#hanging myself feels like a very viable option rn

[an0nimity]

its pathetic, realizing that despite the amount of energy ive tried to put out into the world, the things i love most wont love me back

friends, family, new and old

it all feels like its falling apart

im unlovable if its not through a screen. my skin is cold and made of glass and i just keep hurting everyonr who comes into contact with me

[dhominis]

Update on my meatspace existence! CW for parents and disordered eating and general neuroticism. Things are pretty great.

I’m happy.

Social-wise, I am not where I’d like to be but I am slowly getting more and more social contact. (It’s... not enough, not by a long shot, but fairly okay for someone who’s been in a new city for like three months. Especially at my general level of social competence. The ideal setup involves more or less constant interaction with people, far more physical contact -- I need to live in a house with like five or six friends who are smart and excited about things and also really like physical contact.) I have a friend with whom I can hike and talk about cool pathogens. I’m probably LARPing with an cool epidemiologist and her LARP group pretty soon, which is nerd shit and also increased social competence and also running around in the woods -- perfect. I have been doing various social things. (Went to a kink social thing and a cute girl hit on me. It was great -- I don’t think she meant it as a serious expression of interest but I’m generally really ecstatic about people flirting with me. Also got great hugs.) Life is getting better.

Plans for the future seem more and more clear -- flexible, but there are viable paths to outcomes I want. Current most viable path: being an ICU nurse. I think I am going to be a really good ICU nurse; people who are familiar with my general personality concur. I am smart and competent and compassionate but not high-automatic-empathy enough that it’ll interfere with my functioning, I automatically think of things in terms of feedback within systems, I need to be active and under stress, I’m pretty high-conscientiousness with adequate caffeine intake and expect further improvement once I get either real ADHD meds or modafinil, I’ll be so good at this.

(I can handle stress, I can handle pressure. I cannot handle not being under pressure. A high-pressure job that occupies a lot of my time is more or less necessary; I am like a neurotic border collie that can’t self-motivate, I will always find things to do, if they’re not imposed from outside those things will be e.g. having pointless anxiety about things that really don’t merit anxiety.)

Be an ICU nurse for a few years. Donate ten percent. It’s worth figuring out whether “reducing medical error via checklists” is a viably high-impact thing; more likely I’ll end up working in the ICU until I stop being a high-stress traumatized adolescent, then go to CRNA school and make ridiculous CRNA salary and donate like $100k/year or something absolutely ridiculous like that.

Also when I moved out here I was very much thinking “yeah I’m gonna just work as much as I need to pay my bills and not think about school and just relax so much” and three months later I’m pulling stupid overtime and figuring out the best way to fast-track my nursing degree. (Depends on how much transfer credit Shitty Online College is willing to give me, but likely the best way to do it will be to finish my BS online while working full-time and then go to an accelerated RN program; that’d be only one full year of in-person school. And then just be a nurse.)

I applied to Shitty Online College today; in a few weeks they’ll tell me how much transfer credit they’ll give me. It might be a viable option, and if that’s the case I’ll work full-time and finish my BS and apply for the one-year RN for 2021. Even if it’s not a viable option I’ll need anat/phys to get into nursing school and it’ll be a lot cheaper to do the self-study CLEP-adjacent test-out thing the shitty online college offers.

...I don’t know how to self-motivate. I don’t know how to self-study. This is a thing I have to learn but also I don’t know how to learn. Offers of peer-pressure coworking are so welcome, guys.

I have been in overtime every week since the first week. I am comfortably middle-class, have been living on about $1200 a month, am saving over half my income. I am in a really good position to do everything I want to! Like, within a few years I’d be able to buy a house were I not instead funneling all my income into education.

It has occurred to me that being non-disabled in certain important ways is a large part of why I’m okay. It’s... not intuitive to think of myself like that; I couldn’t handwrite enough for any reasonable goal until 2017 (a few legible sentences and that’s it for the day!), couldn’t make decisions based on my long-term ability to walk. There is less pain now. I am able to walk the mile and a half to and from work; I don’t need an apartment that’s right next to my workplace, I don’t need a car. I can hang out in a room full of loud alarms going off constantly and also make phone calls constantly and have people’s lives dependent on my ability to cope with this (this is my current job, I fucking love it).

Eating still has not been good (see post, CW for various ~food issues~). I’d hoped that the change of environment and commitment to exposing myself to unpleasant things e.g. eating would be useful, and there have been really substantial improvements (haven’t vomited since I left $homestate, I think I’ve at least maintained my weight, there’s only been one day I didn’t eat at all) but it’s... still requiring sustained effort. (You may notice that I am not yet great at sustained self-directed effort.) I’ll figure it out. Getting adequate therapy is a priority.

I could afford full-time Soylent. This is not an option I’m seriously considering in the near term but it is very comforting to know that there is another option. It’s likely that after e.g. a year of effort and therapy food will become intrinsically motivating again -- it’s been less than a year since my food issues became seriously harmful, after all, and recovery is likely. But even if that doesn’t happen, even if solid food is horrible forever, I have an option besides “do a thing that is seriously aversive every day several times a day for the rest of my life” and “don’t eat and subsequently be unable to function because I don’t eat.”

What else --

I had planned to maintain contact with my parents after leaving, since it’s important to them; this is no longer a viable plan. Every seriously unpleasant mental state since I left has either been “eating is unpleasant” or “I talked to my parents and this is Not Good.” It’s... relevant that every time this has happened, it’s been substantially less bad than literally every day I’d lived with my parents. Possibly I do not have a good understanding of what is a reasonable amount of distress to put myself in. I am still learning this and it’s okay.

So. Not talking to them. It feels good and free and safe. I almost think I should miss them -- it feels disrespectful for my reactions to be universally positive. Mostly this is not distressing because oh my god this is awesome I don’t have to interact with them unless I specifically choose to.

Also, now I am responsible for adult things like meal prep and cleaning and health insurance and finding a therapist and getting my in-state driver’s license and, uh, getting an ADHD eval. I have been putting off going to the DMV and I just... I have to go to the DMV. This will suck a bunch for a very short period of time and then I will have an in-state driver’s license and also will laugh at myself for not having done this two months ago.

(figuring things out and becoming more competent -- intrinsically motivating, for me. it’s a good trait to have.)