Skitt: imposter's healing journey

I've lost a lot of friends this year. I've heard that this happens while you're on your healing journey. You can't keep things that severed the old you in the way to who you're becoming. However, I suspect that I am the problem. How could all these people be the problem? Maybe they are right? Even if they aren't I'm the one who keeps attracting these people so it has to be me. What if I haven't been healing and I've fooled everyone so well that I began to believe the lie myself. I'm still really controlling, I feel like I'm constantly adding abandonment triggers, still very judgemental, I shrink away from accountability because it's uncomfortable, I've been lying at work more than I've ever lied at a job. I don't feel like I'm making progress. I know this isn't the worst version of myself. *Not that there is a better or worse version of myself. There is just surviving, learning, and healing. * It feels bad a lot of the time. It's overwhelming how awful it feels. It feels lonely. It feels like pain. There's so much hurt and anger. I hate the emptyness. Rather than sit and be with myself I dissociate. I can't control it, even if I wanted to sit with myself I didn't think I could. I dissociate so often I think I have gotten used to the feeling. I don't even notice it anymore. The melancholy is always right there on the periphery. Watching, waiting for its moment to strike and consume me. 

When I say melancholy I mean hormone induced depression. I hope that's what all this is. My whole life changed relatively fast and when the dust settled my hormones stood there in rubble with a bomb. I really want this depression and dissociation to all be hormones. I want the imposter syndrome and irritability to be hormones. I want this constant numb apathy that is my new baseline to be hormones. I want not to be able to feel emotionally connected or build intimacy to be hormones. But I'm worried that I'm actually just a terrible person. 

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a sociopath, beyond help, better off alone. I'm worried that I can't get better. My therapist is always telling me to sit in discomfort and I can not, no matter the reward, seem to do it. I want to get better, to be better, but apparently not at the risk of my own comfort. So I sit here less than a foot away from the woman who loves me. Meanwhile I've never been farther away. I'm off treading water in the middle of the dark ocean and the storm is bearing down on me. 

The shell of me is here faking a smile, trying to give her whatever I think she wants, and fawning instead of… I don't know… being authentic. I don't know what that looks like right now. I don't identify with this version of me. I don't like this person. They are mean, forgetful, scared, lost, lonely, on the offensive, arrogant, full of pain but unwilling to feel it, anxious, overwhelmed, sad, and quite a bit to handle. Despite being lonely and wanting to connect I keep this person away from everyone. I don't want people to meet me like this. So I seem standoffish despite really wanting to be on the inside. It looks nice. People look happy. I want that so bad. I want to feel like that. 

Skittles: depression 10/23/21

I hate myself all the time. Even when I am telling myself I'm the shit. I hate how I look right now and how I feel in my body. I hate myself partly because I'm sick. I hate myself mostly because I feel like a failure. I have an idea of who I want to be and I just can't seem to give it up or get there. I don't want to be me I want to be this idea of me I have in my head. This me I believe will make me happy though I have no evidence of that. I have heard that it will probably be awful. But I can't give up the idea. I don't know if it's because I told everyone that's what I want to do and I'm sticking with it due to pride. Or if it's because I'm very stubborn.

I'm not doing terribly. But I'm don't think I'm doing great either. I've only lived alone when I was in college. Other than that I live with my parents. Which I find embarrassing. But I can't get myself to move out either. I don't think I can live on my own and I hate other people so I can't have a roommate. I don't have a car. I'm so close to thirty but it feels like I'm twenty two. I don't want to be this way at thirty. But I also don't think I can get it together by then. 

I can feel myself getting bad again and that worries me. I've gained so much weight. I think if I have an episode right now I'll lose the little stability I have in life. That and I'll never lose the weight. I don't know if I can go though another dark phase. I don't think I'm strong enough.

Its not fair that making it this far, fighting this monster of a disease, doesn't count for anything. It's not something one can be traditionally proud of. Like graduating college. Or getting a good job. But everyday I've actively chosen to stay alive. Even when it was hard and I didn't want to. I get no credit for that. That suffering I've been doing does nothing to offset the little progress I've made towards being an adult. Having depression makes me undesirable in so many different facets of life. It makes me an unfit romantic partner. An unwanted employee. A shitty student. A bad friend. A terrible family member. I'm just sick and I am trying so hard to get better. But it's hard and it's not easy. I want to give up every day.

Not getting better makes me feel like a failure. Not meeting my developmental goals makes me feel like a failure. Not having my degree makes me feel like a failure not being this ideal version of me makes me feel like a failure. But I know that I'm just in the dark place right now. My brain is literally just feeding me lies. My brain is sick and if it wasn't I wouldn't feel this way or want to do these things. It's all the disease and none of this is true. It's like being trapped in virtual reality. You know it's not real but you can't escape, and if you die here you die in real life too. But it still sucks. 

skittles: everything is a moment

This post is about a conversation, well  more of an argument I had with one of my partners. I currently have three. I'll do an update on that later. This post is not about that. I'll also give them all names later. This post is not about that either.

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation, depression

My boyfriendv said to me I need you to love yourself. I need you to want to live. I need you to like things just for you. 

My boyfriend clearly has never been depressed. Or maybe this is just a function of being depressed for so long. It feels like I've been depressed forever. But my earliest memories of being depressed start around the age of seven. That's almost 20 years. It's hasn't always been this bad but I've always had it. I knew it was wrong to die at 20. It took me into the age of 23 to not want to die. I still don't actively want to live. But I'm working towards really really not wanting to die.

He wants me to really like things and I do for a moment. But then I move on. I liked horses, sailing, and pokemon for a moment. Now I don't. Everything for me seems to be of passing phase. Because when a wave of depression hits I don't like anything. I don't want to do anything. I don't even like my bed I just spend all day there. When my depression lets up a bit, the things I used to like don't feel the same. I've been neglecting them and I feel guilty about it. Now there is bad feelings associated with them. So I move on to something else. It's hard to maintain a passion for me when I know I will eventually let it down. 

How do you tell someone you live for the moment and not for next week, not for the year. You can't have passions if you're just living in the moment. You can be really passionate about the thing for a second but it's not going to be a lifelong commitment. I already have a lifelong commitment. It's my fight with depression, and it's not something that I can share. He wants me to have hobbies and interests that I can share with him. Things that I love that we can do together. But everything I love everything that doesn't feel guilty return to after a moment of depression is because it doesn't have other people associated with it. It's because I'm not letting anyone down. It's because it's impossible to let myself down with the hobbies and interests that I do have. I like traveling to travel takes time. If I go through a fit of depression and don't go anywhere, that's completely acceptable. I like trying new foods. If I don't try anything new for a year or for three that's also fine. I like spending time with friends. I know that my friends will always be there when I get better. 

Also these specific hobbies are things that help me in my lifelong commitment. In my lifelong fight against depression I have to take care of myself. A good allotment of that means personal hygiene. When I travel I have to wash clothes, I have to wash myself. I have to go to the doctor to get a checkup especially if I'm traveling internationally. Traveling makes me be better and fight my depression. Trying new foods forces me to eat. I cannot tell you how many times when I'm in a fit that I just don't eat.I don't have a tasting for anything. I don't want anything. I don't desire anything I hate everything. But you can't hate something you've never had before and you can't desire something you've never had before. To try new foods is a way for me to eat especially when I'm in a fit. I also don't want to answer phone when I am really depressed. I don't want to see people. I don't want people to see me. But if I have commitments to hang out with my friends I will honor them even if I don't feel like it. I do try to wiggle out of them but it usually doesn't work because they know better. 

Everything I like is centered around keeping me healthy. Everything I like is centered on making me better. Everything I like is centered around me. I don't know how to bring another person into that. Yes you can travel with people but that's really hard to do and it's not something we can just do casually. Yes we can eat out and eat a different places but he's picky. Yes I can introduce him to my friends but I only introduce my serious relationships. 

I don't think he understands that I do have interests similar to how he's interested in comics and card games but they're different. His are social hobbies. Mine aren't hobbies that require you to learn necessarily or think strategically or have a lot of history in the very same ways. Mine also not things I need to do with other people. I can do every single one of the things I like to do by myself. Except for hang out with friends that requires other people. 

I don't know how to explain to him that depression shapes my life in more ways than just affecting my mental health. It affects how I emote. It affects my ability to care. It affects my interest levels. It affects my interests. Living with depression and having lived with it for more than 20 years has shaped who I am. It's become part of me. He's always saying he's afraid I don't want to live. He should be. Because in the fit of depression I won't want to live. But if I can make it through it I can get to a place where I don't want to die. I know it's not much but it's all I have to offer. And I really want him to accept that as enough.