characters not be fully rid of the pain they carry with them, but watch how far they’ve come and know that they will get better eventually. There’s a trigger warning for anxiety and depression in most of the videos, and depictions of suicidal ideation or self harm in a few. But I swear to you, if you can find the strength to watch them in order, it is a beautiful treat.

So I think I’m going to watch that now.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

I’m changing the time to 45 minutes

trigger warning: talk of depression, suicide

give me a minute while my mind drifts into the consciousness of poetic drift. I want to start writing more often and write longer pieces, so I’m changing the timer to 45 minutes, and it will always be in the middle of the night. going to try to do it every night.

So I just wrote up a story and it ended up being incredibly depressing to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable posting it because I didn’t want to risk someone falling into a dangerous depressive episode, even if I put up a content warning. someone from my old friend group nearly attempted suicide today, and the discord for that group of friends has gotten depressing and I think I absorbed all of that without addressing it properly. I tried to plow through because I’m frustrated by my low writing output and don’t want this blog to be mostly me rehashing/reliving my own problems and trauma.

I don’t know, it’s crazy. This isn’t even the first time this year one of my friends from that friend group came close to attempting suicide and someone I used to consider my best friend became completely despondent since the pandemic from the stress and depression that the pandemic caused. It’s like the depressions an infection that’s been spreading through my not very big group of friends and I’m worried for their health at this point. But I also know from personal experience that people with good intentions can end up being overwhelming to deal with from being overbearing and make me feel even worse.

I haven’t talked to my parents about this, mostly because they have their own baggage to the point where they can become despondent on their own(I actually got in a fight with my mom today about her using soapy water instead of soap for washing her hands), so I don’t even know how they could help me.

God, how would I even react to one of my friends killing themselves? So much bad shit has happened that I don’t even have the capacity to be empathetic sometimes and feel annoyed and bitter that I have to deal with someone else being triggered.

There really isn’t anything to say because there’s nothing I can do accept be there for them and listen to them and make sure they know they can reach out. And I hate that’s all I can do. I absolutely hate it.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

It’s past 5 in the morning. I don’t have a timer and I don’t have much to say. I’ve been staying up until the sunrise and waking up past noon. I was just thinking about how I would stay up so late into the night and be so anxious, but now, whenever I see the hazy gray rays of dawn peak out from under the horizon, I feel a sense it’s comfort, like it’s finally okay to go to bed and fall asleep. I’ve found myself appreciating those early dawns a lot, and I’m not sure anyone experiences them, because no one in their right mind would stay up late enough to see it, and even those who would wake up early enough to see it may be too busy fighting the urge to fall back asleep to really appreciate it. It’s like a moment for me and me alone, an intimate exchange between me and the sun as it’s slowly waking up in the form of a single whisper:

“Everything is going to be okay.”

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

so I’ve been doing a lot of hiatuses(hiati?)

If you think about it, the heat death of the universe is really just its cosmically ordained bedtime.

Hi, I’m a shut-in, and welcome to my 5th hiatus in a blog that I was supposed to be doing daily.

The semester’s finally over. I figured since I was so exhausted, I didn’t see much of a point in torturing myself to do a daily output. So I just chilled and finally played some new video games that I’ve had for forever but never played. That’s been nice. But then, I still started wavering.

I think the reason for that is because whenever I start the timer, I feel the need to recount and rehash whatever trauma is on my mind for that given day, whether something genuinely triggering happened, or if it’s just lurking in the back of my head. And I’m not so sure I want to do that. I want this to be something I look forward to doing, not just have it be some extra drain on my mental health that I end up abandoning and then feeling guilty for abandoning it. I don’t want to do that. I want to write. I want to paint vivid descriptions of a dragon’ butt cheeks.

I feel very... floaty right now. Like my body thinks its time to go sleep but my mind disagrees, so I’m in a strange, waking limbo. This usually happens when I find myself taking big naps. I wake up deep into the night, and find myself passing the time with snacking and watching tv and playing videogames. It’s a strange sensation, like the lines between dreams and reality can become blurred, as I’m isolated from the waking world and drowsiness nibbles at my consciousness. on those nights where I scroll through youtube browsing animated shorts and game demos, may as well be dreaming. But the thing about the night is that you find yourself unable to reach out to anyone else. They’re all slumbering. And if you wake them, you don’t actually wake them. You force them into the same post-midnight where it all feels slightly off, and they’re disoriented and annoyed, and everything they say and do is directed towards the anxious escape from this strange plain and back into the dreaming world, where they’re more comfortable. Where they’ve let themselves go, at the mercy of their deepest thoughts, fears, and desires.

Who knows if the person you wake awakes as the same person every time? You might wake them and they turn out to be... someone else.

That whole paragraph sounds like a script for the “a voice from darkness” podcast. It was such an interesting premise. It’s about a talk show hosts that takes calls from people dealing with paranormal phenomena, and the stories and problems that are told end up overlapping with one another. By halfway through the first season, I was excited to see how it would all come together. And it ended up missing the mark. The stories are interspersed with the segment “odd america,” which is basically a mini horror story that interrupts the main story of a podcast which is already on the shorter end. Because it’s so short, it’s hard to go that in depth into the stories that are told. Between that and the “national alerts” section, which crops up later in the season, it ends up becoming impossible to go in depth on the story that’s being told episode to episode, and it ends up devolving into a series of incredibly interesting writing prompts. I stopped listening when the first episode of season 2 had the talk show hosts sister suddenly calls to grill him on the secrets he’s hiding regarding a past traumatic event, which raises the question of why she’s doing this through a talk show that’s being broadcast to the public and... it just didn’t work with the format. The whole thing was a shame, really.

But don’t want to complain anymore. I want to write! from here on out, before I start the 30 minute timer, I’m going to take a minute come up with a writing prompt, and then do the freestyle stream of consciousness stuff based on that. I might take a blog night just to come up with some writing prompts.

Well, the timer’s almost done. Time to head out.

Signed,

The Postmodern Poe

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

“I have to write a paper on king lear”

Yeah, you read the title right. I have to write a paper on king lear, one which I haven’t really properly started. I have an opening question, but outside of that, I have nothing. I thought that I would take tonight as an opportunity to give up the writer’s block, but I don’t seem to be able to actually talk about it. Why the fuck am I so scared to write about the paper?

So the paper is on king lear. and the question I want to ask is “is king lear confusing love and power?... something about him saying “the king shall speak to the duke of cornwall and the father his daughter...”

I can’t. I really can’t. fuck. I’m just going to eat some blueberries and lettuce and get back to you.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

“But I don’t feel like writing”

Too bad, we’re writing! You’re going to sit down and let your stream of consciousness flow onto the text of a computer screen to be enjoyed by an anonymous audience whom you feel comfortable divulging your darkest secrets to while chilling to some slick lofi beats or so help me god!!!

Anyway, I know my last post was about being lovesick, but I kinda want to talk about my relationship with media today. You know, media. videogames, books, movies, tv shows. You know, stuff that I would enjoy and do enjoy infinitely more than youtube and reddit. Here’s the thing: I used to read in high school. I didn’t read a WHOLE lot, but I would pick up a book every now and then and get sucked in. I’d also play dark souls. Man, I fucking loved dark souls. Why? Because I had this idea that I had to be as good at a game as possible, and dark souls gave me a convenient outlet for my hatred of my own free time. I also loved the gloomy atmosphere and made me learn about myself and feel emotionally invested. But that all stopped. I stopped reading regularly, and I eventually stopped enjoying video games regularly.

The reason I stopped reading regularly was because I slowly realized that that all the blurbs on the backs of books made everything sound exactly the same and either insanely boring or uninspired. And so, I found myself reading about 1/3 the way through books before realizing that they were full of shit. And when I started college, everything became about reading, which I’m thankful for, but when you’re reading for work, it becomes pretty difficult to read for fun. It certainly didn’t help to be a 24/7 stress mess who was constantly freaking out about the next assignment, only to burrow into youtube videos and reddit as a brief escape from work assignments the destruction of our planet, burning the precious free time I had that should’ve been spent getting rest. But I digress.

Video games eventually fell somewhat out of fashion for me because I got anxiety over the time investment over playing a game, because somehow it felt like starting a whole new project. And like, I don’t owe a goddamn thing to these video games. Why am I so stressed out about them? But alas, they found the same death knell in college. I don’t know if anyone has noticed by now, but I have some mental health issues. But I guess we all share at least some of the same mental scars now, now that the pandemic has sustained similar injuries on all of us. Even if it is to varying degrees.

tv shows and movies are a different beast. yes, tv shows have the problem of time investment, but they’re also fairly easy to get into. Movies have no time investment, and I avoid purely out of a refusal to plan even 30 minutes in advance and therefore not block out any time for personal enjoyment. And yet, there are several movies I’m aware of that I haven’t seen but am reasonably certain I would enjoy, and several tv shows that I’ve started that were enjoyable but I stopped watching altogether. Because those tv shows and movies would be too much fun to watch and I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

I guess the idea is to wait until I’m in a better mood to watch tv shows and movies that require more of my attention so that I can enjoy them more. But like I said, I don’t owe a goddamn thing to those tv shows or movies. They’re inanimate. Why am I deliberately and irrationally depriving myself of things I know I would enjoy?

Yu-Gi-Oh’s an exception though, apparently. For some fucking reason I have no issue watching a group of teenagers play a trading card game and not even abide by the rules of the card game, because everytime they win it’s because of some made up bullshit that was never put in the game, and they don’t summon the monsters properly and- ah, but who gives a shit. I’ve come to take a liking to media that’s irreconciably stupid and exists for no other reason than to be stupid. Because a lot of the time, it’s stupid with so much sincerity that you slowly realize that it has more heart than most pieces of media that try to take themselves seriously. That’s what I’ve found, anyways. Maybe I’m just looking in all the wrong places.

Well, that’s all for today’s “what’s this random anon ranting about now?” Catch me next time where I’ll rant about how the phrase “hardcore parkour!” was used by the ancient Greeks to perform black magic!

Signed,

the Postmodern Poe.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

I’m lovesick(part 1)

Warning: discussions of sex.

So I’m feeling myself... well, feel things again as things open up and the prospect of returning to “normal” feels close and in reach, rather than a distant delusion. And one of those things I’m feeling is lovesickness.

I had a partner before the pandemic broke, and you probably know the story, either from a friend, or first-hand. The long-distance and stress from being away from each other made us fight with each other more and more, until we just... let go.

Honestly, the relationship was on the rocks looking back. We were constantly dealing with the other’s mental illness, the lack of romantic skills(like me not knowing how to comb long hair) made it difficult to create intimate moments. We loved each other, but didn’t know how to love. And the pandemic basically killed that.

Anyways, we eventually reconciled after a few months apart, acknowledged our shortcomings in the relationship, etc. One night we’re talking, and they’re talking about their okcupid account that they made, and I suddenly break down crying about how I still loved her and only broke up with her because I didn’t want to keep hurting her. She took it pretty well, saying that she was glad I told her this, and that she didn’t want me to keep it from her.

“I love you so much” i responded.

I would like to say that was the end of it, and I moved on after that, but life is much more awkard and disappointing, because for the next couple I somehow kept convincing myself that she had feelings for me, and when I finally got it through my head that she didn’t, I still wanted to believe that there was a chance. I didn’t get my head out of my ass until she was talking about how she liked it better before we started dating and were just friends. To which I replied, “but when were friends, I liked you then.” To which they freaked out and had to get off the call, and I realized that if I didn’t get my fucking act together, I was going to lose them as a friend.

And so I’ve been doing that. It hasn’t been that easy. I talked to them a few weeks ago, which had been the first time in about a month, and we joked and talked like friends would. Except with each laugh and giggle that they made, I became aroused. By the end of the call, I was so fucking horny that I couldn’t think straight for the next hour, even after I masturbated... twice.

And while I’m feeling my thighs and arms go weak from the sound of her voice, I know that they’re browsing okcupid. There’s no reason that they would stop. They just don’t talk to me about it because they want to keep boundaries between us, and they know I wouldn’t take it well to listen to her talk about how they’re flirting online with people, specifically people that aren’t me.

Want to know the joke that ties this together? I’m thinking about this because I masturbated earlier tonight and something felt missing, and I realized it was because I miss the intimacy of sex.

Well, it’s been about a half hour now. Probably going to do a part 2, because there’s a lot to unpack and a lot to work through, given that I’ve had to hold back the more nihilistic, depressive, toxic passions that will only become stronger and all-consuming if I let it be typed out and saved onto this post.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

The hiatus is over!!!

So my school semester ends is a couple weeks and I still have to write a paper that I haven’t started yet. But I’ve decided that I needed to come back to this, for a few reasons, but the basic conclusion is that the whole point of this blog was to learn to power through writer’s block no matter what state I was in, and foregoing this exercise because I don’t feel like I have the time after having writer’s block from trying to write a paper(though to be honest, it’s more like I was avoiding the paper) is ludicrous.

So what’s happened to me since then? Not much, but also a lot. You see, I got locked out of my house at around 4 in the morning, and realized I wasn’t even that motivated to get back inside because i was finally forced to slow down and reflect on what the fuck I was doing with myself. So I sat in a chair and waited for the gray dawn to seep through the clouded sky, and asked myself: Why do I keep doing bad things to myself even though I know they’re bad and feel bad after doing them? After a bit of thinking, the answer became simple: I wanted to.

It seemed so ridiculous, yet so obviously true. I’d thought it was an addiction, and it was, but it was all so addicting because the poisons that I turned to tasted sweet to me, and the medicines that I would avoid tasted bitter. And it was so enlightening because I thought that swearing off youtube videos or reddit meant I would have to undergo some great trial, but that’s not the case. All I have to do is realize that these poisons taste bitter, and medicines:music, meditation, reading and writing: were sweet. I don’t really know how to explain this, probably because I haven’t fully absorbed the lesson. I still find myself going on reddit, and I still find myself going on Youtube. And I’m writing this post as something of a reminder of what I realized. Because It was a true epiphany, one that I don’t want to forget, and would really wish to recall. Because I suspect that when I was afflicted with pain over and over again, I became accustomed to it, and paradoxically fled into it, having learned to grow used to it, and become numb to its harm. And I wrapped myself in it, afraid to break out and go into music, because the good things in my life tasted bitter, and I was numb to the good it did to me. And All I have to do is break free from this and realize that the poison that I think to be sweet is in fact bitter in the pain it causes me and that the medicine I think to be bitter is in fact sweet in the good it does to me.

So finally rang the doorbell, where my dad woke up and let me in, and went to sleep. that day, I decided that I was going to just sit and allow myself to take in my surroundings. The result? I felt bored. overwhelmingly bored. Like I had a severe emotional deadness, which before manifested into depression, but now into boredom. Which I suppose was positive, but that meant it was impossible for me to focus on the reading I needed for class.

And so I decided to experiment with reducing my dosage for my medication. Which, maybe it wasn’t a smart move. I’ve gone a few days without it before, forgetting that I was supposed to take it, and it ended with me having a stress breakdown that left me unable to do anything for the rest of the day or the day after. But you know what? I’m fucking glad I did it. Because now I feel like I’m not dead inside. I’m singing more often. A lot more often. For no reason other than I want to. for the first time, I had to stop myself from singing more because I didn’t want to strain my voice. I feel like I have more energy, and am more attentive. Of course, the “downside” is that my brain is moving a mile a minute. Which isn’t necessarily bad, except it’s 110% all the time and hard to turn off, especially for sleep. And it makes it a lot harder to put my obsessive compulsive tendencies to rest. This has resulted in me feeling very tired and unable to focus the past couple days, leading to more - you guessed it - youtube and reddit. That said, I still vastly prefer it to feeling emotionally dead inside, which is how I felt with the orignal dosage.

I finally got some intake forms for a mood and anxiety program, so I’m soon going to get a professional opinion on all of this, so there’s no need to worry about me doing some vigilante therapy or whatever I’m doing. So what now? The next thing I’m going to work on is probably meditating and learning to relax myself on my own without relying on medication that makes me emotionally dead. Will probably experiment with caffeine, since that worked with focusing on past papers.

The timer’s up. I could keep writing if I wanted to, but if I wrote fo7r as long as I felt like it, I wouldn’t fall asleep until 6 in the morning, which would not be good for me. Like I said, my brain is moving a mile a minute all the time. So I may find myself doing some day writing as well as some night writing to let off steam. But seriously idea of HAVING to write to let off steam is so refreshing and exciting.

Thank you for listening.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

My impromptu Hiatus

trigger warning: depression, anxiety.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that that’s out of my system, let me tell you about my impromptu hiatus.

It was a real dumpter fire, let me tell you. Basically, I kept telling myself that it was totally fine that I kept staying up until 5 am and waking up at 10 am over and over. And one night was truly poetic in its irony. I was trying to prepare for class, and I realized that I didn’t do a good job of taking care of myself, and end up pushing myself too hard with now discernible improvement in performance because my being tired led to decreased productivity. From this, I concluded that sometimes, it’s okay to be slightly unprepared for a class so long as I get the rest I need. So I decided to treat myself to a pancake that night.

I tried to, anyways.

You see, I’ve never shared this with you, my anonymous and nonexistent audience, but I live with hoarders. Not like my room is messy, like, somehow the house is full of shit that can’t go anywhere because everywhere else is full of shit and it’s literally be impossible to be organized in any capacity. The kitchen is no different. So when I tried to make a pancake I kept being interrupted with shit falling from the fridge(seriously it happened like, 8 times), not knowing where to find stuff I just placed, etc. By the time I had cooked the pancake and ate it, I was more stressed out and anxious than when I started, and ended up staying up through the night.

Because of that, I finally overslept and missed a class, which made me spiral into a depressive episode, where I played a lot of pokemon. 

Fun, right?

Jeez, I’m tired. Anyway, after some rest, I’m feeling better now. I’d like to philosophize about all the lessons I’ve learned, but I’m honestly mentally tired, as opposed to physically tired. I’m going to have to be doing a lot of writing as the semester ends, and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to keep up. I’ll still rant about stupid and contrarian shit when the mood strikes me, like how Yu-Gi-Oh is the best shonen anime because it’s feminist, but don’t expect a post on a daily basis.

I’m also going to be shortening the time I write to 20 minutes when it’s 3 am and I need to go to sleep. I’ve been doing that anyways, but it’s good to formalize it. I think a good rule of thumb is that if I manage to sit myself in front of the tumblr page before 1 am, I’ll make it 30 minutes. Otherwise, I’ll make it 20 minutes.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed my authenticity which the internet so dearly craves.

well, not really. I still have a couple pets on the timer.

How about this? One of my friends was sad and asked me to tell them a joke, so I panicked and said that my dick was made of cotton candy.

I know, I’m a funny guy. Just like my grandpappy and his pappy before him. It’s too bad that I inherited their cotton candy dick to a strange genetic disorder. On the bright side, my dick tastes sweeter than most other dicks, so I have that going for me.

NOW the timer’s done!

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

Don’t read this post, it’s a bust

Well, this is on my mind already, so I guess I'll explain why Yu-Gi-Oh is a better anime than demon slayer from memory. Let's break it down by episode. Gah, fuck, I'm too tired for that shit. I guess I'll just let my thoughts seep onto the screen with my heavy eyes as I listen to some nice lofi beats. Did I mention I like lofi? Fucking greatest innovation in music since, I dunno, the xylophone. It's snowing on my banana split? who the hell knows. I'm very tired. I wonder how much stamina this requires. Goddamn, I have a full day tomorrow, why am I staying up so late to write this?I should put in a new clause where if I'm shit-faced tired, I only write for 15 minutes or so. I don't have anything deep to share, or thoughtful. I'm just tapping away on my computer screen. You know, this was bound to happen eventually. Where I just crap out and don't have anything interesting to say. That's okay. The whole point was to just let my creativity flow wherever it wanted to flow, and sometimes, it just doesn't flow. Which is why I'm going to post this anyways when I'm done. It's still nice and relaxing. I wonder what it's like to see music? I know it's basically synesthesia, but I'm not sure how apt that is, since it's so subjective to each person. Maybe its subjectivity is what makes it so apt a comparison. Someone might see a meadow in a song, a different person might see a rainy storm. Music is weird like that. It takes the idiosyncrasies  of speech to a whole new level. You might say a sentence in a lot of different ways, but the meaning doesn't usually change too much. But a piece of music... actually, is it true for a piece of music? I was going to say that by playing a piece of music differently, you can drastically change its meaning and interpretation, but I kinda feel like I was talking out of my ass, and I don't usually like to do that.' Whatevs. Who can think about paradoxically trying to explain music with the written word when I don't even know what happiness feels like? That took a fucking turn for the depressing, didn't it? I don't even know why you'd bother to read this, since it's just me rambling, but apparently you did, and this is how I reward you: depression. That's just the way it is, I guess. In all honesty, if you did read to the end of this, whoever you are, I appreciate you taking that kind of risk and having faith that I might stumble onto some grand reflection. If you feel unsatisfied, I suggest you read the previous post. I'm much more proud of that one. Well, I'm going to call it a night. I seriously need to take better care of myself. Goodnight!

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

The Golden Apple Orchard

Warning: contains horror elements

The cobblestone road is strewn about with golden apples. Turquoise-haired foxes run and play about the crimson-red grass. My memory of how I found this orchard is fuzzy. Something to do with a long-winding road that I took while driving home. My heavy eyes were forcing themselves closed in the deep dark night, so I stopped to get some rest. When I woke up, I found myself in this orchard's parking lot, with the hazy diamond dawn sending light through the misty air and dewy leaves like quicksilver. It was just a single cobblestone road, with golden apple trees strewn on either side for miles, some stretched and bended about in liquidy arches. Some with roots that latched on to the sky above, floating in the wind that carried with it a sweet scent, like the blood of a rare steak. Days passed, and I kept walking on that cobblestone path, not sure what to look for, not sure what I might find. Eventually, one of the torquoise-haired foxes stopped along the path and spoke to me: "Do you know where you are, human? Of course you don't. There's no terror in your eyes, no urgency in your breath. I s'pose it's for the best. No one who comes here ever leaves, anyhow." He then skipped along the cobblestone path ahead of me, growing no less smaller in my sight as he chased the background. I wanted to chase after him. Ask him what he meant, where I was. But like they said, it was for the best. So I just let him grow larger and taller, until along the mountain range he walked, so far off in the distance no one would believe it ever existed. The sun was white and cold, and rested just above the range. The fox went up to it, and swallowed it whole, And the sky went a deep acid blue as the last of the sun's silver rays slowly vanished between its teeth, and the bright light on the crimson grass became ever-shrinking columns as they were nibbled and devoured by the deep dark blue, as though the light itself were shadow. My breath grew heavy. my fingers went numb. the fox was gone, and the white, cold sun it devoured was replaced by a hot, obsidian moon, that melted and dissolved into the acid sky. And then I died.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

Your daily dose of lofi depression.

Neon raindrops tapped the pavement in soft rhythms as I walked the street. lights flickered through the windows of buildings like ghosts. I see someone walk by, and saw their eyes. They were looking down from beneath their umbrella at the wet streaks and puddles that formed along the asphault, but I saw their eyes all the same, and behind their irises saw the blinding flashes of their soul trapped within their shuffling shell. Just as they were about to leave my line of sight, their eyes met mine, and in that one fleeting moment, I saw their love, their wants, their wisdom, and how it was all coated by the cold sludge of their pain and sorrow. And somehow, their pain looked just like mine. Their sorrow felt so familiarly like my own.

It was just a moment. But in that one moment, my own pain softened, and sorrow faded. I felt my own soul shine a little brighter. Thought a little clearer Loved a little more. desired a a little fiercer. My step bounced a little lighter. That one moment only, and then it was gone.

I wonder what they saw in me. I wonder what it made them feel. I wonder if we were meant to find each other in that moment. Maybe we could help ourselves see sunshine again. Maybe we could rekindle our desires together. Maybe we could become wiser together. Maybe we could love each other.

Or maybe they were just going about their day, wondering who that weirdo in the hoodie was and why they were staring at them, and tried to look away to avoid me, only stealing a glance when they saw I wouldn’t stop looking, worried that I might follow them.

And that’s why I didn’t run after them. Why the hope that reignited that fire in my heart I tempered with more pain and sorrow, so that the hope would fade, my desires would dampen, and the pain would hurt less, the sorrow less cold. And then I went about my walk, wherever I was walking to do whatever I thought was so fucking important.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

Anime is kinda trash.

GUYS. AMAZING DEVELOPMENT. I’m not writing this entry hours before sunrise anymore! My class ended, and I chilled out with only a couple youtube videos before realizing that the best thing to do would be to go to bed. Now I’m listening to that sweet, sweet lo-fi and writing with the satisfaction that I’ll go to bed before 2 am.

Now onto the main topic: Anime is kinda trash.

Obviously, the entirety of japanese anime is completely creatively bankrupt. I love studio ghibli’s output, there are several anime shows that I found myself enjoying, and I’ll probably find several more anime shows and movies and movies that I enjoy. But generally, anime is kinda trash.

For example, I tried getting into demon slayer, and the whole premise is that the protagonist’s sister becomes a demon, and he has to figure out how to turn her back into a human. It’s clear that she cares for her brother by refusing to eat him despite it being natural for her as a demon to do so. You’d think that this would set up a dynamic that explores the struggles of him and his sister as they figure out how to turn her back, right? Wrong. She has a gag placed over her mouth so she can’t eat anyone and then goes for a 2-year long nap so that the protag can learn how to be a demon slayer. I’m not joking. They didn’t know what the fuck to do with her character, so they did fuck all except have her fight a demon and act like a house cat. It’s fucking demeaning to have such a strong set up for a supporting character only to push her aside so that they can focus on this generic nice guy train for two years. I honestly thought it would be different because it didn’t have any fanservice, but nope! The poor characterization is still there.

this may have been forgivable if the protag’s arc wasn’t fucking boring. He’s just not interesting enough as a character to carry an episode on his own. I thought that the demon slayer trial would be an opportunity to give a taste of other supporting characters, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, he singlehandedly slays an uber strong demon so that we can se just how strong the protag is. We see the 3 other people who passed the trial, but they hardly interact with each other, so we just don’t know anything about them accept for their surface level traits of asshole, traumatized, and silent.

But the fight scenes are good, right?

Not even! You know why? Because they constantly interrupt the fight scenes for dialogue! But the dialogue fucking sucks because neither the demons nor the protag has anything fucking interesting to say! It’s all just the demons talking about how evil they are, and then the protag shouts a breathing technique before going into an inner monologue on how to beat them. And then he does.

I made it 5 episodes in and stopped when he got to the demon who talked about how he ate teenage girls, because of course it had to be exclusively teenage girls just so that we could tell he was really evil. For fucks sake.

It’s a genuine shame, because the animation is honestly beautiful, and looked like it was setting up an interesting world. But that doesn’t mean anything if the characters are shit and the fights suck.

I’ll just end it here by saying that sexism and bias against women and female characters harms the end product. You know why it harms the end product? BECAUSE IF YOU VIEW WOMEN THROUGH THE LENS OF SHALLOW STEREOTYPES, THEN YOUR FEMALE CHARACTERS AREN’T GOING TO BE INTERESTING AND YOUR SHONEN ANIME WON’T BE ANYTHING BUT WELL-PRODUCED WISH FULFILLMENT.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

Gotta make this shit quick because it’s basically sunrise at this point

So the timer’s set to 20 minutes because I need to stop waiting until It’s moments before dawn before I remember I committed to writing everyday.

I mean, fucking hell, I have responsibilities. I know it may seem like I’m full on hikikomori, but I still have (part time )college classes and shit. This fucking shit isn’t healthy. But then again, neither are the depression headaches that I got today while trying to find something I enjoyed. First I tried reddit. I don’t know why that’s always the first thing I try, because it always makes me feel worse. Then video games. That didn’t really work, either. Then youtube. I felt myself breaking down at like midnight. Then I finally tried music, and that actually helped me focus enough to do shit like the dishes. I was also able to find my rogue summer shoe in my dumpster of a house. I’d been wearing winter boots this whole damn time.

I wanted to be a musician when I was in high school, but for some reason I compared myself to the greatest guitarists in the world, like Paco de Lucia, and concluded that I was a failure because I wasn’t at his level. I was kind of caught between wanting to push myself and being addicted to the internet throughout all of high school, and by the time I graduated, the internet won out. I basically spent a whole year not doing anything because I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted to do with my life and knew that I didn’t want to waste my parent’s money trying to figure out while at some college I picked for some surface level reason. God damn, my gap year was a low point. Anxiety attacks, moaning in my head, insomnia. One of the weird things that happened is that late at night, I would punish myself by watching bad tv.

I shit you not, I would perform psychological self-harm by subjecting myself to mediocre kids movies and cartoons. It’s ridiculous, I know. And yet, that’s what I did. In a lot of ways, the pandemic forcing me back into my house felt like I was starting from square one. All the progress I’d made felt suddenly erased. God, there’s so much pain inside me. There’s so much I still need to confront.

Now that I say all of this out loud(metaphorically speaking, anyways) I’m realizing that there’s probably a bunch of other people who feel the same way I do, where past trauma forces them into cheap escapes, and after making a lot of progress, were set back by the pandemic because, despite their progress, they didn’t actually solve the problems that had troubled them. They only ever compartmentalized them or ran away from them. How many people are there who wanted to do so much with themselves when they were little but got caught up in fear and anxiety brought on by a broken family and enabled by internet addiction? How many people feel like there’s nothing that they can do about it because every time they try to break out, they become immediately overwhelmed?

If anyone reads this inane ramble, I’ll end on this lesson I intend to abide by: Find the thing you used to love, and don’t worry about how good you are at it or how good you feel like you should be. Approach it the way you first did when you were starting out: Something you did because it was fun. I promise it will make you feel better.

Edit: Thank god for lo-fi beats.

[diaries-of-a-shut-in]

I should really go to bed earlier

Trigger Warning: Horror, Anxiety, Insomnia

It’s 2:30 in the morning right now. I should really think about going to bed earlier. Maybe somewhere in the pm and not the am.

The thing is, there’s been some strange things going on in my house in the dark. Insects crawl on the wall. Worms float through the air. But when I turn on the lights, all of it goes away. When I close my eyes, I can feel a snake lick my fingert8ips. It’s hard to go to sleep knowing that kind of stuff happens.

So I’ve just been surfing the internet. Finding cool art, listening to cool music until the sun rises, and I can finally go to bed. Not so much because I feel safer, but because my eyelids close themselves for me, and my last memory before falling asleep is the snake slithering on my hand.

How big is the snake? It’s hard to tell sometimes. It can’t be any wider than a pencil, but it must be long, because I can hear its several hundreds silent movements across the floor when I’m not looking. Sometimes the sounds add up like a waterfall of motor oil. Sometimes they add up like the sound a trail gasoline constantly burning but never ending.

The frogs are the worst part, because they get into my dreams. I’ll be have dreams of walking on a giant worm under a fanged moon, and the frogs will be everywhere, deafening me with their croaks. The skin on worm will turn muddy and marshy, and suddenly I’m wading through a slimy bog up to my knees while frogs slam into my thighs. But then I’m up to my waist and they slam into my stomach. Then I’m up to my shoulders, and the frogs crawl into my through through my collar bone...

When I’m lucky, I wake up after a minute or two, coughing and hacking as I try to get taste of their oily legs out of my throat. When I’m unlucky, the dream lasts for a couple hours, and the taste lasts until the next morning. One night, I foolishly let my head rest against my pillow, and the frogs stayed in my dream stayed my throat for what felt like a whole day. I woke up coughing blood. Well, some of it was blood. The rest of it, whatever it was, couldn’t have come from my own body. In the silence, I could hear the snake laughing.

So that’s why I don’t let myself fall asleep while it’s nighttime. I’d much rather dream of blazing sunshine than let my senses return to the frogs and worms that come out when the sunsets. The snake is easy enough to deal with at night.

Besides, when I’m watching a good tv show, I can hardly feel him on my leg.