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chronicallymissyxo-blog · 5 years

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Being brave here, so here goes. Caution, in this post, I mention a few things that COULD contain triggers, so this is a warning just in advance. I needed to write today, it helps clear my head, and it helps me breathe.

This piece of writing I'm gonna call "Living my life with chronic pain & mental health."

First things first - My name is Meghan, I'm 23 years old and I am a chronic illness and mental health warrior. I begun struggling with my mental health when I was at school. I was bullied a lot, for my size, the way I look, for wearing glasses, for having spots, I was constantly pushed around and came home with bruises. I was a mess. I begun self-harming. Not a bad self harm, just a surface scratch when I was about 13. I hid this until after 3 years, my father hit me. We had an argument. I didn't know then I was suffering with depression. I was always the misunderstood, people didn't understand me because I was different. But I was taken by child protective services and moved back to my mums. I would get angry, frustrated, I'd have panic attacks but I didn't know they were panic attacks. I was really depressed but this wasn't acknowledged until I was 18. I finally caved in, wrote a note and took a bunch of pills. Because of that, I lost my job, I lost my life. I gained a lot of weight through antidepressants and I was told I was suffering with severe anxiety and depression. Since that, I've been on a rocky road. I started feeling a lot of muscle and joint pain, and it spread across my whole body and it was constant.

After that, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Borderline Personality Disorder, so I'm gonna explain about these illnesses, and how they affect me every day. I have nothing to do with my parents anymore. Mostly because my Dad hit me and my Mum doesn't understand my illnesses and isn't willing to. I do apologise today by the way, I'm having a really terrible brain fog day. When you’re struggling with your mental health, it can be so easy to mistakenly believe the people in your life hate you. For example, it’s hard to remember when that person you haven’t spoken to in a few days doesn’t reply to your texts, they aren’t ignoring you out of spite, they’re probably incredibly busy.If you can relate to this struggle, you’re not alone. Thinking the people around you secretly hate you or don’t want to be around you is a common experience for those dealing with mental illness. When your brain is being cruel to you, it doesn’t just affect you, it can often extend to how you interact with others. If you recognise what your disorder does to you, it’s a new stepping stone to greater skills and extra peaceful moments sprinkled throughout your day. I feel exhausted and weak at the end of the day, whether I let everything out of hell’s gates or I attempted to find peace. The goal is to make it to the end of your day with the knowledge you are worth it and it’s possible to make it through your misfortunes, even if finding peace hurts. Now imagine you experience losing your best friend, or thinking that's the case when they're just busy, you'd get panicked and upset - imagine that exact emotion at that level of intensity every single day. The gears start spinning your head. The truth starts to be less and less relevant when you experience this level of emotion. Do they even like me anymore? Did they ever? Have they been doing everything they can to show me they don’t want me around, and I’ve just been missing it? I hurt one of them the other day, saying or doing something careless based on too much emotion, like I usually do. Was that the final straw? Are they finally done being able to forgive me like I always knew they would be? You start to push them away to protect them from yourself and from all of the huge feelings. If one of them is your “favourite person,” someone you have become enmeshed with and have taken on their emotions as if they were your own in a really unhealthy fashion, it gets even more intense and complicated. This is the fear of abandonment someone with Borderline feels, on some level, every single day. It’s not them being dramatic. It’s not them looking for attention or trying to isolate you. It’s a level of emotional pain most people will never experience or will experience so infrequently that it stands out in their mind as a terrible day in their life. I suffer with quiet borderline, in which I keep it all in and internalise the feelings, but blame myself for it.

With anxiety, I do little things that normal people living a normal life wouldn't do. I start to obsessively clean and organise things. I rearrange things. Something as small as the order of my bathroom, taking everything out of the cupboards and putting it back in different places, or even my furniture. Sometimes it stays, sometimes I move it back the way it was. I guess I feel like it’s in a better spot than it was before and if I’m moving while doing it I’m putting myself in better place also. I blink. A lot, And clean like a madwoman. Sometimes, it’s the only thing I can do that allows me to feel in control of something. I also twist my hair, shaking my legs unintentionally, and click my nails. Anxieties lead me into a state of thinking I’m worthless, not doing enough or being good enough. Then that leads me into my depressive, no motivation isolation state. I ask my fiance why he loves me and why he chose to be with me. I often don’t feel like I’m ‘enough.’ If I’m anxious I try my best not to bombard him with messages especially if he's out, but sometimes it's the only thing keeping me sane. Anxiety makes me feel that I’m always bothering people. Even close friends. Just trying to start a conversation with them makes me feel that I’m just being a big bother, so I tend to isolate myself. Since feeling lonely is better than feeling like a bother in my eyes. I see myself mentally retreating and feeling myself go down the spiral, while being able to maintain a good outward appearance. Nobody notices the change. Having to deal with the constant depression and social anxiety along with Borderline, people think I’m ‘doing better’ whereas I’m just good at hiding the hard things. I internally attack myself. Whereas someone with classic Borderline acts upon other people, I attack myself because I prefer to deal with things internally, if I've done something wrong, I internally attack myself then over-react in situations because I feel like the worst person on the face of the earth. It's been described as being a quiet Borderline. I get attached to friends almost immediately and I spend 90 percent of my day trying to make them like me. If I think they are a little angry with me or dislike me, then my world crumbles and I feel like the worst human being alive, like I'm not good enough. If me and Jonny have a disagreement, I dissociate completely which in turn causes over reactions I'm unaware of being I'm not fully aware of what I'm doing. It's easier to dissociate rather than deal with things.

Dissociation takes me to a peaceful place but on the outside I'm saying and doing things I'm unaware of. It scares me, and it makes me scared of myself. I'd never hurt anyone else, I'd only ever hurt myself. Little things can set me off, which then can cause me to feel really depressed. I internalise things then hurt myself, though I'm 2 months clean of self-harm now. Before that I was 4 months clean. I fear abandonment, but I also fear getting attached to people because I always end up hurt, then feel even worse. Vicious cycle of mentality. I find it easier to shut down than blow up, so I self-sabotage myself. All these flood gates of emotions in my head build up, but I can't let them out, I hold it all in.Then we come to the chronic pain side of things. People who don't understand just think "oh it's just pain and tiredness, get over it." But it's so much more than that. It isn't just pain and fatigue. We can't just take painkillers and hope it goes away. However, those living with chronic pain/Fibromyalgia/M.E know it can cause so many more symptoms than that. Sometimes these illnesses can even cause symptoms that others may see as “taboo” or off-limits. The first thing we cross is sensory overload. It’s hard to handle too much noise, movements, lights, smells, etc. It makes socialisation extremely hard because if there’s more than one person there, there’s already extra movement and sound going on. Add a public place to it, and it makes the system go haywire with brain fog, indecisiveness, anxiety and pain. A lot of times it can come off as rude or antisocial, but I don’t think you could ever understand how hard Anglicization with sensory overload is until you’ve experienced it. I struggle to regulate my temperature a lot too. Some days it's not even hot, or sweaty but I'll be drenched even when I haven't been out. In Summer, unless there is water involved, I try to avoid going out which is a downfall because I have a vitamin D deficiency, so I can never win. It's really embarrassing and I constantly feel like I need to explain myself if people look at me because I'm so sweaty.

Now we move on to the sudden fatigue… I AM NOT LAZY! I’ve learned that I have to pace myself to ensure that I have the right energy to get through the day so if I say no to something or ask you to help with something that seems like an easy task, I’m not being lazy, I have hit an energy wall. Some days I still over do it and I struggle to cope with the pain. It's almost like constant exhaustion, and the fact that no one wants to understand or comprehend makes it more difficult, especially because we're in pain 24/7. I’m sometimes a little sensitive, irritable and snappy. I don’t enjoy being around people (partly due to sensory overload) and I have closed myself off so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings with my callousness. The constant pain makes me so angry with everything that it’s hard to function.

The worst thing for me living with this is the migraines and the brain fog. I can't describe exactly what it feels like, but what I can tell you is when I get a chronic migraine, I get severe brain fog. Some days I get just migraines, some days I get just brain fog. When this happens, it's almost like I feel disconnected from life, like there's a huge bubble around me. It's like I'm in a slow motion picture, I forget words, forget where I am, and I forget what I'm talking about mid-sentence. Conversation with Brain Fog is difficult. I accidentally zone out while listening to my fiance and sometimes I drift into a different thing entirely whilst still trying to listen to him. It's like I'm walking through jelly, everything just feels heavy, like there's a weight pressing right on the front of my head. My eyes don't focus. I'm trying to function but it's difficult to coordinate physical movements as you try to go about your day. Some days, you can see straight but everything seems distant. You feel exhausted mentally, everything exhausts you mentally and though you're seeing straight, the world just feels blurry. It's hard to put sentences together, or to think of certain words. It's hard to do little things because you've sort of forgotten how to do them. I struggle with my weight. I fluctuate a lot. I can't help it, I can lose weight but I'll end up putting it on. I struggle with my tummy, and find myself needing to go to the bathroom because something I'd normally eat just upsets my tummy on that day. I sometimes have issues with my bladder. My bladder is overactive, but I have to drink a lot as I get dehydrated quickly and I get a dry mouth as a side effect from medications. I find myself waking 2-3 times a night to go to the bathroom. Something less talked about with chronic pain, is genuinely anxiety and depression. Depression is a factor, but it's not the cause of chronic pain. My pain is medically unexplained. Depression doesn't go away because the cause of it doesn't go away. You can keep it under control with medications but people don't want to, or aren't willing to understand invisible illnesses. People will see you laugh, and smile so they assume you must be happy. But they don't understand the true feelings of what goes on deep inside your brain.My life has gotten slowly better over the last few months. Whilst yes, I've been on a low, it's nothing to do with my fiancé or anything. It's just the vicious cycle of emotions and pain that drags me down.

I love him so much. I know there's times when I'm selfish unintentionally because I don't think, I'm always apologetic if I've upset him for whatever reason. I've always placed him first, even though he never asked me to, but I love him that much I'll worship the ground he walks on. I'm always apologetic if I've ever lashed out and caused him pain. All these little apologies I need to make, because I know there's times where he's doubted my love and affection. I'm just so lucky to have a guy like him in my life, while he doesn't understand my illnesses, he does his best to support me. I know we have our arguments, and our disagreements, and there's been times we've pushed each other away. But being able to look him the eye, and apologise, helps us grow even stronger despite the blips. How do I tell him how much love I feel when I look into his eyes and hear him telling me he loves me? How do I express my feelings for him as there are not enough words to tell him how much I care? If he wasn't here for me, I would be nothing but with him by my side, I feel like I can do anything and be myself. I'm the luckiest girl on the planet to have a fiancé like him, I really am. So yeah. I'm sorry this has been long winded. I just needed to get a lot of things off my chest today. I hope you all have an amazing day.

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megacircuit9universe · 4 years

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Bad Penny

WED APR 29 2020

Okay, so the Covid pandemic has been an issue in America now for two months. I held off early on from doing any commentary or speculation about it, because it’s an extremely serious situation, and I felt I needed to just shut up and see how the situation developed.

Two months later, however, it’s time for some kind of an analysis.

Firstly, social distancing has been working incredibly well, anywhere it’s being taken seriously, and especially where it was established (by Gubernatorial decree) early. And by, incredibly well, I mean... the hospitals have not been overrun with cases, and the death toll has been minimal... but even in states that are doing great.. there are still a lot of cases, and a lot of deaths.

The general “curve” in America... the climb in cases over time, has been flattened to an appreciable degree, but nowhere are we tailing off yet, and seeing any significant decline.

Two months in, we are still in the grip of this virus, but it’s now at least under control. It’s at a plateau.

The initial terror of those early weeks, when the cases just kept climbing, and projections were that hospitals would be overwhelmed... has subsided. And now we’ve all dealt with this long enough to have gotten used to wearing masks in public, wearing gloves and washing our hands frequently, wiping down our groceries with sani-wipes after we get them home, and late night talk show hosts doing their monologues from home to no audience, and if they even have a guest, doing it via remote video conference.

People are trying their best to stay home, but not all people can stay home. Essential workers must still get out there and work every day, putting themselves at risk, while those who can stay home are getting restless... and running out of money.

Which brings us to the flip side of this extremely bad penny, which fate has dealt us... the economy.

Of course, if you’ve followed this blog, you know that’s been one of the main subjects for a couple years now... that good old self driving economy that had been booming along for a straight decade, seemingly impervious to any upset... even after three reckless years of a Trump administration.

I’ve stipulated many times over the span of these essays that a recession, being a thing to bedevil Donald Trump, was off the table. It wasn’t gonna happen. I believe in aliens, and that time travelers have predicted Trump presiding over a market crash... and STILL did not believe that, in this specific worldline, a recession could happen... because clearly, effective measures had been taken to prevent those predictions from coming true... namely and army of AI bots to regulate bubbles from getting too large, and sudden downturns from lasting over a week.

Yet... entering May of 2020... here we are.

And where is that?

Crude oil prices went negative last week. The airline industry is operating at around 5% of what it was doing a year ago. All sports, movie theaters, and any other public entertainment is shut down. All schools are closed. Weddings and funerals alike are being cancelled. This means no catering for such events, no Senior proms, no graduation parties. That hurts restaurants, who are already suffering from no dining room customers.

Small business are shuttering left and right. Gyms and massage parlors. All barbershops and hair salons. Pretty much all retail, including malls.

Unemployment is higher now than it was at the peak of the Great Depression, and Congressional attempts to help people out, while they are sheltering in place... have been abysmal.

A one time payment of $1200.00 to each adult... not enough for most people to get through two weeks... and most people have not gotten these tiny checks, because the system is overwhelmed.

Same for small business aid... which they’ve attempted twice now to roll out. Both times the money vanished into the wind instantly before it could get to those who need it... getting sucked up by large businesses who gamed the system and got in the door early... because we trusted big banks to dole out this Federal money on the government’s behalf.

Even scrap metal prices have fallen into a black hole. Scrap iron and steel, which last year, got you a dollar or two a pound?... three tenths of a cent per pound today. THREE POUNDS FOR A PENNY!

Now, they’re warning about disruptions in the supply chain of meat... not because we have any shortage of meat coming from the farms, but because Covid is breaking out in the meat packing plants, where “essential” workers cannot get any distance from one another, and do not have any time off to shelter from the virus.

The stock market itself is burnt toast. It’s black, crispy, and smoking.

That AI bot coalition I wrote about last fall... that formed after Trump began fucking with tariffs, and conspired to get the ball rolling on his impeachment... well who the hell knows what’s become of them now, but the lower level economy bots are probably all frozen in permanent error mode, unable to process the world we are in now, thanks to a caronavirus.

So... is this economic crash Trump’s fault directly? No.

The virus was a product of evolution that came out of Wuhan China... it had nothing to do with tariffs or politics. It popped up by chance, and once it did, it was destined to spread around the world.

But in the US, we... specifically Trump, had a good three months warning, as it ravaged China, and spread to Europe... in order to prepare.

Obama had a pandemic task force. If he had still been president, we would’ve been warned in January, and a federal lock down (rather than state by state) would’ve began in February, at the first sign that this virus had made its way into common spread.

Manufacture of PPE, and tests would have been ramped up immediately, and contact tracing would’ve also begun.

The economy would still have taken a it with all the social distancing, but there would also have been a world more pressure on congress (especially the senate) to get people proper compensation for lost wages while in lockdown.

States would have had all the resources they needed to battle the virus on the front lines and... because we got started so early, with such a well planned, and focused response... the entire run of the pandemic in America would have been far less severe, and under control in far less time... likely seeing us get back to something like normal life by April.

Granted, no matter who was president in 2020, we still would not yet have a vaccine, so even in the best case scenario, caution would be the watchword all through spring and summer... but with high levels of testing available, not just to identify the infected, but also the ones who’d recovered... it might just be the inconvenience of masks in public, smaller gatherings in public, and more intense screening at airports.

It would’ve been a mild recession, economically. Businesses not doing as well as they did the year before. People losing jobs in non essential industries, but then finding new niches online.

I’m sure that in this best case scenario, people would still be bitching about their rights during lockdown, and then bitching more about it all having been an overblown hoax in the mild aftermath... crying that we never do all this stuff for the Flu!

Which, by the way, we should take the Flu more seriously. Flu death tolls should not be so easily ignored every year.

At any rate, my point with the above paragraphs is to point out that under Trump, going into May, we are in a deadlock with Sars-COV2... while the economy is in a death spiral.

And the only reason we’re doing THAT good, is thanks to the extreme struggles and sacrifice of state governments, and the people themselves... both forced to deal with this on their own, with no cooperation or material support from the federal government at all.

“Aw, come on! You can’t say, NO support...”

Yes I can. When you can’t even get your token support money where it’s supposed to go, because your distribution system is too half-assed to keep any track of it... yes I can.

I speculated, way back when this started, that perhaps they, the time travelers and their AI counterparts on our dark web, knew that the one scenario in which Donald Trump always fails to seize total power, is in timelines where a pandemic strikes in his first Presidential term... before he’s had enough time to dismantle the democracy... and because it’s just the one kind of problem he has no ability to bullshit away.

I dropped that line of speculation because it seemed then, and still seems now, too drastic of a move for agents of this type, who’s motto is, “first, do no harm,” to unleash a pandemic... not just on America, but the whole planet... to stop one President from becoming a dictator in one country on one of an infinite number of world lines.

That said... of all the types of national or global crises which could fall into a President’s lap while in office... pandemic DOES seem now truly to be the ONE scenario... Donald Trump just cannot get the upper hand against in any way.

Early on I thought, Well, this will be his 9/11. His Great Recession. This is his moment to shine and win reelection easily, because all he has to do is let the CDC run the show and then take all the credit when they get it under control!

But no.

He has refused to take a leadership role at any stage in this crisis... leaving it up to the states to deal with it... but also refusing to help the states... and also getting quite bristly with the CDC along the way.

He did, does, and will continue to believe he can bullshit this pandemic away, by minimizing it... promising it will magically go away... attacking anybody who takes it too seriously, or who questions his idiotic ideas for quick fixes like Hydroxychoroquin at first...

...and then last week his jaw dropping suggestion on live TV that maybe we should inject people with disinfectants as a kind of cleaning of the body... and then hit the body with UV light strong enough to penetrate the skin?

I do believe that profoundly moronic statement in front of the world... which he belabored for over a minute with full confidence... was in fact his coup de grace.

Forget about, “grab them by the pussy,” this was on a whole other level of stupid and dangerous, at a moment in history when such stupidity was least tolerable by the planet as a whole, and most indelible.

And he’s not done being that level of stupid, either.

This crisis is faaar from over, thanks to his total failure to lead... a fact which is no secret to anybody by this point... and he’s got six looong months to go between now and the election.

Six long months in which Sars-COV2 is NOT going away.

Six long months in which the destroyed economy is NOT getting any better.

Six long months in which to keep floundering, and flapping his gums with ever more ludicrous gems like... inject the body with disinfectants.

Joe Biden may be barely lucid for two hours a day if you inject him full of steroids first thing in the morning... but at this point, even the most butt hurt Bernie supporter (and I am one) will be voting for Biden in November.. even if we have to wear a hazmat suit to the polls because the second wave of Covid19 is fully underway.

Trump... already impeached last year... now utterly unable to get caronavirus out of the news cycle ever again, even for a day... unable to get people to forget about it... because it’s upended their lives for years to come...

...unable to lean on a booming economy... and also unable to shake loose from the blame for, what is shaping up to be Depression II (forcing the history books to rename the one in the 30s as Depression I, going forward) will not have a goddam leg to stand on for reelection... even if his opponent were to be a paper bag with googly eyes taped to it.

So, the question is... was this just a coincidence in an election year? Was it Yaweh? Or was it the time force, making a last ditch offensive to stop Trump from becoming a dictator?

Well... if it was the latter... then it could only be warranted, if they knew for damn certain, that the death toll... globally... not just in America... in worldlines where Trump does seize total power... is always in the high millions.

I’m not saying that’s true.

I’m saying that for a deliberate pandemic to be staged... killing a couple to three million, as this one will likely do... it would have to be a last resort, and only to save, say... ten to twenty million over the same period of time.

Could any President, even one as idiotic and narcissistic as Trump, kill ten to twenty million people around the globe in a second term? It sounds ridiculous. But... we were living in pretty ridiculous times even before this pandemic, and are certainly now, in extremely ridiculous times. So... maybe? Why not?

Double digit millions of deaths globally is just a few nuclear launches. We’ve all known that since the 1950s.

And you have to admit... if there were ever a world leader dumb enough to actually start a nuclear war with China, Russia, India, etc... it would be Trump. He’s that stupid, and he’s that stubborn.

Even if he had to live out his last ten or twenty years in an underground bunker, he’d probably do it to settle some score or other... if he had nobody around to stop him, and no working democracy to stay his hand.

But... and I know this entry is dragging on by this point... we can’t bring up nuclear war without talking about the aliens.

According to this model, that’s the only thing they really care about, when it comes to Earthly affairs. They’ve been closely monitoring us since the end of WWII, because we figured out nuclear fission bombs.

Life? Check in every million years.

Fire? Check in every thousand years.

Electricity? Check in every hundred.

Fission bombs? Keep an outpost nearby and troll their air forces and orbital space stations.

Weirdly, two days ago, it made headlines that the Pentagon had suddenly certified some old fighter plane footage of unidentified flying objects, trolling the air force pilots, was in fact real and not some hoax.

This was footage like they declassified back in 2015 or so... but they felt now was the time to come out and say... yes, this is real. We stand by this footage of little tick-tack objects locked onto by fighter plane scanners... outmaneuvering and outrunning them, despite all we know about the laws of physics, and despite the fact that one pilot on the radio is like, “There’s a whole fleet of them!”

Why did the Pentagon remind us of that stuff now... and stand by it’s legitimacy?

The motive would seem unclear.

But... Kim Jong-Un... dictatorial leader of North Korea, also happens to have gone missing since last week. He missed a big celebration of his grandfather god, Kim Ill-sung, and has not turned up since.

The most credible speculation, coming out of China and Japan is that he’s dead.

According to these sources, he is either dead, or brain dead in a vegetative state... but he’s probably dead.

So, from the perspective of nuclear war... and who on planet Earth is the most dangerous global player with nukes... the only one actually blowing up nukes on testing sites in the last thirty years... and the one most likely to trigger a full global nuclear exchange...

...Well, that would be the same human in charge of that one hunk of land on the Korean Peninsula, that, as viewed from orbit, by night, is extremely dark and devoid of electric lights, even while all the land around it is shining very brightly.

In other words, Kim Jong-Un, would stick out as a sore thumb to aliens, obsessed with preventing nuclear war.

And... he’s dead now.

...In this election year that the other loose cannon to worry about... in America... is also suddenly in very deep political trouble, due to an unexpected global pandemic which is killing a couple million... but not ten or twenty million overnight, with centuries, to millenniums of radioactive repercussions to stunt the progress of human kind.

But if the time traveler side of this is right, then we HAVE had such nuclear exchanges in other worldlines, here in the early 21st century... so in those worldlines, the aliens failed to intervene.

You have to go back over a year, I think... in this blog... to find the last time I speculated about the AI from time travelers, and the AI from 20-teen tech intermingling on the dark web with AI from alien tech.

And back then, I wasn’t sure what role the alien AI bots were really playing.

And I haven’t had anything new to say about that since then.

But now, on the eve of May 2020... there’s a case to be made that they just might’ve been quietly paying attention... and decided, in an extremely rare act of intervention in Earthly affairs... to take out Kim Jong-Un.

It doesn’t mean the aliens are behind the pandemic... which would not be their MO... but maybe the pandemic forced their hand, given the intel they had about how destabilizing it was to the world order... and yes, intel from our local time bots about how things went in other worldlines here on the ground with the same group of players running the world states.

Things to think about.

I’m far from stating anything definitively tonight. I’m just a guy with a model. And I’ve got some pretty insane world events to try and plug into that model... from the pandemic, to Trumps shitty response to it after two months, to the disappearance of Kim Jong-Un, to the Pentagon trying to low key tell us aliens are real.

We’ll see how shit plays out through spring and summer.

Until then, I am once again... going to bed.

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therealgirlsguidetoadulting-blog · 6 years

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Depression...let’s be entirely transparent.

Let’s start this off with a disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and I have also never formally been diagnosed with depression or anxiety, but I know enough about myself and I have self-diagnosed myself with these conditions. I am fortunate enough to have a very supportive family and there have been multiple times when I thought that therapy and/or medication to help me level out was something that I desired, but it comes in waves, and there are times when I just don’t feel as if medication or therapy would work. I also got to a point in my life when I grew comfortable in my sadness, and when it felt as if I could just continue to get by and be fine, but I learned that there is more to life than just surviving.

Depression is something I have struggled with for the last nine years or so in my life, and stems from a variety of different experiences. I was bullied for the majority of my childhood in school, which then continued from elementary into high school. I was a conscientious student, always excelling in the classroom, and quick to volunteer to help the teacher or other students. I was a goody-two-shoes, and as a child, I enjoyed nothing more than feeling validated for my intelligence. It’s something that I still find immense pride in as an adult. I made myself an easy target because coupled with my righteous attitude, I was also extremely sensitive, allowing for other students to pick on me endlessly. I also made the mistake of always having crushes on the most popular boys, full of no substance and only bullshit. I’ve openly made mistakes when it comes to love and even my friendships, and I pay the price for it also.

Turning 21 this year scared the shit out of me. This is a milestone year and here I was at college, feeling super anticlimactic. Almost all of my friends graduated last year, and during that spring semester, I studied abroad in London, and I have missed both my American and international friends from my time there. I have celebrated the last four birthdays at college, because my birthday is during September, and is the beginning of school starting. I knew starting my senior year, that it was going to be difficult, but I had hoped that coming off the high of being abroad and growing up a little, that I was going to have an easier adjustment.

I am alone, a lot of time. All exaggerating aside, I spend a lot of time by myself, which I enjoy, but it can also be bad for me. It feels too late now to start making a whole new bunch of friends, and while I have acquaintances, I can’t create a whole new friend group or even reciprocate my social life when I was in London. My course load is insane right now and practically every person I know continues to ask me about my honors thesis or what my plans are for after graduation. And that gets exhausting after a while. Couple my workload with little to no sleep, terrible food availability and eating habits, and it equates to my overall somber mood.

Depression is not something that is foreign to me. It is not something unknown, but rather like an annoying old friend that keeps pulling me back in. I turned 21 and I realized that it feels like my life has repeated itself this year. I feel just like my 12 year old self, on the cusp of maturity, dealing with too many emotions and drowning in the intellectualization of my feelings. When I was in seventh grade, my life shifted dramatically, and since then, it feels as if I have been trying to claw my way back to before that time. During this time, I was getting bullied in school by this guy I had a crush on, and all of his friends, and in the midst of getting harassed, my grandmother died. My entire life was altered by this, not only because I was very close to her, but because I closeted my guilt and the feelings I was having. I didn’t know how to talk to my father, who had just lost his mother, or anyone else about it. I bottled my feelings and I poured my emotions into writing, which became my only solace. I used fiction to help articulate my feelings, and it has become a great comfort to me.

The loss of my grandmother has impacted me significantly and has also shaped the way I view the other relationships I have with my family members. Unfortunately, I also lost my mom’s mother this year, and while it wasn’t my first brush with familial death, it took me right back to when I was 12 and had no idea what was going on. My maternal grandmother died when I was studying in London, and one of my first thoughts was ‘how am I going to get home?’ And my mother assured me I didn’t have to return to the states, but I couldn’t be the only one who wasn’t there, so it took a week off from school to be with my family. That week was incredibly hard, and I remember that even before the funeral, I decided I was only going to allow myself to be upset for that day, and that afterwards, I was going to be the perfect eldest daughter and take care of as much as I could to alleviate pressure on my mother. I took care of everything that week, and when it was time to return to England, my mother came with me.

For about a month I think I was on autopilot. My mom came to London with me, because she was actually scheduled to stay with me and visit for a week of my spring break. It was kind of opportune timing, but I had no idea how draining it was going to be to essentially babysit her for a week, without the buffer of my sister or father. Ultimately, we did have a great week and I am glad that I got to spend time with her. The next two weeks were harder on me than I thought, because I had two back to back tours, and they were somewhat socially draining. I tried desperately to fit in with the groups and friends I made during those times, but I think the close proximity and intensity of the tours started to wear on me. By the time I left Greece at the end of spring break, I had stitches in my knee from a terrible hiking accident, and I was a little worse for wear.

The parallels between my 21st and 12th years became glaringly obvious to me, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was regressing instead of maturing. I was doing well in school academically, but socially I was coming up short. And I was also sad at the prospect of feeling like I had no one to share these large moments of graduating with; it was supposed to be a time of celebration, but instead I was alone, spending many nights in a row staying up to complete homework. And it’s still hard—and I still have moments of weakness when I cry and get frustrated and feel lonely and overworked. There’s no golden answer, but I think one of the most important things I learned was that I need to acknowledge how I am feeling, and allow myself to feel. Monitoring and policing my emotions just results in outbursts later on, and if I just have a few moments of either anxiety or frustration, I feel better off for it. I also have a stronger relationship with my parents, and they have had to learn that sometimes, I don’t always need a solution to whatever I am telling them, but rather I just need them to listen and support me.

Some Lessons I have learned about Depression and other Thoughts

1. It sucks, it does. And it is incredibly isolating. But there is always help, and while I never formally got assistance, I did learn other ways to manage my feelings.

2. I utilized the resource I had, which was my best friend, Vicki. She has talked me out of my downward spirals more than once, and she has been the most selfless person towards me. I have always said, that without her, I think I would have just become a shell of a person and would have isolated myself away from others.

3. I had to make the decision to live. I never wanted to self-harm or kill myself, because I fear pain and I couldn’t stomach the fact that I would essentially be breaking my parents’ hearts. What I mean, is that I had to decide that I wanted to do more than just get by. And I have had to reevaluate what my life means, and realize that I am worthy of more than just terrible things happening, or boys breaking my heart or friends leaving.

4. Find what you enjoy in life, and make a conscious effort to be present. I love reading, writing, listening to music and watching crappy television. I like these things because they are all various ways in which I can escape the day to day toils of life and just relax or throw myself into a different headspace.

5. It all takes time. There will be good and bad days. It is a process. I am still learning and I have moments of weakness when it feels as if it is all crashing down on me. But it isn’t and there is just so much life to live. Now that I have seen a little bit of the world, I know that there are endless possibilities, and I wanna explore what is out there.

#depression chat

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stuckinsaratoga-blog · 7 years

Text

Everything hurts.

Staring at the screen hurts.

Thinking of something to write hurts.

Thinking of doing anything at all brings me pain and exhaustion.

I suppose this feeling is what they call “depression”. Two years ago, when I was a junior in college, I had a similar spell of negative thoughts and prolonged sadness. At the time I was reluctant to call it depression. I only started to label the state I was in as depression many months after I started feeling “better”.

The thing is, I don’t know if the depression ever really went away. I just remember feeling more joy later on, and in general, I wasn’t constantly sad or low as I was during that period.

Now, i’ve just graduated from university, and i’m having a similar downward spiral that i’ve recently become more aware of. I’ve denied it for too long, and now I hope that I may accept and break out of what has become a kind of sickness.

I’ve just moved back home after four very intense years in New York city. As an undergraduate in NYU, I perhaps experienced it all. Love, heartbreak, drugs, alcohol, sex, spirituality, religious fervor, religious disenchantment, political passion, political dispassion, political withdrawal, intellectualism, anti-intellectualism, the will to live, the will to die, hate, envy, confidence, insecurity, and more.

There were people I hated, people I loved very much, people who I didn’t care about, people whose approval I sought hard for, people who disappointed me, surprised me, disgusted me, and so on.

In New York, there was always somebody I had to be. I came to accept that on a daily basis, I was required to inhabit multiple personalities, each as unique as real humans and how they differ from one another. There was constantly somebody who I needed to become. There were selves waiting to be born, and many selves who were waiting to die.

There were apartments to be moved into, roommates to be found, assignments to be submitted, jobs to be applied to, resumes to be made and remade, vacations to be planned and booked, organizations to be joined, and food to be scavenged and cooked.

All of this was squeezed into four extremely action-packed years in what felt like the world’s epicenter, where people would kill themselves, and often do, for more time, and less suffering. New Yorkers suffer a lot, in so many large and tiny ways.

I’ve seen a lot of kindness in the past few years. I’ve seen people shedding skins and becoming mightier, fiercer, funnier, better.

I’ve seen people make decisions beyond what they are capable of. I’ve seen people cry their lungs out, and laugh fully, richly. I’ve seen people fall into deep silences, and find their noisiest voices as well.

Now, here I am, in the Quiet.

My home is in Saratoga, one of the most expensive zip codes in the US. Here, my room is spacious and sunny. My living arrangement is unlike anything I could have dreamt of, if I had stayed on in New York with the city’s impossible housing prices.

I hear only the sound of my fingers typing against my laptop as I write, plus the occasional whish of a car whizzing through the nearby highway.

I hear the light, calming music that my mother plays in our luxurious home’s multi-room sound system. Suddenly, I hear the intrusive buzzing of a fly as it slams itself against my window, battling the glass that it will never break through.

Sometimes, it becomes so silent here that I forget I have the ability to hear. It’s only when my father’s heavy footsteps shatter the silence that I remember that sound exists, and I cringe. I half-hope that he doesn’t barge through my door, and half-pray that he does enter, that he asks me how i’m doing and if i’m ok, to which i’ll not respond to at first, because I would have forgotten my voice and how to use it.

Here in Saratoga, my voice often quietly sinks into the ocean of silence, until I have to jump start it several times before using it again, like a broken car engine.

For so long, I have run away from this place. Since I was 14 years old, I have been finding intelligent, extravagant methods to escape this town. My first plan was a year abroad at a boarding school in India, where I planned to spend a year discovering my roots.

I returned from that year with a brand new take on friendship, and an understanding of the depths that human relationships could be taken. This discovery unfortunately clashed with disastrous re-encounters with my childhood friends upon my return. The kids here had moved on, tried alcohol, gotten their licenses, and still not stomached my freakish desire to study in India, the country made of trash and starving children.

I had left California for the first time, as a proud, attractive, outspoken and artistic 13 year old. A year later, I returned the Loser, who had put on weight, had a strange long-distance relationship with a FOB sitting in Chennai, and who had developed off-putting, “Indian boarding school” tendencies (for our so-called “straight” society) like laughing at fat kids.

I finished high school as quickly as I could, until I had two months to graduate, and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I took off to India the day after a traumatizing prom experience, never looking back, even as my high school graduation ceremony carried on without me.

This time, I was moving to Mumbai. I had dreams of becoming a Bollywood heroine, like the many beautiful women I had seen in the pirated DVD’s that my mum would pick up at the Indian grocery store. Despite my failing grades in my final year of high school, I had been admitted into New York University, which now loomed on the horizon. The summer before college began, I set up a new life in India, with my past in California and my future in New York both lurking around my present like ghost stories.

My father’s earnings from his executive position at an IT firm nourished and pampered me as I frolicked amongst Mumbai’s high society and attended acting school. Instead of becoming a Bollywood star, I ended up falling deeply, religiously in love with a boy in my drama program; a former athlete who spoke crass, broken English, who would forever transform my mind, body, and, among other things, my accent.

Indeed, I returned to America many epic months later, only to land directly in New York city. I arrived with a frown, in a full salwar-kameez, carrying a suitcase filled strictly with Indian clothes, and speaking a thickly accented, Haryanvi’s English.

And thus kickstarted four impossible years of unimaginable twists and turns. I reluctantly initiated my academic career at NYU as media studies student, only to vacillate between sociology, physics, film, and finally, education. Somehow after switching departments numerous times and taking a semester off to study in a Gurukulum in North India, I managed to graduate in time, alongside some of the best friends, and best people, I had met in my twenty one years.

I had entered college with rage and irritation for having left my lover behind in India. I was determined to graduate in three short years to return to him. Meanwhile, he was meandering through the seething inner-workings of Mumbai’s film industry, slowly being swallowed into an oblivion that I would never be able to locate or understand.

I kept my head down, my English dilapidated, and my face in a perpetual scowl as I glided through the initial years of college. And to my surprise, I found myself transcending this new, grumpy persona, when I finally ended the relationship that had come to define me.

Today, years later, I am seated in the room of my childhood, immersed in the same suburban silence that devoured me during my youth, thrusting me towards all corners of the planet.

All the faces and hearts that had enraptured me these past few years are not here. Instead, I see the occasional appearance of my mother and father, who are living the busy, fulfilling lives that they formed in reaction to my siblings’ and my own departure from home years ago.

Everyday, I wake up long after the sun has risen, upset that sleepiness has abandoned me, and that I can no longer conquer my reality with the merciless curtain of slumber. I reluctantly start my day with an angry walk in my expensive neighborhood, the July sun beating down on me. Thoughts swarm and compete in my head like starving fish in a tiny bowl.

After my walk, I re-enter my home, trying to avoid any encounter with my parents, whose happy and loving “good mornings” break my soul and turn me more bitter. I begin a sweaty, wrathful yoga routine in my backyard. Despite my deep breathing and mighty warrior poses, I am left with a racing heart and throbbing head.

I try hard to avoid staring too long at my mother and father, whose faces reveal small, terrifying signs of age.

I’ve left a life of to-do lists and experimental living, only to re-enter the place of my childhood. Lately I’ve been watching with new eyes, noticing how people arrive in this pretty neighborhood, smiling tiredly at their new chance for peace and happiness. They fret their little familial concerns that appear cute and almost village-like to me, after my years spent in Mumbai and New York City, empires of unspeakable yearning.

I was suddenly in the thick of a kind of anxiety that was previously foreign to me. The sneaky expectations hiding in the crevices of my high-income household burst from their dormancy, and I was now considering the abandonment of my radicalism of the past four years. I imagined a kind of massive succumbing that I had never known before. I was even making calculations as to “the kind of lifestyle” that I needed to be able to afford. It was in the midst of all of this, that I received the news that my former lover, from that miraculous summer in Mumbai, had drowned in a river during the last week of June.

It felt like the icing on the cake.

Suddenly it was as though my seventeen year old beating heart had been resurrected, bursting through the ice and concrete I had buried it underneath years ago, in a desperate act of self preservation.

I was taken back to the magical days of Mumbai when the monsoon was at its peak, and I just didn’t care. I was seventeen and witnessing the kind of love that they speak about in history textbooks and religious scripture.

Suddenly everything became unfurled and undone. For the first time I met Death. He shook my hand and speared through my soul as he took away somebody who I had once wedded in my mind, somebody whose blood still felt as though it runs through my own veins.

And I began to see death in everything. I would experience tiny, nightmarish flashes during the day. I’d imagine finding my parents dead. My sister, dead. My brother, dead. I even began to prepare for my own death, arranging everything from my belongings to my electronic files, and planning my will. I wanted to eliminate the need for my loved one’s to take part in any cruel guessing game after my death, should something happen to me anytime soon.

The question of my future wasn’t quelled with any great bout of clarity or renewed perspective, nor was I doused with a heavy blanket of gratitude. Instead, my anxiety was paired with mind-numbing confusion as I battled with the bizarre, even obscene feelings that I was experiencing after his death. I’d swing from one extreme to another every other moment.

This silence, maybe I don’t hate it. I’m looking at the sun as its setting, and its creating a beutiful silloete out of everything before me.

I wonder what to do with it, what to do with this silence. Something in me screams to be in India once again. To be living in Mumbai where I was once wanted and loved. To traverse this country and all the water that insulate it. To arrive in

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katherinemacbride · 7 years

Text

(a body is time and experiences that it exists through is a body is some cells is air between us)

He asked me to speak up and reminded me that he was partially deaf. The surface of the skin on my face heated as quickly and shamefully as if I was pissing on it right there in front of him. It remained hot, piss become flame. I looked at the powerpoint on the computer in front of me and down at my notes and struggled to consider how to begin, again. The shame familiar, repetitive, ugly. Standing in my room when I was little wrestling with how to be after being told off for showing off. Dressing like a boy to erase my body, make it invisible. Heat in my face in university rooms as I attempted to come to terms with sounding out that voice in front of others, asking questions that I didn’t know how to formulate. I wanted to know, to speak, to know by speaking. Speaking now about photography and the movements of the children using the camera, their patterns and routines, and my attempts at grouping some of their deeply felt actions; efforts towards grasping some of the elusive movements of transition that they made through recording.

Speaking more loudly required the use of force. I forced the air through my larynx; no amount of deep breathing or knowledge of how to use my diaphragm helps in these situations. I forced its way through, over, out. My muscles forcing a journey of a different volume and intensity; the voice no longer sounding to me like mine, its rhythm altered. I wanted hard to be able to be loud, for him to feel comfortable listening. He would be one of the people in this room most likely to go with me on a meander around the material, and I loved his deep ethical positioning that often led him into depression. I could see him listening hard. She cut in and brought the conversation to consent. This was also necessary, but the possibility of wondering what we actually do when we use a camera with others seemed far away as we negotiated consent, and she told us that the safest choice was to do nothing.

(your soft cunt)

If you loved me, and were unable to say so very often, apart from when distance brought the words to your lips, and I lived somewhere else, and you sought to assert your separateness, and this upset me, but I understood it later on reflection thanks to the wiseness of my friends, and we enjoyed our time together, then maybe it would be okay this ageing, changing roles? If you were sick, and couldn’t talk about it, because that might mean living in the world of language and naming and the loss of power and autonomy that this might bring you, and I could accept that this might mean an increase in my own anxiety, then perhaps we could continue to communicate at several removes from what it is we are trying to actually say?

We were talking about things becoming manifest in words being enough — that there might not be an option to talk much about them, but an acknowledgement that what can’t be talked about does exist can stand in as an important support.

It is hard when you don’t make things manifest so often, or maybe you do but you talk in clues, elisions, omissions and sideways glances at the subject. I spoke directly and added to the list, ‘find better ways of communicating with my parents.’ This directness didn’t reach you, it reached us, and we talked about knowing that we could talk to people being enough for now.

(under your soft belly)

Sitting round the long table waiting to introduce myself. Anxiety. Going over and over again what I think I will say. Planning how to be concise, how to sound like I know what I’m talking about, how to not sound stupid, maybe even how to sound smart. There is a range of experiences and practices and reasons for being there unfolding and I feel okay amongst them — junior but not hopelessly out of place. One of the artists is deaf and has an interpreter there who records speech by typing on a device that connects to a screen that the woman can read from. This is making me stressed. I fear more than sounding stupid or inarticulate, that I will not be loud enough and will have to feel the shame of repeating my words. Making A Pause. Disrupting The Flow. Causing someone else the discomfort of having to ask me to repeat myself. Being an irritant and seeming unthoughtful or uncaring towards difference. W is a beautiful delightful flow of words drawing people out of themselves. His long body movements meet his language perfectly, as he moves gracefully from theory of many shades and hues, to markets, to sex, to forms of social groupings, to loving dirty laughing. There is nothing to fear here, apart from not shining and glinting back in response to his long fingers of attention. My turn, I am nervous. I cannot situate myself in the informal.

Right now I’m barn-dooring. I swing into the dynamic move but my grip can’t hold and I fall backwards off the wall. W’s intervention can’t soften the landing.

I never told W how much that glistening week meant, although I wanted to. I couldn’t find the words. He’s dead now and the closest I came was dreaming it and making photos of his published writings.

(in soft, worn trousers)

There was that time I wanted to make a work that said WALK AWAY on one piece and FUCK ME on the other, hung on opposing walls. R said that was sexy and she liked that it was angry too. I was like, ‘It’s not even meant to be angry, it’s meant to be about not building something up by fighting against it. It’s about A explaining Deleuze to me in terms of her job, explaining her job to me in terms of Deleuze and wondering if it was best not to fight the institution any more.’ But I like that R read it like that because it’s obvious really that I was angry and thinking about sex.

Walking away is angry, or if it is not then that is just a bit too mindful for me. Like, fuck’s sake RD Laing what the fuck where you thinking?

(your tight and solid look)

‘I feel caught between passions and loves for many ideas and am regularly mind-blown by the ways in which closeness to possible ways of understanding the world can bring about calmness and a feeling of happiness, or disorientation and feelings of disorder. I am bouncing between dialectical traditions and the potential alchemies of thinking about things as gaseous and becoming. Love and work.’

Love and work. We never did do that reading group.

(clothes worn surely, comfortably, protectively)

we talk in circles we talk in ellipses we talk elliptically

making sparks

we talk in ovals we talk in meniscuses we talk in spirals

webs and spiders

born in intersubjectivity sticky sweaty skins touching air bending, compressing

hitting bones, ears, flesh

breathing oxygen into blood heart rates attuning chests vibrating

sparks

(your melted and creaking voice)

The changing number of Xs which might denote the changing relations from coupledom to exes. Four Xs for a message about masturbation. Two Xs as neutral, immediately decreasing to one on separation.

(swooping down on its giggles)

we flip, you and I in and out of deficit, care in and out of open, closed in and out of seeing, being screened in and out of noise, silence in and out of overflow, retention in and out of repression, suppression, and occupation via intensity  the impossibility of equal states

(synchronising with darting bodily movements of soft touch that meet others)

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