status

Still alive!

Okay, I'm not sure what I'm getting all excited for. I'm actually the opposite of excited right now. Life is rather ho-hum hum-drum right now, and I couldn't think of a better way to say that (sorry).

I've been stuck in the midst of another writer's block rut for a long while now, and whatever I do end up putting out tends to feel too painful to read (in the not-good writing sense, not the emotional one); cue past discussions I've had on writing frustrations from before.

But I mean when it comes down to it, it's just frustrating to not be able to articulate what you're feeling, especially in the more intense moments that you partly don't want to forget but partly do because this hurts too much. What's the point of suffering if you're only going to forget it later? And for some reason that feels like such a privileged millenial thing to say. 

Anyway, the past year has been... rough. I get the feeling (unsure how realistic this is) that some of my past entries have felt melodramatic even though they felt perfectly real enough to me at the time-- it's just more that my mind tends towards the depressing and cynical, and once it senses a downward spiral it just wants to go all the way to the bottom. Think the worst thoughts you can think. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! (sorry Dr. Seuss)

In the two months leading up to the election last year, coinciding with the last few entries on this blog, I basically went through a series of emotional breakdowns (read: sleepless nights while sobbing at home regularly) for reasons that would basically change every two weeks. Random things friends and family said or did, or more often than not my own mistakes and mishaps, would just trigger me into going off on yet another one out of a long list of long-term developed insecurities. I would be fine one moment and then in the midst of an uncontrollable mind-death-spiral the next.

Around the same time, my therapist diagnosed me with dysthymia, a form of depression that essentially is less acute than severe depression but tends to be more chronic and cyclical. In other words, it's less intense, but it lasts a lot longer-- typically on the order of years.

I'm not going to go into full detail about everything that's happened since then, but basically, I've gone through more ups-and-downs while slowly trying to discern for myself how to get back into a normal mode of living again. What originally had little to do with my job situation (read: original reasons for depression) has been starting to affect it in the past couple of months since I've begun searching again, and I'm not happy with how slow the process has been, but that's just something that I've had to live with.

If anything, I've been trying to learn to be patient with myself, because I think a lot of my issues and insecurities stem from lacking patience with myself and the subsequent disappointment that I've felt inside.

I find it difficult to be patient with myself when I can see something better already, only to find that I am blocked by my own inadequacy and fear of failure. And even when I do attempt things and fail, the experience of failing itself and manner in which I perceive others responding to it has in some ways done more to reinforce the anxiety and despair that I've felt in the long-term. Especially when I'm told that my situation isn't really "all that bad"; when I can see how much I could be doing right now, but for some reason just end up not-- insert how much of a "noob" I am for all those stupid little things I won't mention because they really are that petty (and yes I've internalized all those times I've been called that even though they were jokes and I know I shouldn't have).

I know I shouldn't care so much about what other people think, and yet, I do. I know that my life situation really isn't all that bad relatively speaking, and yet I can't help but feel a sense of despair and disillusionment with life- no, living, right now, and no, I'm not suicidal; I just don't feel like doing anything a lot of the time. And I honestly can't help but feel disappointed in myself when I can often see some solutions to my own problems but otherwise feel too helpless to actually do anything about it-- a helplessness that at one point culminated in convulsive sobbing after an otherwise 'reassuring' phone call, while screaming, "WHY WON'T IT STOP WHY WON'T IT STOP WHY WON'T IT STOP-"

Because the one thing I couldn't control, when I needed it the most, was my own emotions.

I have moments where I start to see how everything in my life is a construct of some sort (society, work, church, "normality," what-have-you), and I start to wonder, what's the point of all this. It frustrates me when I'm told that things will get better when I have a job, or perhaps someone else will be able to make me feel better, or that God will just make things work out in the long run; honestly, to me, this runs much deeper than that, and these kinds of suggestions strike me as lacking awareness in how to engage with individuals struggling with mental illness (although to be fair, not that I would know much better either).

I don't have faith in such simple solutions; ones that strike me more as trying to cover up the symptoms rather than deal with the cause: a deep brokenness for which I have no other words to describe, and even just calling it that sounds juvenile and trite to my own ears. (It's an affectation from all those church years.)

The annoying thing about trying to write all of this, is that I don't think there are any real words for whatever this is. Words can only mean so much if you haven't felt the source for them for yourself; all I can describe are the symptoms and try to rationalize something out of them, something that ends up coming across (at least to me) as reductive and a poor reflection of what it really feels like to experience an overwhelming sense of hopelessness when all other social and personal indicators seem to be telling you otherwise.

Maybe I'm trying to give this more weight than it actually has to begin with. Or maybe- you know what, never mind. I give up trying to wonder about these things. I honestly don't know. I'm just tired, man.

I'll try to have more faith in myself and other people and the world when I wake up tomorrow.