#so i GUESS ill go Fuck myself and have to deal with only being self-diagnosed with adhd. and atypical depression

[possibly-eli]

i dont understand what about this is so difficult for people to comprehend:

i just kinda want my thoughts on opinions on MY OWN HEALTH to be entertained instead of immediately disregarded

like. im 17. i shouldnt be having back pain so often. i shouldnt be having such severe leg pain. i shouldnt be dealing with such shitty hand joints. but FUCK ME i guess i dont get a say in jack SHIT about my own health!!!!! because what i say means fuck all!!!!! ok man!!!! whatever i guess!!!!!!!

[hellitwasyoufirstsergeant]

Hi everyone! I’m not really sure why I’m posting this here, I suppose because I’m not ready for people I know ‘irl’ to see this, and this is the only account I have anywhere where none of my irl friends follow it. As to why I’m posting this at all, I’m not so sure either. I suppose largely for myself, in the hope that it will exorcise some demons, and partly for other people, because eating disorders just are not discussed enough and perhaps by posting this I can show someone else that they’re not alone. 

There may be mistakes in this and it may not all be 100% coherent, I found it hard to write and I didn’t wish to read it back over.

WARNING: The following post contains discussions of eating disorders and mental health issues. Please do not read if this is a trigger for you, and please not not read if you’re only here to pass judgement 

Looking back now, it’s so easy to realise why I felt the way I did, and to see my descent into mental illness. At the time, it was confusing as hell. I wasn’t diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and clinical depression until I was 17, although I had been suffering from both for six years already, I just didn’t realise it, because I just didn’t know they existed. I didn’t know there were medical conditions to describe how I felt, perhaps if I did I wouldn’t have felt so alone and so alienated. It wasn’t until last year that I realised I’d suffered from an eating disorder. Before that, I didn’t know that binge eating was an eating disorder. 

The words ‘eating disorder’ to me conjured up images of skeletal bodies, of people making themselves sick. I wish that preteen and teen me knew that I was suffering from an actual condition, that other people suffered from too. 

I don’t recall specifically the first time I binged on food, but over autumn (fall) of 2011 it became a regular occurrence, a habit. It was my way of coping with the changes in my life - starting a new school, my mum being diagnosed with a clinical illness and an increasingly fractured relationship with my dad - and my feelings of loneliness. I was also self conscious about my body, I was in a more advanced stage of puberty than most of my peers and I was aware of the fact that I was a little overweight. Bingeing became an outlet for feelings that I couldn’t understand, and therefore that I couldn’t process. 

It was a process that I repeated regularly for six years. It was like a paradox, the more I looked at myself in the mirror and hated what I saw, the more I binged, the very thing that made me carry on putting on weight. I was overweight, I still am today, but I wish that I could have seen myself the way others saw me - slightly chubby but not the ugly monster I thought myself at the time. I ate my feelings away, it was the only coping mechanism I knew. Even when in some ways my life improved - when I was 14 I finally fell in with a group of friends who were kind and who made me feel accepted - my mental state continued to decline and I continued to eat to cope. I was also feeling confused about my sexuality, something that increased my sense of alienation and otherness. It was often the only thing that got me through the day, the only thing that made life bearable to me. 

I never confided the way I felt or my problem with food to anyone during this period. My mum knew that I had issues with food, twice she found hidden stashes in my bedroom. She has been a good parent to me, but I so wish she’d handled it differently. She made me feel ashamed, something that made me more determined to hide my problem and therefore to not confront it. I think perhaps that she would’ve been a lot more understanding had she known the feelings behind the problem, but I didn’t know how to go about telling her. 

I can’t remember how old I was exactly when I shoplifted food for the first time, I think around 14. The £10 a week pocket money was no longer enough to fund my problem, even though I always chose the cheapest food so that I could buy as much as possible. I shoplifted semi regularly from the local supermarkets for around 18 months, I still don’t know how I was never caught. 

In September 2016, I started sixth form college. It was a fresh start that I so badly needed, my five years at secondary school having been so unhappy. It was hard to begin with, only my oldest friend went to the same college as me and old feelings of loneliness resurfaced. A part of me had hoped that the change of school would allow me to leave my bingeing habit behind, but it wasn’t to be. Even when I settled in and began making friends, I continued bingeing. 

New friends at college told me of their mental health issues, and I finally felt understood - there were other people who felt the way I did, other people who wanted to die. These feelings may not be normal, but I’m not alone anymore. Despite feeling accepted properly for the first time in my life, I continued to eat. Perhaps it was the stress of A levels (my fellow Brits know how fucking hard these are), or my mum’s decline in health, or my increasingly worsening relationship with my dad. 

In May/June time of 2017, my oldest friend, Imogen, who was one of a few friends now aware of my poor mental state, told me that I should go to the doctor. After a little persuading, I agreed. She came with me, but the appointment achieved nothing. I tried a few more GPs at my local surgery and eventually found one who made me feel listened to, and who was kind and sympathetic. I don’t recall the exact time I was diagnosed (to be honest this period in my life is a bit of a blur), but after some months I was finally diagnosed with GAD and clinical depression. I still continued to stay silent about my problem with food. 

Ironically, it was actually the further decline of my mental state that allowed me to break my old habit. My mental health had declined fairly slowly over the past few years, but the decline accelerated over autumn and winter of 2017. I don’t know if there was a trigger behind that, I guess mental health doesn’t need a reason. I didn’t know how to deal with the way I felt, I lashed out and fell out with Imogen, which hit me hard. We didn’t talk at all for three months. Before this period, I had often thought that things would be so much easier if I was dead, but my thoughts had never progressed beyond that. Now, it became more active. I actually wanted to die. I stopped looking when I crossed the road, I stopped looking after my physical health at all. Fears about hurting my mum were the only thing stopping me from taking it further. But, I finally stopped binge eating, so disinterested in life that even the that no longer made me feel better. 

My mental state didn’t take a turn for the better, but I grew used to these new feelings and started to process them properly. I got better at pushing them out, but I did eventually decide to tell my parents about my diagnoses. My mum was very supportive, she still is, my dad not so (although I probably should’ve expected that). I made up with Imogen, my behaviour started to normalise. I felt so free from my old bingeing habit, it had only been a few months but it felt like a lifetime ago. 

In February 2018, my mum told me that she’d be moving to Yorkshire. She’d been forced by her job to take early retirement due to ill health, she was only 50 at the time, and wanted to live somewhere cheaper so she could save on living costs and pay off her mortgage. I was scared, and considered for a time moving in with my grandparents so that I could stay in a place where I knew people, but eventually decided that I’d move with my mum. Still, despite the biggest change ever to happen in my life, I managed to avoid a return to my binge eating habit. I’m still not sure how. Perhaps now that the habit was broken it no longer had the hold over me that it once did. 

And then, around March 2018, my dad gave me £500. To this day I still have no idea why, I guess guilt. But it was so much more money than I’d ever had. The temptation not to spend any of it on food was too great. I decided to treat myself, I’d spend £100 on food and put the rest in my savings. 

By the time I finished college at the beginning of June, the entire £500 was gone, at least £450 of it spent on food. I still remember the binge I had the day after me and mum moved out of our old home and in with my grandparents, who we lived with for seven weeks before going to Yorkshire. My mental state declined still further, and I wasted most of those weeks in bed, not having the energy to do anything. I kicked myself later for not using it to spend time with the friends I was leaving behind. 

After we moved to Yorkshire in August, I spent two of the worst months of my life. My old feelings of loneliness resurfaced, not helped by the fact that one of my closest friends just stopped talking to me. I seemed to alternate between binge eating, my binges even bigger than they ever had been, and hardly eating at all. 

But, eventually, I managed to settle in. I got a job, I made new friends. I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop binge eating again, it just happened. I wasn’t lonely anymore, but my mental state didn’t seem to get any better. But, I had healthier ways of coping and I didn’t need to binge as an outlet for my feelings anymore. In September 2019, I started uni, and I finally felt like my life had a purpose. 

Now, I have more and better friends than I ever had. I’m glad I made the move to Yorkshire, where I live now is much nicer where I grew up and if I hadn’t made the move there are so many amazing people I wouldn’t have met. Most of my friends are aware of my mental health issues, although I rarely discuss them in detail. 

However, only one of my friends is aware of my eating disorder. I didn’t realise until last year that binge eating was classified as an eating disorder. I’m not quite sure why, but this discovery prompted me to finally confide in my oldest friend, Imogen. She was very supportive and understanding, and I know my other friends would be, but it’s still something where I look back and I’m like ‘woah that actually happened’. Putting it out of my mind as much as possible has been my way of coping with the fact that it did happen. I have been slightly more open online that I have irl about the fact that I had an eating disorder, but this is the first time I have discussed it this in depth with anyone. 

I’m going to say now what I wish preteen and teen me had known: you are not alone. Whether you’re suffering from an eating disorder, from mental health issues, or from something else, you are not alone. I can’t say truthfully that I have never regretted confiding in someone, but the majority of the time it has helped me, even in a small way. Please talk to someone if you have an eating disorder, be it a friend, a family member, a GP, a teacher, even me. It is nothing to be ashamed of. 

I stopped binge eating as a regular habit at the start of winter 2018. Although I relapsed a couple times last year, it’s been twelve months and counting since my last binge. 

[cookinguptales]

A long post about having undiagnosed ADHD as a little girl. And how we all need to talk a hell of a lot more about Reaction Sensitive Dysphoria.

(cw: mental illness, childhood punishment, discussions of childhood self-harm & suicidal ideation)

When I was a little girl, I was a crybaby. I didn’t know why I’d cry all the time. I just did. Everything always felt catastrophic, even if it was just a disagreement over what to play with my friends. People called me manipulative. I got made fun of at school. I was sent to the school therapist. Hell, the only time I ever had to go to the principal’s office, I was in kindergarten and would not. stop. crying. I was literally sent to the principal’s office for crying too much.

(Note. How did I respond to that? I cried. A lot.)

Here are a few examples of things that made me feel like the world was ending:

Once I came home sobbing and my parents asked me what was wrong. Why was I crying? Because the other kids had called me a crybaby.

Once at daycare (around age six), some older boys were making effigies of their teachers out of play-doh and then smushing them and convinced me to join in. The minute I did, they told me that they were telling my teacher, which made me about lose my damn mind.

I was a voracious reader and often ran out of reading material. Once I sneaked some of my mother’s romance novels that she’d left in the bathroom for light reading. They were Very Adult. I was so scared she’d find out and scold me for reading sexually explicit books.

Now, my parents think these are kind of funny stories. They say that I was very cute. But in truth, I was a nervous wreck. My life was pretty good in most ways, but I’d have these moments that just felt like cascading catastrophes. Anytime someone criticized me or my work or my ideas, the sky would just come crashing down. I’d cry so hard I couldn’t breathe. I’d cry so hard I threw up. I grew out of the crying by about age nine, but that sickening feeling of failure never really left.

About 8 years ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Severe ADHD. I believe the doctor’s exact words were “I don’t even know how you graduated from high school”. They tried me on ADHD medicine but it made my heart go dokidoki so I just had to live with being unmedicated. I wasn’t told a lot about ADHD at that point, or how ADHD symptoms differ for women, so I just kind of assumed that it was just focus and that’s it. Brain fog wasn’t exactly new to me, what with my other illnesses, so I figured I’d just live with it.

But about a year ago, I learned about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is a fairly common symptom of ADHD that no one ever told me about in my goddamn life! It essentially means that when you are criticized (or perceive something as criticism) by others or by yourself, your brain goes into absolute hyperdrive. You go from zero to “everyone hates me and I deserve that and probably don’t deserve to live too because I am just the worst” over like. literally nothing. And it’s not just like a mental thing you can train yourself out of. It’s characterized by actual physical pain. Y’all, I have anxiety and depression and this is not the same thing. This is your whole body seizing up and your brain going into a maelstrom that’s fairly similar to a panic attack.

Here’s the less cute side to all of those stories:

I had very few friends, and the friends I did have thought I was annoying and manipulative. The more I cried, the more kids stayed away from me.

After the Play-Doh incident, I cried for days. Days. And I was scared of my teacher for weeks. My parents laughed it off as a cute child thing, but none of it was cute for me. The older boys forgot about it by the next day, but it haunted my interactions with that teacher for weeks. It interfered with my education. I was a nervous wreck at school. I was so scared that she would hate me. That I’d be singled out in class. That I’d fail and my whole education would be upended and I’d fail out of school and my parents would hate me too and my life would be over. That’s... a lot for a six year old.

Those romance novels? That was a closely guarded secret that I kept for years. For literal years, I was afraid she’d somehow find out that I’d read those books. I would think of it when I was nine, ten, eleven years old and my whole body would stiffen up. I’d occasionally throw up. I cried about what might happen if my parents ever found out. Would they hate me forever? Yes, probably. They’d never love me again. I was a bad child. I finally told my mom about it a few months ago. I was 29. A small part of me was still scared I’d get in trouble. (My mom laughed about it; she was just like ‘wow, I should have put those books up higher’.)

When I was six, I went to an aftercare at a neighbor’s house for a while. (This predated the other daycare.) One day, one of the kids at aftercare didn’t get off the bus. The lady asked if anyone knew where he was. Trying to be helpful, I said I thought I’d seen him on the bus. (And like -- I really did think I did. But I was six and six year olds are uhhh not smart.) Surprise! He’d actually left school early for a dr’s appt. But she thought he’d missed his bus stop and spent like an hour on the phone figuring out what happened. And y’all. When she realized he hadn’t been on that bus, she was furious. When my other neighbor picked me up for my mom that evening, the lady told her that I was a bad child who’d purposefully lied to scare her. She said I wasn’t allowed to come back. And ohhh guys. I begged my neighbor not to tell my mom. (She did.) And then I begged my mom not to tell my dad. She was honestly kind of alarmed at how vehement I was about dad not knowing. (I was like a shaking, sobbing mess.) She asked me what I thought would happen. idk. Maybe he’d hit me. (My parents never hit me.) Maybe he’d throw me out of the house. Maybe he’d never talk to me again. He’d definitely stop loving me. I was so bad. So, so bad. I was a bad child. No one would ever love me. I was a worthless, bad child.

In short, I was hysterical.

When my parents finally talked to me about it, it was less of a talk about consequences and more talking me off the fucking ledge. They weren’t that concerned about the actual incident; they figured out pretty quickly that I’d just made a mistake. A temporarily scary one, but a mistake all the same. (I basically never misbehaved, so they were kind of confused by the whole situation, honestly.) But they were very concerned about my reaction to it. I knew they loved me, right? I knew that they wouldn’t hurt me, right? Why did I think that was a possibility?

I didn’t know. I still don’t know. It wasn’t rational. It was just my brain exploding into a thousand tiny pieces.

This is not a memory my mom laughs about. I think it really genuinely disturbed her. She’s still angry at that aftercare neighbor for doing that to me. As an adult, I realize that the person who actually fucked up in that scenario was the boy’s mother, who didn’t call to alert aftercare that he wouldn’t be coming. (Funnily enough, that boy’s mother was my first grade teacher -- the one I was so terrified of. Small town. I guess I was scared of her hating me, too.) But as a child, this wasn’t just bad. It was catastrophic. I genuinely considered hurting myself. I was six years old and I considered hurting myself. Suicidal ideation is often part and parcel with RSD. I’ve had to deal with that since elementary school.

RSD is real and it’s terrifying and it’s not unusual in children with ADHD. It’s still a problem that I struggle with. I’ve had friends not answer texts for a while and my brain just. assumes that I said something wrong. And now they hate me. Because I’m a bad person. And my whole body will shake. I’ll sweat. My stomach will roll. My chest will literally hurt like I’m having a heart attack. I still have to blink back those tears. Sometimes I’ll go for a walk to distract myself and burn off all that energy. Sometimes I’ll write a post like this. Sometimes I’ll just lie in bed. Shaking. Trying very hard not to think about doing Bad Things. It’s hard to say how it’ll go until it goes.

(Note: I’m okay right now! I was just talking about this with dad yesterday so I’ve been thinking about it.)

And this is not my friends’ fault! Or my family’s fault. This is no one’s fault. It’s just... mental illness, I guess. It’s hard to predict. Sometimes I can have a calm and reasonable discussion about my faults (which I fully admit exist) and sometimes someone disagrees with me on whether a tv show is good and my brain shits itself. (I’m dumb and stupid and this person probably hates me now! Because I didn’t love Avatar! Why did I open my big mouth? Now our whole relationship is ruined and I ruined it because I am a dumb relationship-ruiner!) Obviously, it gets worse when my physical and mental state is already fragile. I have a lot of chronic physical and mental illnesses, so like... it happens. But it’s very hard to predict, very hard to control, and all you can do is really talk yourself through it when it happens. Breathe. Focus on what’s real and what’s not. Distract yourself. Be as kind to your brain as you can because it will not be kind back.

Talk to people who love you. Try, whenever possible, to be one of those people.

idk. I wish I had concrete advice to finish this off. But it’s more just like... please learn to see the signs, especially in small children. I had far too many strong emotions for a child to figure out on her own. I really could have used some help. It’s too late for my childhood, but not for the other kids who are struggling with similar issues right now.

And if you read this and see yourself in it, do me a solid and talk to your doctor? Your brain might thank you one day.

[definitelymoodymoonstruck]

hello

My name is Moody. I don't think anybody is really going to read any of this. But in case they do ... Here go's nothing. For all intense purposes, my name is Moody. I'll let you debate why that is, and yes like the title of the blog says. I do have OCD. For those of you who don't know what that is, I will tell you. Obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD as it is most commonly called is a form of Anxiety. It is where our brain can't really let things go. So we end up doing these things called compulsion. I'll give you an example because I'm bad at explaining things. let's say you are freaked out thinking your house is going to be robed, so to make yourself feel better you go around checking that all the doors and windows to your house are locked. the obsession is the fear of being robbed, the compulsion is constantly checking the doors and windows. that's OCD in a nutshell. well, at least the way I understand it. you see I have had OCD my entire life. but I've only recently been diagnosed. When I first started to go to therapy I was 15. me and my dad when to the doctor so I could get a Physical for sports. the doctor did all the usual stuff; tested my eye site, made sure I was up to date on my shots, asked me why I was so overweight ( which by the way is an incredibly fucked up thing to tell a 15-year-old who already and low self-esteem. ) I don't know how it led to this but after the physical, he gave me a depression test. which I then scored high on. You're probably sitting there saying “I thought this was about you having OCD not depression ” I'm getting to that. so he recommended my dad take me to a therapist. when I got there the lady asked me a couple of questions about how I was feeling and why I was feeling this way, and I told her. up to that point most of my depression was because I would worry so much then get depressed then vise versa. after that, she diagnosed me with anxiety and depression. after that, I would end up going to therapy regularly for the next 7 years. but for those 7 years, nothing was working. my therapist was really confused about what was happening to me. why wasn't I showing any improvement? it wasn't until I almost ended up in the hospital that I would figure out that I was misdiagnosed. I was about to spend an awesome vacation with my family. I was pumped we were going to leave in two days when it happened. I was just scrolling through ticktock when I came across a video where a guy was talking about an asteroid that would destroy the earth next march. in my head, I knew this was bullshit. I told myself over and over it was bull shit. but my OCD already took over. my entire vacation I was obsessively searching the internet for something to make me feel better. trying to distract me from the fear of my possible impending doom. someone to debunk this, or to give me a plan of things they would do to stop this from happening. nothing worked. even after the vacation ended I was still losing it. I. COULD. NOT. LET.GO! my mom and dad even talked to me about possibly going to a hospital for a while. it wasn't until I was talking to a friend of mine about all the stuff I was losing my shit over. that he asked me how long I had been dealing with OCD that it clicked. After that, I finally started to get the help I needed. we were able to figure out a system that helped me pull myself out of my constant stream of obsessions. I finally started to get better. you know as better as someone like me can be. I cant get rid of my OCD but I now know how to deal with it. know that your all caught up on my mantel health journey. You're probably wondering why I'm writing all this here. to be frank with you I'm not entirely sure. maybe the premise of this is to show the people like me that there not alone. whether they know it or not. maybe it's to show people who don't know what OCD is what it's really like . or maybe it's just so I can find people who are like me. whatever the reason I'm glad your here.   I guess ill end this post here: and ill see you all next week. yours truly ~ Moody

[nightmaresorpromises]

🍄✨💐

OKAY THIS GOT REALLY LONG BC I FEEL THE NEED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF SO LIKE IM SORRY LMFAO. Also pls no one yell at me I’m just saying how I feel and what I think, I recognize that everyone will have different views/opinions/experiences and that I can only speak based on my own. I am not a doctor

🍄: do you support self diagnosis?

This is kind of a difficult question, I know most people hate the self diagnosis stuff, but personally I think their are certain mental health issues that you can become aware of without a medical diagnosis.

That being said, many mental health issues and disorders are incredibly complex and I think those DO need a medical diagnosis, especially since from what I understand a lot of disorders can mimic and or cause symptoms of other ones.

So for me personally, my eating disorder, anxiety, and depression (which I honestly don’t call that I just say I’m depressed bc I’m not medically diagnosed?) are all self diagnosed, but I’ve seen myself develop my eating disorder and was willing to die for it, I frequently have anxiety attacks to the point I feel like I’m going to faint and I can’t breathe, I’m terrified to order my own food sometimes because of the social interaction, and I’m borderline suicidal and struggle with self harm as a result. So like? I feel, I don’t want to say justified because that sounds kind of wrong, but I feel okay in going “I have these issues, and this is what I struggle with”

but I don’t think I’d ever self diagnose with something complex like bi polar disorder, borderline personality disorder etc, because those are much harder in my eyes to determine, or understand without a medical diagnosis. (Obviously that’s just my opinion and example as someone who A.) doesn’t have the option to get medically diagnosed regarding my mental health issues and B.) who has never struggled with any of those disorders or known anyone who does.)

So like? I’m definitely not pro “identify with whatever mental health issue you have a symptom of!” But I also think to an extent individuals who struggle with their mental health can have enough sense to go okay, this is my life, this isn’t healthy or normal, I’m struggle with these things so maybe I’m dealing with anxiety, or whatever else.

But I understand the frustration around self diagnosis because you obviously have ignorant people going “omg lol I can’t focus on this thing I totally have adhd or add” or “lol I got so angry out of nowhere! Clearly I’m bi-polar” and like... I won’t even get into that. *facepalms*

💐: do you believe in recovery?

This is hard for me. I guess yes and no.

Yes because sure there are things you can overcome, and recover from like addiction, and eating disorders, and there are things you can treat like depression and other mental illnesses,

But no because (pessimistic bitch over here sorry) at the end of the day you’ll still struggle with those things. So you can get better at coping, you can get treatment, but even for me personally now that I’m no longer restricting my food unhealthy, and I’m not terrified of food, I still get ED thoughts, I still get triggered. Like the mental health issue is always going to be in the background of your mind and you’re still going to have to deal with it, even if the strain isn’t as harsh because you’ve gotten better and developed a healthier way to handle it.

So I guess that depends on your definition of recovery. Of course I believe in getting better, and not having your issues hit you as harshly even if they still lurk in your mind.

But, part of me despises the fact that a lot of those issues are still gonna lurk. (I guess I don’t believe in being “totally cured!” Or whatever ? Idk)

But that’s just my take on it, everyone’s different and everyone’s issues are different. And obviously getting better through treatment and developing better coping mechanisms and whatever else can greatly help you and ease your struggles. So it gets easier, and I guess that’s what recovery is supposed to be about. Getting better even if you aren’t “cured”

✨: do you have any advice to others (especially young people) about how to recover?

Oh god. Okay so like, as someone who hit rock bottom at like 15 emotionally I think one of the biggest things is you have to want to recover.

And to a lot of people that sounds obvious but it got to a point where I, and a lot of my friends who struggled with their mental health stopped wanting to get better.

If you’re going to recover, you need to want it. Not necessarily be ready, because you might never feel “ready” it’s a huge jump, but you have to WANT it. Or else no help or advice will ever reach you, and you won’t give an honest try to do whatever it is you need personally to recover.

2.) you have to be willing to change in whatever ways are possible and necessary, because obviously there are things such as living situations that you might not be able to change giving your situation. But the things you can change like how you respond to situations, who and what you surround yourself with (social media, toxic friends, toxic online communities etc) you have to be willing to cut those out.

And obviously, that’s easier said then done, especially when you may already feel alone and like cutting them off will only add to that lonliness, but guys, you have to do it. And I know it’ll be hard at first but getting rid of those toxic relationships will lift a weight off of your shoulders and I promise you will make new friends. Shit like that happens when you least expect it and it’s annoying and weird and dumb. But cut out that toxic shit in your life.

Overall change though, if you don’t like the way you treat people take a step back and go “okay why do I react this way? Why do I treat people this way?” And don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t attack yourself seek to understand it, and that will enable you to then go, “okay how I respond isn’t fair, how can I change that?” And that goes for how you treat yourself too. If you can change those negative thoughts, behaviors and treatment to both yourself and others it will help your mental state a lot.

3.) patience and understanding I guess? I’m sure there’s a lot of feeling like you might be a horrible person out there, a lot of anger and pent up frustration with yourself and the world because of all the shit you’ve had to deal with and like, those feelings are justified, but you should also be patient with yourself and understand that people do stupid, cruel, fucked up shit. We make mistakes, we treat people kinda poorly, but don’t destroy yourself over it.

Understand or seek to understand why x y z is happening and use that to do what you can to change the situation, even if it’s scary or hard. You can regret actions, but regretting them forever won’t help you grow or get better it’ll only make you sink ya know? So like, accept how you’re feeling, but don’t succumb to it, and work to change the negative behaviors or energies that surround you.

Oh my god okay 4, and like SUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT. DO NOT COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE. Stop IT. NO ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Where you are is based on your own path, and you’re on your clock not anyone else’s. Everyone has so many different experiences it’s impossible and not fair to sit and judge yourself based on someone else’s capabilities.

Because we all have different experiences while you may be struggling to learn how to respond or handle social situations, which might be something others know how to do, those same people might be struggle to process grief and loss, which maybe you experienced already and learned how to handle.

(Idk if that makes sense,) but basically like, you’re where you need to be in life and you’re learning what you need to learn when you need to learn it. We aren’t all on the same track. Some of us are learning things our friends learned at sixteen, some of us are working towards things 35 year olds haven’t gotten to yet. Everyone is different and because of that we are going to have different experiences. Different bodies, different personalities, different struggles

And that’s OKAY that’s how we’re supposed to be

(Thanks for coming to my I just woke up and chugged coffee ted talk. Obviously take everything I say with some salt, those are just my opinions and views and I understand that they won’t be helpful or apply to everyone and their situation. I’m just trying to explain how I see or feel about things given my life. Obv I’m not a doctor or anything I’m just a college student no one come for me thank you I’m sorry have a nice day)

[kenryusai]

i dont write on tumblr because i have no reason to. but i have nowhere else to go to talk about what i feel. and im a problematic son of a bitch so lets gooooo!!

ive been stressed and depressed for the past weeks since i lost a debate tournament. ive been really down and unmotivated, i cant deny this. the reason i call myself depressed even when im not clinically diagnosed is because it is a major emotional burden to me. i dont use this term lightly, in any context. its just been really tough for me to get back on my feet after that loss. it felt like i couldnt get past that point anymore, it feels like i peaked. although i hate thinking that it is that way, it feels like it is.

i understand that i probably havent peaked, i am exhaggerating. but i dont exhaggerate how much self hate, doubt, and overthinking it caused me. i dont know if i didnt try hard enough. i probably didnt. i dont know. i feel as if i cant find the same passion for debate anymore. i cant get myself to be as enthusiastic as ive been. im missing something, a link, a clue, an idea.

i try my best to ignore it. the tipping point is todays realization that i have been bringing my burdens trouble to other people. acknowledging a mistake shouldnt be the end of it. i cant keep arguing with people that are special to me. i could have just said sorry. i feel depressed.

it doesnt seem like a big deal, i mean only real champions who are destined for greatness dont quit. they dont let it bother them and keep on going. but i realized thats too unrealistic for me, to keep going without being bothered by my problems. its unrealistic to not make mistakes and not let it bother you.

i am a very open person, i usually tell someone something im feeling on the spot. i have, but i cant keep telling ry i feel sad and down and unmotivated everyday. thats just a huge bummer, she cant have her fun, especially with me, im her boyfriend. small arguments shouldnt matter, but this is something personal.

have i let myself go to far down the pit? ry and i are healthy as fuck, theres not doubt about it, that doesnt mean we dont make mistakes. we do, but we know how to resolve and communicate, eventually were all good again. i hope she feels the same way. however, i felt the discomfort while i was justifying myself. its not that were fighting or that i have massively fucked up. i havent, we talked about it, its cool now. i guess its just that im tired. of arguing when i dont have to. arguing the wrong way everytime. arguing unnecesarily. im not tired of debate. im tired of me.

denate has been what i devoted my highschool life to, more than any other person i know. i founf family here. but im tired of myself. i really really am. im tired of every little thing i do, the wrong things i do, the things i know about myself. im done with it.

what i need to do is fix myself. this self hate has gone long enough to damage my self image and how i interact with people. its easier said than done for sure. and i definitely dont know where to start. but as im writing this, its a huge burden ive lifted from my chest. i have 3 weeks to prepare for a very important tournament. i cant let myself be like this till then. i need to move.

i hope this doesnt come off as pretentious, im writing this at 12:47 in the morning. i have nothing but genuine emotions and thoughts. i love my girlfriend and i hope she understands me.

*i love you ry, you know whats happening, i just cant let it go for so long. i know its my bad for not telling you, but i did. i just dont feel anything progrssing from that point after idea 2. i think its right to tell you now before classes start. there was no necessity for me to tell you everyday that i felt sand and i felt like shit. im sorry for last night. its a small argument, i honestly just didnt hear you because i was fixing my alarm. honestly, my bad, ill make it up to you. but for now i wanna tell you what its like for me.

[omegas-spaghettios]

Dear A,

I do my best to not be a vindictive person. I have had a history of being vindictive to multiple people, and it's never ended well for anybody involved. But there are a lot of things you do that hurt me, even though you can't know why. That's why I'm writing here, to get my words out there without harming you.

I know you moved here within the last couple years and you are struggling to make friends, and I think you are a genuinely nice person. I've done all I can to talk to you and ask about your interests, and i agonized at Wal-Mart trying to find you the perfect gift. This isn't to guilt you, i happily chose to do all of that. And I believe your company is fun. I wouldn't really search it out much, but when I have it in the group it has mostly been pleasant.

Until recently.

Let me tell you some things I have gone through, A. I have grown up in LDS Utah as a closeted Bisexual. I have been through hell, and I know I have had it easier than a lot of LGBTQ+ people in that religion. Since 8th grade I have consistently had depression and anxiety, clinically diagnosed, with therapy and meds and everything due to living here, the social hatred is incredibly intense. During that time up till now, just finished 11th, I have also had multiple self harm and suicidal stretches. This isn't asking for pity, most kids my age unfortunately have had to go through this. This isn't new.

I started dating a mormon girl 10th grade year. It was good for a long while, but starting 11th year it got bad. She had awful anger management issues, and was incredibly vindictive. Not to mention that she guilted me into supressing my problems so I can help hers. For months I endured passive aggression and my own repression and fights and anger because I truly loved her. But last month I decided enough was enough. I cut it off. I am not of the LDS faith anymore, and that was a major part of the decision as she still is, but that wasn't really why.

Not to mention the hallucinations. For the last year I have had infrequent hallicunations of Wendigo's, i'm sure you know what those are, as well as paranoia. Just yesterday I got diagnosed with anxiety and depression induced psychosis. I took my meds for the first time today for the hallucinations and begin therapy Monday.

The point is, add all of this together with what has been happening in the world and the stress of me being asthmatic when a respiratory disease is running rampant, and i believe you can see why I am struggling. I have turned to our friend group of 7, A, to finally talk to my peers in healthy ways about my struggles and not face my ex's wrath. I'm really struggling and for once I feel like I have a good support network, one I only kind of get at home.

So why am I upset and hurt? Well, a lot things. A, I know you believe in witchcraft and paganism and that creepypastas like Slenderman and Jeff the Killer are real. Personally, I think it's not real in the slightest as it can't be empirically proven, but that isn't why I'm upset in these scenarios. I think your beliefs are a bit ridiculous, but I respect everyone's beliefs. You do you. It is how you have used your beliefs to inadvertently harm me.

I came out to the group as Bisexual. The deal is, 4 of the 6 of you gals all knew already. You didn't. The ones who already knew came out in support, and you were silent. No harm done, really. Felt kind of off, but oh well, I don't really care. You weren't vindictive and haven't been about it. The issue is, you came out as a witch to your parents and gave us the play by play expecting our comfort. The comfort you never afforded me. I still gave it, i remember the hell I went through when I came out as Bi to my parents and you shouldn't go through that alone. But it hurts, knowing it's one sided.

But that isn't all. Your parents wouldn't let you use a dating app, so you came to the group chat and said we needed to find you a boyfriend. That's my my place, find your own damn boyfriend. I am fresh out of an awful relationship and now a single Bisexual. Even if I wanted to think about anyone's relationships much less my own, do you think i would set you up with people I think were interesting? And not try to date them myself? But I was polite and told her the truth: I only talked to that friend group and one other person. A couple of others also respectfully declined to find you one. Then you had the fucking audacity to send in the chat a picture of you scowling and leaving at that. Not an emoji, no words, a picture of your actual face in pure disgust. That's when I got angry. How dare you demand I find you somebody. How dare you be that lazy and demand me, in my fucking disaster state, to do it for you.

Well then, let's address the mental issues I have. It isn't your fault, I want you to know. And any one of these instances is excusable, but together I don't think it is. I had a full on panic attack sitting two feet away from you and another friend, let's call her E. My paranoia was shooting through the roof, i felt like I was about to be killed and I couldn't breathe. E kept giving me concerned looks and mouthing if I was okay, in which I gave many half hearted thumbs up. She knew it was bullshit, but guess why she didn't say anything? Because you, A, were running off about how Slenderman is stalking you. You even said that paranoia and fear means he is around. Not that you believe that, that it is FACT. It was incredibly dehumanizing of you to tell me what I was experiencing in that exact moment was because some 2000's fictional monster was around. I didn't say anything, granted because I physically couldn't, but it's not your fault. But everyone I have ever met will tell you I wear my heart on my sleeve. So how you could sit next to me, who was silent and fighting tears and quietly trying to gasp for air and was shaking and was being quiet as to not bother you (thanks, ex), you ignored me. Not only that, you dehumanized the very reaction I was having. That really hurt, A. Unintentional or not, it hurt.

Not to mention when I made a meme of my full name on Kermit jumping off a cliff to commit suicide, I made that very clear in the meme. I posted it in the group chat. I know that is not a good way to reach out, but I haven't reached out to anyone in months, so it's better than I have in a long time. A, you just said "yeah" and moved on to some asinine topic. Others tried to bring it up but you steamrolled overthem with your rocks or Jeff the Killer or something. A very clear cry on my behalf for help, and you said "yeah". Thank you.

Then this morning. Last night I woke up around 1 AM absolutely panicked. Not able to breath, shaking, world spinning, sweats, everything. Like I was dropped right in the middle of my worst panic attack ever. I was sure SOMETHING was about to kill me. It took hours to feel safe, and i haven't slept since 1 AM. I posted in the chat that I couldn't sleep and needed to talk to somebody. It was late, but I needed somebody. I was vague, but I don't want to drop that i am psychotic in the middle of a group chat. Then you woke up around 9 and said "oh, I can't sleep most nights so I get your pain. I felt really sick last night and threw up." I don't mean to diminish your experiences, A. I don't know how hard it is for you. But I went through hell last night without any of my friends in the chat, I eventually got ahold of my sister. Then you have the audacity to come to me and say "I get it. I was ill last night, so I get it." Again, it could have been miserable for you. But you just ignored my cries for help AGAIN, and you tossed my pain out of view so you could go on about yourself AGAIN.

I've done so much to make you feel welcome. I wouldn't choose you as a friend, but you are in the group and as such have worked to make you feel like part of it. But you don't care about me. At least, it doesn't seem like you do. I have made it very clear multiple times that I am not okay (did I mention the time I posted things in that chat about me experiencing hallucinations and you didn't say a damn thing?) and you don't care.

I write this out here because you don't know what I'm going through, so I can't hold it all against you I guess. But with how dismissive you are I don't trust you with it. We will be nothing more than superficial friends, if that. I typed this out, so I'm going to take a deep breath and move on, I'll be civil and jovial with you. But you have hurt me deeply, and thus have lost my trust.

- Bryan

[shirts181]

Random life vent

I remember being really happy as a kid/teenager, everything was awesome, always had friends and family around and did cool stuff, didn’t overthink about anything just lived my life as it came day by day. Not anymore. Before i dive into this, there’s going to be so many things im going to miss or havent remembered thats probably vital or important in relation to what im saying and as im re-reading over it ill realise i havent added something so yeah just a heads up, im a guy in his mid 20′s, majority of this my friends now dont even know about and i couldnt even imagine trying to explain all this shit to somebody i know, i guess thats why im here lol, i want to add and not sure if its related to how i turned out or not but growing up i was always on the shy side, wasn’t super shy but like when i would do shit like do a class presentation by myself id always go red and blush and sometimes get teary, not that i was sad or upset, id just get fucking teary like a dickhead lol, would use my hands when i talked and just overall looked like a nervous wreck. I was comfy around friends and family, could do whatever, didnt really care, if anything i felt like an extrovert around them, but when it came to being in situations i didnt know anybody, i plainly would just say nothing, not make an effort to really engage in conversation, just lay back and wait for that situation to be over til i was with my friends. If somebody approached me id obviously talk to them and whatever but rarely would i be the person initiating anything like that, was a bit of a idiot like that growing up lol. I’ve always been the person who wanted everyone to be happy, i was always oblivious to how other people like my friends had family or whatever issues growing up and the REAL impact it has on them, like divorced parents or they dont know their mum or dad or whatever that stuff, i knew people with depression and anxiety growing up and i was always open to talk to people about it, i LOVED being the friend to speak to if anybody was feeling like shit or wanted to vent, it made me feel really appreciated and id been given this trust to listen to what they have to say, like i might be able to make them feel better about what they had to say regardless of if i could properly help/change their circumstances and problems, but maybe put a smile on their face and make them laugh and let them know it’ll be ok without even being sure if it would, but i never would say that and 100% know it would be ok, but by saying that it might just give them some hope that things CAN be ok and they then believe it can change for the better. From the age of 16 i was super self conscious, i cared what people thought of me, not that im a super ugly guy or had anything dramatically wrong looks wise or how i was, but more so for me maybe like saying something and somebody over hearing it and me being like “oh fuck i should of said that” because it might sound bad or like having pimples (probably same as every teenager ever lol) or a bad hair day (literally) kinda thing. I cared how people portrayed me, i wanted everyone to know i was just average person who just wanted everybody to be happy, i made conscious decisions on what i said to who and where i said it, clothes i would wear depending on where i was going and who might see me, that stuff was like a necessity in my life, i wasn’t like ocd about that stuff because sometimes id be in situations where i know id be judged but still followed through, but something about me just fuckinggggg hated having somebody look at me a certain way and portray me differently to who i really am. I just re-read that and holy shit lol i sound like an idiot the way i’ve said what i’ve said, this is another thing about me maybe saying something and not accurately making it out to sound how i intend it to sound. Whatever rofl, now the real shit. I got diagnosed by a psych with anxiety when i was 18, this was the beginning of my mental downfall from then to this day. About 6-7 months of solid anxiety i could barely leave my house, was scared for no fucking reason, dont even know why, all i remember is my heart beating like crazy and feeling like i was going to pass out or whatever. This would happen mainly in social situations during and before even seeing others/doing things. I would work myself up to the point of crying, getting hives/being itchy everywhere on my body, nervously shaking and visually just looking terrified. I couldn’t drive properly because i’d get panic attacks and id feel like im about to pass out and i cant escape cos im trapped inside a car, traffic was the worst especially when i was alone, there was numerous times that i fucking cried in my car before and after id pull over to relax myself, how stupid is this shit? Why does this happen to people, how does this shit happen to ME, i dont even get why this all is even happening, im not an unhealthy person by any means so im not sick and didnt have symptoms of any illness, wtf is going on. How the fuck do i get over this, ended up seeing a psych because i had no idea wtf was wrong with me, bring in my diagnosis of having anxiety. While i was at home, i would hardcore grind out games on my computer, it made me feel normal and not like absolute shit, dont know why but at the time thats all that made me not feel like absolute shit and scared of being outside in the world. I took pills for this, tried to be active by exercising, playing sport and making an effort and forcing myself out of the house. At the start it was absolute torture, i didn’t ever think i’d get over this, it was that bad. I was on medication, couldn’t tell you what one because i just dont remember and never payed attention to medication names etc. Fast forward 6-7 months, i am actually feeling ok, i apply for jobs, go to job interviews with ease, im actually feeling really good like im making improvements in my life and progressing correctly by taking the next step, something i wouldn’t of thought of doing months earlier. I ended up getting a job and it was like a weight off my shoulders, i was excited, my parents were super happy with me for how far that i had come, i felt good as, potentially like im on track to success in living my life and being able to feel good again. As i got this job i was confident in going out and felt like i could properly just do shit, like i could be me again. This lasted about 15 months, i was ok to drive, i NEVER had a panic attack during this 15 months, i felt good af, when i drove i would even laugh at myself be like “why tf was i panicking? why was i such an idiot and getting worried over shit that cant and wont effect me and make me feel scared? why would i care about those things”, even in like social situations same thing, it was great. It all started to come back, slowly it like bloody crept its way back to being bad, but at this stage i was in denial, i was like na i can get over this i dont need to see anybody, but realistically i probably needed to. To this day i’ve never seen a psych about it, for the last 4-5 years ive almost just adapted to knowing im going to have panic attacks and feel like shit, iv learnt to cope and deal with it myself, the thought of me taking pills for this again scares me, why would i want to take pills to get better again when once i feel good, come off them, id get back into this state of mind and feel anxious again, and then repeat, why the fuck, seriously, why the fuck would i put myself into this potential scenario, i say potential because its a possibility, but thats not a risk im willing to take, people get addicted to this shit, ultimately what im trying to say is i dont want to be that person that gets reliant on taking pills to just having a functioning mind that doesnt make me feel scared and afraid, why cant i just shake this off? is there something im not doing? wtf is the cure to this shit? i know its not the pills because i dont want to become reliant on medications to make me happy. Im pretty convinced im depressed too, iv had serious thoughts about suicide, but i dont think im somebody who could actually commit to it, and if i was, i would probably make the decision to speak to somebody, but im stuck in a mindset where im not going to die from it, but i feel like shit all the time, i dont want meds, i dont know how to fix where im at pretty much, theres things that have happened to me the last couple years which have convinced me im a bad partner in a relationship, not for things i do but for what i unintentionally didnt do, im not a fulfilling boyfriend, ive either never obviously met the right girl for me or im just not fit to be a boyfriend, and thats what i think, how can somebody commit to me but im to stressed and worried about how my commitment to them might not be enough? the constant worry of not being a good boyfriend, when all i really want is for everything to be ok and happy, not that if things arent good or happy that thats a bad thing, i totally understand not everything is perfect and there are shit things that happen to people or in the world thats always going to happen, but i feel like, mainly with my last ex girlfriend, i felt like i was in a competition half the time to compete and get reassurance i was being a good boyfriend because i didnt know anything else, i was locked into this relationship i felt i couldnt escape, i so badly wanted out but was sucked into the mindset that if i left id have nothing and couldnt be with anybody because shes the only one who would be with me cos she already is, how the fuck do i overcome this, how do i get out? Its been a year since she ended up breaking up with me and pretty much for those reasons, i wasn’t up to par with her standards, i wasnt her dream boyfriend, for somebody who accepted my past issues with anxiety and letting her in on all my personal shit, if somebody who i thought cared for me leaves me, how could i ever convince or even get another girl to be with me knowing i have this weight and baggage of being a potential let down and not being able to be the person she needs me to be?  Writing all this i thought id feel better but i kinda still feel like shit. I weighed up deleting this, i had it all highlighted ready to backspace and alt f4 this but fuck it i might regret not posting this, i guess thats why im here anyway. If you read all this sorry for the random bullshit, i re-read it and i sidetracked myself hard from what i was originally going to say but im kinda tired and was literally just typing anything that came to my mind andddd yeeeeaaaahhh.. peace

[nongoxi]

Hewwo internet I guess first post on this hellsite for the first time in a long time...? Idk what I’m fully expecting here, I think I want this to be a journal? A safe place to say what I feel without being judged for how I feel about it. Obviously I want professional help, but right now I don’t feel that this is possible, and I feel guilty trying to pay for it.

Background on that; I live with a very nice roommate who lets me live with him for nothing. He doesn’t ask anything of me and usually we try to split house duties about 50/50. Anyway, that’s irrelevant and tbh if I could go get a job, I definitely would.

I do feel guilty for not being able to work well, at least not from what I’ve learned about myself. Every time I try, I get so fucked in the head and end up quitting after a few weeks because I can’t handle it...

I’ve been diagnosed with so many things at this point that idk what to believe. CPTSD, regular PTSD, depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, probably some other thing that I’m entirely unaware of. Who knows. I’ve been undiagnosed with DPD and BPD so that’s at least good? Idk, BPD was a large stretch by what seemed like a pill pushing asshole. And DPD came after that with a proper evaluation. Its been over 5 years since then though, and recent therapy sessions have said I more than likely don’t fit that diagnostic criteria anymore. So yay for improvement?

Depression and anxiety make sense, but I honestly think they’re symptoms of cPTSD (which was originally thought to be PTSD or PTSD like symptoms depending who you ask). I feel most hopeless when it’s like... in relation to past trauma and I can usually function well until something triggers me. Then it’s just breakdown after breakdown that could possibly last for two or three hours, maybe longer. I’ve only really had a few strong flashbacks... those were scary, being encompassed by an abuser who still follows me some places online. Yet I still question if I’m the true abuser, even though I really have no ill will towards anyone who’s ever harmed me. I just want peace I guess. Idk, it’s hard to know if I’ve ever been super toxic or abusive myself you know? Like, just trying to control my own life and my own will. Trying to gauge what’s good for me or not and make choices that are for myself idk. I’m not making much sense anymore so I’ll move on I think.

I’ve tried multiple different types of medication, mostly SSRIs and benzos and firstly, benzos are trash don’t get me started on the major addiction I was starting to develop or the emotional want of that high in the first place. Second, SSRIs pretty much always just make me wanna like... not exist. Like in the bad way. I’ve been on a few mood stabilisers and I’m allergic to the most common one, so that was fun dealing with whether or not the rash was gonna spread to my mouth. It didn’t, but you know, it was on my chin so let’s just not think about that anymore. I think the sad thing is, I want to be better, I really do. But with having taken probably over 30 medications with no help so far? I just want to get better without medicine. It feels like I’m always forced to take medications that I don’t want to though. You want therapy? Gotta have a psychiatrist too. Why? Idk, money? Maybe? I feel like therapy would be more productive if I could deal without having to have a medication station looking over my shoulder, ready to shove pills between my lips though. I’m tired of medicine.

Even Wellbutrin makes me feel like I want to self harm or not exist. Using it to stop smoking has been painful and honestly I’m still smoking just as much so? Guess it’s not working anyway. I’ll tell my gp about this at any rate, because she seems like she’s the only doctor who actually listens to me when I say something.

Speaking of which, I need to write a list of what things I’m feeling so I can give it to her. I’m scared, but I think it would benefit me in the end. And maybe she’ll listen to me about the “potential” ED I have. Look, I know I have food problems, I exhibit a lot of fucking symptoms of A, B, and BED but haha I’m fat so no one listens. Look, going through a binge phase for like 4 months straight and feeling uncontrollable urges to eat the whole house? Gaining 20 pounds in that time? 5 pounds a month isn’t that bad but bruh I weigh enough that my daily caloric intake is 2900 without exercise for maintain. Like 3500-4000 cals a day isn’t normal can we just discuss that thanks??? Anyway. No doctor wants to hear it and I always get the “write your calories down” stuff which makes me just... want to control it down to 1200 or less a day and. I try so hard not to do that and I’m stuck now. I don’t know what to do anymore and I need help but lmao wow that’s.. Impossible to get when you’re fat I guess. And it’s not just “I’m 180 pounds I’m so fat”, no I’m around the 275-325 mark (no exact details because I really don’t want people to know who I am or how I may look physically, if anyone ever actually finds this).

Idk where to even go from here. I feel better writing this out. I have no clue what to even remotely say. I wanted to vent and I guess I did so, but I didn’t really vent about what I wanted to, so now I’m just confused. Hell, I barely remember what I wanted to vent about so this is probably better. Imma sign off on this though for now, maybe I’ll be back. Who knows.

Btw, call me Nogi if you wanna use a name. I’m agender, but I’m comfortable with any pronouns (they/she/he/it). I’m 25. I’d prefer minors not interact with me, and that’s about the only reason I bring up age. So if you’re a minor, please leave.

I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to speak about how I feel and vent. Maybe reblog cute things? Or vent things? But mostly I’m here for me. Respect that.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Aurgh it’s hard as fuck when your main squick is something that’s popular with like, almost every other human being ever, and is intended to be one of those safe everyday conversations you can have with both intimate friends and complete strangers. Where it’s supposed to be a thing that humanity uses as a uniting, welcoming, bonding force... but to me it’s just... a really uncomfortable reminder of a host of bad things.

I’m talking food here.

Food conversations often make me feel uncomfortable. Vastly uncomfortable. There’s an intricate set of conditions for which conversations I’m fine with and which will bother me, but no one except me is going to know all that minuteness. Point is: food conversations, food socialization, it’s everywhere. And it’s so hard to handle. Because i know everyone wants to be nice and they’re reaching out to me, but every time they do that kind gesture, it’s alienating and disturbing me more. And so 9 times out of 10, I put on a polite face and humor them because I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t let them know it bothers me. 

Dudes I am like, always trying to minimize my discomfort for others, because I know it’s impractical to act otherwise.

Which means I’m constantly living in a state of internally squirming.

Let’s be clear: I am someone who’s pretty comfortable giving feedback to friends, talking back and forth about what does/doesn’t work between us. I’m not someone socially anxious at approaching topics like these. I’m FINE telling friends, “Hey, I don’t like X, how about we do Y?” But just... food’s an impossible battle, dudes, and you can’t do it to complete strangers, to EVERYONE you meet, to EVERY circumstance you go through... it’s just... it’s a losing battle and I’d rather be polite and not make others feel uncomfortable, than constantly jut out to no good result.

For like. The one time out of ten I ask people (usually close friends) to avoid food-related actions and conversations, it’s a roll of the dice whether or not their behavior changes, even when they don’t complain “That makes it hard to talk to you!” Usually the confiding conversation changes little. Even when they’re trying to do something. 

The problem is that food reminds me I’m socially ostracized, and it reminds me of a lot of the mental illness and self-care issues I’ve chronically had in my life. In fact, food is a really good symbol of everywhere I just STRUGGLE so like, yeah, surprise surprise, I hate hearing and talking about it and stuff.

So like. Number one. I have Celiac Disease. I got diagnosed as an infant (praise God) and have lived a strict gluten free diet my entire life, even before most people knew what the word meant or knew the word existed. I have pride for being a Celiac, but I don’t like what the social impacts are. I learned to turn down food offered to me. Which is like. A lot of the time, dudes. Humans bond through food. But growing up without food bonding is....... yeah wow, dudes, apparently it messes you up, who knew.

1. You gotta turn down the dinner invitations for people who want to cook for you, knowing they’ll have nooooo idea how to prepare safe gluten-free friendly foods. Or, you don’t want to be a Drastic Social Burden(TM) that’s difficult to prepare for (because there’s so much RESEARCH they’d have to do, and so much I’d have to DOUBLE CHECK for them, just to make sure I could eat one fucking cupcake). So any time there’s a social gathering around dinner that isn’t going to a restaurant, it turns into a major cringe reaction for me, wishing that this hangout were literally ANY other time of day.

Mealtimes, which everyone else uses as a way to bond with one another in a positive, delightful way... are one of the Biggest Ways to make me feel alienated, uncomfortable, socially burdensome, on edge. Instead of making me feel included, I feel all the more aware I’m the odd one out. During the times people *DO* actually cook gluten free for me, I feel an unending wave of gratefulness piled on social burden, because they had to go out of their fucking way to figure this out, due to the problematic nature of me having strict dietary restrictions.

2. You know how often food gets offered to you as gifts? I have to constantly turn down those gifts. I already lack gift giving abilities; turning down gifts is socially cumbersome but something I’m always waiting to have to do. Instead of ever feeling grateful someone offered me something (I know they mean well), I have to ruin the moment by asking to see the packaging for the ingredients list, or saying “no”. And someone saying “I’d love to cook for you!” just makes me think “oh god oh god oh god NO. please NO.”

3. Really fun hanging out with friends and “Let’s go eat” and you have to veto 3/4 of the restaurants they want to go to because you can’t eat there. Frankly, I often succumb to “Pick what you want, I’ll figure something out for me.” My friends don’t like that and insist to include me (food bonding [sigh]) but yeahhhh, I like to wimp out on that rather than bother.

4. Oh hi guess what it also goes into being left out of religious experiences like church communions. Until larger churches started offering gluten free wafers to replace bread... if I wanted to be included in communion... I either had to whisper something to the pastor before she gave me bread, or I’d have to give her my gluten free bread ahead of time so she could give it to me specially (this is what my mom did for me, who always tried to make me feel included as a little kid... bake me my own cakes for birthday parties... arrange this stuff with the church... what have you). And let’s not get started on the awkward conversations I had when friends invited me to seder and I had to do a lot of make-sure-ing there too.

5. Okay guys you know how COMMON it is for people to text you food pictures? Look what I made. This is my dinner. What have you. How that will IMMEDIATELY set off my discomfort??? But if I don’t respond, I’ll get a text half an hour later, “Hey, did you see my concoction?” 

6. Ngl this makes me 300000x more nervous if I have to do any food-related hosting event. Even if it’s “bring something to the potluck!” it throws me into so much distress. Now *I* have to pick food for *someone else*, when I live in a world where no one knows how to pick food for me. It makes me uncertain what to bring, what’s acceptable to bring, etc. I mean, I guess the one thing I have going for me is I make sure I bring stuff ANY person of ANY diet can eat, but like... there’s so much social discomfort. I get even more uncomfortable at the thought of trying to cook meals for people (doesn’t help I can’t cook to save my life) or hosting social events with snacks in them (ex: movie nights). 

THERE IS A REASON I DEFAULT TO “HEY WHO WANTS TO GO OUT TO DINNER, I’LL PAY!!!!” it’s the one non-uncomfortable way I can show my love to my friends, while dealing with a physical need I know they have (hunger). It’s not the “best” bonding way, but I try to minimize those experiences, get out of them, but like... if I’m offering to buy you dinner, THIS IS ***THE*** BEST I CAN DO AND I AM DESPERATE TO DO IT BECAUSE IT IS THE ***ONLY*** WAY I CAN FOOD BOND WITH YOU AND I KNOW YOU NEED THAT.

On and on and on and on and on. 

Like, on its own, living with Celiac is damn EASY. It’s not hard to cook and eat gluten free meals. But it’s the interaction with all the other human beings, who default to eating gluten-filled meals, and trying to get me in on the socialization of gluten-filled meals... that makes it so problematic to navigate. And means I’m constantly feeling socially........ jutting out. Square peg in round hole phenomenon.

But it’s not just the fact that everyone else grew up bonding with food and meals... and I was separated out and couldn’t bond. 

Uarghghghg it’s not just Celiac. Celiac is simple. Celiac is normal. I’m 100% chill with the fact I have it, and I actually get angry when people suggest it’s something that should be “cured.” Fuck you dudes, I’m normal, I’m healthy, my life is great, it’s not my fault you like wheat and think I should like it too. 

But. Where things get really emotionally hairy. It’s that food is a pinnacle of my non-neurotypical issues. I forever screwed up my diet in college when I got so depressed I quit eating regularly and lost something like 10-15 lb (which was... like... 10% of my body weight, yiiiiikes). It became this... self-imposed contest... where I tried to skip as many meals as possible. It became a Rule that I didn’t eat Sundays. It took years for me to eat 2-3 meals a day again. And it forever impacted the health of what I ate. I have really baaaaaad diet.

And diet is always the first thing to get impacted when I have a depression-y spell. It’s the hardest thing for me to get in control to try to take care of myself. I’m CONSTANTLY struggling to take care of myself even during my happy periods, when it comes to food, and so you can only imagine what happens to my diet when I’m in my many bad spells. Food represents the constant struggle, the constant inability for me to function. It sometimes feels like the symbol of my mental illness. It’s a battle I am constantly, constantly, constantly, constantly fighting. I’m fighting to get ONE meal a week that I’ve fucking cooked for myself. I’m fighting to eat things that could be called “meals” at all (don’t worry, I get my calories and shit in, I eat very regularly, I snack all the fucking time, I’m not underfed, I’m fiiiiiine, it’s just not... good nutritional value, and it relies heavily on restaurants or non-scratch non-recipe items). 

And when food is the epitome of so many bad things - inability to fit in socially, inability to take care of myself, a memory of times when I collapsed psychologically my freshman year of college and went into eating disorder mode... like dudes, I’m sorry, I’m not going to enjoy photos of your macaroni and cheese you texted me. It’s going to make me go into instant Red Flag Mental Mode where I’m thinking about nothing except constant internal battles I fight.

And yet.

Oh goodie.

Food is The Go To socializer. Food is a Nice Easy Topic. Food is everywhere, and I just bite my tongue and smile and tell someone, “Looks like a tasty dinner.”

[rolandfaunte]

The Story of Sewing Kit

I guess it kind of starts in the fall of 2016. Up until this point I had had some issues with anxiety/depression, and huge issues with sleep, but nothing that I would have considered to be an emergency. All of the sudden it seemed like accomplishments were becoming less frequent. Before this, when I was happy, each thought that came about in regards to an obligation was accompanied by a bit of energy that could be used to do it. That energy stopped showing up and the list of things that needed to be done began to grow as the likelihood of those tasks being completed began to shrink. I think of it like a car. Before these issues, when the car was required to drive a certain distance, gas would simply appear in the tank. Now, those same distances were required, but the gas no longer appeared. In this metaphor, the gas is provided by the subconscious, or just “the sub” as I like to call it. When you’re hungry, the sub gives you a bit of gas to go to the kitchen or order something. When you’re hungry but depressed, that gas never arrives. What then? Can you create you own? I’ve come to think of consciously-generated fuel as will power, and I didn’t really seem to have any at that time. The truth of the matter is that the sub was getting sick and, as a result, I started slowly dissolving into a pathetic mess. After sleep and motivation were gone, the disease began to target my self-worth. By the disease, I mean the bipolar disorder that at the time I was unaware of but would soon be diagnosed. The pattern of life I was developing mostly consisted of doing nothing or crying. At this point my life sill wasn’t necessarily all that bad, because I would only spend a few hours per day in a truly horrible place and would otherwise just be numb and fragile. This would be changing soon but the issue was still manageable enough that I didn’t do anything about it. In this time period, a typical day would begin with a skipped class and inactivity until around 5 o’clock, when I would retreat to my room and cry for a while about nothing and then just be numb again. My sense of self-worth was very low but I was yet to have any suicidal thoughts or full disconnections from reality. It was bad of course, but nothing compared to what was to come. In the context of the future that I’m now aware of, it’s hard to see this time period as so terrible, though it was certainly worse than anything that had preceded it. In the fall of 2016 I was introduced to Dr. K. We tried a few standard ssris and I took them religiously, thinking that they could bring back an older version of myself but they didn’t work very well. We tried a few different combinations but my decline was accelerating at an alarming rate. Each day of this time period would be the best day I would have for months to come. The episodes of tearfulness and misery became the standard mode of my life. I kept these things mostly private from those I knew well because I found them to be embarrassing and extremely confusing. After a while of this, in the springtime, a new type of episode began to emerge. It was one of infinite bliss and unstable happiness. My self-worth inflated to an amazing degree and I was filled with what felt like an infinite love and sense of connection to all things. I would create things at an alarming pace that all turned out to be of terrible quality but at the time seemed to me to be far more important than anything else in the history of the world. These were my first true experiences with hypomania. These episodes would break ferociously. I remember walking to campus in a state of absolute ecstasy, being extremely impressed with myself and all of the amazing things I would come to accomplish. My genius was absolute and my understanding of the world was absolutely messianic. The introduction of mania made for an incredibly ridiculous life, in which I was either overflowing with energy and ecstasy or begging a god I didn’t believe in to bring about some accident that would kill me. Neither version of the brain could remember the other, and I never seemed to spend any time in between them. I told my doctor of these things and he asked me to more elaborately journal during these moments, which I proceeded to do. When I next went to visit him he said he thought I might have a bipolar disorder and wanted to try a different tact medically. One med, Latuda, was very successful but left me with an unacceptable side-effect called akathisia. When I went to see him after a few weeks we had a lengthy conversation about my sense of the future and my hope for recovery and he regretfully informed me that I was ill to a point at which out-patient treatment wouldn’t be enough and it was time for me to be admitted. On the day I was admitted, I remember laying in some sort of examination room when a nurse entered and asked how I was feeling. Through tears I informed her, “I’m never going to be happy ever again.” I meant that. I was sure of it in ways I’ve never been sure of anything else. At some point before the Latuda I had begun to lose my relationship with reality but it was now gone entirely. I had no sense of what was real and was entirely possessed by the darkest thoughts imaginable, or perhaps even worse than that depending on who is being asked. For those who haven’t been depressed, these types of thoughts remain beyond imagination. When entering the ward I was presented with a line on which I needed to sign my name and write the date. I paused at the part of the paper that required the date and looked up to the nurse in confusion. Her and I were both visibly surprised by the fact that, not only did I not know what month it was, I also didn’t know whether it was 2015 or 2016. I can’t explain how or why, but I simply did not know. It was like looking at a bill at a restaurant and your brain just refusing the put in the effort to calculate a tip, except mine couldn’t even put in the effort to tell me what year it was. In that hospital I felt as though I was joining the ranks of those to whom I was truly similar. The broken and unproductive elements of society who were unable to do anything other than consume resources and spread misery and chaos. I looked at the outlets that fed energy to the medical machines, the nurses and the attendants, the food we ate, and the light that let us see it and saw them all as a waste. Why wouldn’t they just let us destroy ourselves? Why did they insist on keeping us in places where suicide was impossible when it was obviously the best thing for anyone who ended up here? I’ve never in my life spent so much time staring at a clock. The issues with sleep had made a vengeful reemergence and the time spent in the hospital truly felt like an eternity. I remember looking out of the window at a woman walking to work and thinking “I will literally never do that. I will never have a job. I will never contribute. I will never be useful enough to have to be anywhere ever.” When I was discharged, things improved in the sense that I no longer had to live my entire life on one hallway but my life was, to me at least, objectively and inarguably worse than death. I remember saying to myself that I would trade literally anyone’s life for my own. I would become anyone else and do whatever they had to do as long as it wasn’t this. I spent most of my time daydreaming about eternal nothingness. If I were to, today, right now as I write this, compile a list of reasons to not kill myself, it would be long to a point where I would get bored with the task. At that time the list consisted of two things: my family, and the girl I loved. One of the things I’ve come to realize about the disease is that it is a logical genius, and was able to provide me with an unending collection of reasons why those two elements did not belong there. Its mission was to empty the list. As for my family, one of its favorite arguments was that, over time, I would come to bring them far more harm than they could currently imagine. I would suck the goodness from their lives as they tried to care for me, exhaust them emotionally, consume their resources, and burden them infinitely. I would spoil our family’s good name and make them hate me. In a net, long term evaluation of their pain, it would be best for them to deal with my death for a few years and recover rather than have me drain them of life until I finally submitted at a later date, which I was convinced I would. As for my girlfriend, the argument was a bit different. The disease didn’t need me to necessarily excuse my suicide to her but rather find a way to remove her from my life. It told me that she only stayed with me out of a moral obligation, that she resented me secretly for how unimpressive and obviously useless I was. It told me that if I truly cared about her, I would end things between us and allow her to be free of that entanglement which, according to the disease, was something she wanted but could not bring herself to execute. These were two on the list of endless arguments in favor of me emptying the list of reasons not to do what the disease wanted me to. Both elements of the list stood stead-fast, but the disease is a beast against which arguments cannot be won while it still exists, the arguments are perpetual. The memories of that summer are quiet because I wasn’t quite there when they were made. I spent nearly the entirety of every day inside my own head, consumed by some mixture of panic, pain, dread, anger, or sadness, among others. I would wake up in the morning and simply think to myself “I can’t believe I have to do this for another day. I can’t. I can’t fucking do this anymore.” I remember thinking about how I wouldn’t wish it upon my very worst enemy. This was a punishment far worse than death, and yet somehow I had ended up inside of it without ever having committed any obvious crime. I remember sitting by the river with my best friend. This was my favorite place, next to my favorite person, and I felt nothing. It was gone and so was I. That summer moved forward into the fall when I was introduced to a physical miracle by the name of Seroquel. It brought me the most consistent sleep I had had in years, but the dosage was high to a point where my life was extremely muted and I was very dull. Next to depression, this was a miracle. When the dose of Seroquel was lowered and my mind was clearing up I began the process of trying to move these experiences out of my memories and into words and music. Unfortunately, I had never done any sort of recording before so I truly had no idea what I was doing. I was starting from scratch, with no outside help other than google. I learned how to use the different pieces of equipment very slowly, and still had only ever played piano and guitar. I listened to drums more closely to try and figure out how best to use them, as with bass, and finally started using other instruments to supplement the songs. Altogether, the process was absolutely grueling and nearly drove me out of my mind. I can’t even count how many times I worked from the early afternoon until the waking hours only to delete everything I had done. If I had to put a number on how much time was actually put into that album, including the learning process, I would start at 500 hours. Over the months I began to think of Sewing Kit as a potential weapon against future depression, thinking that when the next episode hit and the disease asked “what value do you bring?” I would have something to gesture towards and be able to confidently say “I made something that was worth making.” And that’s that. That’s Sewing Kit.

[juistheseminarian]

Eccentric, part 2 : now I’m here

I was planning to be done with this by now - both with this article and with the illness. I can’t believe that it’s been almost 15 years and I still get people congratulating me for acknowledging that I have an issue and going it’s-the-first-step-to-recovery, which they’ve learned was an appropriate thing to say since you don’t want to stand there and be embarrassed like I do with my boyfriend’s mom when she starts crying (which she does a lot). I’ve stirred things and realized things and I intended this to sound like a sort of retrospective from a place of unadulterated success. But guess what! 

I ended the last bit on my return from anorexia and lasting relationship with a psychologist I described as abusive, although that may be excessive and may come from the resentment of a long therapy seemingly not having “worked”. I started seeing them around age 12, before the eating disorder really declared, and i was referred to them at the end of an endless session of musical chairs through which I met many, many ‘emergency’ professionals whose schedules couldn’t accommodate another patient. I had to tell the whole story every time as if I were filing a police complaint or justifying an ailment that had long thinned beyond recognition, losing more of its meaning every time; I worried often, and I still do, about making myself sound ill enough to be considered, knowing I was taking their time when they could be curing people with actual issues. 

Having been sent to therapy after the school phobia I developed as a 5 or 6-year-old, and then again as a 12-year-old, and on and off ever since, means I’ve barely lived without framing my every breath as something to be treated and fixed, analyzed and made normal, insufficient, dependant, bending the wrong way. I entered this longest bout of therapy as a child and left it a decade later as a child. I believe for the first few years the psychologist was reliable if a little too set in her ways: there was no talk of medication outside of an apparent agreement to exclude it, which comforted my irrational fear of treatment with just as little medical basis as I previously had. However, her patient-based approach helped me feel like this time around it wouldn’t be an issue if I wasn’t “really” anything, or that’s how I viewed it at first. I don’t mean to dismiss the entirety of what happened there, only, you know, the bits where a refusal to diagnose me lead to a refusal to treat me, which in turn lead to desperation to fit me into the superstitious ramblings of an unstable person who refused to treat herself. Fuck that person. Call it what it is. 

I resented the amount of information she gave me about herself, the description of her previous marriage leading up to ten years of unhappiness she couldn’t get out of, the description of her current partner’s superior attitude, the way her life was a mess and the way I viewed her as honest instead of genuinely intrusive. She’d offer to pay me to iron her clothes, she’d talk to my teenage self about her finances, about her gynecological health, and I listened, and my mother became concerned. By then she had framed my parents as unable to understand me the way she would, she whose child had run away from home and I had to know all about it, apparently. I defended her. 

After the anorexia bit I grew alright for a while. I went to high school, I had a boyfriend, I neglected my own friends in order to make him my first priority at all costs, in short I was playing my role very well. My writing got noticed, as it should be, and I was exempted from english class, as I should be. I was bad at maths, I was good at history, I enjoyed latin class, I had friends I looked cool to because of the whole having had sex thing. Over one year my boyfriend and I had split up and I saw a few boys from my grade, most notably a wreck of a teen who regularly said he could be doing this with any of my friends and prided himself for using me “as an experiment”. When I broke up with him to go have the world’s least satisfactory sex with a friend of his, he called me crying hundreds of times. He had read somewhere that cool people had open relationships so he wanted one: when I took him up on that he said I disgusted him, turned around cause he “couldn’t look at me”, and masturbated in my bed. It was terrific. I was a sheep in shame’s clothing. 

There were the “can we do this without a condom”s and the “I want to see you shove that shower up your vagina to clean out the danger and I’m watching you”s and the “I can’t believe you cheated on me”s (he was kind!) and the “I’m storming out of your birthday party because you and your friends are little bitches”s. I don’t like how this is taking the same turn my life took - revolving around boys and men the second it got the chance, which is something I still haven’t worked out today as I live under the constant scrutiny of my several imaginary sugar daddy-leaning role models, but I’m keeping that topic for next time. This is, of course, she says in a white girl voice, about me. 

During the last year of high school, the boyfriend and I broke up for good because I had fallen in love with a guy we had met at a music festival and had pursued email after email. I felt glorious cracking the shells of emotionally unstable dudes and making them rely on me for subcontracting introspection: now I take “you’re the closest friend I’ve ever had” as a red flag, poisonous edible paper that dissolves in my water tank and kills me. It seems I do know better now, and it seems no woman ever told me that, and I keep being scared of them, and I keep being gay too, that’s my life’s familiar ghost. I’ve never gone far enough to confront the very real fact of loving women: I saw it as a kid when female nudity made me react, when I didn’t feel any sense of belonging with either boys or girls, when I felt like a monster. That desire is different because I don’t let it exist. Funny i’m only mentioning it now. What’s it like to be out to yourself? 

Do you relate to princesses? To female leads? Sometimes I can’t allow myself to replace fictional characters cause how realistic would it be to have the man of the story want to fuck me when my buttcrack isn’t even shaved? Obviously that would never work. Obviously cinderella’s ass is smooth. I never feel polished enough, or good enough an actor, or intelligible enough: expanding like a red giant, I feel like a stomach with needs, and the picture is grotesque - nothing like those Degas ballerinas. Dripping, eating itself, round but not motherly, the hunchback from Ken Russell’s the Devils is too feminine next to me. Suppose i’m fattening from storing all that shame. 

***

These days I resent the other diseased. Everyone hates my uncle cause he’s got it too and he drinks and he takes medication that people view with contempt; he lets himself die but it never seems to work even though he acts like it. Somehow something is still barely holding his limbs attached, miraculously, precariously. And my friend’s mother too, brain locked in a hamster wheel, hanging on to people like smeagol consumed, no longer in touch: filtering words like a beekeeper, only letting the crazy in. She makes me afraid to give birth. Would my children grow with a devolved being, Lovecraft’s blind cave-dweller, who once was human and is now condemned to live? Avoiding it in hallways, fearing it under their bed? 

By the fourth year of the relationship with festival boy my anxiety had become the decisive factor in every single move I made. I could no longer travel, be spontaneous, laugh, orgasm or breathe. The lump in my throat had grown bigger than I was and my face felt numb, I evaporated, I had emergency doctors drive a camera through my nose only for them to confirm I was choking myself this whole time. It really felt strange: like you’d have tried to swallow turkish delight but it piled up in your throat, invisible. The doctor wrote: patient known for anxiety. I thought: great, now when I die for real they’re gonna think i’m crying wolf and also they’re gonna be right. Fortunately enough, I then was relieved from the constant imminence of choking, you’d never guess how. 

I called a therapist my mom had taken me to when i was about 12 and we both liked her a lot - serious and a little intimidating in just the right way, a little soft yet clearly not one to let me bullshit my way out (my mom liked those). I was in the uni hall with some friends when her assistant called me back and scheduled an appointment for me later this same week: it was a huge deal. She remembered me. I suddenly felt safe, suddenly felt myself slip from my own consciousness like the narrator in Janice Galloway’s depression book when she enters a clinic: she’s no longer her own problem, or so she thinks at first, before realizing care never comes in the shape we expected. 

I started treatment almost immediately and was in shock at the realization that I did not need to suffer any more. I wasn’t aware, I didn’t KNOW of the existence of medication that would prevent me from spending hours and hours in inescapable pain, contorting my body between screams and frantic sobs, persuaded I was about to die a solitary death that’d leave me to witness my loved ones moving on in relief. Everything around me felt temporary and fleeting and treacherous. And most of all, each of these occasions were a trial for my failure to live, and I sat accused as my chrysalis life developed before me, never free, never daring, hidden, waiting. Every time, I realized how much I was missing out on. Every time I was too tired to seize the day after recovering and just dozed, scrutinized always, for a respite I knew would be short. My idea of living was a xanax in front of any distracting tv show: suddenly sleep was warm, and I wasn’t dying, and things lifted by the tornado gently fell back into place, and disappeared. 

(river) Oh, I got plenty of help. Therapists and medications and EMDR and - hypnosis and transcendental meditation. Nothing made me feel better (...) I feel everything. There just wasn’t enough positive emotion to balance me out. (payton: so it wasn’t because of me?) (river) no. you were my only relief. (“the politician” (2019) ep.6) 

My trust in festival boy was broken: I felt that if I was ever overcome with the looming fear and froze, he wouldn’t help. I have no idea if it was true: I’m very prone to blaming others for my feeling abandoned, often with no relation to their behaviour. I never could learn his language (i’m sure I can now) and the required travelling to see him became too much, even though we had met through travelling and didn’t feel at home anywhere. This continent of my life was infected and we steeped in sepsis for months and months, resentful, picturing other people when we touched, searching for admiration elsewhere. It’s the worst thing you can do to a bond, demand things from it when it’s dead, as if it was gonna answer. You know it’s been dead for months but when you try and bury it, you can swear you saw it squirm, and then it’s gone, and you took out the doubt. 

In this case I didn’t, Martin did. Martin was an old friend I knew through my first partner, and he came back into my life with an exact timing, like he was taking up an offer I was about to throw at someone else. It was all i wanted, car rides at night, feeling desired, watching him on stage, not being shamed. Comfort and help and reassurance, feeling small next to him, and knowing for certain that he understood: everything he says I take seriously, because there’s no way he doesn’t know, I could never lie, and I don’t want to. Well - I omit a little bit since that’s what it takes for me to grow guilt-free: I’m a fangirl and have never felt the need to stop, I let the obsession continent drift and crash, and perhaps it will become submerged and perhaps it won’t. Point is, I can defend it now, all the pieces I feel,I’m no one’s moodboard. 

I took a step back and realized I had no way of relying on the trope of a positive ending to this,  since there isn’t one. I see no perspective for myself, and I recently understood why antidepressants were considered a risk factor for suicides. It did make me indifferent to things that used to be matters of life and death: school grades, my weight… I care, and I don’t. I gained over 10 kg that sports don’t affect at all: I run all the time, cycle all the time, and it piles up forever, and I don’t recognize myself. I don’t fit in myself anymore. I don’t want to celebrate this thing i haven’t chosen and that I can’t deal with, and when I start thinking about it I end up in a frenzy. I just pretend it’s not there, but I feel so heavy carrying all that me. 

It’s a good time to be lost, if you’re okay with it. I’m not. I’m not free enough to be lost: I’m merely pulling on my leash and choking myself, looking at the shop displays, window shopping for life, shiny presents in a snowy christmas street, the others singing while I watch. I watch, I drift off, they see me lose focus, we’re too tired to get me back. There’s so much to experience and when I look back, so much I’m glad I’ve done before realizing I was doing it, because clearly it would be too late by now. I’m not a recluse by choice: I’m one of the weak ones, the eternal witness, or a loser, depending on how you see it. I like both. I think taking myself as seriously as i do now is both a symptom and a cause of why I’m such a bore: what’s so bad about looking stupid? I do it all the time while trying to not look anything at all. It’s not that deep, if I do say so myself, and as you’d expect, I never do. Ah the clever girl’s burden, say the adults, and together we mock the monster we’ve created and the monster takes it personally. 

So see, that’s where I’m at: no longer can I lazily bask in the excuse of a shitty partner, this time it’s on me, it’s on being sick, it’s on being sick without an excuse. My parents support me. My partner supports me. My friends would support me if i let them anywhere near me. But I take the crazy and I give it an incubator, I show it films with role models of crazy so it can grow and grow and finally make me special, isn’t this what I do? Look at joaquin phoenix and lose weight, I tell it; you’re not very good at the crazy, looking so plump and healthy. At least show your scars: they’re fading, it’s been over a decade, so now what, we’re just gonna look like someone who should get a makeover without the moving story of why they’re neglecting their appearance? What’s funny is, I’m actually a very ambitious person, mediocre is my rock bottom - listen to me when I tell you. There’s no such thing as effortless when effortless is a mountain.

(payton: i’m scared.) (river) don’t be. There’s more honor in defeat than there is in unused potential. (“the politician” (2019), ep.8) 

My therapist recently told me that if I was catholic I’d be in trouble. Duh, right? Jokes aside, she went: then people would see you as a waste because you do nothing with your force. You wouldn’t be allowed to just have that and not live it. I pondered: don’t you think I know that? Is more guilt really the solution? 

I know i want things. I know I love things, and people, and sounds, and places, and smells, and being alive. But do you see the difference between ‘knowing’ you shouldn’t be doing something, and understanding it in your very flesh, by experience, growing from it with the intimate conviction that it’s something you must stay away from? I know those things, and I don’t feel them really. I’m a fast learner, I’m a semi competent person, I can almost seem okay in a group. But I have shackles for lungs and I have concrete for breath. It’s got brutalist charm and warmth almost doesn’t spread. 

So that’s where I am with the dreams I have and the love I feel and the way it won’t come out. I suppose I’m awake but I’m not quite there. Martin feels it first: the pain on his face when I disconnect is breaking my heart. He’s just trying to bring me back. I’m loved. I’m locked away. And once my arms break I’ll dig my way out with my teeth if I need to.

[necromaniackat]

I AM NOT FATPHOBIC

I know at this point in my blogging career I’ve gotten the reputation of being “fatphobic” but let me tell you something; I used to be fat. I used to be an overweight social justice warrior scrolling through tumblr, self diagnosing myself with all these mental illnesses. Guess what happened: I grew up. I learned what the real world is like and I learned it all first hand. Let me tell you a few things I learned about the real world.

1) Yes, people treat you differently. People tend to be harsher on people who are bigger rather than someone who’s a normal size or even someone who’s underweight. WHY?! Because, you are not seen as conventionally beautiful or appealing. There are some very beautiful overweight people but the majority isn’t beautiful. It takes an upwards of 2,000 calories a day to maintain your weight so if you’re 200+lbs and gaining then that means you’re consuming more than the recommended daily calories. That means if you’re gaining, say 5lbs in a week, you’re eating enough food for two or three people. People don’t pity you because you see what you’re doing to yourself and you demand to be considered beautiful. People like Eugenia Cooney are seriously mentally ill, who don’t see the damage they’re doing to themselves. Yes, I recognize people who are overweight have the same type of mental illness but let’s not kid ourselves. The majority doesn’t have that type of mental illness.

2) There is no such thing as medical fatphobia. I would know, I used to be fat. I was 147lbs at 4′7. I was severely overweight during my late teens. I also had the beginnings of MDD and bipolar disorder. When my doctor told me my depression would lessen if I lost weight and started to eat right, I did that and I started to feel better. My meds also worked a bit better.

Also my grandmother was morbidly obese. She was bed ridden for YEARS. I used to go to her doctor’s appointments with her and my mom. Please note my grandmother is a polio survivor so that affected her health as well. When I was around 4/5 years old my grandmother overdosed on her medications; we don’t know if it’s suicide or an accident. My mom and I have had many conversations about this issue and we both agree that if my grandmother had lost a significant amount of weight then she may still be alive. He quality of life would’ve improved so much. I asked my mom if my grandmother ever experienced “fatphobia”, my mom told me that if anything she was coddled for being as heavy as she was. She got high dosages for medications and was a doctor’s wet dream so to speak.

3) Your loved ones pay for your weight. Going off of my grandmother’s experiences as a morbid obese person, I’m going to add the effect it had on her family. My mom was a single mother looking after three kids -two under the age of six- on top of working full time, on top of having to look after my grandmother because my grandmother couldn’t look after herself. My mom put her life in danger every time my grandmother fell and she had to help lift her up. My grandmother weighed 500+lbs when she died and the last time she fell the firefighters literally told my mom not to try to lift her up because my grandmother could crush her to death.

My grandmother also didn’t get a chance to play with her grand kids the way a normal grandparent should. 90% of the memories I have with my grandmother are stationed in her bed. She was 62 when she died and my little sister doesn’t have any memories with our grandmother, and me and my older brother only remember the times she fell or was in her bed. It’s not fair to any of us that those are the memories we have of her. She was so much more than just her weight but at the end of her life all her troubles were caused by her weight. She was a special needs teacher and a middle school teacher. She taught for 25 years. I miss my grandmother every day. It’s not fair that she died so young.

4) Enablers. Cut those fuckers out of your life. If they loved you they would want you to be healthy. It doesn’t matter if it’s mentally, emotionally or physically; if they loved you, they would want you to be the best version of yourself. When I was overweight I found I was most miserable when I was surrounded by people who enabled my behaviour. They didn’t care that I was slowly killing myself. If somebody loves you, they’ll want you to be healthy. If that means they’re “mean” to you.

When my depression was at a low point my uncle showed me zero pity because I wasn’t doing anything to help my situation, I wanted to wallow in myself damnation and bring everyone in with me. He hated the person I was because he knew I could be such a better version of myself and he kicked me in the ass to become that person. At the time I despised him to my very core but today, I love and understand him and his methods.

5) Social media. Oh my God! Where do I even start with this one? Let me start with, you’re not untouchable. The F/A is an echo chamber of people pulling the wool over each other’s eyes. If you love someone, you tell them the fucking truth. If you hate someone, you tell them the fucking truth. If I get made fun of for being short then you get made fun of for being fat because that’s the truth. I’m abnormally short and you are abnormally large. Social media is the viper’s den of the world, you’re not safe. People are going to make fun of your weaknesses and if you’re fat, you’re going to be made fun of for being fat. Simple.

The F/A throws a temper tantrum when their delusional bubble is burst. Being fat is unhealthy and not pretty to look at. Now, I know what you’re going to say “if you don’t like it don’t look at it then”. But as soon as I voice an opinion you just have to look at the post, click my blog, look through my blog and then message me rude things. “But Kat, that’s hypocritical of you.” I KNOW! I’m not untouchable either and I realize you have your right to send me those messages, but I’m not holding a gun to your head and telling you to waste your time. This is where your delusional bubble bursts. If you’re going to message me horrid things, I’m going to ask just this one thing of you, don’t do it on anon. Show me that you have a thick skin and can deal with people having opinions that make you uncomfortable. 

6) Habits. I know the F/A is going to use smokers as a scapegoat. Let me just tell you, I begged and pleaded my family to quit smoking when I was a kid. But as I grew up I realized people needed their coping mechanisms or habits that they do. For me, I have a smoke when I go out on the town. I also pre-game. I have the terrible habit of drinking energy drinks. They’re not good for you but I moderate my consumption. If I drink a red bull one day, I go two days without coffee. When I was 147lbs my diet consisted of deep fried pizza and junk food but I also did zero exercise. I wasn’t moderating my habits. 

Also using food as an emotional coping mechanism is not cool. You shouldn’t do that because food isn’t meant for that. The same way alcohol isn’t meant for it or working out. You need to deal with your baggage. You need to face your shit and deal with it another way so you can get your head on straight and deal with your weight. Am I saying adapt an eating disorder? No! Eating disorders are a mental illness not a lifestyle.

Anyways, that’s my opinion on F/A and such. My inbox is open and all I ask is for you to not use anon if you want to give me hate. You can’t change my mind.

[alicezan-ncgred]

Bleeding Red

Preface: I’ve been bitching around the bush of this long enough. So, I’ve been really silent on a bunch of stuff that’s been eating me alive which has made me both inactive and unproductive. I’m going to get straight to the point, starting off with the TL:DR from my post on my main blog. Context: An anon asked me if I was alright because I hadn’t updated in a while.

TL:DR You probably didn’t ask this to hear about all the bad shit of my life so here’s the short of it. No, I’m not doing fine. I will try get next weeks post out on time and I’ll work on making up on the lost posts. Updates will return regularly, ‘ite.

Time for the thick and thin of it.

Insecurity and being shafted: I’m stoic, even at my worst I won’t say anything. I’ll push through regardless of my current condition and since I’ve gone years like this, it’s not hard for me to do. In my real life situation, I’m currently in a place of social isolation. This has lead to a somewhat near reliance on Tumblr to be my social outlet. This present many issues.

The main one is that I’m quite the isolationist. This has only been reinforced by many interactions throughout the entirely of my life. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever had anything really more than two friends at a time. While in a way this has helped me express myself so well through writing, it’s come at the cost of social skill. I don’t talk to anyone.

With this kind of issue you could easily imagine that the THREE PEOPLE (four now, but very limited) to ever directly talk ended up in a way shafting me. The first blocked and disconnected with me without warning or reason. At this point we’ve been talking to each for about a month and we hit it off very well and then one day, silence. Never heard from them again. That fucked me up hard when I finally realized what happened.

The second person left during the Tumblr P**n Purge. We were talking about how to contact each other on other platforms and then they stopped responding. I had already given contact to other platforms of which they pinged me in any way. Another person that I trusted massively on here just abandoned me and I’m still hurting from that. Wasn’t fair at all.

Then the third person was someone that I been following for a while. This person is actually the reason that I’ve been putting this off for so long. I don’t want them to see this post but they will. I got an ask from them that ultimately turned out to be misinformation. I said I wasn’t mad but I was. I was so fucking angry about it and I’m still kinda mad, but I didn’t want problems. I still don’t. I just didn’t want them to worry about it. This will come back later.

I try my best to be as inoffensive as possible. The problem with that is that much of the things I believe or enjoy are highly divisive. Hell, even my own identity can be seen as offence. I’m bisexual, non-binary (I’m currently still questioning this. I might actually be gender fluid but in the overall scheme, that’s worse than being non-binary), and nonreligious. I’m in a very religious area so you I’m still “in the closet” about much of this IRL. I though it would better online but with how much people are saying bisexuality doesn’t exist, or that non-binary isn’t a valid gender (or that being gender fluid make you insane and you should be locked up) and all the hate people who say they are this are getting, the very community that’s supposed to accept me, HATES me. I had a bi pride flag icon last year during Pride Month. I never doing that ever again. It was terrible.

I’m trying my best to come out of my shell like I said I would when I made this blog but it seems I’m just crawling further into it. People I think I can trust keep setting me up to fall, people I know in real life won’t ever accept my existence if they knew who I really was, and my own mental health problem and self loathing are eating me alive. But that isn’t the total of it.

Crumbling Pillar: I’ve always ended up in the position where things were thrown onto me. In which no one wanted to do, I was stuck with. Because of this not only do I have a severe distaste being around my family (beyond everything mentioned before hand) but I grew to have a negative out look on everything. This effect is still quite obvious in my writings, especially my poems. Out of the 14 poems on my poem blog @washed-soul​, only one has a happy meaning.

The one happy poem was called dreams. Under a metaphor it talks about how a demon kept me trapped in a dark space. I start to get better and nearly break free before I have a negative relapse back to my old ways. The poems ends with the demon putting a end to itself leaving the nightmare in which it was keeping me in to slowly fade away, letting one crack of light peeking through to become a window to a door until one day I walk free. When writing this poem, I never thought I would find myself rebuilding the nightmare but that’s where I am.

I’m done with holding things together that other people have placed onto me. Because of this, issues have began showing in my private life. Issues that should’ve been solved decades ago are only now being addressed. This change in the status quo of my life has caused many issues in my productive and mood. Between everything else I’m too tired to do anything.

Is that a reason, is that an excuse. No it isn’t but it’s the best thing I got as a reason. I’m doing my damnedest to do the best I can but of course, when it comes to the thing that matter I just fall short. Big fucking whopha my intelligence and capability does me if I can’t use it for anything that means a damn.

Meaningless Triviality: I’m a very emotional person. I’m very strongly bound to my emotions and if everything above hasn’t given it away, my emotions are very negative prone. But it just doesn’t stop there, it goes back into my memories. I can only honestly place 3 happy memories for certain that aren’t either A) a dream or B) me escaping reality through my mind. Besides that, almost all my memories are negative. 

People like to throw around the word Nihilist to describe themselves because today's culture is very, god while I hate to use this word, edgy. For those who don’t know a Nihilist is someone who views the world as being completely  meaningless and reject all religious and moral principles. I very truly struggle with this outlook of life. It’s a daily for me to berate myself saying “just kill yourself” or “I want to die” or just shutting down and crumpling up while say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again. Hell, I did that while writing this. 

I take things very hard, even the slightest transgression. I’m so used to trying to make things perfect and because people have the image that I’m the smart one, the mature one, the capable one, I’m left with the over hanging expectation of excellence. Almost no room for margin of error or being human. Since I’m the silent type, I put up no challenge and work to meet it. Only time I get any praise for anything too. 

I guess as a little self promotion to my main blog, for those that have read the very first few updates of my main blog @the-truth-behind-redacted, or read Defiance’s character sheet, while The Machine and Defiance are separate character, they both share the name Machine. That in part is a reflect of said above expectation. How ravenous and inhuman it can be all under the guise of something human. Those characters are the two sides to the same coin. 

Remember how I said I try to be un-problematical and how I try to avoid any potential conflict. In the first segment I told on how I lied about my feelings just so another person didn’t have to worry over something that honestly, in hindsight, wasn’t even really a big deal. But I also said how it consumed me in anger. I just don’t want to bother anyone over anything. It’s part of the reason why I am writing this post, as some way of a self enforced rehab program to get better. 

This absolute consumption of negative emotion has pushed me into a non human state before. I hit a point of absolute mental exhaustion and in such a self enforced bubble of actual hatred I became completely apathetic. I felt numb to everything. I watched and heard of terrible things happening to people, and felt nothing. I watched people lives crumble before them leaving them nowhere to go and LAUGHED. “Just another worthless pathetic worm on this rotting carcass of a planet being hit with the hard reality that life doesn’t care for them. What whimsical pathetic bullshit they deluded themselves with to think otherwise.” This isn’t an exaggeration on how I thought, this is what I actually thought. Which brings me too.

The Mandatory Sob Story: Roll your eyes everyone and get the tiny violin. I guess in order for everyone to exactly understand the place I’m coming from when it comes to mental health I’ll have to detail my experiences. I have a long standing history with mental illness. I have professionally diagnosed OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, and visual and auditory hallucinations. I take 600 mg of Seroquel a day as well as Amitriptyline when needed. I’m also still currently in therapy to deal with said OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, the visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as Suicidal thoughts, and my Nihilism. There’s a reason to why I’m so god damn familiar with mental illness and treatment plans.  

OCD and Bipolarism run in my family on my fathers side. My Father’s Father had them, my Sister has them, my brother most likely has them (however he refuses to see a doctor because he uses said possible mental illnesses as a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to be treated and he has FUCKING ADMITTED IT), my father has them, and I have them. I, however, have the misfortune of having it real bad. I said yes to well over half of all the total symptoms when I was being tested (I don’t remember exact numbers but I remember there being three pages worth of common symptoms) which was very worrying to the doctor. I was currently in an inpatient hospitalization program at the time for both suicidal thoughts and actions, and severe depression. 

On that, my graze in with suicide. Before I went into my first inpatient program I was contemplating suicide. I was sat in front of a mirror with a bottle of over the counter medication. It was an unopened bottle of ibuprofen, 1000 200mg tables. What I planed to do was down the whole bottle with benadryl and die in my sleep. I had the small box of benadryl got from the Kroger pharmacy and a hand full of ibuprofen poured out looking directly into the mirror. My suicide note was sitting on the desk on my room with an online copy on my laptop open.

I sat there for an hour in the dead of midnight complicating my life. I had lost all hope in the world, filled with hatred, anger, pain, and despair. I had no god or after life to look forward too, part way hoping that a Hell existed for me to burn in. I hated myself that much. I was close to taking the first handful before before I caught a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror. In what was in a weird sudden epiphany I realized that I truly did become what I hated but not for any reason I told myself. I became the very bastion of negativity I sought to fight and rid of in what little friends I did have. That was what set off my path to recovery in spite of the medical system. I guess if people care I’ll make a separate post on that. 

Before I move on, I feel I should explain my history with the visual and auditory hallucinations. It should be no surprise that with everything else above, I also had extreme paranoia that led to me having very bad insomnia. Insomnia is, just like most other medical disorders like Depression, Self-harm, Anxiety, OCD,  Bipolarism, is romanticized to hell. Insomnia isn’t having one nights bad sleep where you got 5 hours of sleep instead of 8.

You know what Insomnia is? insomnia is being physical incapable of sleeping despite not sleeping in 2 to 3 day while your body suffers massive agony brought on by this. Muscle spasms and seizing, difficulty breathing, your eyes feeling like fire ants are eating them, and of course visual and auditory hallucinations. Now I already had issues with visual and auditory hallucinations even when I could get sleep regularly but the combined effects of my OCD and Bipolarism made this perfect condition of Insomnia, Anxiety, Paranoia, with the already added in disposition to hallucinations and I felt like I was actually losing my mind. 

My hallucinations presented themselves in three forms. Disassociation of reality, night terrors, or alterations of reality. Disassociation of reality often were complete black out moments. I would lose any perceived connect to reality and enter an episode of my mind. I can’t remember what they actually were but I do remember what it felt like. Cold sweats, anxiety to point where if I didn’t lock up I would vomit, actual physical pain, mind numbing fear, and intense fatigue. 

The second were night terrors often in the form of horrific “things.” I do remember these and most of them were as best as I could describe, forms of things that were vaguely human and formations of industrial machinery. The most vivid one I remember was of a long lengthy apparition that was for the most part human but many locations of it’s impossible physiology were rebar beams and mechanical sockets. It began when I was about to fall asleep and it was next to my window. The thing was making week groaning and gasping sounds before it violently slammed against my window breaking it then letting out a horrific howl that I can’t describe as it tossed itself out followed shorty after with the sound of bones breaking against the dirt. 

Now that might not seem so bad, exspecally with everything that is in horror movies or games now, but keep in mind that was fucking real to me. It was as real as the clicking of the keys of my keyboard as I’m writing this. As real as the chair I’m sitting in and as real as the wall in front of me. As far as my mind was concerned that thing, what ever it was, actually existed. It took me physical touching my window to make sure it wasn’t actually broken and checking outside to see if there wasn’t a body there. This isn’t the type of thing I talk about lightly. 

Finally there is the alteration of reality. This is very simply but it’s something that fucked with me hard. For very little meaning or warning, I would have trouble interpreting the world around me. My hearing and sight would be warped and there wasn’t any real way to tell what I was hearing or seeing was real or not until the episode was over. The way I got through these was the ultimate fake it till you make it. Obviously, very often I failed and this created issue in my schooling. 

Ending Message: I’ve been in a very bad state for a while now and as it is now, no signs of getting better. I also strongly believe my medications are being to fail me which I’ve been telling my doctor and therapist for over a year now but nothing’s been done. Mainly it’s my Depression but insomnia episodes are beginning and my own paranoia been on the rise. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even look at a creepy image or thumbnail without having a very bad episode. 

I’ve managed to eat something today which was nice but my body is cramping hard. And to possible stave of a possible comment, I’m biologically male. Like I said I’m not in the best head space, or living for that matter. If this gets better, only time will tell. 

[braindumpsterfires]

“Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter. The fact is, I am not like other people.” ― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

     I got pretty good at faking it, I guess.  There was a time when “are you okay?” was a pretty often question I’d hear from the few people I had in my life.  I’d zoned off again, disassociating.  Maybe somebody glanced my way weird and it seemed they could be judging me.  There goes my mood.  The only thing I can do is look away and stay quiet, legs shaking, goosebumps all over... Nausea so bad I can’t help but gag from time to time... Sometimes I’d answer the question, often to be dismissed as “just being sensitive” or “nervous” and just to “forget about it” and “focus on something else.”  They didn’t get it.  Not to get into the gross details, but my bowels have been greatly effected by my illness, and I had thought it was “just nerves”.  It had happened as long as I can remember.  I was an “anti-social” kid.  When I was real young if you’d talk to me and you weren’t somebody I’d see on a regular basis, I’d lose my shit.  Not like literally... But, I couldn’t handle strangers.  I’d start to freak out and cry and shut down.  I wouldn’t communicate with them.  I didn’t know what anxiety was then.       

     Mentally ill meant crazy... I wasn’t crazy, and I knew that then. To me that’d mean I would hear distinct voices or do weird twitches or hoard or something like on TV.  Like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.   Because my thoughts didn’t match up with what I felt mental illness meant, I had accepted I was just “sensitive”, “shy”, “quiet”, “weird”, “moody”, “dramatic”, “obsessive”, “manic”, “hard to love”, “exhausting”, as I was told time and time again.  Left undiagnosed, it only got worse and worse.  Life didn’t know it had to be a little gentler with me.  That I was sick.  The adults in my life pushed me harder when they needed to sit me down and talk with me and just try to understand that my brain is different. They couldn’t see my brain was sick and needed help.

    I’d grab hold of anyone who would give me the time of day and wouldn’t let go unless they rejected me.  I thought love meant somebody who could tolerate being around me and say what I needed to hear at the time to soothe the fucking demon that is my illness.  I got into relationships with people I should’ve kept as friends.  I misinterpreted connections and charmed my way into the situations I thought I needed... to feel something.  Something to fill the void of emptiness I had felt for so long. If it meant me having to do all the work in the relationship, I did it.  That’s why my name is still on a house that I will receive no equity in when sold, despite the fact I paid the mortgage for a long time.  Hell, go back even further... I was married at 19.  I’ve often considered having a child with partners in the past with a direct goal in my head that that meant they wouldn’t leave me ever.  That’s an unhealthy way to think.  But it isn’t my fault...  All I can say is, I’m sure glad somehow nature was kind to my broken-brained self and kept me fairly safe.  I have credit card debt.  But I don’t have any STDs or diseases, I don’t have any kids... The divorce actually was finalized (forced by a partner at the time, but it was the push I needed to get it done, so whatever.)  

        It’s not easy to sit here today and accept the fact that all the people I’ve had hate in my heart for for so long just didn’t know how to deal with me.  I can’t blame them completely, though I’ve pushed a large portion of my insecurities on them and their actions in my life specifically.  They say a lot of recovery begins with forgiving people. Forgiveness is a concept I haven’t explored much, not when dismissing my feelings as not real is far less anxiety-inducing. I mean sure, some who have meandered in and out of my life deserve to stay gone, because their actions, while overlooked at the time, can now be looked back on as unforgivable.  In no way blaming myself, the thought does occur to me that perhaps my chemical imbalances are the spark of many of the traumas I’ve experienced.  I don’t give those people that much power, honestly.  It isn’t “all their fault.” What I am saying is if I caught this thing before it ran my life for this long, things would be way different. My life has been quite the cocktail of undiagnosed, ignored, dismissed mental illness and life events that would devastate a person who would be considered, generally, mentally healthy...  It’s no wonder everyone is in awe of how much shit I’ve experienced in 25 years.  I’ve lived through things many people probably never even will experience, and 90% of it was set into motion by my mental illness.  It strapped me to a bad situation and wouldn’t let me leave until I couldn’t handle it any longer.  Cutting the ties had to be very abrupt and as impersonal as possible, (cant handle somebody being mad at me...)  Getting out meant sending a text or even an email, then throwing my phone across the room, ignoring the world for as long as possible.  I know breaking up that way is the asshole way to do it. But I literally couldn’t handle that kind of pressure with another person.

Weed wasn’t a thing then, I was too afraid because I had been raised to associate weed with prescription pain pills... They were evil, and had made it so my childhood was never stable and I lived in a car for a minute and never had my own room and spent 7 years sleeping on an area rug on a living room floor.  And no one paid attention, so I stayed unhealthy mentally.  And it got worse.  And worse.

  As I think so deeply about it, things make more and more sense.  These deep inner thoughts about MYSELF seemed so foreign before.  Maybe I could imagine it for a flicker of a second, but then the lack of self worth would come into play and I’d obsess over how poorly I did something or how those in my life didn’t truly love me and that I felt so empty and bored and just wanted to feel...something.  Faking love is fucked up.  It’s fucked up to have done it a lot throughout your life.  I’m done with that shit...

   I believe the mental illness itself has been passed to me from my mother.  My dad was mentally healthy, aside from abusing alcohol for a time (which he sought AA for because of me and recovered from and remained sober from when I could walk, on.)  My mother abused sleeping pills at the end.  She killed herself accidentally... She just wanted peace from the disorder that she never was allowed to understand.  But I can see it now.  I won’t let myself not get help for this.  I want a life worth living, damnit.  For once in my life I fucking feel like I deserve that.  And that’s a really, really new and cool thing for me.

        I don’t feel empty today.  I’ve had fun and have been pinpointing things I enjoy that make me, well...me.  It started out with spending a good portion of my day with W, and that friendship is going along real well.  It’s cool being able to share my sudden self discovery with somebody like I was able to last night and today.  I’m totally ready to develop more healthy friendships.  For the first time I want to put myself into social situations on purpose.  I want to interact with likeminded people and have fun.  That sounds so obvious as I reread it to myself... But before this breakthrough I really couldn’t enjoy that (masks are great coping mechanisms, fooled ya.)

      And if love finds me eventually, that’s cool.  I do hope it does.  But for now, I’m just going to keep being me, especially now that I have stuff I genuinely want to experience and do now.  I see how I’ve forced things I didn’t even want in the past, just to have someone, and I won’t do that shit again.  I hope certain people stick around, but I’m not bending over backwards for people who don’t deserve it anymore.  

    I suddenly want to start creating things again... building models, reading, photography... I’ve wanted to look into going back to school, but always dismissed the thought because the impulsive decisions I’ve made in my life never allowed me to do things for me.  Or, rather, I could have... If I had the self confidence and love for myself to want things for myself enough to push on.  Instead I’d do what I needed to do to keep my partner and my routine, even if it meant exhausting myself and forgetting what “relaxing” even felt like.  I could lay around all I wanted, but my brain wasn’t like a dog.  It wouldn’t sit or stay or anything else.  It did what it always did... Negative thoughts, obsess...obsess...obsess....

     When I’ve slept for 13 hours straight or spent a day doing absolutely nothing, I’m not being lazy.  My body isn’t tired.  My soul is.  But my levels must be okay because I like doing things again today.  The depression is gone, (for now.  I don’t expect to be happy forever, that isn’t realistic, nor should it be.) It’s very brief departure made me go and get medicated that day in 2015 saved my life, I think.  For a moment I cared about myself and wanted to try.  Something then must’ve given me hope.  What I had accepted before as character flaws that I was stuck with were really mental issues that I now see and understand and accept, and, better yet, now can manage properly.  The next step is getting diagnosed by a specialist (a second opinion), and perhaps talk to a therapist, (at least until my thoughts are sorted.)  

    I guess I’ll allow myself to research this a bit more before I go do something else.  Or maybe sleep... It is 12:17 AM and, while without anxiety and actually happy, I’m exhausted from how much deep soul-searching I’ve done the last 24 hours.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m excited about life.  The thought of “I don’t want to die, I just don’t want to exist anymore” seems kinda insane to me right now.  There’s so much out there I haven’t seen or experienced yet.  Like so fucking much.  And well, I’m kinda cool.  I’m starting to like myself today.  I won’t say love... We’re just seeing how things go.  Baby steps.  One day at a time...

-AEL

[stefano-and-obscura]

This is NOT Okay: Bullying someone over fanfiction and over what their friends said.

Unfortunately it has come to my attention that a mutual of mine was being harassed both on here and on AO3 because of her Stefano Valentini Randomness Stories, and this sad, pathetic waste of space below tried to JUSTIFY it. What they put is absolutely sickening. [I wound up using strong language in my responses, so I am sorry you have to read those words.]

More under the cut because this is getting long

Look, my friend didn't tell me she was called "basement dweller," and I don't care who did it. That person's ass is grass whether you like it or not. She didn't complain to me about it. I found it myself and acted

If your friend didn't tell you, that meant you actually read it and you saw who REALLY called her a basement dweller, which makes it all the more fucking pathetic you're harassing someone JUST because of what a fan of theirs told your friend!! Where's the justification for THAT?? You just wanted an excuse to hate on someone who wrote what you didn't like, and instead of being the LOGICAL person and confronting the one who insulted your friend you went after the person who had nothing to do with it.

Your friend brought that on herself; she commented something rude, someone else defended the author, and your idiotic little rat brain decides to go after the author???????

That's like me going after YOUR FRIEND because of YOUR BEHAVIOR.  I feel so, so sorry that your friend has to put up with a fucking overly goddamn worthless piece of shit like you who thinks its okay to bully others because "MAH FWENDS!" How fucking old are you???????

I'm gonna get this straight once and for all: we did NOT tell her to delete her story. We did not just choose to target her because she was who she was. We just found a crappy story and left our comments.We are just as entitled to our opinions. 

From the comments I saw when she linked me I saw you fucking assholes DID tell her to delete her story!! You're just fucking lucky she deleted the whole damn thing because she didn't want to deal with drama anymore, but you are lying through your teeth. You CHOSE to target her because "lolz shitteh storie!" which itself is an EXTREMELY shitty reason to harass someone in the first place and tell therm to delete something they're working on.  You're a sick fuck, you all are, because if you think its justifiable to harass people based on how badly their story is written you don't deserve the privilege of being online at all.

You can leave your shitty opinion WITHOUT harassing the author, doncha know?? There's CONSTRUCTIVE criticism (which nobody there used) that your dumb fucking asses could have used instead of "THIS SUCKS DELETE YOUR STORY DELETE IT NOW" like a bunch of enraged toddlers who are pissy that they can't get what they want.

Instead of ignoring us and deleting them, she turned it into drama. So, immediately, by that alone, that in turn caused her white knights to do what they have been doing.

This just in: Apparently people CANNOT offer their own reason for doing the way it does without "turning it into drama".  You bastards were the ones who turned it into drama by harassing her still, people defending themselves against hateful comments (aka "DELETE YOUR SHITTY STORY") is NOT causing drama. You got pissy because she told you off and gave her reason, so you decided to bully her all because "wahh my fee fees hurt!"

And yes, she could use a little bit of real world. Everyone gets depressed, everyone gets anxious. She's not special. Everyone gets a little fragile here and there,

You're one of the stupidest motherfuckers to ever stupid.

Because of her fragile mental health due to her condition, the poor girl deals with enough ‘real world’ shit at home. There’s a reason that people come online, to escape that, and sorry, bullying is not ‘real world’. It is something that happens in the real world, but its not normal and should never be okay to do at all, not even online. (Where it can get worse than real world bullying because smug rat bastards like yourself think you can hide behind a wall of anonymity until someone dies from it, in which case you’re held responsible)

You have NO understanding of mental illnesses! There's a difference between "I'm feeling sad! I'm feeling nervious!" AND A DEBILITATING MENTAL ILLNESS THAT PEOPLE HAVE TO BE ON MEDICATION FOR.

One of your friends being "sad" is NOT the same as someone struggling with depression! One of your friends feeling nervous sometimes is NOT the same as someone dealing with near-crippling anxiety!

Nobody takes medicine for being just sad and just nervous, and everyone gets a little fragile here and there??????? There's a big fucking difference from being at a low point AND HAVING YOUR MENTAL ILLNESS AFFECT YOU SO BADLY THAT YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, AND THERE'S A REASON WHY MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO COMMIT SUICIDE ARE STRUGGLING WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES.

With you and your friends' fucking harassment YOU COULD HAVE BULLIED THIS GIRL TO SELF HARM and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if you already did, ALL OVER A STORY YOU HATED AND SOMEONE ELSE'S COMMENT.

How many people have you done this to? How many people did you indirectly kill because you bullied them to self harm and suicide?

and no. Saying a bad story is bad is not bullying. It is not. You're just calling it bullying because she said it was. You're just functioning on her vocabulary.

HMMMMM apparently telling someone to delete their story over and over, spamming her and leaving other hateful shit isn't bullying?? You're fucking delusional.  You outright admitted to it that she had to get hurt.  You planned this, you and the rest of the sick fucks in your pack decided to BULLY her over something so incredibly stupid.

And you know what? All of my friends have medically diagnosed problems too, not just "depression" and "anxiety."

And you know what?????? Everyone experiences mental illnesses differently, some worse than others! And goody goody, your friend has BPD?? So does my mother, who, because of her BPD, has physically and emotionally hurt me, other people and herself, and she attempted SUICIDE because it got that bad!

Meanwhile judging from YOUR attitude and lack of understanding (or plain ignorance) towards mental illness, either your friend has VERY mild, manageable BPD or your friend doesn't have BPD at all! None of your friends do, or if they DO, they either have it under control or they know what kind of shitty bitch you are and keep it hidden from you because they know you'll treat them like absolute trash otherwise.

YOUR ACTIONS have only worsened the girl's mental state, and you don't  care at all because "Ha ha my friends handle it better/don't have anything so YOU should be able to do the same by my neurotypical standards uwu"

I'm not a white knight. I'm her best friend.

You may be her "friend" (Which I doubt because unless you're hiding that side from her, ,who wants to be friends with something like you?) but you still white-knighted by jumping in where your ass didn't belong. Not only that but you went after the WRONG PERSON, IF YOU ACTUALLY DID IT BECAUSE OF THE BASEMENT DWELLER INSULT!!

Judging from the fact you KNEW it wasn't her who called your friend a basement dweller (which is a stupid fucking thing to get offended over unless you're 12)  You didn't attack her for the basement dweller thing at all, did you??

You saw an opportunity to attack her because of her shitty story (as if you didn't already do the whole "DELETE YOUR STORY IT SUCKS" bit) and find a way to justify it.

It was never about the basement dweller thing, as far as I see. If it really was why did you bother attacking her some more instead of going after the person who made the comment?????? You said so yourself, your friend didn't tell you, you saw it!

And no, if she can't just delete comments and not cry over them for hours, I'm sorry. She has no business writing fanfiction. I repeat, she has NO BUSINESS writing fanfiction.

I'm sorry but if you can't dislike someone's story without harassing them and bullying them for hours, I'm sorry, you have no business being online. I REPEAT, you have NO BUSINESS BEING ONLINE.

Yeah, her writing isn't exactly my favorite either, but guess what?? She can improve at writing!! You? You'll always be a sad, unwanted worthless shitty waste of egg and sperm.

I am not bullying the girl.

And I’m totally not typing this sentence online and posting it to a website called tumblr! 

I am criticizing her writing and her method of grabbing fans by lying to them, pandering to them, and forcing them to bend to her every will.

“This sucks delete your story!” isn’t criticizing, dumbass. 

Grabbing fans by lying to them and pandering them, and forcing them to bend to her will? I call bullshit on all of that! 

First let’s address the pandering accusation.  You have FANS, you write content the FANS WANT.  As a FANFIC AUTHOR, I mean that’s basically your job, its not pandering, its supply and demand. If that was true then everyone writing Stefano Valentini fanfic because people like Stefano are now fan panderers!

Also, how the fuck does she lie to them?????? I don’t fucking see it!! 

-She actually does write these in second person, signifying the READER is the one in it. (I dislike those stories a lot for obvious reasons, is that your beef with it too?)

-Its not in chronological order either

She’s not lying to them, and HOW is she fan-pandering if there ISN’T any fan pandering????? All I see is stuff SHE wants to write, and lemme guess its only “fan pandering” because of second person perspective?? That’s bullshit. 

Manipulation? I’ll believe it when I see it, bitch.

She is manipulative and dangerous. I would even advise you to stay away from her because you're giving in to her. That is all I'm gonna say.

“She is manipulative and dangerous, I would even advise you to stay away from her!” Cries the idiotic bully-bitch who’s been harassing the user over a STORY and claiming its for a “basement dweller” comment that she didn’t even write herself.  

Yeah, I’m TOTALLY gonna listen to a person who bullies others!! 

You’re the only manipulative and dangerous one here.  You said you didn’t care if she gets hurt, that she needs a bit of ‘real world’.  People like you are the ones who cause people to commit suicide, or cause those people to turn into murderers because they lost the value for their own lives as well as others, because believe it or not, SpaceUndies, your actions DO have consequences!! 

I only know this because I've known people like this.

Are you seriously fucking 12? You're not the only one who's dealt with people like this!

I've had internet access since late 2012, you honestly don't fucking thing I've encountered a lot of dangerous, manipulative people???????  I'm really good at picking out manipulative people based on several behavioral patterns I've observed in the ones I met (and including a guardian of mine who's warped me so badly as a child that I still am suffering from her actions to this day) and I can tell you FLAT OUT that, as far as I am seeing right now in front of me, the only manipulative bastard is you.

You're unhealthily obsessed with harassing people and claiming "uM SOMEONE ELSE CALLED MY FRIEND A BASEMENT DWELLER" and white-knighting because "I'm sticking up for a friend!"

I've dealt with enough useless wastes of human DNA like yourself to know which ones need to be kept away from the internet and other people, and you're one of them.

Ignoring the fact that Basement Dweller isn't even a viable insult to any degree and is in no way harmful, I can only imagine how much you fly off the loop when something a tad more different happens.

You're dangerous and you need to have your psych evaluated. First it starts with hurting people online, then real life bullying, an then you'll be kidnapping and murdering people for minor infractions.

They would threaten themselves and their own lives just to get attention. She is doing the same.

That is where I got you, bitch.

She never threatened her own safety, at all.  I just mentioned that-because if your stupid little incompetent ass bothered to read, I said she COULD do that, because that's what people with fragile mental health DO!  They're more prone to self harm and suicide due to BULLYING which you said she needed some of.

Also, this goes to prove how much of an idiotic bastard you are. 

"Hurr durr if someone I don't like is having issues and does say about self harm THEY FAKIN'!"

Guess what? Your friend SUPPOSEDLY has BPD.  I bet that every time they get on the verge of self harm THEY'RE FAKING. Do you think the same too, or are they somehow magically the exception??

 I would say get out while you still can. But hey, if you just think I'm a bitch for defending my BPD friend, so be it. At least she can change and adapt to life. Like I said, I don't protect because they ask me to. I do it because I want to.

You're a bitch because you're BULLYING someone! Sorry tootsie-pop but bullying is not the same as defending, NOT TO MENTION you're "defending" her from the WRONG PERSON.  You fucking ADMITTED that you saw everything and YOU ADMITTED you didn't care who sent that message! You're not even bullying her for the basement dweller comment, you're just bullying this girl because you hated the story.

Also what does your BPD friend have to do with it?? She didn't even come to you about this which shows she wasn't upset! Her BPD HAD NO PART IN THIS, you're just using that as a "HA HA GOTCHA" card against someone with another mental condition.   Because of your SHITTINESS towards symptoms and conditions and claiming "EVERYONE gets like that sometimes!" I actually, truly, honestly do believe your friend DOESN'T have BPD at all, you're just lying through your teeth, because otherwise you would have known about the whole "Mental illness symptoms are FAR DIFFERENT from regular mood stuff!"

Your friend can adapt and change in life?? What a coinky-dink, so can the author!! I mean she has to in order to survive with her condition, but that doesn't mean she HAS to put that guard up 24/7, ESPECIALLY online where most real world bullshit shouldn't have to happen.

Your logic never lines up and it doesn't make sense. You KNEW she had fragile mental health but you kept pushing her to the FUCKING BRINK because you could, like any other evil bastard who just wants to watch people suffer.

You don't care for your friend at all, judging from the above, you're only using her as a pathetic excuse. You just wanted a reason to hurt someone over a little story you personally hated. You don't care about other peoples' mental health, you truly don't care if blood is spilled over it because "They deserved it because SOMEONE DIFFERENT called my friend a meanie word that little kids use :( "

You never experienced online bullying, but for this alone and the fact you knowingly bullied someone with fragile mental health because "she deserved it", I hope you experience it.   I honestly do hope that, for as long as you continue being online, you get some "real world" from other people no matter what you do and what you say. I want you to go through as much bullshit as you put this girl through, and when you go to other people about your issues, they laugh in your face and tell you the same thing you've said above.