“They are too young”, “They don’t know better”, “I need to protect them”, “They had a tough life”, “I’m sure they care”, “They mean well”, “I’m sure they love me”
It’s an interesting thing growing up in a dysfunctional family. There will be behaviors you embrace and ones you absolutely hate, people you love/hate and people you excuse and include/exclude. And round and round we go!
I think I’ve been clear with my thoughts of my mom and dad; or as clear as my mind can be at this stage. I’ve been protective of my brothers though. “They are too young”. “I’m sure they love me”.
It’s time for me to admit and face the reality though; my brothers aren’t “small” anymore; they are 35 years old. They can think for themselves. I asked my brothers to care; to at least ask how I’m doing. I got called a “martyr” by one, no response from the other. Got into a bit of an argument with the one about if my request for asking about my wellbeing is martyrdom or not. Snapped at them, brought up shit from 20 years ago. Messages back and forth, no conclusion. I do not know if I’m a “martyr” or not. All I know is my brothers still to date have not just asked how I’m doing. I know I snapped at them as 30 years of stuff boiled over.
Over 30 years. 30 years of excuses; “they are too young”. 30 years of built up anger. What I’m sure of is I love them, and will do anything for them. I know, I wished they`d at some point take my side. I also know that writing this post makes me cry. And I know I cannot keep making excuses for them. I am mad at them. I am angry at them. I am angry at them for not caring enough about me to ask me how I’m doing. Not caring enough. Not taking my side. …and I don’t even know what that side is…I do know I’m angry.
I have yet another health problem: and as the doctors conduct their tests and examinations I’m casually frightened about the potential demise of my of queendom that I never really got to start….and yes, sure, the somewhat real possibility of a stroke or heart failure or tumors or whatever else is a bit scary too…
And damn could I use a hug from my mom, and/or from my brothers, and/or the person I thought was my best friend.. The odds of that happening? Let’s see; my mom? Haven’t spoken to her in five years, not since the last time the doctors were pondering wondering my health of potential death. My brothers? Not into any real signs of caring. Can’t really blame them; we did grow up in a dysfunctional family. And my “best friend” of sorts. She told me to do yoga. No “I’m so sorry to hear that”, no “how do you feel about this”, no “what is going on in your head”, no “ what does this mean” no, “what is next”, no “can I do something” no “you are strong and amazing and you got this”, no “I’m here for you”.
I did get “I’m here for you” and “you got this” messages, as well as the others. I got them from my friends. And friends of friends. I got a lot of support! …and I neglected all of them…because…my mom, brothers, best friend didn’t, and they should!
They should. They didn’t.
So. As I click on publish on this post I will go through my whatsapps and message back all the people that actually show they care. And I’ll make sure to call and/or see them.
Why am I so stuck on people who I think should care about me but clearly don’t, while I have people who actually do care about me? Great question. About time I focus on the good in my life and let got of the things/people that can never be.
Been a way, but back now. Yay! That is a summary of it, details later. Onto the real topic of today; the blurred and twisted vision of ours. The blurred is a funny one; drink too much and everything is pretty and fuckable…yup, totally a story for another time. But. The glasses we put on, whether sober or not do change how we see and experience things – just like sunglasses do.
Here is a black and white, slightly exaggerated, take on it; grow up in a happy loving hippie home and you believe everyone is good. Grow up in a fucked up home with abuse and everyone is an enemy. Add on it; life experiences that can move you from one end to another or just add to the strength of your love or hate of humankind. And our glasses? That’s what we take from it. If we’ve only seen love and happiness we expect and see it around. If we’ve only seen hate and abuse, that is what we see and expect. Every word, a look, an action, from another person will be colored with our vision and expectations; the color of our glasses.
And so we do what? React. With our glasses attached. Sure. Sometimes it’s accurate; love should be met with love, and hate? Better do take a strong resistant pose and action on anyone aimed at hurting you. But what if, when, we are wrong? When our glasses have colored, categorized something as something it is not?
I had a fight with my brother the other night on whatsapp. I was fuming; this fucker never took my side, doesn’t care about me, was never there for me. I couldn’t sleep for two nights as I was re-playing the conversation and the words he used in my head. I was ready to tell him to fuck off, to forget me as he clearly already had. …It was the other night…I had two nights to ponder and hate and fume about it – until today; I checked the messages; to see just how right I was. …and was I? Right? Couple of reads over and a strong, painful look in the mirror I could see I was the one doing most of attacking. Was he apologizing or promising he will do better? No. But was he the asshole I had gone into the discussion thinking he would be? No. Was it still bad? Yes. That bad? No.
Those glasses. The fucking glasses. …not talking about you hippies, your glasses seem great. Well, you could really use a good sense of reality in you! No one is that happy! …nope, sorry, that is my glasses speaking…my glasses are of doom and gloom. And I need to change that. Or, well, I need to remember to take my glasses off sometimes. There is time for doom and gloom, but. Maybe there is time for other things as well? The glasses we wear will shape and color how we go about things; sometimes good, sometimes bad. Taking off the glasses, at least for a second every once in a while, as hard as it might be, could show us other colors too, the diamonds that could be…could let us think others too…Time and space and clubs of it all. …clubs…get it? Lol…sorry (my gaming sunnies on now).
Be humble, bow down, don’t speak up. That’s what I grew up with. Some I’m sure my parents believed in, and some; due to their fuckedupness might have actually destroyed them and me. The lying cheating alcoholic of a dad wanted me to be the best ever; smartest, quickest at all I do…just not want any affection or support or him being actually present, as he was, well, otherwise occupied. And the cold-hearted robot of a mom who was always there seemed to take pleasure in my emotional suffering. Oh you are getting good grades? “You aren’t as smart as you think” Oh, you made friends? “They will all leave you in the end” Oh, you are dating someone new “men in our family leave us”. Oh you broke up? “Men don’t like what you do”
Dealing with that shit. Dealing. With. That. Shit.
Restrictions. This shit builds complex, hard to break restriction in your mind. Walls that filter our any other messages. Silence the teachers, the friends, and more importantly the inner voice – that’s your parents ya’ll. That’s what counts as you “hear” – restrictions. There might be others telling you they like you, love you, appreciate you, but all you can hear is “you are not good enough. No one loves you. Stop trying”.
In fact, there’s a voice you hear if you go against their damage.
Let’s break that down. Voice. Their damage. It is their voice, about their damage. It is not a rando in a bar telling you their life story, it is a key figure in your life telling you their life story for years, decades. It is about them reflecting their shit on you; their experiences resulted in their shit – clearly you should expect the same experiences and therefore the same shit.
What that does: Restrictions. It is in your head, your mind.
What you need to do: Question that shit. Question the shit out of that shit.
If you are like me you were conditioned to certain attributes with certain behaviours. It can be as stereotypical as “you are a girl/woman, you are supposed to, not supposed to xyz”. Or just more creative ways of telling you are not capable of it, and definitely not worth it.
Let’s have a more objective, oh-have-I-grown-up -chat with them …things I should have said…
“Stop crying, you are only looking for attention” – my mum to me after my granddad died –> yes, I’m crying, I’m sad. I’m fucking sad, and I’m fucking allowed to be. Hug me for fucks sake
“You are not as smart as you think” – my mum to me after I got first place in class –> I see you hate my dad for whatever reason. Yes, I share some traits with him, one being pretty damn smart. That also means knowing when I’m not smart enough, and when I can kick a 4th grader in the ass. I am smart, I know the shit I’m talking about. I know my shit. Shut, the fuck up. Be proud of me
“They will all forget about you” – my mum to me with me making new friends in college –> not my damage, mum. It might have been your experience, and it might very well be mine. That’s life. No need to make a “all hate you” – performance about it. I have friends that understand and stand by me, few of them even for years and years. Should they leave me, I’d like you to be there for me
“He is too good looking for you” – my mum after seeing a pic of one of my exes –> really mum? I’m not pretty? Smart? Lovely? Not worthy of a good looking person? …the fuck you are a mum for? Ask me if he makes me happy
“Men don’t like what you do” – my mum to me when I found out the man I was dating had slept with another woman –> I cry in front of my mum and hope for a question of “what’s wrong”. The silence and coldness that pursued led for my comment “I had to break up with a guy”. Her comment, not a question, “men don’t like what you do” –> would love a hug on my side! …further questions, caring, being on my side no whatever what…acknowledge and support the crying child in front of you, you bitch! Seriously, Really mum? I’m not pretty? Smart? Lovely? …the fuck you are a mum for? Guess I’ll just hit him up for a random hookup and fuck his brains up. Love? Nah. Fuck off.
The hate, the fucked up mental models, and the sense of your own worth is too often tied up with mental models that aren’t yours, mental models that don’t support you going forward.
What you do? You listen. You accept. You build your base on what the fucked up people say. And then you fucking keep building.
What you do as of 10,20, 30, 40, 50 years from that is tell them, at least in your head, to fuck off.
What you aim for is for those 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now is to stand your ground. Be proud of your choices, whether a success with a happy ending or a complete clusterfuck; or a combination of the two. What you aim for is you owning that shit. You owning your actions.
So. Break those mental models and weird as “rules”. Fight the voices in your head that tell you no, cheerlead the voices that tell you yes – fight them all! Here are some examples:
Crying. Cry your fucking eyes out if you want to. Do it! Share your hopes and dreams and vulnerabilities. If you are lucky someone somewhere will bring a bottle of wine and join you on it, the people online certainly will – We’re broken people now……
Friends. Make them, make new, make millions. Reach out, touch, share. You are not alone. We got you – Don’t be creapy though….just. don’t…
Success. Fuck aim for only whatever you need, aim for what you want. Get the money, the title, the reach, the happiness or the enlightment. The Hugo Boss in your feet is fine, you deserved it, paid for, worked for it. Don’t apolize for it.
Step 4 that should be1. Not the Hugo Boss, but the not apolozing for it. Free your mind, free yourself. Don’t let other people’s walls keep you out from your happiness.
People fuck up. That is a damn sure fact. I have yet to meet a “perfect” person. I’m sure even Ned Flanders has some deep dark secrets in his life; secrets that haunt him. Sure, for him it might be that he spilled a cup of tea 14 years ago at a friend’s place and blamed it on the dog, but still. That shit will find you, haunt you, stay with you.
Here’s what I’m well, not ashamed, but pondering on coulda should woulda perhaps maybe done, do differently currently in my life:
Drinking 3 bottles of wine (now graduation to 3,5) a night
Messaging all my friends and colleagues with the most random things (mostly memes, occasionally deep thoughts, and way too often unsolicited life advice) after the forementioned wine intake
Blacking out, texting a random dude on tinder, inviting him over, having sex, not remembering it the next day
Spending 2k a month on online gambling sites putting my bank account on minus
The thing is. I do these things again and again and again. For a while I pretended they were not issues, then I realized they could be. Brush it under the rug I told myself! ..it is what I have done for years after all.
Solid advice for the first crumble or few – add years of that pile under the rug and it stands out, breaks.
The worst of it all, talking to people, whether on tinder with randos or on whatsapp with friends, and not remembering any of it the next day. I would not remember anything I said, wrote, promised. So what do I do when I wake up? I drown my head in the pillows, acknowledge I still have my phone beside me while secretly wishing it was magically stolen, and not go through my message and/or call history – nothing good is in there. So. Enter alcohol, the magical elixir of coping with shit I did with alcohol the last night.
And that’s just my last two nights, repeated over and over again the last two weeks, and the last two months..maybe more, surely for more. Don’t get me started on the past 36 years of my life and all the cringy moments I may or may not fully remember. …for example, the number of people that have come to me years later with “I still remember our kiss in xyz” is way higher than it should be. ….So offering that just as a example and using that purely to downplay my semi- and/ or more than – embarrassing moments…
And the logical choice after those acts and thoughts and after plays? Hide. Regret. Pretend it didn’t happen. Or, in my case nowadays; drink more to be drunk enough to see what I wrote to people when I was drunk.
That, my friends, is an excellent way to separate yourself from reality. Get drunk to do things, and then get drunk to “remember willingly” and deal with things you did while getting drunk as you can’t do that while sober. Ain’t that a fun circle of fucked up to live in?
Manage your damage.
So. Listen up! Time to establish some rules. It would be great to tell people to stop the shit they are doing but how realistic is that? People don’t just immediately get over their damage because someone says so. ..side note; fuck people who think it would be as simple as that… What we can do, should do, could do, is manage our damage. I have a gambling issue; I have set gambling limits on the websites that mean I cannot lose more than what I set as a loss limit. My drinking of black out times meet random tinder times – only once a week. Instead of wherever whenever (we’re meant to be together…..not…) I tell myself I can have one night a week to have too many drinks and have too many tinder chats. Should I go for non-tolerance? Maybe, but. Just like a kid, a candy day a week is what motivates, what keeps you from having candy every night. Consider it a pit stop for candyless future? Maybe. Better than candy-all-day, sure…maybe…
I’m not saying I will give these things up. Drinking, one night stands, gambling. I like them, but for damn sure need to limit them. And especially on the day after; not starting with need-drinks-so-that-I-don’t-feel-bad -shit. If things have gone over the proper limit of said things; had a drink too many and got sloppy drunk, slept with a colleague you should not have, gambled your life away…what ever your damage is; feel that pain, that damage. Deal with the emotional after math of it. Don’t hide, don’t pretend, don’t have drinks or shots to ignore it while moving onto the next one. Don’t feed the cycle. Manager your damage. Set them limits. Allow some of you and your past to exist while actively creating that pitstop for your future you.
This is one of those things you need to bear with me for a minute, or two, depending on your reading speed and how much reflection you do while at it. I was a smart ass as kid, who knew! Finding out math was a thing and that my dad taught math for a living lead me to a path of using math “wrong” to prove my dad wrong – solid, undeniable logic with loopholes I found funny. …My dad actually did enjoy it too.
One of my favourites, and what I still use in my work to demonstrate logic does not rule all, was the good old 1+1. My teachers told me the answer is 2, so did my dad. The economics books I got to know way later on my life, and strategy workshops and gurus too, tell it’s three, because “synergy” and whatever bullshit of “teamwork makes the dream work”; 1+1 makes more than 1. Here was my thinking as a kid; you rake a pile (1) of leaves and another pile (1) of leaves and you put them together, you have a pile (1) of leaves. 1+1=1
It was funny as a kid. Still find it useful in work settings. In my personal life? It has been an equation following my life; an equation I’ve actually used against myself. My now + a single effort = my now. Why bother? I have tried and failed, made way, and had hard as hell setbacks. But I’ve tried. I’ve tried and tried and tried. I’ve tried and found myself back where I started, maybe even worse. I’ve had momentarily wins, I’ve had the highs of running away and moving around. But. I’ve felt like I’m still where I was, not making any way forward, especially not with that single thing of action.
So. Childhood. I had a lot of reoccurring nightmares as a kid. One of them was of me walking down a street in my hometown and falling down because my legs could not carry me anymore. I would fall down. I could not get up. I would desperately try and stand but could not. I would see people passing by, ignoring me. No-one would stop and help. No one would acknowledge me. No one would help. I was alone. A kid. Alone.
Two weeks ago I started having those dreams again – just with a small but major a change. I would walk down a street, go to a coffee shop, cross a bridge, attend a show… I was once even a politician in my government, and once being able to fly around pirate ships to escape high jumping werewolves that looked like panthers – not sure that’s a good thing or a bad one, leave it up to the Freud enthusiasts…sorry no apparent long shapes in that dream you could interpret as penis…where was I? Right, walking. For the past couple of weeks I’ve had these dreams where I’m somewhere, walking (or flying), and my legs start to wobble. I feel like I’m about to fall down. And instead of walking, instead of falling down? I grab a table, a chair, I might even walk faster towards a wall I see so that I can hug that wall and stay up. I know, I’m scared, I will fall down – but I don’t. I might, who knows. But I don’t. And then I wake up.
I wake up and realize that was a dream. I wake and realize that unlike 30 years ago I now have coping strategies, resources, friends, medical help – and the will and understanding to ask for help, to get me going. I wake up realizing that all the work, the ones of adding to zero, have actually made a difference. That dream, is a fresh reminder of where I started. It is a nightly reminder of me making progress. It is a nightly reminder I am so much better off than where I started from. It is a nightly reminder I can, eventually, truly, stand on my feet.
I’ve been wallowing in sadness for a while (read; days, weeks, months, years). It has been a great excuse to have uber eats deliver my meals; salad? No. Pizza, yes. It has been a great reason to not move an arm or a leg to do anything. It has been a great excuse to ignore my friends, my work, my family. The excuse? Sadness, depression, anxiety; world of pain, a mountain of tears. Sure, it is valid. It is. But.
But. Maybe it’s time to take a step forward. We will have time to wallow. But. Maybe now we need to kick our leg in a leg and make it at least twitch.
We all know the concept of beach body. Here’s a July start for it. While the majority of my followers and likes are from my side of the world, we should not neglect the other half. And. Given that new years is always a shitty time for change; let’s aim for February 1st of change. February 1st of change to report on. That means, for the math people of you to fact check; 6-7 months of change!
And the rules?
Milestone your achievements; I’m assuming your goal is to get/be better, let’s count the steps you take for it. Whether your goal is to just get out of your apartment by February, or run the marathon; taking a walk to the corner store will count.
No step is too small; we have different goals, we all start from different places – no step is too small
Want to lose weight (that’s me); skip a pizza order per week, walk 100 meters, make one push up to try it out
Want to start dating; open a dating profile, say hi to a person of interest, asks a rock out to try it out
Want to get ahead in your career; update your CV, start linking articles to your LinkedIN profile, send an application to a job and try it out
No judgement; the steps we take might be small, and they might be counteracted with a bunch of other actions. The point is to make a step for the better.
NO STEP IS TOO SMALL. Take that trash out, make that one squat, have a shower, leave your apartment, say hi to a rando, do your laundry. Be proud. Be MY PROUD
You need to do one thing a week you can call as #myproud. One thing. ONE.
We deal with shit, we feel like it. But we need to, want to, move on. How do we do it? One step at a time. That step might not mean shit to others, they might even laugh at it – but for us? For us that one step is massive. Let’s make that step, let’s be proud of it.
“Just do it” fucking sucks as a statement. It is one of those things only I am allowed to tell myself, maybe the one or two people closest to me as well. Others; fuck off. …unless you actually know what I’m going through.
Here are the things I cannot “just do”:
-answer your message
-open a random door
-attend your whatever event
-meet you and your friend
-answer your call
-try a new meal
-clean my apartment
-go to the store
-care about my physical well-being
-make my bed
-have a shower
-take out my trash
-not have a drink
-not have sex with random strangers
-get my shit together
…
Want to know why? Here’s why:
-answer your message; my anxiety cannot deal with the potential requirements your message comes with; needing to call you, answer you, meet you. If I don’t answer you, will you hate me forever? I do not have the mental capacity for these questions
-open a random door; I have control issues, new doors with unknown things behind them freak me out; how and which way does this door open? What’s behind it? What happens next? People will laugh
-attend your whatever event; what should my social anxiety wear for it? The shirts of me cannot have these people looking at me like they hate me and judge me? They will laugh at me
-meet you and your friend; I might love you and trust you, but now you want to force another person on me? How could you do this to me? I thought we were friends…you having another person with you is you putting me on the “need to pretend I’m great” zone even if you know I’m not. Are you betraying my trust in you by having your “friend” see my mental breakdown you know will happen? Do you hate me?
-answer your call: fuck off. Let me have my peace and time to collect myself and my thoughts. Don’t force me to quick pretend to be happy
-try a new meal; you know I don’t like new things. If I try a new meal I know you will be looking at me, watching me as I taste it. You are looking at me to hate it so that you can laugh at me
-clean my apartment: Just clean my apartment? Yes it is a mess. There are pizza boxes, dirty underwear and dust all around. I have long hair so yes, my shower drain is full, you can see the bundles of hair on my floor. Have not done the dishes in a week or two, these disposable ones work fine. And the bottles of wine? Yup, all around. I’m sure your apartment is great.
-go to the store: There are days when I cannot even get out of my bed except to go to the bathroom and receive the take out I just ordered. There are days when all I want is to stay in my bed in the darkness. I might watch Netflix, I might order food in. Glad you can walk around as you want
-care about my physical well-being: Not. Not at the top of my list. My head is not right, the heart even less. My body? Would I give a shit? No. I can’t even get out of my bed.
-make my bed – I will sleep in it, now, and next day night and day. I can barely get to the bathroom. Why would i make my bed? Who is going to see it?
-have a shower – I think my best is around 8-9 days without shower. I will lie in my bed thinking I’m fine until I start thinking I smell, after a few days of that I will shower, if I really really smell
-take out my trash – The pizza boxes, or quick food, or anything really. They will pile up. As long as I can step over or around them I am fine.
-not have a drink – Should I not drink? I want to forget the world, I want to forget me. I will drink, I will drink now and I will drink tomorrow
-not have sex with random strangers – I go to bar and grab a stranger, or even better yet, use Tinder for it; sex delivered at home. Do I necessarily remember it the next day? No. I just needed to be close to someone, I needed the sex.
-get my shit together- On it. Dickhead.
…
Let’s get this straight. Living with mental illness is messy. It comes with concrete messy things of dirty underwear on the floor, messy actions of getting black out drunk at office events, and messy aftermath of messages on your phone you have no recollection of. It comes with days and weeks of disappearing, calling sick for work, not replying to your friends. It comes with being unable to complete the simplest of things of taking out the trash or making your bed.
I’ve been there, done that, living there. I have been diagnosed with clinical depression, general anxiety disorder and social anxiety – that I know of. I am in therapy and my therapist might have a diagnosis or two to add to this. I’m not new to this though, this has been years of me. I’m living with it, making progress I hope, while having my ups and the sure deep downs.
The more I have worked on my problems, the more I speak to others about them, I realize I am not alone. And if I’m not alone, it means you are not either.
Our brains are fun, and with mental stress and illness even funner (no, I do not care about the correct spelling for that, thank you for asking that in your head). While they see and hear and feel and observe pretty much everything, the amount of information they can bring to our conscious is very very limited. We are talking about 11 million bits of information per second processed by our brain with only 50 of it making to our conscious minds. As the google search of algorithms they are, they try and fill that 50 bits with the most relevant information; based on our previous searches and preferences.
Here’s how that works in real life; if you have been in a car accident, you will suddenly notice how ALL newspapers are reporting on ALL the car accidents that happened and think there are more of them than usual. If you broke your leg and are now walking with crutches you will notice ALL the other people with crutches; there must be dozens of them every second everywhere. Or, let’s take a less negative example; if you are planning for a kid, you will suddenly only see the new baby mommas around you, the strollers in the streets, and the crying toddlers ALL around. That means your brain looks for things, highlights things that it thinks you want to see. That means it ignores all the other things – pushes those things to page 2 and 7 of the google search; you can find them, but only if you really really want to.
.
And how’s that with living with mental health issues, with drama in our past? Well, we see things that fit our drama, we see things that match our previous experiences, we see things that we think we are supposed to see. Our brains, while yes, could mean good, might not be corrupt, are just looking for those best fit search results based on our previous experiences and expectations; neglect – people ignoring us and leaving us all alone, hurt – people wanting to harm us and being after us in harmful ways, praise – people only wanting to exploit us and use us to benefit themselves.
Eventually what that does is we ourselves look consciously for only the neglect, harm and hurt. No matter what someone does or whatever happens we look for the one thing that supports our worldview; our search parameters – the evil world, hurt to us.
Here’s an example of my past few weeks. I have been going through a bit of a downward time again in my life – this time due to burnout mostly. I have this friend who I’ve known for about 6 years now. She has been absolutely an amazing friend; being there for me when I cry, sending memes to cheer me up, having a laugh at and with me on good days, just being an absolute treasure of a human. She has a dog and during the past couple of years she has had the said dog, I have made numerous comments how I’d love one too…but can’t because my landlord doesn’t allow for one, how my work schedule would be a pain etc. And her dog is damn cute! So. Couple of weeks ago we were talking and she brought up me having her dog for a couple of days after I had made comments how great an emotional support dog that dog would be. I said I’d love that and as she brought the dog over couple of days later my mind went into harm-mode; “so you don’t want to walk your dog”, “you want your freedom and push this dog on me” “guess you are hoping for bad weather so that you are not the only one having to walk her in rain and guess now you can enjoy your coffee in your apartment with me walking your dog”.
And then there are these people who keep messaging me with “how are you?” “thinking of you”. They keep doing that month after month even when I’ve totally disappeared on them, made promises to meet them and then cancelled on them. I see their messages pop up on my phone and I get a rush of anxiety throughout my body – what do these people need now!?!? Can’t they just let me be!?!?! Why do they need to torment me?
These friends that have stuck by me, are sticking by me. Friends that understand my pain, or at least acknowledge I’m in pain. Their words, their actions, the hugs they pull me into; a whole new world of tears. As they pull me in, keep pulling me in, they force me to fight. My “I know you will hurt me” against their “no, you idiot, I like you and care for you”. I fight them with “no-one ever did in my life” and they counteract with “well, idiot, I’m not those people”. And this fight is only after a couple of hundred times they have shown me they care for me and are there for me, even as the idiot I am keep pushing them back.
My advice? The words I myself still try to get through my head; some people can be good, some actions just for the love, not all is evil – everything must not end in doom and betrayal.
Difficult I know, impossible as it seeems, give it a go, give it a chance.
I cannot tell you how much it humbles me to get the views and comments on my blog. I get several likes, I have 19 followers (in addition to the millions of fictional ones in my head), and numerous comments on my blog. 70% of the comments want to increase my SEO; sure, prob need action on that front – will not get to it though with you, sorry. 20% want to show me the “nudes promised” …as a girl, I’m fairly certain I did not ask for dick pics – who the fuck does (no one, no one is the answer if you are wondering…sorry Jennifer, sure you have great boobs too) … 9% of comments come with generic terms of; “love how you are phrasing this topic” – which blog would that not fit you robot you… With my math, and I was really reeeeaaaallly good at it in elementary school, we are talking about 1 and less than 1% of a chance of real people commenting…well..
So. Dick pics, requests for nudes, rando spam comments equalling to 99%. What’s left? There are few non-commercial, authentic sounding comments and questions. One especially asking why I’m still sad, shouldn’t I just get on with it.
I am and I should. And I will.
This one comment. Whether from a robot or a real person, or a real person copy-pasting comments, got me thinking. I guess I have been all sad and all. All pain. All suffering. Gloom. Sure. In my view I’m making progress. But…
WELL. Person making that comment; THAT’S DEPRESSION FOR YOU. …fucker… Guess what? As much as I would love to come up with a magical overnight solution for depression; take this, do this – 24 hours – depression be gone: It. Is. Not. Possible. ……on another note though; totally appreciate your comment…..but then again; WHAT THE HELL…dickhead?
And on a 37th note (the first 30 something were in my head with more swear words than actual message); yup. Still sad, still depressed, still working on it.
Still. Working on it.
Why post this? Here’s why: Depression, anxiety, mental illness is a journey, it’s not an overnight cold, it’s not a virus or an infection you can just easily treat. It creeps up on you, slowly takes you down. You can fight it, pretend it’s not there, put up a front – “I’m ok”.
“I’m ok” is what feeds it, gives it power. Getting yourself to admit “not ok” takes strength. That alone takes ages; acknowledging it even longer. Working on it. Working on it. It can be days, weeks, months, years. I myself am on years-side of “I’m ok”.
I am doing better, I’m on the better side of ok, might even mean it on most of days now. I love to hear your comments (the real ones), but never ever ask why I’m still sad or couldn’t I just get on with it. Toxic comments like that need to acknowledge they are toxic. …phrase it differently and I’ll respond gladly.
My blog, this space, is about working shit out, working it through. It’s about the downs and ups and downs and downs and ups again. It is about making way – for the better.
So.
Comments from robots – cool – SEO rankings going up? – really do not care.
Comments from real people; thank you. I appreciate you and love you taking the moment to comment – let’s talk more
Comments from real people downplaying depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness – kindly fuck off ..unless you are realiazing you suck, then yes, hit me up, I’ll walk you through it
