Free will experiment failed!

Long Post Full of Suck and Also Awesomeness

So I’ve been a bit overwhelmed the last few weeks because of Life and also The Suck and things have been incredibly Not Great. I’ve had like a solid week of level 9 on my scale for mental health (where 10 is that someone needs to call 911 for me) so it’s been pretty scary.

When I get this bad, I struggle a lot with feeling like the feelings I have are all in my head, are all my own fault, that I’m a burden on literally anyone and that no one in their right mind (platonically or otherwise) could possibly care about me in any real way. Rationally, I know that’s not true, but it’s really hard to fight constantly against your own brain when physically you’re exhausted and mentally you’re exhausted and you’re constantly in contact with the thing that started your Suck in the first place. So I have been losing my internal battle against The Suck.

Here’s where things stood as of last week; I was waking up at 3:15am and getting ready for work so that I could be out the door by 3:45am so I’d be on time to work, since work is a 45 minute drive from my house. My road kills my bike’s tires, so no bike, and I haven’t had a car since November. It’s cold. Right now, it’s also very wet and often below freezing and I’ve been doing this for four months, ever since my mother took back the car I’ve been driving for five years to give it to my sister for her 16th birthday. I would work from 4:30 to noon-ish, walk an hour to school, have my classes, walk an hour to an hour-fifteen to the high school to coach swim practice, and then usually I’d be able to get a ride home from there. It has been Exhausting.

Over winter break, I also experienced a mental health crash. This is not unusual for me at this time of year, since I have prolonged forced exposure to my abuser and this year was especially bad since I was a fucking idiot who decided I wanted to try to repair things with them. Thought it was going ok until Christmas; turns out they were playing hook/line/sinker, and I sunk like a rock. Self-loathing for putting myself in that position on top of anger that they are still shitty on top of much general brokenness because they went full-tilt back into mental/emotional abuse once I was beginning to feel safe again. 

It’s been almost two months since then, and I still haven’t been able to climb out of this stupid hole I ended up in and it’s really frustrating on so many levels to want to be happy and to want to be ok and to want to be a functional person and to just . . . not be any of those things. And knowing all the ways I suck at being a person makes me feel like less of a person and it’s just not a very good cycle to be stuck in, especially when you know you’re in the cycle, you can see it, you just can’t seem to get out of it. 

So I don’t feel like much of a person, and I don’t feel like anyone can possibly care for me.

Fast forward to this week; one of my best friends in the world is getting ready to move to LA for a two year school program. As weird as this might sound, I’m not really bothered that he’s left because he’s one of those friends where we’ve known each other for twelve years, and he knows me probably better than almost anyone on this planet, and we’ve gone years without really seeing each other before and when we do finally see each other again we’re still just there and we get each other and it’s just amazing and I love him dearly.

Anyway. So Monday night we got the chance to hang out for the first time in a few years, and up until this time I hadn’t really had the chance to tell him all of the stuff that went on with my abuser or what’s going on in my head, but because he knows me so well he pried and managed to get me to basically word vomit everything that’s gone on and the whole time I’m terrified that him finally knowing what a train wreck I am will make him never talk to me again, that he’ll go to LA and think “wow glad I’m away from that Mess,” so I’m scared shitless while having this conversation and I end up telling him about my name change which not a lot of people around here know about still and he just-

First off, he listened to absolutely everything I said and (me being me) I cried, and while I cried he didn’t try to touch me or hold me cause that makes me overwhelmed and I tend to shut down when that happens so I was able to calm myself down so I could keep talking and he just sat and listened patiently until I was done. Once I was done, he asked if he could hug me and since I was done I was ok with it, and so he held me and I cried like a baby and he just held me and it was So Nice and then he asked if I wanted him to call me Alyx instead of my other name, and I said he didn’t have to since he knew me by my other name and it was ok if using that name was easier but he just gave me A Look and asked again if I wanted him to call me Alyx and I started crying again and was like “I’d actually really love it if you called me Alyx” and he was like “Ok Alyx!” and was like totally cool with it and also didn’t let me get away with hiding behind what he wanted or what someone else would prefer cause that’s literally always been a problem of mine, I don’t know how to and am not generally comfortable with telling people what I want because I feel that that’s really selfish but he was having none of my shit and it was Amazing.

So after I calmed down he drove me home and then Wednesday is the day he leaves. Now, I work for his mother who runs a daycare and since the whole family was going with him to drop him off in LA, I’m taking over the daycare for the afternoon so they can fly out. So I get there, he’s there, he comes over and we have our whole goodbye hug and I’m just like “don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry” cause there’s kids everywhere and they’ll all wanna know what’s wrong and I don’t want to deal with that and so I somehow manage to keep it together when all the sudden he’s like “Crap I forgot something!” and goes running back to his room while I’m laughing cause they’re supposed to leave in like ten minutes and he was supposed to have all his stuff packed like three days ago when he comes back and he looks at me very serious and I’m like “Shit somethings wrong what’s happening” and he just stops.

Keep in mind this is someone who can basically be qualified to say he knows me better than I know me sometimes, and he just looks at me super serious and holds out a fucking set of car keys.

So I’m floored, because he can’t actually be doing what I think he’s doing, and he’s like “So this is for you to borrow for the weekend -” and I’m like ok that makes way more sense until he finishes and is all “-and then when mom and dad get back on Monday they’ll talk to you about the title transfer and everything.” 

Cue complete bawling. Complete, can’t-hold-it-in-because-shit-like-this-doesn’t-happen-to-people-like-me bawling. And so he’s hugging me again, I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe, the kids are all asking why I’m crying which kinda makes me cry more until I’m like “Cause my friend’s an idiot” which his mom hears and so she cracks up and meanwhile I’m holding the car keys and shaking and crying and my friend is holding me and he’s telling me how he just wanted me to know how loved I am and that there’s people in the world who cherish me and that he knows I haven’t really felt that way and so he’s basically not giving me the option to let my head get in the way of what is fact. And I’m like he just gave me his car and people don’t fucking do that for other people, like maybe for family but I’m not family and he knows exactly how much of a Mess I am and he still did it????? 

I can’t even handle this. It’s been like four days and I’m still completely overwhelmed. I keep feeling like people as amazing as him don’t just do stuff like that for people as shitty as me, but then I look outside and there sits the damn car and I’ve got the keys on my lanyard and then I start crying again and so like, physically, I won’t be as tired, because not only will I not be walking everywhere, but swim season also ended yesterday, and mentally I’m short-circuiting a bit because there is Evidence that for some reason there are people who must still like me even though I’m A Mess, and not even just “like” me cause this is not just a “like” kind of thing, this is like a “love” kinda thing and me and him are and always have been and most likely always will be a completely platonic love, but this is totally still a “love” thing cause HE JUST GAVE ME HIS CAR. THE FUCKING SHIT, BRO.

I don’t even know how this is going to affect my current mental health things because my brain still hasn’t figured out how to function since this bombshell happened, but I have actually laughed out loud to things I’ve seen online the last day or so, which I haven’t done in months. I have a car. Now that I have a car, I can move out of the house I’ve been living in which has not been helping my mental state at all. I can get a new job if I want, I can go to fucking Chipotle if I want (cause it’s in the next town over T.T ) and I don’t have to worry about rain of freezing temperatures or the fact that I rolled my ankle like three weeks ago and it wasn’t getting better cause I was walking so much.

I don’t want to get too excited past how overwhelmed I already am, but I’m pretty certain this is one of those things that that literally changed my life in such a way that I will probably tell this story to anyone who’ll listen for the rest of my life as a time where things got Better. And, it’ll be super funny if my friend gets famous someday (his thing in LA? Crazy big acting/singing/dancing thing that feeds Juilliard and spits out famous peeps all the damn time and he’s ridiculously talented and works hard and has a heart of literal gold) cause then I can point at super famous person and tell this story and people might think I’m Cool ^.^