A Journal
I'm actually gonna try to update this daily
11/12/2020
Ok I wrote last entry after midnight. I think I'm getting down a rhythm for my good nights. I feel aprehensive about talking about it though- Something about writing it down makes it lose its magic. I'll report back when I have something I wanna write.
Vibes are: pretty good.
11/12/2020
Had another good night. Not gonna question it. Not quite as cloud 9 as yesterday, but I'm still enjoying myself. Even started doing some basic exercises too, so that's nice.
Vibes are: hoping it lasts.
11/11/2020
Had a good night tonight. Busy day, got my stuff done. Chilled out. Kinda forgot myself for a bit, in a good way.
Vibes are: nice.
11/10/2020
In the interest of writing stuff that isn't about my constantly failing mental health, I think I should start transcribing my dream journal. I've had it for a few years now and it's about half full of mostly weird gibberish. I started it in hopes of finding some kind of pattern in my dreams but mostly it's just a lot of mental crossed wires topped with complete fantasy. Like last night I went from an anxeity dream about struggling in school to a bittersweet one about hanging out with friends I haven't been in contact with for a long time, to being really worried about two birds living outside my childhood home not being able to catch crickets. The first two follow the usual "stuff I'm worried/think about" trend and the last is one of those just dream logic mashups. Still, it'd be nice to be able to type them because writing in an actual journal while still lying down is hard, but it's the only place I can really try and rack my brain to remember the details of my dreams. They're like buckets full of differently sized balls, it might look like a few big points but if you rummage around you'll find a bunch of smaller ones hiding between the bigger ones.
Vibes are: It's the morning so I'm mostly tired. Not looking forward to today or tomorrow.
11/9/2020
I feel like I was back in August again mentally. At some point I think I just need to give myself a goddamn break. Can't keep thinking about how shitty stuff is all the time. Getting into imaginary arguments that I end up losing anyway. Getting pissed off for said reason. Irritable all the time. Making moody journals. It's not sustainable, or at the very least, it's not fun.
I'm letting myself forget stuff. I won't list them here because to be honest I'm feeling kinda okay doing it. I'm no longer wrapped up in my blanket 24/7. I'm getting better at nailing down those floating clouds of anxiety. Still working on actually having fun playing games instead of using them to just pass time. Maybe I'll get there. I just have to let myself know that problems will get solved. There are solutions. They will be found. I will find them. But for now, just let me live.
Vibes are: improved.
11/8/2020
Well, that's over. Cool.
Talked to my mom about her voting choices today, told her that the reason I wanted to talk less was because I didn't feel comfortable talking with someone who could make a decision like that. She broke down because she was afraid her family would be torn apart by politicians. It wasn't that, but I couldn't explain how someone who was actually paying attention to who they voted for could only have made that choice if they were okay with risking other peoples' lives. Saying that now feels a bit hypocritical, it's not like any democratic candidate wasn't also calling drone strikes and overseeing death in the streets, but it's at a different scale. Lesser evils.
Long story short I want to believe she's just ignorant. I really do. I have to, because otherwise the option is to just renounce her as my mom, and I'm not ready to do that. I can't keep cutting people off. But trying to explain, source, and debate people into not voting for a straight up racist is more energy than I can muster most days, even if the person is my mom. And this is a process that probably won't be just a couple gentle conversations. It might take weeks, months, maybe years before she comes around. Some part of me just wants to take the fact that she insists she's a good person at face value. Check the box and move on with my life. Another part of me feels like that would be a betrayal of what I stand for. A third part says that second part is bullshitting and just wants to do this for the drama. Honestly I can't tell which one is right. Sometimes I feel like I really do do stuff just for the sake of the drama, the ability to feel something, but I know if I keep giving into that I'll end up tearing apart every relationship I've got left.
I konw I can't abide by a t**mp supporter. That's the beginning and end of that. The question is how do I deal with my parents being supporters? If I choose to believe they're good people with unmelted brains then ideally some solid evidence will swing them. I just need said evidence, and to present it in a way that's good. After all, she said that if she knew that **u*p was actually killing folks, she'd switch her vote in a heartbeat. Now the question is who do I focus my argument on? I thought LGBT people, but while I'm surrounded by them daily my mom's exposure is two incredibly rich white twinks she's only seen on TV. Might play to my favor, actually. The race angle is difficult, but if done well might work. The problem is that most of the actual deaths that can be traced are traced back to domestic terrorists, not the guy himself. Egging murderers on and actually murdering someone are techincally different, but if done on a large enough scale and done repeatedly, is it really any different?
Third part of my brain chimed in again while reading this back. It feels scummy using actual tragedies as some kind of football playbook, but that's kind of the point. Tossing sad story after sad story is just going to get her running her whatabout-isms again. I dunno. I feel like I need help. Or distance. Maybe both.
Vibes are: trying.
11/5/2020
AYY WE'VE FOUND THE SECRET SECOND PATH OF GRIEF WHERE YOU GO FROM ANGER STRAIGHT TO MANIC HILARITY
Seriously this whole thing is so fucking wild. For posterity: Georgia hasn't been flipped, Nevada is still Nevada, Putin is resigning and Supernatural is somehow still relevant?? They sent their first gay character directly to super hell??? What the fuck. What the actual fuck is going on. I feel insane. Continuing my investingation into immingration to New Zealand or Canada or something.
Vibes are: inscrutable.
11/2/2020
HHhmhmngfkldgfd Hey Lets Talk About Headphones ok so my headphone cable is super long so I can cook while I've got them plugged into my computer which means I can listen and kinda turn to watch any stream I've got going. The speakers on my computer aren't great and something about the noise having a direction makes it feel less encompassing, so I use my headphones. The reason for this is that while I've got my headphones on I can have a constant stream of media coming into my head which keeps my brain calm and prevents it from self destricting at any given moment. The only problem comes when I have to pee, but I'm thinking about buying an extender so I can wear them even in the fucking bathroom because my terrible, awful brain won't give me but a moment's peace to brush my fucking teeth. Also it would be really funny.
Vibes are: Somewhere between screaming and screaming
11/1/2020
Okay first off I was up until like 4 am last night because my fuckin neighbors had what I could only assume was like 20 people crammed so tightly into an apartment they had to keep the door open, leaving the rest of the people on this floor privy to all the yelling going on in there. So that was cool.
I'm at that stage where I'm too scared to get up from my computer to do anything except get more food. Using the bathroom is something I have to psych myself up for because I'm so anxious that if I don't have a constant stream of media to numb the feeling I'll start to spiral. It's like walking outside into a cold gust of wind in your PJs. The blanket helps some but I'm not having a great time.
Registration starts tomorrow, and I'm actually kinda struggling to find enough classes that I want to take. I'm mostly just excited for my research project finally getting going. I also just realized I forgot to get the proposal typed up properly so guess I'm gonna do that after I finish this entry. Welp. Not a lot else to put here. Just anxious. Feeling a crushing sensation. Not great.
Vibes are: not great.
10/31/2020
Techncially it's after midnight but I wanna write a halloween entry so I'm gonna.
Had a call with my mom today, reminding me again that she's a dumbass supporter and I'm losing what shreds of respect I had gained for her reading that book about white fragility a few weeks ago. I don't get what kind of bizarro toilet bowl spiral logic she gets into to think that voting that way will make anything better. I mean she lived through the fucking Bush administration and I guess kept her head so thorougly in the sand that it never really registered that the shitheads don't actually care about human life or their actual voters, but as long as they keep waving those stars and bars they'll keep getting that supporter money. Fuckin A.
In other news, still feeling filled with a sense of loneliness when I'm in a call with my partner and co. There's a distance there that I have no idea how to address and that's definitely going to become a problem at some point. Dunno when.
On the other hand, had a nice night with an old friend yesterday. We watched It Follows, which is a movie that still eludes me but we both got to gush about the soundtrack so that's nice. I feel bad about talking over him a couple times, though. I don't want to make it a habit because a hand twice burned doesn't reach a third or whatever, but on the other hand my brain operates at a tempo that's both too slow and too fast for conversations with other people so I start ideas at weird times and don't realize its a weird time until it's too late. So that's cool.
Vibes for this week have been mostly okay, I've kept myself busy with school stuff so that's been keeping me above water mostly. It's when I realize that a) this won't last forever and b) my social life is largely on life support at this point that things start to look kinda grim. I just wish I knew how to act around people. Sometimes I feel like I've got it and other times I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. The fun part is that if I try to talk to this to someone they'll just nod and say "that's life" and somehow that just makes everything worse. "That's just the way things are." "It is what it is." What bullshit defeatism. Fuck that. What kind of life can you live if you look at hard problems and all you do is shrug and say "oh well"? Just roll over whenever you're told? Cause you're tired? I'm fucking tired and I'm still out here, railing my complaints into the infinite void of the web but at least it's SOMETHING. I refuse to accept "that's life" as an end. To say "that's life" is to refuse to admit either one of two facts: the problem is hard and you cannot solve it, or the problem is hard because solving it would create change. Those results are never easy to deal with but at least they're results. Shrugging and deciding to stop hopping fences into grassier fields for fear of the brown grass you can see being somehow worse than giving up the verdant hills you cannot is a life not worth living in my eyes. I'll burn bridges and scrape knees to get there but I'll fucking get there. Or at least I'll try.
Vibes are: mad, sad.
10/26/2020
Writing this at 11 am. The stress has boiled away and left a nice thick film of regular old anxiety, not doing great today.
Vibes are: bad
Okay update from 45 minutes later: Actually ate something, feeling a lot better. If anyone actually reads this, please look after yourselves. Things get a lot less shitty once you're fed and clean.
10/25/2020
Ouugghgjfgdkfgd busy week, lots of stress cause of a group project with one person on the other side of the world and another who just feels perpetually on a different page. Also I've got to get my capstone project set up and I have zero professors associated with the project, AND I still haven't sat down and gone through the classes available next semester to get registered. On top of that, been feeling pretty unbalanced mood wide and compoundly a little lonely. I wrote about this before, how communicating helps but also communicating is hard. I don't feel like myself when I'm like this and when I'm like that I can't talk like a normal person.
Vibes are: mgmkgfklhdklg
10/20/2020
Before midnight. Staying ooooon target with school stuff, so I'm pretty happy with that.
Met up with an old friend a couple nights ago. It was kinda weird, I always wanted to get to know him better back when we played ss13 a lot, but he moved to different servers and I just stopped playing altogether, and now that we've met back up it's just been a little awk. He also hangs out in a lot of high channer brainrot areas which is usually a turnoff for me, and does make me a bit wary. That said, he's never been shown to be a bad guy, and he's got a lot of friends who are probably on the spectrum so I don't think he's a shitter, just got some vocabulary that sets my alarms off. Maybe I just need less sensitive alarms, but my vibes haven't been completely wrong yet.
Vibes are: doing alright.
10/19/2020
After midnight tonight. Mostly just been trucking along these past couple days. Finally collected enough candies to get a cool pair of wings in a certain ROBLOX game. Dunno how much I wanna talk about that here but yeah I still play ROBLOX. Getting some work done. Got t-minus 2 weeks to find two faculty members that are willing to read my dumb research, as well as a dumb research proposal, so that'll be fun. Maybe it's time to bug Walker, if he counts.
Otherwise, not much to talk about. Pretty standard.
Vibes are: doing good.
10/16/2020
I guess it's mental health week cause I got a call from my sister tonight. She failed a big test and she spiraled cause of it. This wasn't the first time I've gotten one of these calls, actually it happens with enough reguarity I've kinda become the defacto fallback when my mom doesn't do a very good job at talking her down from an anxiety spike. My mom isn't very good at that at all, really. She's ruthlessly focused on academic success, and my sister is someone who studied a ton to get to where she was and is trying to get into medical school. The combination doesn't mix very well on nights like these. I think I'm just more nurturing but honestly I think it's just my mom doesn't quite see the whole picture. I called her after I got off the phone with my sister to tell her to please, for the love of god, don't tell someone who's having an anxiety attack that "it's not all going to be okay". Like, holy shit.
Anyway I gave a like hour long lecture on how to properly comfort someone, which is fucking wild for a child to be giving that to their own mother but here we are. The good news is she was super responsive to that, I just think she didn't spend a lot of time thinking about how to make someone feel better and more about her own convictions about my sister's failure to study properly and how that's leading to her downfall. (I mean, she probably does need to study more, but you don't say that to someone in a spiral. You tell them it's all gonna be okay, because that's what they need to hear.)
I don't want this to sound like me patting my own back, and honestly I'm not sure that it'll work out even if my mom follows my advice, but I like to think we made progress. I just hope I get fewer calls from my sister. That means she's doing better, and also I don't need to lecture my mom anymore. Wins all around.
Vibes are: okay.
10/15/2020
Had a three hour convo with my mom about my mental health. I've come around with her since she's actually reading some race theory, she just finished White Fragility, which is honestly way more than I ever expected from her. It was a weird feeling realizing that she was a person who listened to me and actually acted on something I was passionate about? Like, god.
Our talk was long, but nice. I talked about my mental health, and tried out actually saying what I was thinking instead of playing my cards close to the chest. We actually got through to some interesting stuff. I'm not really sure how I feel after it. Definitely won't be getting any work done tonight, though.
As for the long break, I was honestly just having a pretty good week. Super busy, but wasn't crashing or anything. Tonight though the vibes kinda took a dip. That's about all I got.
Vibes are: hard to gauge.
10/10/2020
It's after midnight, yes I'm writing two entries in one day.
Ok first: God Damn It I had a meeting with somebody today and I completely fucking forgot and this is 100% going to fuck with her perception of me later on God Damn It. I just hope we can rechedule and I actually keep the fucking date. Fuck.
In other news I got that library card. No idea what I'll do with it but I've got it now. Saw Return of the Night of the Living Dead. Long ass title but very good movie, really bummed that out of all the things that the zombie genre had to take from this movie it had to be the brains and not the intelligent zombies or the reason why they eat brains in the first place. They were a very fun villain and I wish they'd be explored more, but at the same time seeing just the tip of the iceberg before it gets (literally) nuked is also very fun.
Vibes are: mostly mad at myself.
10/9/2020
Alright so this is where I've been the past few days 
Well not all the past few days, but yeah it's been busy. It's a nice busy though, helps clear out the vacuum inside my head and give me something to hold onto. Vibes have legimiately been pretty good. Got a text from my mom yesterday asking about a prescription notification, she didn't ask if it was antidepressants and I didn't say, but she didn't press into why I had it so I left it at that. I think she's legimiately worried about her part in my mental health, and I think she definitely has a place in it, but I don't think it's what she thinks it is and I have no idea what it actually is so for now I've decided to leave it.
I finished Fisth of the North Star. It was good. Completey off the hinges, bizarre, and didn't have the scene where he throws an arrow back at a guy, but still pretty cool regardless. I think more shows should have power up scenes like they did in that movie. Weird movements, dumb sound effects, background fades to a picture of a nebula, it's prime. You just don't get that these days.
Other than that, I'm more or less free today, so I'm gonna drive down and get my library card. Movie night tonight is Return of the Living Dead, so that'll be cool. I've been trying to watch all the classics of horror and sci-fi so this will be a must-see.
I've noticed that as my status improves I've become more social, putting myself out more. I used to write it up to just stress but I think being depressed really does harm my ability to remain social, but remaining social is what keeps me from getting really depressed. Kind of a catch 22 (another movie I gotta watch). BUT, if I get the fuck over myself and actually talk about myself to people, then maybe it'll be easier to talk when I'm feeling shitty. I've spent too long filtering out the weird, lopsided parts of myself, trying to make myself seem cool or well-balanced or whatever. Nobody's cool. Nobody's well-balanced, really. We're all fucked up. I'm gonna be fucked up and that's okay.
Vibes are: good.
10/5/2020
Aaaafter midnight. Skipped Saturday cause I was drunk.
Watched the first half of Fist of the North Star, gotta watch the second half sooner or later. Gotta finish a presentation I haven't even started on before that, and that's due Tuesday. If you don't hear from me then assume I'm dead.
I recently read some stuff surrounding The Web We Lost, a very long article that I didn't have the time to read cause it's like an hour long lecture or a blog post on a site that's been taken down and squatted by some other nutjob. But from what I could read about it, it goes over in depth the kinds of spaces like we've got here on Neocities. More specifically, blogs and places like blogs that support more dicussion, thinking, and don't subscribe to the stream-like subscription model that most modern social media sites do. Personally, I liked the notion a lot. Neocities has given me something that no other major site could give me, and something that they would never be able to give me without seriously restructuring their sites from the ground up, and that is a place that's mine. These days most social media sites don't have any way to really customize and express yourself. Instead you get an account, barely even a page. Something more akin to the form they hand you at the DMV than a proper creative space. They claim to be a place to express yourself and follow creators but really all it is is an engagement machine.
Create infinite content to create infinite interactions to create infinite engagement to create infinite money. Repeat until the sun explodes. That's the recipe, and it makes me sick. There's no room there, there's no place for people to have thoughtful conversation. There's no space for one single person to even really express themselves in the longform, it's all chopped up, condensed, pre-packaged, sorted via algorithm and either stifled or shared to a specific set of people in a way that's meant to generate engagement, not conversation. Likes and shares are the currency, and places like Neocities are broke in their eyes.
Yet somehow every time I come back to this site I feel enriched. I don't even talk to anyone here, yet I feel more heard than anywhere else, and it's because I can make these long-ass posts and actually explain myself. It's beautiful. If I try to make a tweet chain longer than 7 posts Twitter's webapp will start to chug because it's literally not designed for that, but I can hammer away for hours on here without any issue.
And the best part of it is that even if this page seems like a twitter feed, a series of compartmentalized posts in reverse chronological order, it's because I made it that way. /I/ decided that. I could have done an entirely different format. You could be clicking on little book icons for each entry. It could be a wheel. It could be a fucking random link that takes you to a random day and you've just gotta deal.
That's my choice. It's my space. No algorithm dictates this. I make zero money from this, and I never will. This is for me. Hell, it could be just for me. I could make the most fucking obtuse, obscure, inhospitable site designed just to make it impossible to navigate like a normal person. Something you'd have to peel apart nail by nail to extract any meaning from. But I CAN DO THAT. That's what Neocities gives. The promise that this is your space. No rules. No obligations. No algorithm or analytics or engagements or impressions or even a fucking like button. You create your dream world, you create your nightmare. It's yours.
And that's beautiful.
Vibes are: righteous.
10/3/2020
I'm writing this after midnight so techincally I didn't miss a day. Not a lot to report today either, though. Did some work, still a fair amount to do. Played SS13 for a while. Kuu's movie night was tonight, we saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time which was a /deeply disturbing/ movie for a lot of reasons, the least of all being that I always had a kind of intrinsic fear of those backwoods houses for the kind of
Ok while I was writing this a group of students has gathered in the alley near my window and apparently one of them is having their birthday today because I hear them all sing a really loose rendition of the happy birthday song followed by "CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG". I really wanted to lean out my window and yell "lets fucking goooo" or something but I backed down. Kinda bummed about it now, I always had a quiet appreciation of "encounters" like that, but my social apprehension keeps me from them a lot. ANYWAY-
weird shit you'd find in them, even when they aren't inhabited by a cannibal family. There's things out in the backwoods of Texas that aren't meant to be found by anyone except the sky and the people that built them. I think it's better that it stays that way.
I did recently start watching cocktail mixing videos. Not that I'd get into them myself, I have neither the tolerance nor the income to maintain a decent home bar and I'm not about to start drinking shitty alcohol so I can play bartender. The nice thing is that it reminded me of my old guilty pleasure of watching these japanese bartenders make drinks, or japanese chefs make really nice food. I love cooking videos but the extra ASMR element is great, and there's something special added by the fact that it's all japanese. I'm not really a weeaboo but I do appreciate the aesthetic, and the fact that I don't speak a word of japanese somehow adds to it. It's just comfy knowing I wouldn't have to speak, and that's ok. I'm just here for the snow.
Vibes are: pretty good.
10/1/2020
Not a lot to comment on the past couple days. Been pretty alright, finally did the dishes. Ate a shit ton of postickers. Played L4D2 with the buds. Played SS13 for a while. Didn't do a whole lot of schoolwork. Got two big assignments I need to finish by next week, and resubmit a different one. Registered for a library card. Actually brushed my teeth for 2 minutes. This might be kind of embarrasing to say but hey this is what this blog is for: I've been really bad about brushing my teeth. I lose the rhythm because I kinda hate doing it, especially in the evening. But I gotta. Gonna try and shake up the routine a bit so it feels less like a routine.
Vibes are: pretty alright.
9/29/2020
Okay I missed yesterday. That was the last session I had with my therapist. Honestly not sure if that was a step forwards or backwards, but at least I don't have to keep paying for the sessions. I just did not feel like I was making any progress with her, and that our personalities and ways of going about mental health were incompatible. I didn't really feel heard and I had no idea how to express myself in a way that could be heard. On top of that, it felt like she wasn't giving me any new solutions that I didn't already have or was already thinking about beyond medication. Disappointing.
So I have no idea what to do now. I'm not literally screaming in my head all the time so that's cool, and I've given myself permission to start just shutting out sources of mental distress like my family and the World At Large, but something tells me these are gonna be temporary solutions at best. Still no progress on the self-improvement front. I'm kinda sticking to my well-tread areas of the internet tonight cause there's a big political debate and that's just a reminder that our country has already gone to hell and I should probably start looking for escape routes. Seattle, then Canada. Or maybe the EU. If I could get my hands on a Euro passport I'd be golden. Oh well. Still need to finish my grad degree regardless. We'll see what's still standing in a year's time.
Vibes are: Not great.
9/27/2020
Sober mod here. Thought about leaving this entry as just "i'm not here for a long time or a good time" but that would be too twitter. I spent most of today playing ss13, but actually spent some time doing my reading in my stats textbook and this is the first time I've ever felt like I was getting some kind of comprehension from that book. It's new, but also means I have to read /really fucking slowly/ if I want to get any kind of understanding. My scheduling for these reading sessions may need some adjustment.
Vibes are: okay.
9/26/2020
I'm drunk so tongiht is gonna be short and I will probably not rant about capitalism this time around. Just bummed that once i start working full time I'm not gonna have time to make a whole ass really fuckingg good breakfast and that's shitty. Like dude, a good ass breakfast is the CORNERSTONE of a good day. If you don't have breakfast that whips ass you're bascially fucked for the rest of the day. And I dont really plan on having kids or marrying someone who is gonna do the whole like, house-person thing cause thats kinda fucked and I dont wanna have a marriange that equates to a free servant, so I gotta figure out brekkie for myself. But for reall. Eggs. Cheese. Meaty stuff. Mushrooms maybe? I gotta experiment more with microwave omlettes. They are the future. Okay I'm done now go to bed.
9/25/2020
Ok yeah I missed a day but that was cause yesterday I was just cruising so I didn't really feel the need to vent. Today was honestly not that bad either. I did spend literally 6 hours playing SS13 but I think the quasi social interaction is actually helping a lot.
Otherwise, I missed that thesis defense I was really looking forwards to watching (because I woke up late and then, played ss13 for 6 hours, so uh) so that kinda bummed me out. I'm also not 100% sure what my group for my class expects me to do, because I blanked on it and nobody's talking in the GC so I'm just gonna assume everything's ok and just keeeep going. Gotta do a bunch of reading this weekend, like I do every weekend. The only problem is I'm running low on tea supplies so I might have to struggle by with water and, the uh, gallon of ice tea I have in the fridge. Truly harrowing times.
Re: my mental health. Honestly? Pretty ok. I cut down on the amount of times I've been calling my mom. Those calls just drain me for whatever reason so now they're once during the week and once right before Saxton Hell Saturday so I have a guaranteed mood rebound. I also want to figure out a way to programatically graph my mood over the course of a month using these daily entries, even if it's just a date and a reading. Thinking about doing the "vibes are X" thing I had on the homepage but, per entry. Or just color the date text. For now I'll put this here:
Vibes: appropriate.
9/23/2020
Medication update: Still haven't taken em. Still banking on these problems being temporary, even if the news cycles seem to say otherwise. I kinda have to believe that because otherwise this little house of cards of a mental state I've got is going to implode. I'm going to see my therapist on Monday and part of me kinda dreads it. I still feel like I'm misunderstood in there, and I have a hard time visualizing progress with her. I guess we'll see.
On another note, I've always had a really strong emotional response to music. It's why I don't listen to it a whole lot. I get the same way that I get when I walk out of a movie theatre after being absolutely engrossed in a story for 2 hours. I just get kinda lost in my head. That was back when I had a mostly centered mental state, though. Now I'm pretty solidly leaning off to the not so good side, so I've taken to dusting off a few old albums and seeing how it goes. Honestly it feels weirdly corrective? Not sure what to draw from this, but at least now I can listen through some really good albums without going cross-eyed.
9/22/2020
Medication update: I haven't taken it.
One, it's called sertraline, not citalopram. I misheard it the first time, typed it into google, and managed to get a completely different drug that happens to /also/ be an antidepressant. Two, I don't think I'm going to take it. I guess I spooked myself initially by checking the side effects but I've slept on it and honestly I don't think I've really come to medication just yet. To be 100% honest I don't really feel like my therapist is trying enough. It feels like her first step is medication, and then stuff after that, but for me I feel the opposite. I've been through way worse in terms of mental state, and the trigger for this few months is more complex, but I don't think permanent. I've done more with less and I intend to keep up that streak.
So let's talk about this journal. I've mostly been using it as a vent space and it'll probably still serve that purpose but also I wanna start journaling daily. I talked previously about filter bias and I hope talking each day will counteract that, and also help me keep track of my thoughts so each week when I go see my therapist I'll have a week's worth of notes to look back on that I don't have to scramble mentally for. I worry that the past month and a half of me doing that has painted the wrong picture in her head and I want to change that. I'm just not sure how. But I do know that whatever I end up doing, I don't want it to be under medication. It's not that I'm wanting to stay 'sharp' or 'pure', because I sure as hell am neither of those things on the best days, but I like the way I think right now because if nothing else it's predictable. It's the same pair of shoes I've been wearing for a very long time. I've gotten used to the twisting halls and deep pitfalls.
Now, on the other hand, from what I've learned SSRIs dont change the way you think much, they just help you get more of that sweet sweet serotonin. So maybe my worries are unfounded. But I can't deny that wave of anxiety that hit me when I realized what I was about to start. Depression isn't fucking rabies, so something else must have been bothering me about that. I still managed to get down there and pick up the prescription (the bottle's burning a hole in my bathroom drawer), but I couldn't bring myself to take one. It's a leap I'm not ready for.
9/21/2020
Well I have a prescription for citalopram, which is an SSRI meant to treat anxiety and depression. I start 25 mg today.
9/16/2020
I'm not sure if this therapist is working out. Coming up on six weeks and I haven't heard anything that I didn't already know or suspsect. I kinda figured my anxiety was back, or that I may have been depressed. I had some idea of how to approach my future career. I had some idea of how to deal with my racist as fuck family. What I didn't have an idea of was how I was supposed to not feel like I was going fucking insane. To avoid the crushing, clining feeling of fear and dread that can follow me for hours. How to open the fuck up and maybe make some real connections with people instead of being YET AGAIN the funny kinda-friend. Maybe start acting like a real person instead of what I think a real person acts like. But I haven't gotten any of those kinds of answers. Instead it's "learn to accept" or "think about how you react" or "separate one thing from the other". The only concrete thing she's given me is a maybe on some anti-depressants. They might help but honestly I'm not sure if I want to stay with her long enough to get a scrip. I could probably talk to a different doctor, or hell, just go out on my own like I was before and try and hash this out myself. I just can't shake the feeling that behind the camera she's just checking boxes. That I'm not really being understood. That I'm not communicating my actual problems because some part of me thinks they're fucking stupid and I should just listen to the nice doctor and go with what she says because someone who's known me for a grand total of less than a day and spent even less of that actually thinking up solutions instead of just letting me talk myself in circles is a better source of wisdom than the person living inside my head for way too fucking long.
Hell, I might have a mood disorder but I cannot see any help for it coming from these sessions. I could probably go for another year before we end up hitting something actually useful.
It's kinda funny to think, but I think just venting onto this site has been better therapy than an actual therapist has been, and I'm not sure how well that thought sits with me.
9/10/2020
Hey yeah so remember therapy? Anyway third session in and the doc is thinking I might have a mood disorder.
8/25/2020
Being consumed by an inescapable feeling of fear and tension is cool :)
I think I do want to nuke this site. I feel like my best way forwards is taking all of this, swallowing it, and deciding to move on despite all of it. Working through everything will take years, and I have a few months before I need to get my shit together. I have to move forward.
8/21/2020
Well, I just got off the phone with my mom after a, I do not exaggerate, 5 hour phone call together. We talked politics for what I think was the first time in our relationship. She started off by saying she'd voted for Trump (she called them the Rs), and asking if I was going to vote for "the Ds" again. I think this was prompted because I had talked about how I hoped they weren't watching Fox News a few weeks ago. We had always kinda danced around the topic of politics growing up, mostly because it never actually came up. I always knew my parents were center-right Republicans, but I guess I had blocked that fact out once 2016 rolled around. Now the next election cycle comes by and I'm reminded that they still believe he's the best choice. (Speaking of which, if you're reading this and support Trump, fuck off.) So I did my best to talk about various issues and it became kinda obvious that she'd bought into a lot of the hype, because I could still come around to very left conclusions with her and she'd agree with them, but I guess she'd never really applied them to her thinking in politics, and I'm not sure if she ever will.
The conversation went from talking about capitalism, to the idea of good citizenry and what that meant, and eventually landed on the recent BLM protests. I'd been a supporter for quite a while, but just never talked about it. (And to be honest, I was pretty light on the support. Never went to a protest (I live in a pretty republican Texas suburb), but signed petitions, emailed senators, and donated to protest funds.) Mentioning how I supported the protests set off a very long conversation about the virtues of nonviolent protest and some pearl clutching over people getting beat up, and eventually got around to talking about the nature of racism in America. I'll cut to the chase, my mom is afraid of black people and thinks the statistics about them being more violent/prone to crime constitutes proof that it's deserved.
We'd talk about the issue a lot, and it was complicated by the fact that she's Chinese and has encountered her own fair share of racism in life, but I could never get through to her that the BLM movement wasn't here to disregard her own experiences. She just asked why I couldn't protest something else like the limp response to COVID (I have) or starving children in Africa or some other noble(-er) cause. I couldn't justify supporting BLM beyond saying that it was a present issue with a lot of public support, but my dear mom always liked her anecdotal evidence more than anything else. If she hadn't heard it from a friend, or seen it herself, then it wasn't true. I couldn't argue with that. We chased eachother around in circles for a couple more hours before we kind of unofficially agreed to disagree, and at that point it was nearly midnight so she went to bed.
The thing that sticks with me is that, well it's a few things actually.
I had tried talking about how the American dream was kind of bogus, but it was hard to argue that with someone who, by all definitions, was a pretty good example of the thing. She'd come here when she was young, with not a lot of money, (and a degree from a top university in Beijing, but we'll put that aside) and built a pretty good life for her and, consequently, me.
In spite of all our disagreements, it never really came to shouting. It was honestly one of the most civil discussions about this topic that I'd ever had. The thing that scared me though, was that she warned me not to talk about this with my stepdad or my extended step-family (the very same I've been avoiding visiting the past couple years cause they are pretty fucking racist). I'll be honest, I was kinda looking forwards to just laying all this out in front of them this Christmas, getting shouted down, and kicked out for being a communist or whatever, but if I'm honest I don't really have the guts for it. Also one of my uncles carries a gun for his job and probably has it with him when he visits and I'm NOT about to chance that. Ideally I'll just come up with a series of bullshit excuses each year and hope that they stop expecting me to come. My sister *adores* the cousins on that side of the family, though, so that's going to be an issue becuase she'll know my excuses are bullshit. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
In any case, my mom's still a republican, I'm still a diet communist and BLM supporter, and nothing really changed. Maybe I am one of those spineless liberals I hear people complain about. Who knows. Ideally the US will collapse in about 20 years and I won't have to worry about this anymore.
8/19/2020
I want to be capable of feeling warmth again. I try to be polite, accomodating, cause that's what I was raised to be, but I haven't felt real, true warmth in a very long time. Too long. I feel jaded and cold and colorless. I want to blame it on the world around me, and holy shit is it to blame, but I think part of that process of getting back to where I was is going to involve me prying myself open with my own two hands. The world isn't going to get better, and I can't wait on it to do so. I need to get better.
8/16/2020
Well it's been a week so I should probably post something. My sister decided to visit our extended family up north so I've been home alone all week. Which actually is a boon to me, I prefer being alone and not having her to cause problems and also not having to visit my varying-degrees-of-racist relatives means I had a pretty nice week all things considered. I head back to school tomorrow, and classes start next week, so I'll have another nice quiet week to myself. That one might not be too quiet, however. There's some uncertainty with paying my tuition and I've finally gotten around to scheduling an appointment with a therapist, so it'll be a week of several changes. In any case it'll be interesting, and a proper breath of fresh air after this summer. Hopefully I'll be able to leave this behind and finally start to heal. Hopefully.
8/8/2020
I'm drunk, let's talk about capitalism.
I kind of hate the notion of "worthlessness". The whole notion of "worth" in terms of money, as in actual dollars, I think is backwards. Money, in my mind, ought to be like this: a farmer puts in a certain amount of effort and expertise to produce a certain amount of flour. A potter does the same, to produce a certain amount of pottery. In a barter system, the potter gives the pottery to the farmer, and receives flour. But maybe the farmer doesn't need pottery. So the potter gives the pottery to a separate person, who gives the potter Effort Units, that represent the effort the potter put in. The potter then gives the Effort Units to the farmer, who knows how much effort went into making a certain amount of flour, and gives them that much flour. The farmer is then free to exchange that Effort for whatever he likes. That's fair. That's what should be going on. The problem is that money does not represent effort. It represents how much you stack the cards for yourself. It's how billionaires can barely lift a finger while the warehouse workers break their backs and still make more money in a day than they'll see in a lifetime. It's bullshit.
And besides, even if we do put in effort into something, does it actually help? What money do you earn for sharing a warm moment with a loved one, or building a community garden to share with your neighbors? There's no money in that. Some can argue that the acceptance and growth of relationships you get from these actions is payment enough, because it benefits the people around you. Well I'd like to turn that on its head and say, well why do we need to get paid for our jobs? Do they not benefit the people around us? Shouldn't the knowledge that we're benefiting our neighbors and friends be enough? Or is it that our jobs are fundamentally meaningless and exist just to make rich people we'll never meet even richer?
Here's my big thought: if your business can't be proven to be a net benefit for the community and people that are involved with it, it shouldn't exist. Period.
8/6/2020
Sometimes I wonder if I'm legimiately going insane. It's hard to trust my own thoughts sometimes, and I can get a certain way that I'll convince myself that the "me" I think I am and the "me" I actually am are completely different. That I'm just some house of cards made out of constructed personalities on top of constructed personalities surrounding some core that I'll never know and might never want to know. I probably definitely need to see someone.
My internship ends tomorrow. I was just getting used to being there, too. But it's time to move on from this summer. Tie my loose ends, maybe enjoy a couple weeks, then it's off to school again for one last go-around. Expect a lengthy entry tomorrow, or don't. Honestly not sure how I'm gonna feel once this is all properly over. Relieved, hopefully. Afraid, probably.
8/3/2020
I think part of me likes being miserable. Makes me feel more real.
7/28/2020
Sometimes I think about burning this site. Wipe everything, shut down the account, never look back. Part of me worries that it's turning into a kind of stress whirlpool, just a massive monolith of everything that's left me hurt or confused or frustrated. It's better that it does get destroyed. Maybe I'll be able to move on from this summer, and everything that came with it.
7/23/2020
Another work entry but I had a breakthrough and I don't want this to be a "sad complains about their family" site.
I used to imagine my thought processes, the different headspaces I occupy and ways of thinking, as a wheel of colored glass panes. It would rotate, and color the world I saw through it differently. Sometimes I'd rotate it manually, to try and change my perspective on something. As for the colors themselves, I haven't really bothered to try and catalogue them. They're very fluid, and I worry giving them names will constrain them to certain definitions that are probably not going to be true. But that's besides the point. This glass wheel was how I thought my mind worked, but I'm starting to realize there might also be another: colored mirrors. When you're in varying states of emotional turmoil and headspaces throughout the days for two and a half months you start to notice patterns. Feelings of ambition, futility, confidence, contentment, grief, and frustration, that not only color the way I saw the world, but also how I was interpreting my own train of thought. Sometimes I feel like an entirely different person in one mirror than another, but I imagine that's just from changing the way I think, about the way I think.
It's a little word-vomit, and I'm both not entirey sure it's accurate, or even that the distinctions are quite so similar. (Maybe not just different colors, but shapes, lenses, hell, there might be another person in here after all.) But it's something. I'm not sure what to do with the information, but it's something.
7/20/2020
I'm writing this at work so I'll be quick, but I have to get these thoughts down on paper. Page. Whatever.
I had what is about as close to as a productive argument as you can get with my sister yesterday. It was over the thermostat. She likes it cold, I like it warm. It's our parents' house, so it's their last say, but they live on the other side of the country so generally small stuff is left up to us two to figure out. Problems with that are: I have no idea how to bring stuff up to my sister, she doesn't know how to de-escelate a fight, and she reacts very poorly to "attacks" but not to "just bringing stuff up", and I have no idea where that line is. Previous track record is questions about her behavior tend to fall into the prior category, but when you're housemates, most problems relate to behavior. I digress. I won't go through a play-by-play because that usually causes more problems than it's worth, but it started off with a "quit touching the thermostat" message from her, and ended in laying out what I said earlier, minus the "you don't know how to turn a conflict into a conversation, and rely on others to bridge that gap" bit. All in all honestly, way better than these kinds of thing normally go. But now I'm sitting here at work, caked in anxiety, unable to really relax and get down to business because I keep thinking about yesterday.
Sometimes it's just so easy to believe she's some unreformable monster, a behavioral anomaly, and something to be pushed away and shunned at all costs. But then there's these moments where I really, actually get through to her, and we have real, actual compromise (even if it's just the thermostat) and I see this girl who's just sore and can't, or won't, heal from what was a not-so-great childhood. We both had the same experiences growing up together, I guess we just grew from it in entirely different ways. Maybe grew isn't the right word, I think she, and probably me, have a long way to go. And part of me hates relating to her because... I don't know. Maybe it's some truth I'm not willing to admit to myself right now, or maybe it's because I'm right and she's just irredeemable. Work in progress, I guess. All I can really say is I'm not spending another summer with her in close quarters. People who have to have full blown fights over the temperature probably aren't ideal pairs for roommates.
Also, that absolutely wasn't quick, but neither was my boss ;)
7/16/2020
Getting hit with that general feeling of burnout again. I'm working an internship and today the coordinator asked me if I was going to stick with my current field or go back to my old one, or even move somewhere else. I honestly can't tell if the misery from this summer has been because of work, because of home, of because of something in between, and I have no idea if going into my new field was even a good idea. I hope that finishing my degree will give me the expertise and clarity I need to feel comfortable in the workplace, but that's not going to be my whole life. I'm too anti-capitalist for that. But what am I going to do otherwise? Join a club? Start a hobby? Find some greater purpose in life? Burn my worldly possessions and walk east, into the rising sun?
7/11/2020
I worry sometimes that there's a filter bias in this journal. The whole site is called "i'm not sad" and that wasn't just some tongue-in-cheek joke. Really, I'm not. I get sad sometimes. I get mad sometimes. I get frustrated sometimes. It all just pours out here. The brighter moments of excitement or happiness or love don't get shown here. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, because on the other hand I never really had a place to express my frustration and fear and anger before. It still happened, of course, I just kept it bottled up. Let it subside inside me. It's worked for a while. I dunno if putting it out here helps get those feelings outside of me and onto this page, or if typing them out gives them more power. Like typing them out gives them some sort of body, a permanent state. Maybe I'll burn this site once in a while. Purge it all. It'll still be left somewhere in the Neocities archives somewhere, I'm sure. Nothing ever goes away on the internet. But it'll be gone from me. Fully excised. Then maybe I can move on.
7/7/2020
Can you feel burnt out with life? Cause that's the only way I can really desribe my current mental state.
7/5/2020
So as it turns out, feeling your stomach drop whenever you hear the garage door open or the front door shut isn't normal. And neither is tensing up when you hear someone put their hand on the doorknob of your room. So that's cool, and something that definitely didn't take me almost a decade to realize. I really need to a) get a therapist and b) get out of this fucking house.
The longer this summer goes on the more it feels like surviving is the only objective. It is all temporary.
7/3/2020
Y'know I've wanted to go see a therapist so I can grab them by the shoulders and beg them to tell me what my fucking problem is, but the more I think about it the more it seems like I've got like 3 or 4 smaller problems that all overlap to make one big federal fucking issue. And it kind of blows. Because they all need addressing individually, but first I have to get them untangled from eachother, and that's a process that's probably gonna take a year or three. Anyway I'm thinking about giving it all up and becoming one of those people that walks around saying "remember, we will all be dust" and not wearing underwear.
Okay, the underwear thing was a joke but honestly I've been taking a lot of solace in reminding myself that literally everything is temporary. At some point it's all gonna end. Eventually.
7/1/2020
God my mood just dives up and down constantly. This is great. I'm doing great.
6/28/2020
No big account of my life today. Honestly not a lot of anything today. Failed to get work done on a project, as per the usual. My school is shaking up classes in a few days so that'll be fun. I'm mostly just writing this to put some distance between me and the 26th. It's not a bad place, but it's uncomfortable, and the more steps I can count between me and then, the better I'll feel about it. Probably.
6/26/2020
Ok actual vent time, hella TMI.
So my sister and I have never gotten along. Pretty much ever. I joke that the only thing we share is a last name but it's not a joke because it's completely true. We are 100% different people. We don't share interests, personalities, religions, or value systems. And on top of that we've both got our fair share of psychological scarring from childhood experiences with divorce, parental verbal abuse, the public school system, etc. Not gonna get into that here. Fact is we're mostly adults now, and we're rebuilding the relationships of our family step by step.
So flash back a few years. My sister and mom are nearly outright hostile to eachother. She's been drifting away from all of us over the last few years, and ends up taking up qevaxvat, jrrq, bar vafgnapr bs pbxr. The only reason I know any of that is because back then she pretty much only had me in the family to vent to. So I took on all those dirty secrets.
Anyway, a couple more years pass. I leave for college. My relationship with my mom has improved, and we're actually pretty close now. I like that. My sister and mom have cooled a bit mostly because she went to college too and could get some space. I get stuck in the middle of their fights a lot because I'm the only one either of them can talk to without exploding into argument (barring our stepdad, but my sister views him as our mom's right arm, which he honestly kinda is). I don't like that. On one hand, I do want them to get better, on the other hand holy shit I'm not a therapist and I'm absolutely not emotionally equipped to deal with that. But whatever. This story has a happy ending anyway. My mom and sister have been talking on the regular, and aren't outright hostile. They're actually building a relationship. Distance really does help heal. I've been chatting with my mom, and stepping in where I need to.
I picked up a habit of playing armchair psychologist, trying to peel apart my sister's mind, which my mom and I both fully believed was borderline delusional, but honestly I don't think it helped at all. My sister and I just drifted apart as I tried to distance myself.
Anyway, the reason I'm making this post is because of today. My sister and I have been sharing the house since I got back from college. I've been stonewalling her this whole time because I'm convinced she's a monster, and frankly she terrifies me. (The reason for this is not hard to explain: witnessing someone throw every bit of verbal ammunition they have at your mom in real time can turn your opinion of anyone sour.) Things degrade quickly. I get paranoid about being watched. She makes regular snide comments about my lifestyle, down to where I put my shoes. Today she makes a comment on the sound of me breathing, (That's not a joke.) and I snap. A huge fight ensues. The receipts going back years are pulled. At some point she finally cracks and admits the way she's been behaving has been behaving is because of the aforementioned scarring. She didn't have a healthy way of expressing it, so she does what she did, and says she's scared of me because I'm outwardly cold and occasionally flat out hostile. (That part was true.) So, we make amends. I won't go into detail. Point is we're not living in a cold war anymore. But with that comes a few other issues.
Just cause we don't hate eachother doesn't make us friends. We still have zero things in common. More importantly, she still believes our extended family is worth spending time around, but I gave up on that particular group of racist suburbians years back. She's also a devout christian, and thinks I'm going to hell because I'm not. We butt heads on political issues a fair bit too, and I'm lowkey worried she's a tr*mp supporter. Not the best soil from which to let a sibling-ship blossom. And honestly? I still really don't care about hearing her exploits into qehtf, frk, or whatever. It's exhausting to hear about because it's more secrets to keep. I hate secrets. (Says the mod with the secret vent journal website.) But seriously. I hate keeping secrets from my mom. She's half the reason I'm not literally suicidal anymore. And if it comes down to estranging my already kinda estranged sister, or my actual mom? I know which one I'm choosing. I just hope I can get out of this fucking state before the house of cards comes down.
Oh, and you're not reading gibberish. It's my way of rationalizing typing out those secrets without actually putting them out. Don't worry about the text. It's not anything serious, I just need to get this off my chest.
Anyway, tune in next time for another episode of sad's entire fucking life story. Goodbye.
6/23/2020
Self doubt is cool.
I don't mean that sarcastically, at least not entirely. I think a little is good. Being too sure of yourself leads to you making mistakes that a more observant self might have avoided. It also encourages you to be more self critical, or at least self aware. Makes you think. I think I'm a pretty introspective person. Thinking about why I think the way I think helps me figure out what /actually/ bothers me. It's definitely not a replacement for therapy, and definitely, absolutely can land you in a doubt spiral. That's something I need to work on. Getting stuck in spiralling thoughts is... Not great. But sometimes getting thrown down deep into the parts of yourself where that doubt lives helps you shine lights onto what causes that doubt in the first place. It's not something I'd recommend you try to seek out on purpose, but when the mood strikes sometimes a controlled fall is better than a straight plummet.
I'm not sure what the point I'm trying to make here is. Just know this: There is a world inside you. There's things in there that aren't you, but make up who you are. Doubts, anxieties, fears, instincts. When you can, go into yourself, and find you. Not the things that look like you, or the things that surround you, but you. If you're lucky, you're not in there too deep, but if you are, just keep looking. You'll find you eventually. What you do there is up to you.
6/20/2020
Figure I ought to put something here to break the silence. Not a lot to report, really. Work on the hellsite continues. I've got a second project going for an org back at school that's been moving absolutely glacially. I'm worried about what they think of me back up there. I'm close with the professor who runs the org and I don't wanna fuck up the relationship, but work is slow. It'll get done in the end, I'll make sure of that.
Beyond that, I've been trying to get myself to exercise more, but between working full time and the general miasma of stress that is my home, I haven't had much motivation to do so. Still, between COVID fucking with peoples' hearts and my own heart not being the best I should probably try for something. This could be my own self-sabotage habit keeping me from starting but that's a topic for another day. Won't be drinking tonight cause I'm out of booze so that's a plus.
6/15/2020
Actually had a nice day today. My parter and I are building a hell site. It's going to be a monument to nightmare HTML, and maybe some other stuff too. My only concern is he doesn't know about this site, and there's a lot of stuff here I'm not sure if I want him- or anyone I know -to see. Maybe I should just have a regular personal journal like normal people, but having this out in the internet gives a kind of closure to it. Or maybe I'm just hoping it all comes crumbling down. Who fucking knows.
6/13/2020
I'll be honest, kinda feel like complete ass right now. Drinking is way overrated and every time I do it I question why I do.
6/12/2020
New day new entry. Not a lot to report. Getting used to a new job, which always sucks. I still kind of miss my old job as a grocery store cashier, but this one pays better. I just wish I didn't have to work in a fucking cube farm. Those places suck at your soul, and it doesn't help that it's filled with the most suburban white population I've run into since I stopped going to church.
I'd say pray for me but that might be counterproductive.
6/11/2020
I used to be a web developer.
You can tell by the state of this site that I wasn't very good at it, but it happened.
If it's any consolation, all the HTML for this site is hand written.