#also it's probably just extreme burnout from my job that eats me alive

[pseudocitrus]

hi recently i've been having some kind of extreme executive dysfunction when it comes to like. being in the world and in contact with people :/ sorry that i am an abyss. but i want to try clawing out this weekend & really attempt to upload the tg fic and stuff to ao3 (which i started but could not finish in 30 days so ao3 deleted it from my drafts 💀) anyway in the meantime i've been really into zelink and botw/totk so if you want to read that it's here and i guess i'll probably....make....separate posts for the fic too??? oh my god the internet is so different since i was here last lakjsdklasjdkajsd but i want to try tumblr again because. literally everything else is in flames.😭😩😭😩😭😩

[lesbianologist]

apology/rectification this is long, probably pointless. but it's going to stay up. this was never intended to be a callout, to shame, to manipulate, garner sympathy, etc. i mean that.

actions

going to therapy more often

speaking specifically about my abandonment trauma

(and about my fears of abandonment)

listening to podcasts on my mental illnesses

using two workbooks my therapist gave me

doing my therapy practices he gave me (mindfulness breathing exercises 3X daily)

distracting myself with anything instead of posting or obsessively seeking reassurance

letting people come back to me if they want to

committing myself to not lashing out at others

committing myself to healthy communication

committing myself to understanding (nonverbal) boundaries

apology (general/overall)

i failed you all as friends. let's start there. my behavior has continually been extremely inappropriate, immature, and lacked the respect you guys deserved. i have every intention of adjusting my behavior (see above), even if none of you want anything to do with me anymore. i understand that my actions contributed to hurt feelings, friendship burnout/exhaustion, missed opportunities for closeness, etc. i haven't been mindful that we all have "irl" lives to live, irl friends, irl jobs, and so much more. i became incredibly codependent on talking to you all and it affected me negatively in that i relapsed into old patterns of behaviour. i know "i'm sorry" is useless, now, because there needs to be proven change in behavioural patterns. still, part of that is feeling remorseful for your actions, and i do. the guilt is eating me alive and i have to just live with it. this isn't to convince anyone, anymore. it's just to say what i know needs to be said and what i know is right to do/say. i got lost in my anger and hurt feelings and instead of communicating that i felt dejected from friendships and tossed aside in a healthy way, i let it consume me, destroying my friend group in the process when i lashed out instead at being ignored. i wasn’t and haven't been the friend that you guys needed me to be and i know that even if i explain my actions, it still doesn’t justify how i’ve been acting. i know it seems like i’m incapable of change, but i am, and i want to. i hope you can forgive me for what i did and wait for me to work on myself and hopefully we can become friends once i am in a better place. i’ll accept if you’re done with me, however painful that might be. but i also promise to listen more than i speak going forward should any of you choose that you want anything to do with me anymore.

i'll be going offline for the foreseeable future, focusing on being a better person/friend. if you want to reach me, you know how.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

so my therapist’s general view on all of this is that I need to stop comparing myself to other people, and if certain things are important to me I need to be able to do them in a way that’s actually sustainable, regardless of what I think I should be able to do. and that all seems...sensible!

but she was also suggesting that in general I should maybe be doing less, to try to figure out what actually is sustainable, and that maybe the answer is going to be to take a step back entirely, and that’s kind of...I mean, she’s white. we’re both white. I’m sure she has some idea what’s going on and she understands I feel I have a responsibility to do what I can, but I don’t know that she feels the same responsibility or really understands that it is a responsibility to try to do something with unearned privilege, rather than just something that feels that way to me personally. so it’s...hard to know how much of that is actually good advice, and how much of it is...you know...white people being privileged enough to opt out.

I mean some of it definitely makes sense. constantly feeling like I’m not doing enough without any real idea of what “enough” might look like is not just not helpful but actively counterproductive. choosing extremely concrete actions (or distinct blocks of time) and doing them, instead of spiraling into “but then I’m choosing not to do other, equally important things, so I have to do everything or I’m a failure”, is also much better than the alternative because it means I will actually do those things instead of mostly not doing things while my brain eats itself alive. sustainability is a very important thing, regardless of whether I feel like I’m doing enough to, I don’t know, earn burnout or something--which means I need to deal with what I actually experience rather than constantly going “yeah but I should be able to do way more than this so how dare I need breaks from doing so little”.

but also, I don’t know. it’s really, really hard for me to know the difference between “this thing is legitimately difficult for me and I need to be kinder to myself about it, which can include cutting back on how often I try to do it and generally not putting so much pressure on myself” and “I am fully capable of doing this thing, it’s just that I don’t want to because it isn’t fun, and I’m looking for an excuse to brush it off and do something fun instead (because I’m a lazy fuckup)”. honestly that line is probably different for everybody, and she didn’t really have suggestions on figuring out where that is. especially because some things are always going to fall into the “I don’t actually want to do this but it’s important enough that I need to make myself do it anyway,” like...exercising more and getting a better sleep schedule and having a job, all of which makes it even more difficult to figure out a) which things actually belong in that category, as opposed to things that really don’t but still feel like they do, and b) how to deal with those things, because being an asshole to myself about them is still counterproductive but otherwise it’s too easy to just not do them.

so I basically just have no idea.