Unemployment

Well, I lasted roughly 2 weeks in my first full time job before I had a meltdown and just physically couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what set it off. Long hours of repetitive work doing basically nothing except sitting there; not being fully trained and not actually knowing what I was supposed to be doing because they hired too many newbies and let me fall through the cracks, annoying and nearly constant conversation about annoying topics from coworkers sitting next to me, or maybe it was the growing paranoia that the leads just didn’t like me. From day one, I suspected they’ve been talking about me behind me back, and there was no way they were saying good things.

Maybe it all really boils down to a much simpler fact: boredom is toxic, and 8 hours of forced boredom a day for a week would have become an inevitable death sentence.

It was probably all of the above, building up until unnaturally frequent bathroom breaks for the sake of getting up and having just a couple minutes to myself were no longer enough to calm the raging storm in my head, and I just knew I had to get out. I remember leaving rather vividly because I wasn’t in control of anything I did that morning; something else just took over, made me get up, turn in my things, leave for an early lunch, and just never go back.

Yes, it was impulsive, and a generally terrible idea, but while the idea may have been growing in my mind for a while, the actions never really felt like my own.

And for a while it seemed like maybe things were going to work out okay; I was offered an interview a day later for a completely different job doing tailoring and clothing customization work, and I thought the interview went really well, almost as if the universe was just pushing me toward something better. But, of course, it’s now been a good three weeks and I never heard anything back from them. I guess it’s not that big of a surprise, in hindsight; I’m not very good at twisting words to make it sound like I’m actually a reliable and punctual worker, and the truth is I’m just not stable enough to be a very reliable person right now.

I’ve kept busy with projects and kept myself doing mostly okay (although I know full well it’s not sustainable, for now, it’s something). I’ve made a plan to swallow my pride and drag myself back to see a psychologist, but I’ve been too lethargic to put forth the time and effort into researching who might be a good fit. Kind of like how I’ve been too lethargic to seriously research whether being on disability is a viable option past checking that I do have diagnoses which are on the list of covered disabilities and I’m pretty sure those conditions have a substantial impact on my ability to function and hold a regular full time job.

Part of me still worries I’m conning the system and it’s going to end horribly for me; guess that’s what happens to those of us who grow up with parents who hide or deny the existence of our mental illness from anyone and everyone in our lives. I’ll linger on that worry, though, and in my lethargic state, it spirals down to much darker, more abstract feelings of general existential dread, and I’m all but paralysed.

I guess I don’t really know how this all ends, or what even happens next.

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Unconventional perspective

I’ve always been on this edge, short-sighted and somewhat disconnected from what seems to be the common perception of life, of stability, of mental health or happiness or being reasonable.

When I was younger, it frustrated me. Nobody really understood me – you know, the typical whiney teenage angst. They made fun of me for being different, for having a mind of my own and blatantly ignoring social norms, and I hated them for it. Wanted to bash in their ignorant skulls and run away for good.

Now, though, I’m freely indifferent. They don’t bother me; that would require far to much caring on my part.

At the same time I see these positivity movements springing up around me, but I just shrug.

I’ve been on my own up until this point, and so far things have found a way to work out.

“You be you,” “you’re amazing the way you are,” “you’re not alone,” “your identity is valid,” etc etc.

Are these sentiments supposed to be helpful? Because I know how I see myself (even if it’s not as the same person everyday) and I never doubted my own truth and furthermore I’m completely fine with being alone.

I can appreciate the suicide awareness efforts here but they’re not for me.

Have I attempted suicide? They thought so at the time, but no, if I really wanted to die, I wouldn’t have failed so pathetically multiple times.

Truth is? I was bored.

I’m not depressed. I’m fucking bored.

I don’t need happy cheerful “your life matters and you are loved” bullshit; I just hate being bored.

It’s selfish. It’s probably absurd. I don’t actually care.

Boredom isn’t a good enough motivator, and such an enormous action is never born as a reaction to simply sitting and doing nothing.

Everything && Nothing

It’s funny how things change without really changing.

I didn’t finish graduate school, I just sort of faded away, finishing my contract with a couple years of teaching experience more than anything else.

I got the very first job I interviewed for, took it, and started the day after final exams were over. It was really exciting for about… hmm… 2 days. I’m now on week 3, hating everything, secretly downing a glass of wine at lunch, trying to figure out the easiest way to quit without screwing myself over (while also navigating the minefield of anxiety, which has been so overwhelming that I was barely even able to tell my manager that I can’t show up for one day because of a doctor’s appointment.)

I know I have this cycle, right, where I hype something up because of some detail turned into a fantasy of an interesting life, but nothing *real* is ever interesting, and I end up hating it so much that I’d rather die.

Full time job, M-F, 8-4, so painfully stereotypical, predictable, and just.. average. Normal. I can’t stand it. I need to be working toward something, not just doing repetitive tasks for 8 hours a day.

I’m itching to throw it all away. Fantasizing about getting fired for my consistent tardiness, a technicality where I just don’t bother getting proof of my prescription medications from my doctor because it’s not worth the effort for a job that makes me miserable.

My coworkers seem cool, but that thing where I kind of fit in but not really because I just don’t know how to engage in casual conversation with other people is happening again. Mostly, I’m paranoid that they don’t like me.

I don’t know, I’ve accepted I’m completely insane (in exaggerated terms), but I’ve also been down the “sane person” path and I can’t stand it. I wouldn’t mind having a little bit more of a handle on myself, but it’s not worth the dullness, lack of feeling, repetitive routine that accompanies it.

Braindead

I used to be creative… I’d draw pictures, design clothes, paint, write with imagery and metaphor… I used to create things.

(I never said I was good, but I enjoyed the process and the feeling)

That image is probably around 7 years old now….

Anyway.

It’s those goddamn drugs; the more I’ve been on adderall, the more my brain has lost its artistic side.

It’s not an excuse.

I doubt you’ll ever read this, but it makes no difference because you don’t have the respect for me to really listen to what I have to say in the first place. (Sure, you might read the words, but you won’t put in the effort to digest them or consider my point of view.)

So, I know there’s no point in me trying to say it directly anymore; in person, you just manipulate the conversation so that you’re controlling it and everything is about you or about how terrible everyone else in my life is. If it’s through messaging, you won’t take the time to understand what my words are saying before deflecting them, either saying I’m victimizing you because you have a certain mental illness or deflecting them so that they become an attack on someone else.

The thing is, admitting you have an illness doesn’t mean anything if you’re using it as an excuse for being a self-centred asshole while neglecting to take any action or put any effort into treating and/or managing the symptoms you seem to think make you immune to criticism or even differing opinions. You don’t get to say “I’m autistic, I have an overly addictive personality, etc” and receive automatic immunity from literally everyone who disagrees with you or is offended by anything you say.

No.

What is that saying about those of us who work so extremely hard to manage our struggles? What even is the point of admitting you have a problem if you’re showing absolutely no signs of any attempt to get better? Is it just to manipulate everyone into feeling sorry for you, because it sure as hell feels like that’s what you’ve been doing to me for god even knows how long at this point. Then, once I feel sorry for you, I let you get away with things that normally would be utterly repulsive. It’s not constructive, it’s not healthy, it’s straight up toxic.

You’re not doing anything to make yourself better, you’re just tossing me around and making me worse despite my efforts to manage my own mental illness as much as I can.

You encourage my developing alcoholism, using alcohol as an incentive for me to hang out with you at your house. You belittle my struggles because I’m able to manage my symptoms better than you are (no doubt because I put serious effort into identifying my own patterns of behaviour and doing my absolute best to correct the irrational ones before they spiral out of hand). You’ve invaded every group of friends I have and you somehow inevitably manage to create drama and destroy the safe space for everyone. You’ve dug yourself so deeply into my life that I can’t get away, not without giving up such a huge and meaningful part of my life.

I’ve tried so hard to keep my distance, to not interact, but it’s never enough. You always find a way to torment me, to baffle me with frustration and anger and hopelessness until next thing I know I’m sitting alone in a dark room drinking straight from the bottle despite having just gone a significant amount of time without using any kind of mind altering substance as a coping mechanism.

As long as you’re around, I fear I might never actually get better.

 

 

 

Hell, you don’t even let me have a single conversation without taking over the whole thing and changing the topic to YOU.

And I’m honestly at a loss. I’m not willing to give up my passion just because you happen to also be a member of our charity group, I can’t just block you and run away. I’ve tried confronting you and I don’t even know how you guilt me into apologizing for being in the wrong when you’re so clearly the toxic one.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had my mind fucked with by someone like you, but the problem is I don’t know how many times I can survive being around this before I break.

You Will. You Will? You Will.

All I can hear is the truth in the song right now, as enough weeks went by that I stopped fidgeting over whether you were avoiding me, stopped letting the silence bother me at all, and here you are, finally being the one to talk first… So I guess I waited long enough to know I was right to think that if I mattered you’d eventually come back, but the thing is, I waited long enough to also learn that there are better people out there.

The funny thing is, those weeks of silence pushed me toward them; in a roundabout way I might even have you to thank for the Thanksgiving at the Tavern with friends I haven’t seen in a very long time, although I’m not going to thank you for it. In fact, I’m taking all of the credit for taking the initiative to reach out and mend an old bridge, because I’m the one who did everything to make that happen.

I’m not giving anyone credit for doing nothing and coincidentally causing me to reflect on my thoughts and act in a certain way; I don’t believe that’s a very, well, healthy way of thinking.

Paralyzed

Feels like the past few weeks have been somewhat of a shitshow… Not that there haven’t been good moments; there definitely have been a few of those, but they’re so separated from the big picture that it’s hard to focus on them.

The good times are the ones where I’m too distracted to think about responsibilities, where I’m too busy to fret over homework, where I’m not alone with my thoughts or ruled by anxiety.

They’re not what I need to write about, though; but really, are they ever?

I’ve been drowning, constantly feeling like I’m in over my head with one of my classes; I’ve got no idea what’s going on, like, at all, but even if I wasn’t prevented from asking for help by my pervasive anxiety, I’m still not sure I understand even enough of the material to know where to start with questions… Then, we got a take-home exam that was due today, only I haven’t done a single problem.

Conveniently, the test was assigned maybe 2 days before my grandmother passed away, so the whole week we were supposed to work on it, I was out of town on one of the most surreal trips of my life… I haven’t been in the mindset to put forth the effort to bullshit my way through any portion of the test. I’m not sure I will be for quite a while.

Anyway. I’m going to write something else about Grandma when it feels right, and I don’t think today is that day.

While the absurdity of those events processes, I still have my own life to deal with, and I just don’t feel like that’s something I can do on my own (and right now, I feel more alone than I have for a long time). I don’t know what to say to my professor about not being able to do that test; I get that the logical thing is to ask for an extension due to circumstances beyond my control, but I don’t think an extension is what I really need. I’ve been so lost in this class that I’m sure there’s no way that I could possibly catch up at this point, and honestly, I just don’t have the motivation to try.

But then, I don’t know what to write in my statement requesting to withdraw from the class, seeing as I missed the deadline by literally a day because the last day to withdraw from classes happened to be the day of my flight back home. I don’t want to have to ask my professor for a signature of approval to drop the class; I physically can’t bring myself to admit that I’m a failure, which is exactly what asking him to sign that form equates to.

So, I’ve done nothing. I skipped class without saying a word, neglected to attempt to make any progress on either the test or the statement, and spent the day cleaning and preparing for my other classes, trying not to think about how alone I am right now.

Even though I have friends, I can’t really talk to them about any of this… Either I can’t bring myself to burden them, or they simply just don’t get it. In not knowing what to say, they brush me off, make things feel worse. And then, my family isn’t exactly available for obvious reasons.

I shouldn’t need anyone, though. I know what I need to do in theory; just, why can’t I bring myself to do any of it?

Inexplicable energy

I never talk to you because too much exposure makes me feel sick and uncomfortable.

We get along okay in small doses, but for some reason that one day of getting along well turns into insistence on spending way too much time around me on your part, and I really just have no idea how to handle it.

Nothing is real;

At least, that’s how life seems right now.

Hurricanes, mass shootings, and a political climate full of turmoil, confusion, and distractions. I want to feel sad, but I’m starting to just feel like I don’t have enough money to donate to all of the causes springing up left and right, and I’m in my own isolated little box where none of it really impacts me directly, anyway. I’m just so tired of seeing it everywhere…

I mean, I’m still stuck in my own head right now. I’m still trying to sort through that chaos… I’m still trying to find a cure for my own pent up feelings of loneliness, spite, self-loathing, and general melancholy.

So when you texted me this morning that it was a bad day because of the shooting, I just put on a face and offered support, once again throwing honesty out the window.

I didn’t care so much that you had thought about going to the show; to be honest, once I read it was a country music concert, it just reminded me about this long standing thing I hate about you. How you’re not anything that I want you to be and yet somehow I’m still here talking to you and leading things along. We can be friends and I’ll be supportive while still silently judging you, but that’s the problem, this isn’t that simple.

In fact, everything about the two of us makes about as much sense as 95% of the things you say, which always basically leave me doing this:

Sometimes I just suspect I’m so bored and lost that I just stick around to play mind games as a form of entertainment, or maybe it’s just as a distraction from all of the things going on in my head that I don’t want to deal with…

 

Unspoken thoughts

I want to tell you just how hard I’ve been working to get better; I wish you knew just how incredibly difficult it is for me to accept that you care.

I just don’t know if there’s a way to show you that; I can’t make you experience the same things I have, I can’t make you feel what I go through every time I bite my tongue and hold my breath, using every ounce of willpower not to lash out at you for having good intentions.

Every time I slip up and lash out, I beat myself up for days on end because it feels like all of that effort I’ve put into preventing this from happening was completely in vain. Like I’ll never be good enough for anyone, because no matter how hard I try, there’s too much damage there and I can’t keep it under control…

And nobody sees the effort behind the good days. There’s such a tremendous amount of energy being poured into simply appearing normal every day, and it goes completely unnoticed. (Of course, there’s nothing surprising about this fact, I’m sure there is just as much effort put forth by others that I’m equally unaware of, but regardless, it wears me out.)

What does get noticed, of course, are the intermittent failures. The few times when I’ve worn myself out too much and one little thing happens and I slip back into the habit of lashing out. I let my instinct take over and I begin to push people away, and by the time I can finally get myself together, the damage is already done.

And of course, on the flipside, I’m not completely and intimately aware of what’s going on in your mind; I may not be noticing the vastness of your efforts, either, although I appreciate any opportunity to attempt to understand.

What is clear to me, though, is that there is a very significant meaning to the fact that I’ve been putting in such a tremendous amount of effort to keep someone around where oftentimes I wouldn’t even think of it, or if I did, I’d almost certainly let my fear prevent me from actually doing anything.