mikestantonn

[mikestantonn]

Putting Myself Out There

So I wrote these poems over the weekend. They have the same subject matter though they’re different in their own ways. They’re about how hard it is for me to open up, and how it’s hard for me to express my feelings to those important to me. I’ve never been good at telling people how I feel, it kind of scares me to be honest. And while sharing this, and these poems, seem contradictory to that statement, it just feels easier to get it out through art. So I share this, so that maybe you’ll understand me and why I act how I do sometimes. And maybe through sharing it, show someone dealing with the same thing that they aren’t alone in feeling like that. The act of sharing them is hard enough but I feel like I need to more, and not be fearful of those who might judge me or what I write. So I put these out into the world, hopefully with many more to follow, in hopes that maybe someday, I don’t feel so afraid to open up anymore. Enjoy.

Like a Pill

I am not alone in this world

Though I often feel lonely

I walk through this life

As if no one understands

I know people love me

Even if I am reserved

Problem is I can’t open up

So I mostly go unheard

I want to tell you my issues

Confide in those I love

But doing so is difficult

For fears that you will leave

You see, anxiety is my monster

A monster that breeds doubt

A beast that convinces one

That loneliness is your reality

And through that doubt

The idea then starts to form

That nobody will understand

So you close off your heart

Fear of speaking your truth

Fills your head with lies

That if I told you my problems

You’ll leave, and I’ll be alone

And so I bottle these emotions

Swallowed whole like a pill

In hopes that consuming them

Will absolve me of this pain

Instead they consume me

For hiding them so long

It’s just hard for me to tell you

Cause I’m afraid, you know?

——————————————-

The Words I Can’t Convey

I write these poems for you

So that you may finally understand

The words in my soul

That I have trouble trying to convey

It’s often hard for me

To show anyone my feelings

To dig my hands into my chest

And pull them out into the world

I wish it was easier for me

To express them to you

Then maybe it wouldn’t hurt

And I wouldn’t be afraid you’d leave

Because I often don’t speak

To those that I love so dear

I’m afraid if they knew my sorrows

Then they wouldn’t want to be around

——————————————-

So those are the two poems. I intend to start sharing more of the stuff I write as I get more comfortable with the fact. Thank you for reading.

[mikestantonn]

Something I wrote a year ago but feel heavily tonight

The Prey and The Shadow

It sits there in the shadow

Lurking close by

It follows its prey

Ready to eat it alive

Its presence is felt

By the one it calls prey

But never gives

Its position away

The prey seeks for it

Seeing might give them a chance

To slay what’s there

And end this horrid dance

But it’s never found

This shadow figure of theirs

It’ll stalk till the end of time

Till the prey is finally theirs

The prey fights back

It thinks it has a chance

To slay what they call “It”

And bring peace, at last

But it’s all a ruse

For they are the shadow

Consuming themselves

With no say in the matter

[mikestantonn]

Brittle

I wish I didn’t break so easily

I fall apart when things get hard

I wish I had a stronger will

Not one that’s so heavily scarred

I don’t know why I am this way

Though I do have some idea

I wish I could just “let it go”

Just give it a good ole “see ya!”

But for some reason I keep it here

I hold it like some treasure

Maybe because it feels like home

Just something so familiar

I tell myself I want big things

I want to shoot for the stars

I wish to land among them

Instead I’m trapped behind these bars

I wish I knew the answers

I wish I knew what to say

I just want a happy life

And to not be this way

I feel like I can be a burden

Though I’m told that it’s not true

Yet I feel like I lean on my friends

A lot more than they do

Why might I be sharing this?

Some of you might ask

I think I just want to be understood

Show you what’s behind my mask

All I want is happiness

Make my dreams come true

But right now I’m too brittle

To make the changes, long overdue

[mikestantonn]

This is who I am: 9 months later

As always, I don’t really know where to begin with these. Hell, I’ve been writing this for what seems like a week at this point. As much as I want to tell people how I feel, the words are really never there when I need them. But I’ll try again, and hopefully whoever reads this will understand.

I won’t go into to much detail about what happened here but shortly after making that post, I lost my therapist due to incorrect info given to me by my health insurance and by my therapist somehow not knowing my insurance wouldn’t cover my visits even though they said it would. I was only a few months into therapy (seeing my first therapist ever too!), and at the time, it felt like the biggest drawback ever. So for most of the spring and summer of 2018, I didn’t see anyone again. I told myself it wasn’t meant to be by telling myself lies that “I didn’t need it” or “I learned enough to do it on my own”, not realizing that would be one of the biggest mistakes I will probably ever make in my life.

The thing about therapy for those of you who never had it (Mind you this could just be my experience with therapy), is that it peels away at the layers of your psyche. Your logic, your emotions, your fears, everything. To the uninitiated, it sounds scary, and that’s because a lot of the time, it fucking is! It was horrifying to me. Just getting there felt like I was strapped to a boulder, trying to claw my way to the door of their office. When you’re in the shape that I was, that I still am, your mind tries to come up with every excuse not to do anything, especially when it comes to life changing events. This part of my body was in high alert. I had to fight myself the whole way, week after week just to go.

After awhile it got easier, as most things do with time. Most of the time I spent with this therapist was stripping away the layers. We talked about my home life, work, relationships, my childhood, high school, my parents, their divorce, dealing with my grandparents deaths, my social interactions, my interests, my dreams, everything! Nothing was off the table. It’s a double edged sword. It’s good to get these things off your chest, but at the same time, you have to bring the truth to light, even if it’s things you never wanted to remember again. I would try to hold it together during sessions, but usually once I got to my car, I would start crying. But I knew it was in a way, necessary. I need to bring these things to light in order to work on them. But just as we started getting into the nitty gritty, I lost my therapist. The worst part about it was that I didn’t know how to handle all this emotions we were pulling out, and with the fact that I tend to hold on to everything and can’t let anything go, it made my anxiety worse. I screwed up not seeing a therapist again right away and in the process set myself back further than I was before I started therapy.

It took about 3-5 months (The timeframe seems foggy to me. So much happened in 2018) before I saw another therapist again. People kept telling me I needed to go but I didn’t listen. I was so deep into my own bullshit that I was falling apart. On the outside, the shell of myself that I’ve built around me over the years gave off the impression that I was fine. Nothing looked like it was wrong. But under that shell, I was a storm of negative emotions. Unfortunately this wouldn’t be the worst of that storm. I started seeing a therapist again back in August and still to this day, I see her every Thursday. It’s been really helpful so far but we didn’t really start cracking the surface until about a month or so ago. And it’s opened an even bigger Pandora’s box than what I was dealing with when I was working with my previous therapist. I thought I use to understand the saying “Sometimes you have to fall apart in order to fall back together again” but this experience has given it a whole new meaning to me.

When you’ve told yourself lies in order to “protect” yourself, it becomes one of the hardest mental tasks unpacking these lies to bring out the truth. The truth is, I really don’t like myself. I almost hate the person I’ve become. It’s hard to even write this part because my reaction is to lie and say I don’t but I do. I’m learning to love myself but right now, I don’t feel like I have any redeeming qualities. People, including my therapist, tell me that I’m a sweet, kind, person but I don’t feel it anymore. It feels like a flaw. I feel like I’ve let people walk all over me my whole life. I use to have a voice but not anymore. I’m too afraid to tell people what I want. I feel like I’m going to push everyone away if my wants contradict theirs. So I follow everyone else and keep my mouth shut. I don’t speak up, I don’t defend myself when being wronged, I don’t do anything. I just internalize it and it becomes this clusterfuck of negative thoughts in my head.

So why am I writing and sharing about all of this? In a way, I guess it makes me feel better. It’s hard to share this because I feel like people don’t care nor do they understand. In this day and age, it still feels like talking about your feelings is a weakness. That it just gives assholes more fodder to talk shit about you. But as hard as it is, it in some ways makes me feel better. It feels like a weight is off my chest putting this out into the world instead of internalizing it. I really don’t expect anyone to even read this, let alone reply to it. It just feels good in a way to share it and to think that whoever does read it might understand what people like me go through, fighting yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally just to get from one day to the next.

This past year has had its great moments, some of which were my favorite so far in this life of mine, but the vast majority of this past year has been one of the toughest years I’ve ever had. Probably one of my least favorite years I’ve ever lived. Right now, I feel like I’m at the lowest point I’ve ever been in my life. It feels like true rock bottom for me. So I plan to make this year one of the best I’ve ever had! Now this isn’t one of those “New Year, New Me” things. I just want to make this year the best because I hope by the time December 31st, 2019 rolls around, that I will be better in some way than I was 365 days before, and that it will continue to get better beyond that. There’s a lot at stake going into this year and beyond. I have a lot to work on to make my life the way I’ve always dreamed. I just hope that when I’m living this future, I’ll be happier than I am right now.

[mikestantonn]

This is who I am

So it’s been about 2 years since I’ve used this tumblr. 2 years seems like such a short amount of time but so much has happened. A few months ago, I deleted everything on this account but now I feel like I need to say some things and get them off my chest. I’ve wanted to say these things for some time now but I didn’t know how to put it to words. In fact, I still really don’t so if this comes off as kind of a ramble, I apologize. But if you want to get some insight as to who I am, and why I act the way I have in recent months (and years for that matter), this is for you!

For about 6 years, I have had a really rough time getting through my life. For the first few years, I handled it okay, but as the years lead up to the present, I have been getting worse and worse. I went from being fairly outspoken, having a fair amount of confidence, and a lot of ambition, to now having none of that. I feel compared to who I use to be, I’m literally just the shell of what’s left. I let life get the best of me.

As of July 2016, I have been diagnosed with GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) and from that point on, I have been on medication to suppress my panic attacks and anxious tendencies. I knew before being diagnosed that I had an anxiety problem but I always tried to handle it on my own without help. It got so bad that I couldn’t function even remotely during a regular day. If I was around people, I may have looked okay, but almost every night when I would be home and finally alone, I would lose it, breaking down in a panic and telling myself I wasn’t good enough for anything. During this time of pre-diagnosed life, I quit my job I held for 7 long years that I hated in order to pursue music. I knew it was risky but I was at a height of personal growth and knew that if I busted my ass that I could totally do it. But things took a turn for the worst and I let things happen to me that I still to this day beat myself up for.

There were people in my life that didn’t believe in me or thought I was dumb for quitting my job to pursue something I loved. I know I shouldn’t have let the negative people in my life influence my choices, especially because it was mine to make and because I also had many people supporting me, but I let it happen and it planted the seeds of doubt in my head. While all of this was happening, my life at home was changing as well. Without getting into to much detail on that, my living situation became pretty hostile to the point where I started to feel like an alien in my own home I grew up in. This started to bleed into my personal life and led me to just start believing that I was a nuisance. I started to believe I was worthless and a waste of space. My confidence along with everything that I felt that made me just started to tank.

Now that I’m on medication, I don’t have frequent panic attacks anymore and I can function enough to get through my day, get work done, and do the things I need to do to get me by. But like I already knew, medication doesn’t solve all problems. I still have these problems that meds don’t just magically get rid of and from time to time, I still find myself having a panic attacks. And to this day, I still have these problems at home and in my personal life that have left me with a low self-esteem and a fear of moving forward.

So now its almost a quarter of the way through 2018. These problems I have sound simple to fix but to me, they aren’t so simple. They left me to act in ways that some people might not understand. I haven’t really pursued any of my passions to the fullest of my abilities, which as lead to a bunch of wasted time on reaching my aspirations and dreams. I have also become a shut in. I stopped talking to many people, stopped going out, developed what I believe is an eating addiction, and lost control of my health both mentally and physically. I stopped posting things on social media, when I saw myself as “social butterfly” always talking to someone and posting things online, sharing what happened in my day, big or small. Now I just have theses notions in my head that nobody cares. I just sit at home, attempting to do something with my time but instead spend most of my time avoiding my problems. I feel like I have dug myself into such a huge hole that it’s now impossible to get out. People say though that you have to hit rock bottom before you can reach where you want to go, it’s just hard to see that when you have the mindset I have.

Recently I have some hope though. I finally started seeing a therapist as of a few weeks ago and so far things are going well so I hope to learn how to handle my problems better. I haven’t really touched any of my interests such as video game streaming and music in such a long time but I’m starting to feel the urge to pick them back up. But when it comes to my social problems, I still have them, and will probably have them for awhile until I learn to change the behavior. But the future doesn’t look so bleak anymore and I have hope for what is to come.

I know this has been a long post and if you took the time to read the whole thing, I honestly appreciate that you have. I just wanted to use this as a way to explain to people who may have been wondering, what’s going on with me and why I have been acting the way I have been acting (Or at least how I feel I have been acting). If you are one of the people who end up reading this, I just wanted to say that I value you in my life and that if I have left you high and dry, not talking to you for awhile, I’m really sorry, and hope that you forgive me and understand that it wasn’t personal whatsoever. I hope that the future can be a little bit of how it was before, but this time, even better.

So this is why I am who I am at this point in my life. I didn’t choose for it to be this way but I refuse to let it stay this way for much longer. It’s going to be a long journey but I will keep pushing forward and hope to become the person I’d like to be. I wanted to share this with you and now I have. This is who I am, raw and unfiltered. Here’s to what’s to come!