this year started really good. for once it felt like everything might come together. i was working, i was doing stuff with people, i was forming great habits.
yeahhhhhh, that didn't even last a month. i'm not gonna go into it, but essentially a sequence of events unfolded IRL that made me extremely scared of people and left me traumatized.
ever since then, all my good habits have broken, i haven't cleaned my room, and i've been eating and sleeping less. i feel silly calling it that but this is probably a form of self-harm, even though there's no visible component to it.
i've also become extremely unstable and irritable, as anyone close to me has probably noticed. i tried to more or less bottle it up until now but that was clearly unhealthy for me, and i've hurt people more with how i've acted than i would have if i handled this trauma head-on.
i'm sorry.
i felt really hopeful at the start of this year, about myself, about us, about the world. that hope was stolen from me.
without hope, i am nothing more than a husk of a person. for over half a year, i've been running on the fumes of hope left behind when the old me was ripped away from me. and now i'm out of that too.
i don't like talking about my emotions very much, because it forces me to confront why i felt the way i did, and it forces me to relive the pain i felt.
but i should have done it earlier. if i did, all of this hurt i caused could have been avoided.
the best time to face it was when it happened. the second best time is now. i don't know if there's still something to salvage. i don't know if anyone is going to forgive me. i don't know if there's a future for me.
therein lies my second major problem. i am horrified of being a burden, or inconveniencing anyone in any way. even if this is their job. i don't want to hurt anyone. and so i just sit there and do nothing, watching the pressure gauge build up until some tiny random unrelated thing pushes me over the edge and i melt down and say things i don't mean.
i need to change. i don't want to be like this. i want to go back to being the one that showed people their potential. i want to build bridges again instead of burning them down. i want to rember happy day again.
i don't know how. but i made a plan anyway. maybe you guys will have some suggestions as well.
(i am seeking professional help as well, but, at the end of the day, the burden of me falls on me, and so I need to figure out how to carry it.)
- staying with someone - if I'm scared of people, the solution to that is obviously a reminder that what happened to me was an extreme outlier and not anywhere near the norm. and so, staying with a trusted online friend for a night should help fix that fear.
- build strong habits - this was one of my sources of hope at the start of the year, I was brushing my teeth, shaving, reading, walking, writing. I could see and feel myself getting better every day. good habits helped both my self-esteem and consistency issues at once. they will help again.
- build things - ties in with number two, but consistently working on something, especially if actual people are using or enjoying that thing, and seeing their hopes, will help me a lot. I'll start by building a habit tracker.
- don't be afraid of being a burden - all of this boils down to me lying or hiding things to avoid hurting people or causing them to worry about me. that's obviously the wrong attitude (to a certain extent, obviously your friends aren't your therapist) and I should stop lying about how I feel at least, even if I don't elaborate beyond that.
- don't be afraid to say no - there were outs, when I was going through that situation IRL where I could have said "no" when I didn't want to do something, but peer pressure got to me, and I was too scared to refuse. saying "no" is good. even if it hurts people sometimes. just don't be an asshole about it.
i don't know if that's enough, but it's a start. and a start is all that's needed to bootstrap the healing process.
for the first time in a long time, even though everything hurts right now, I believe that I'll be okay in the end.
I just hope you can all forgive me someday.
I just wish I'd faced the music sooner so I wouldn't have to ask to be forgiven.
I'm sorry again to anyone I've hurt.
this song reflects my feelings pretty well: https://youtu.be/VPhLXeU25KA?si=aBBGoBh5H44NacLm (turn on subtitles)
love yourseves, -oofie