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2021: Picking Up the Pieces
4 years ago
General
The last year has been pretty rough on me. That's probably not particularly new for people to hear; this year and last year were hard on everyone. For me, however, most of the stress I experienced this year can be traced back to one specific event and the fallout from that. So this journal will be my attempt to try and sort out everything and get an understanding of how I got to where I am.
DISCLAIMER:
I'll try to avoid naming specific people in this journal, partially to respect the privacy of everyone involved and partially to avoid drama. For this same reason, I'll also be disabling comments in this journal. Another thing to keep in mind: there will probably be things mentioned here that won't reflect well on me either; I'm a human being, we all make mistakes, but what matters is that we learn from them and use that experience to better ourselves.
So, with all that said, let's start with some background:
1. BACKGROUND
As I've stated before, I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome when I was a child, as well as severe anxiety and depression when I was in college. However, interacting with my new therapist, as well as some self-reflection I've done, might have brought up some more stuff I wasn't entirely aware of either. See, when I was a child, my father was often away from home, meaning that the parent I often interacted with throughout my life was my mother, who I love very dearly but also tended to be very volatile when upset. This essentially meant that I went for most of my life without a prominent male role model. This led to me being drawn towards my older sibling, who would usually spend more time hanging out with their friends, with me either being left behind or feeling like a third wheel whenever I did get to come. Also, said older sibling was just as volatile as my mother when upset, so that didn't help matters either. This, coupled with my distant relationship with my father, may have led to me developing abandonment issues. These were further compounded when my older sibling came out as transgender and my coming out as gay while we were both in college, since now, not only was I once again without someone to associate with as a male role model, but now anyone I developed any kind of romantic attachment to would be someone my mind would try to convince itself needed to take on that role, whether there was potential for a healthy relationship with that person or not. This, along with the near-constant bullying I received in school growing up, from other students and even from my own immediate family (though in the latter case it was probably not intentional), not to mention the gaslighting I would experience from my classmates in my first semester of college, a few of my past jobs, and one other person I'll be discussing later, all culminated in me developing an inferiority complex, trust issues, and a psychological need to be a people pleaser and perfectionist, which might be the source of my anxiety, while my failure to meet the standards of perfection I would set for myself may have been one of the primary sources of my depression and self-loathing. According to my therapist, the overall cumulative weight of all of these things might have also led to me developing some form of PTSD. Now that we have all that out of the way...
2. THE PANDEMIC
Prior to the COVID pandemic of 2020, I had been working on being more courageous and putting myself out there more, attending more conventions, meeting new people and, in general, trying to be more social in the real world. With the lockdown that occurred at the start of the pandemic, that shut all of that down. For roughly the last two years, the only time I would leave the house would be to go to work, which only got more and more stressful with the new mandates put in place and the fear that someone would walk right through the mask requirements people needed to practice and get everyone in the store sick. On two different occasions in 2020 I, and several of my coworkers, were asked to not come into work because the volume of the workload had decreased that much due to the drop in customer traffic. On top of this, I wasn't sure how I would be able to interact with the services and practices I would normally have left the house to go to. Fortunately, my therapist and psychiatrist would start practicing Telemedicine, and my voice coach would start having lessons with all her students over Zoom, so the anxiety over those, while intense, was fairly short-lived. What was much more intense and long-lasting, however, were...
3. LOSS AND REJECTION
Over the course of 2020, several of my family members died from illnesses that were aggravated by either the pandemic, the lockdown, or both. Most of these I ended up growing numb to; I didn't interact with most of them anyway, so even though I won't ever see them again, I barely saw them at all to begin with, so this didn't really affect things that much. What did affect me much more was the death of a friend of mine whose art streams I used to watch. My feelings on his death are very complicated, most of which stemming from a sense of guilt I had which may tie back into that desire for a male role model in my life and my lack of understanding of said feelings, as well as a sense of jealousy I was developing towards this friend, as well as several other friends I had that had managed to find someone in their life that they could be happy with while I am still single and living with my parents. Unfortunately, me being me, I felt like I needed to vent my very limited understanding of my feelings towards this friend to people, which I realize now is not okay, but didn't realize before expositing an abridged version of said poor understanding of said feelings to a close friend of the friend who died in a fit of depression, frustration, and recklessly poor judgement. He...didn't take it well, telling me that I was being "heinous" and dealing in "psychodrama", and stating that he never wanted to speak to me or do business with me ever again. I don't feel comfortable talking about my feelings towards this particular person, or some of the other things they've done to me and some of my friends who used to be in my artist friend's circle. All I'll say is that I really feel like an idiot for letting myself lose control of my emotions and venting my feelings to someone who doesn't seem to be particularly empathetic. That said, the death of my friend and his friend's rejection have essentially been haunting me for roughly the last seven months now, in much the same way that this one particular statement a former boss made to me in a previous job about how my problems don't matter, my feelings aren't valid, and the negative consequences of my poor mental health was, in her eyes, "a joke". So...
4. THE FALLOUT
I think it was largely everything I just listed that was the main motivation behind me deciding that I'd like to return to college and, hopefully, become a therapist one day. I feel like, if I'd had better understanding of my mental health and better understanding of who to trust with what information I shared about myself, maybe the emotional impact of that particular event wouldn't have hit as painful as it was. It might have eventually led to the same conclusion, but at the very least the blow might have been softer. People have told me that I tend to apologize way too much, to the point that the word "sorry" has become essentially meaningless when coming out of my mouth. I think the reason I do this is an attempt to shed myself of responsibility for my actions and try to stop people from being upset at me by making the case that I didn't know better, which is honestly counter-productive since it shows that I didn't actually learn anything from my actions. So, instead, I've started doing two things instead: thanking the person I would have apologized to for their understanding that I had made a mistake and stating that I plan to do better from now on so as to not repeat that mistake anymore. That's why I want to gain a better understanding of mental health: so that I can better my understanding of myself and help other people better understand themselves.
5. IN CONCLUSION...
To those out there whom I have clashed with emotionally in the past, I can't say I'm in an emotionally stable enough place to forgive you for disagreeing with me, or even to forgive myself for upsetting, frustrating, or angering you to the point that you would take issue with me. All I can offer is the promise that I intend to do better next time. I can't say it means much, but that’s all I can offer.
DISCLAIMER:
I'll try to avoid naming specific people in this journal, partially to respect the privacy of everyone involved and partially to avoid drama. For this same reason, I'll also be disabling comments in this journal. Another thing to keep in mind: there will probably be things mentioned here that won't reflect well on me either; I'm a human being, we all make mistakes, but what matters is that we learn from them and use that experience to better ourselves.
So, with all that said, let's start with some background:
1. BACKGROUND
As I've stated before, I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome when I was a child, as well as severe anxiety and depression when I was in college. However, interacting with my new therapist, as well as some self-reflection I've done, might have brought up some more stuff I wasn't entirely aware of either. See, when I was a child, my father was often away from home, meaning that the parent I often interacted with throughout my life was my mother, who I love very dearly but also tended to be very volatile when upset. This essentially meant that I went for most of my life without a prominent male role model. This led to me being drawn towards my older sibling, who would usually spend more time hanging out with their friends, with me either being left behind or feeling like a third wheel whenever I did get to come. Also, said older sibling was just as volatile as my mother when upset, so that didn't help matters either. This, coupled with my distant relationship with my father, may have led to me developing abandonment issues. These were further compounded when my older sibling came out as transgender and my coming out as gay while we were both in college, since now, not only was I once again without someone to associate with as a male role model, but now anyone I developed any kind of romantic attachment to would be someone my mind would try to convince itself needed to take on that role, whether there was potential for a healthy relationship with that person or not. This, along with the near-constant bullying I received in school growing up, from other students and even from my own immediate family (though in the latter case it was probably not intentional), not to mention the gaslighting I would experience from my classmates in my first semester of college, a few of my past jobs, and one other person I'll be discussing later, all culminated in me developing an inferiority complex, trust issues, and a psychological need to be a people pleaser and perfectionist, which might be the source of my anxiety, while my failure to meet the standards of perfection I would set for myself may have been one of the primary sources of my depression and self-loathing. According to my therapist, the overall cumulative weight of all of these things might have also led to me developing some form of PTSD. Now that we have all that out of the way...
2. THE PANDEMIC
Prior to the COVID pandemic of 2020, I had been working on being more courageous and putting myself out there more, attending more conventions, meeting new people and, in general, trying to be more social in the real world. With the lockdown that occurred at the start of the pandemic, that shut all of that down. For roughly the last two years, the only time I would leave the house would be to go to work, which only got more and more stressful with the new mandates put in place and the fear that someone would walk right through the mask requirements people needed to practice and get everyone in the store sick. On two different occasions in 2020 I, and several of my coworkers, were asked to not come into work because the volume of the workload had decreased that much due to the drop in customer traffic. On top of this, I wasn't sure how I would be able to interact with the services and practices I would normally have left the house to go to. Fortunately, my therapist and psychiatrist would start practicing Telemedicine, and my voice coach would start having lessons with all her students over Zoom, so the anxiety over those, while intense, was fairly short-lived. What was much more intense and long-lasting, however, were...
3. LOSS AND REJECTION
Over the course of 2020, several of my family members died from illnesses that were aggravated by either the pandemic, the lockdown, or both. Most of these I ended up growing numb to; I didn't interact with most of them anyway, so even though I won't ever see them again, I barely saw them at all to begin with, so this didn't really affect things that much. What did affect me much more was the death of a friend of mine whose art streams I used to watch. My feelings on his death are very complicated, most of which stemming from a sense of guilt I had which may tie back into that desire for a male role model in my life and my lack of understanding of said feelings, as well as a sense of jealousy I was developing towards this friend, as well as several other friends I had that had managed to find someone in their life that they could be happy with while I am still single and living with my parents. Unfortunately, me being me, I felt like I needed to vent my very limited understanding of my feelings towards this friend to people, which I realize now is not okay, but didn't realize before expositing an abridged version of said poor understanding of said feelings to a close friend of the friend who died in a fit of depression, frustration, and recklessly poor judgement. He...didn't take it well, telling me that I was being "heinous" and dealing in "psychodrama", and stating that he never wanted to speak to me or do business with me ever again. I don't feel comfortable talking about my feelings towards this particular person, or some of the other things they've done to me and some of my friends who used to be in my artist friend's circle. All I'll say is that I really feel like an idiot for letting myself lose control of my emotions and venting my feelings to someone who doesn't seem to be particularly empathetic. That said, the death of my friend and his friend's rejection have essentially been haunting me for roughly the last seven months now, in much the same way that this one particular statement a former boss made to me in a previous job about how my problems don't matter, my feelings aren't valid, and the negative consequences of my poor mental health was, in her eyes, "a joke". So...
4. THE FALLOUT
I think it was largely everything I just listed that was the main motivation behind me deciding that I'd like to return to college and, hopefully, become a therapist one day. I feel like, if I'd had better understanding of my mental health and better understanding of who to trust with what information I shared about myself, maybe the emotional impact of that particular event wouldn't have hit as painful as it was. It might have eventually led to the same conclusion, but at the very least the blow might have been softer. People have told me that I tend to apologize way too much, to the point that the word "sorry" has become essentially meaningless when coming out of my mouth. I think the reason I do this is an attempt to shed myself of responsibility for my actions and try to stop people from being upset at me by making the case that I didn't know better, which is honestly counter-productive since it shows that I didn't actually learn anything from my actions. So, instead, I've started doing two things instead: thanking the person I would have apologized to for their understanding that I had made a mistake and stating that I plan to do better from now on so as to not repeat that mistake anymore. That's why I want to gain a better understanding of mental health: so that I can better my understanding of myself and help other people better understand themselves.
5. IN CONCLUSION...
To those out there whom I have clashed with emotionally in the past, I can't say I'm in an emotionally stable enough place to forgive you for disagreeing with me, or even to forgive myself for upsetting, frustrating, or angering you to the point that you would take issue with me. All I can offer is the promise that I intend to do better next time. I can't say it means much, but that’s all I can offer.
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