#frankly i'm shocked valve did ANYthing

[zarla-s]

Valve went through and banned a whole bunch of bots yesterday and when I last checked a couple hours ago, the Casual servers are still 99% actual people! If you want to try out TF2 DO IT NOW while you have the chance! Believe me when I say that having matches this clear of bots is RARE. They'll be back in force inevitably in probably a couple days so the window of opportunity here is small. Take the chance to play a normal round of TF2 Casual while you can!

[pb-dot]

The Sisypheanism of Self Care

I don't know if the title is strictly accurate or uses words that are actual words, and neither do I care. Today's been a rough one and I'm granting myself license to be a little extra.

In the last year or so I've become acutely aware that the various mental health care I've been receiving hasn't really been hitting the mark. The talk therapy fails to function as much more than a pressure valve, although it in fairness has been a great pressure valve when I could get it. The problem is that we, that is to say, I and my doctor, former therapist, and social services caseworker haven't really made any inroads into making my life any better or breaking me out of my depression, or this spiral of unemployment, taking a job that doesn't fit my strengths, working until I have burnout and quit - repeat that I have been caught in for most of my adult life.

I was hoping there was an end coming to this time of faffing about with common sense cures for depression, my doctor currently suggests I lose some weight (I know, you're shocked) and take cold showers. In fairness, treatment-resistant depression probably isn't her field of expertise being a GP and all. Anyway, the reason why I hoped this was because I've recently been referred to the public psychiatric center that I know takes a somewhat more clinical approach to treatment, so although I wasn't holding out hope of being "cured" anytime soon, I was kind of hoping this would land me with a treatment plan of some sort. Maybe some different meds? A supplementary diagnosis of some sort? Who's to say, but a fella can dream, can't he?

So far I've talked to two separate mental health professionals who both seem deeply unsure about what to do about me. Out-fucking-standing. Oh, there were also some blood tests as I expressed I was a bit uncertain whether my antidepressants were, in fact, doing anything. I suppose that is the first thing you do in that instance, but I'm just expecting to hear that my body is treating the meds right, and the question if it does do something remains kind of floating in the air. That is, if it doesn't turn out I'm secretly immune to these as well.

Anyway, it's impatience on my end, and I'm fully aware of it. Diagnosing mental health conditions and neurodivergence is tricky and the consequences for making the wrong call can be pretty bad. That said, I'm just tired of getting mh treatment that I can't actually tell if does anything at the same time as I'm getting help getting back to work that I can't tell if does anything, and every time I talk to anyone in my life about this I can't but shrug and go "it'll pay off eventually... I hope."

It's all just such a waste. I was such a bright child in school, and although I wasn't quite as much of a standout during university, I did ok considering I was heavily depressed at the time. Hell, I'm still smart, pretty darn smart in certain fields, I would suggest, and my last formal test of my mental capabilities would agree. And yet, here I sit. Unemployed, frustrated, depressed, a walking pile of anxiety and dark thoughts so robust they almost, but thankfully not quite, should count as a philosophy by now.

Where did I go wrong? There are probably a bunch of things I could have done differently, but frankly, I also feel like Society, that old villain, has failed me in some rather profound ways. It's not just how difficult it has been getting mental health help that actually does something, or how absolutely debilitating being unemployed can be, although these certainly do contribute. My problem isn't just that my life is being made measurably worse by our old foe Late Stage Capitalism, although most of these are just made worse by that cancerous corpse of an ideology. The world seemingly has no place for me it feels like. Loneliness pushes in around me from every conceivable angle, dating is a nightmare, every job requires multi-year experience or specialized education I hadn't even heard about before reading about them, there seems to be no thought put into how exactly anyone not fitting into this cripplingly overspecialized work market is supposed to live their godfuckingdamned life, and that's not even getting into the climate shit.

I honestly hate how easy it is for me to pivot from talking about depression to unemployment. I hate how employment has to be a factor in my mental health. I hate how approximately nobody I've talked to about it, on the professional side, seems to get that I wasn't less depressed back when I was working. I hate how I can't get a job because it feels fucking impossible to be enough of a "go-getter with can-do attitude" to even make it to the interview stage when nothing feels good or worth it. I hate the fucking catch-22 of it all, and I hate that neither psychiatrist nor doctor nor case worker can even begin to unravel this Gordian knot for me, or even tell me where in the good grace of fuck I might begin pulling.

It's like they're saying "Sorry, your depression is untreatable and although we won't say it to your face, the labor market's general indifference to you should tell you that you have no place in it which in the current order of things means you have no value. Shame about that, someone probably should've told you all this before you did your best in school and endured the social ostracization that followed with being a kinda weird kid that loved books, all fueled by the fucking lie that it'd get better once you were done with school."

So yeah. I'm not having a fantastic day today, but I think getting some bile out of my system might have helped me feel a little less terrible? Better days than this will come, I'm sure. I'll try doing nice things for myself the rest of the day, although I'm not quite sure what they were. If I shitpost or rb more saucy art than usual today, that's probably what I ended up with

[the-slender-doll]

Still pretty bot free as of this repost on July 22 2024!

Valve went through and banned a whole bunch of bots yesterday and when I last checked a couple hours ago, the Casual servers are still 99% actual people! If you want to try out TF2 DO IT NOW while you have the chance! Believe me when I say that having matches this clear of bots is RARE. They'll be back in force inevitably in probably a couple days so the window of opportunity here is small. Take the chance to play a normal round of TF2 Casual while you can!