#these are also the days they're most at risk of self harming again 🙃

[byanyan]

the thing that byan is most embarrassed of... is that they have days where they physically can't drag themself out of bed. a lot of the time on their worse days, they'll force themself to get up and do something out of spite (usually ends up being smth involving violence and/or their self destructive tendencies) bc laying around at the mercy of their poor mental health makes them feel weak, which in turn makes them feel worse, but sometimes the weight of everything is just genuinely too much and they end up spending the day either sleeping or dissociating. or both. a lot of the time they'll also turn to substance abuse to get them through, to numb themself and make things more tolerable.

unsurprisingly, you'll never hear them talk about this. it's the sort of thing no one needs to know about, and it's something they're deeply ashamed of. they'll make excuses and lie about having just ditched plans/skipped school/etc. if someone ever comments on them not turning up - which people do, fortunately, tend to buy, considering they already have a tendency to just not show up where they're supposed to.

[yippee-ki-yoyo]

In case anybody's interested in this situation, this is mostly just a vent thing lmao:

My brother updated me earlier about how he's doing with therapy and his new meds and stuff. When he first started therapy, his doctors said he had psychotic depression, bipolar, etc. In the last week or so they've apparently 1) found new meds that are working for him (yay!) And 2) come to the conclusion that he has schizoaffective disorder with bipolar subtype. I'm not especially shocked at this point bc I was told that they were keeping schizophrenia in mind early on but it's still kinda a rocky road, ya know? He told me about some of the stuff going on since I've been out of town and showed me some of the drawings he made when he was deep in a psychotic episodes (they're really cool but the content would also be scary as hell to live through) and some of the dissociation and stuff (waking up covered in mud and thinking "the fuck did I do last night"). Idk it was a lot but I guess I wasn't especially bothered by him being weird or anything. It was more just a shocker bc he somehow kept all this really really well under wraps for years apparently.

He said that his doctors and him think that he might be had symptoms as early as middle school with like flat affect and stuff. I feel kinda guilty that we never noticed before now but logically, there's no reason why I, at 15/16/17, would've thought that my brother whos just starting puberty and being kinda a bitch and distant was actually in serious need of help. Even moreso when middle school was a TERRIBLE time for me mental health wise (self harming, suicidal, probably depressed and anxious idk, toeing the line of an eating disorder). Likewise, I don't think it's really my parent's fault either bc it's really really easy to miss. Hindsights always 2020.

Idk I guess the thing that gets to me most is that I'm worried about him. He was telling me about how he developed tardive dyskinesia from one of his meds. Also the suicide note he wrote a while back scared the shit out of me, esp bc I was on a trip in a van full of other people and learned all of this over text and just had to silently process this for two hours. I'm just so scared I'll get a call one day from someone telling me my baby brother is dead. Ik with a good routine and management he'll most likely be okay, I just worry that he'll go off his meds and we won't notice he's slipping again bc he's so damn good at hiding it. I know he wants to do good things and he's looking forward to school so I'm really rooting for him and I can't imagine how devastating and frustrating for him it would be to lose that stuff.

There's also the more paranoid/anxious part of me, which obviously compared to other concerns is far more on the back burner, that knows there's a decent genetic component re:psychotic disorders + mood disorders. Its something that I'll probably talk about with my new therapist once I finally get the chance to set up an appointment and everything (funding stuff is still getting worked out). I'll probably be carrying around a fear for quite a while about developing psychotic or manic symptoms, especially when I'm trying to develop a career in academia in the time frame when psychosis is most likely to develop for me. Its also a higher risk for other mental illnesses, including bipolar and such.

That and the hypothesis that estrogen may be a protector against the development of psychosis (??) and the probably unfounded fear that starting T in my somewhat near future may trigger psychosis or something (let me be clear I'd still 100% do it it would just suck). Anyway, that's probably a more selfish fear compared to the others but whatever. I think it's worse bc I had this period in like early early high school where I was having a lot of social anxiety/depression kinda stuff and I had this fear that I was developing schizophrenia for a while and now that's like not a completely unfounded fear 🙃🙃🙃 Plus id be mad as all hell to have spent so much time and effort getting better and building a better set of coping skills by myself for it to all be ripped apart by psychosis which is definitely NOT something that's managed as easily. Idk idk idk

My main concerns are still with my brother and everything. This, plus my mom being a fucking nutcase (manipulative, controlling, etc.) really just got me fucked as all hell rn but at least I did well on my GRE yeethaw I guess.