(no subject)
gosh golly i reckon no one uses livejournal anymore.
i feel like it's time to take a step back and think about everything that has happened.
i feel like i need to go back to the "very beginning" or something, like there are so many little things that have added up to where i am right now. not really little, but... i don't know. the beginning could be christmas of 2010 or maybe when i graduated from high school? i guess things started looking bad during my second semester of college.
i graduated high school in 2009. it was decided by everyone around me that the best course of action for me would be unwinding a bit (i had a very bad senior year) and going to a nearby community college for my first two or so years of school. so that's what i did. i did fairly well my first semester, but in general there were a lot of weird things ticking in my head that made it really hard for me to function.
a little bit before i started college, i finally received the chance to speak openly about my "issues" or whatever you will call them with a doctor who was willing to listen to me. she told me that she believed i had anxiety and displayed moderate obsessive/compulsive behavior and would probably have a huge weight taken off of me if we could learn how to combat and deal with these things.
i tried a couple of different kinds of anxiety medication and was going to start seeing a therapist, but my anxiety remained on some level. i completed my first semester, and everything started moving gradually downhill.
i found it nearly impossible to get out of bed, i was falling asleep in the library and missing class, i would sit in a study room and take all of my materials out of my notebooks only to put them back inside in the same exact order to make sure everything was there because i felt terrified that i was forgetting something (this often caused me to miss class), i felt too anxious to talk to my teachers about the material and quizzes i missed, i was constantly feeling physically ill and vomiting in between classes, i was finding it difficult to communicate with my friends, if i was sitting in one of the student lounges by myself and another person came and sat down at another table, i immediately felt like i had to leave, i was in the way, i was out of place, it was wrong of me to be in there, my general anxiety/insecurities concerning my appearance spiked and i became obsessed with all the things i wanted to change about my looks to the point where i didn't want anyone to see my face at its current state. i was completely ruining myself and my performance in school suffered. my grades slipped and i eventually fell so far behind in my classes and was overcome with such extreme despair and anxiety and stress over this that i just dropped out.
the anxiety didn't stop there. as soon as i dropped out, i was buried in questions and concerns--what was i going to do now? would i ever be able to go back to school? how was i going to pay back my grant? what was wrong with me? all the while, i was humoring myself with frequent passively suicidal thoughts. i stopped leaving my house. i stayed in my room and hardly ate a thing. i slept for up to 18 hours at a time. i looked and felt horrible. i lost contact with the people who i held dearest.
my friend jessica had been living in new york for about a year, pursuing her ~broadway dreams~ and she asked me if i would want to move up there, get a job, and be her roommate! well of course that sounded like an excellent idea. i talked about it with my parents and moved up there around... late summer-time, 2010, i think. very quickly, one of my mom's friends, a jewelry designer, offered me an internship. i mostly did deliveries, organized around the office, things like that. things were going well! everyone in the office loved me and wanted to help me get settled in the city and become stable and comfortable with a job i liked. i loved them and trusted them and they took very good care of me. jessica and i actually communicated well at this point in time and things were pretty sweet!
then i went home for christmas.
this was the first time i had seen my parents or any of my friends in so long and i was pumped! i couldn't wait to tell them about my super cool internship and all the awesome things i had been doing in the city! my dad brought me home and the first thing i noted was how icy the roads were. it was really bad that year. that night, i fell asleep in my mom's room with my little brother and sister in a big comfortable pile. i had already began making plans with so many people who were so thrilled that i was making an appearance on planet earth again after so long.
the next morning, i woke up to a text message from my friend, ashley g., saying that she wasn't sure if i'd heard yet--but our dear friend melynda had passed away late last night. my heart immediately shattered. melynda was such a good friend to me throughout high school, one of the first friends outside of my school group of pals. i went to her birthday parties, had a number of classes with her, and was constantly amazed by her brilliance, shared music with her, loved her with all my heart. she had been walking on a back road around her home and our friend, mike, accidentally hit her with his truck. at the time, we were all made to believe that mike had been drunk and acting carelessly, people called him a murderer. i felt angry at him for so long when i knew i shouldn't. he had known melynda for so long and loved her with all his heart. i knew that he was torn up over this, but i still felt angry at him. i attended her memorial and as soon as i got home, jessica called saying that her family wanted to leave for new york !!!tonight!!! and i almost didn't go back. my heart was broken and i felt like i couldn't even move. i couldn't wrap my mind around the loss of one of the most wonderful people i ever had the honor of knowing, but my mom said that she felt it would be best for me to go back, because if i stayed at home, i would crawl into bed and dwell and dwell and do nothing but that. so i went back to new york and back to work.
i was on a new anxiety medication at this point. when i started back at work, i talked to one of the girls in the office, jen, about what had happened. my mom sent an email to kimberly, my boss, and explained everything. they were all very understanding and willing to help and be supportive while i recovered. but my mind felt hazy and foggy. i couldn't focus on anything. i was constantly zoning out, moving around like a zombie, and i was nearly unresponsive. after a couple of months of struggling to even complete simple tasks, i caved under all the stress and resigned from my internship, a decision which i still to this day regret.
i don't remember much about the next few months after that, i spent most of it sleeping.
but i know sometime during those months, i started becoming closer and closer to megan. for the first time in my life, i opened up and told another person everything that was going through my head and i am convinced that if she hadn't been there for me at that time, i would have killed myself. it was around this time that i found out that my aunt shannon's breast cancer took a turn for the worst and she didn't seem to have much time left.
my mom told my doctor about my mental fog and she suggested that i stop taking my anxiety medication and next time i was down in tennessee, we would try something else. i felt scared of the idea of not taking it anymore and then one night i decided to take more than i was supposed to. for the rest of the night i was sick and shaking and crying. i called megan and probably said a lot of stupid, contradictory things. (i want to die. i don't want to die. i want to die. i don't want to die.) i finally vomited and somehow managed to relax, but my body took a few days to recover.
in august, megan and i officially began dating, and there was finally something stable and steady in my life. i don't think i realized at that moment exactly how much i was going to need that to get through what was coming around the around the corner.
two days after that, i took a greyhound bus home. shannon had gotten a surgery for her lungs which was supposed to help. everyone began talking optimistically, but it was still important for me to be home. my dad picked me up from the bus station with my little brother and took me home. we talked about my trip and things like that, nothing serious really. when we pulled into the driveway he told me that shannon had passed away a few hours before, while i was still on the bus. he wanted to wait until i got home to tell me. i wasn't even able to say goodbye. the surgery hadn't helped. it was the surgery that had killed her.
my mother was, and is still, devastated at the loss of her baby sister. shannon left behind a beautiful baby boy named camden and the beautiful home which she bought to share with him. it's been almost a year since this happened and my family is still heavily grieving.
for the next five or so month, i stayed with rita, my grandmother, in shannon's home, to help her with the task of getting settled in as camden's guardian. it was emotionally exhausting. i don't want to go to far into it, but one of our distant, previously well-liked relatives has caused my family great stress--what started out as him helping shannon with paperwork and other things that she didn't have energy to handle in her condition ended with him somehow influencing major medical decisions and having them withhold medicine from shannon so she could sign "agreements" that she actually had not written and was not aware of the conditions of that would guarantee him being paid quite comfortably after she passed away. as you can imagine, things with this relative turned very sour and it caused everyone quite a bit of emotional stress.
during these five months, i saw a decrease in my energy and general will to live and an increase in my anxiety and obsessive/compulsive behavior. i genuinely thought i was going crazy. never in my life had i experienced such unhappiness. i couldn't talk to my family about it because they were wrapped up in their own grief. i dragged myself through the best i could.
i finally decided to come out of the closet to my family, and though it wasn't the best situation at the time, i am happy to say that the dust has settled and it's not so bad anymore. my parents accept megan as my girlfriend and a part of my life. (though it was never an issue with my dad--when my mom freaked out and screamed at me over the phone until i finally had to hang up, he called me back a few seconds later to tell me that it didn't matter, he loved me just the same.) my mom and i are incapable of speaking with our actual voices without fighting so we had a long conversation via fb message and she finally calmed down. most of my family knows now. that took a huge weight off of my shoulders. i hadn't realized how much of my stress and depression was being caused by keeping that part of my a secret from the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally.
after christmas, i went back to new york. megan came to visit and i spent the happiest two weeks of my life with her.
but i was still heavily depressed and unmotivated, but eventually, i found a job at a little vegan place that i loved very much. for the first time in so long, i felt like i actually wanted to get up and do things! i loved the people i worked with, i was finally able to support myself, i was on a schedule instead of just rolling around and doing nothing much at all. i was happy. i felt amazing. everything was looking up.
however! jessica was upset about a few things.
she told me how she wanted to handle me contributing to rent, and when i did exactly what she asked, she got mad, but didn't say anything about it. she was mad at me for shutting the bedroom door and not letting the dogs in there (where she wanted to keep their training pads disregarding how dog urine and dogs in general irritate my allergies) she was mad at me for not cleaning up her mess while she was at auditions. (disregarding that i was usually always at work.) she was mad at me for not paying for groceries that i didn't eat. she was mad because over the course of two months i had used two dishes and put them in the sink when i was done. she was mad because she thought i expected her to "do and pay for my laundry". (disregarding that i hadn't done my laundry... in so long... and the last time i had at this point, i paid for mine and hers.) she was mad at me for making unhealthy decisions as far as my diet went. she was mad at me for making an effort to set aside money for my interests and hobbies (because she thought they were dumb.) she was mad at me for always "making excuses" to not do things in the form of my anxiety and social phobia. she didn't think my job was going to be worth it in the long run because she didn't know how it would "propel my career." she was mad that i didnt go to her auditions with her to help her sign up.
it eventually dissolved into a huge fight. she was unwilling to admit that she was out of line and wrong about everything. i was unwilling to let her disobedient, horrible dogs jump all over me, bite me, eat my food, and destroy my things. i was unwilling to live with a delusional, borderline white supremacist femmeshaming homophobe any longer. if she felt that i was taking advantage of her family without even giving me a chance to start contributing with my NEW JOB which i was SO HAPPY ABOUT (mind you, she does not pay her own rent) then i was going to just go home. she expected me to give her half of my paychecks to rent out the bedroom, which she would REQUIRE me to leave the door open to so that the dogs--HER DOGS--could come in there to piss and shit, obviously not aware of the fact that if she were just renting that room out to ANY OLD PERSON, those conditions would NOT be acceptable at all. she told me that what she does--going to auditions, going to dance classes, was a job. i couldn't make her understand that a job is something that you get paid for, and relying on mommmy and daddy for everything in your entire life is not, in fact, a job! so i packed everything up and i left. i have been in tennessee ever since. i have removed her from twitter and facebook because i don't want to expose myself to someone as vile and cruel as she is. i already have too many things to worry about.
i will probably go back to school soon. but as far as the near, NEAR future goes, i'm going to see my wonderful girlfriend in july. throughout all of this, she has been here, holding me up and supporting me. she gives everything she has to make sure i am happy and healthy and stable. i have never in my life had someone who is so willing to lay themselves down for me and work, work, work so hard for my sake. i can hardly vocalize how much she means to me and how lost i would be without her. she is the reason i am here, alive, and able to reflect on everything that has happened these last two years. with the loss of loved and the betrayal of someone i trusted, with feeling like i'm constantly being shoved off from person to person with no real place call home, with my inconsistent moods and my instability and crying and screaming, she has been here. i love her so much! so soon i'm going to have to decide what to do with myself, my life, my future. but right now, at this moment in time, i have something to look forward, and that's seeing megan again. no matter where i decide to go after this, i know that she will be here with me, so that makes everything seem a lot less scary.
these last two years have been something. i haven't had the best experiences but all that badness and bullshit is over now, and at least i made it here in one piece. it's a bit of an uphill climb, getting better and stabilizing myself, but it will happen. and i can't wait.
i feel like it's time to take a step back and think about everything that has happened.
i feel like i need to go back to the "very beginning" or something, like there are so many little things that have added up to where i am right now. not really little, but... i don't know. the beginning could be christmas of 2010 or maybe when i graduated from high school? i guess things started looking bad during my second semester of college.
i graduated high school in 2009. it was decided by everyone around me that the best course of action for me would be unwinding a bit (i had a very bad senior year) and going to a nearby community college for my first two or so years of school. so that's what i did. i did fairly well my first semester, but in general there were a lot of weird things ticking in my head that made it really hard for me to function.
a little bit before i started college, i finally received the chance to speak openly about my "issues" or whatever you will call them with a doctor who was willing to listen to me. she told me that she believed i had anxiety and displayed moderate obsessive/compulsive behavior and would probably have a huge weight taken off of me if we could learn how to combat and deal with these things.
i tried a couple of different kinds of anxiety medication and was going to start seeing a therapist, but my anxiety remained on some level. i completed my first semester, and everything started moving gradually downhill.
i found it nearly impossible to get out of bed, i was falling asleep in the library and missing class, i would sit in a study room and take all of my materials out of my notebooks only to put them back inside in the same exact order to make sure everything was there because i felt terrified that i was forgetting something (this often caused me to miss class), i felt too anxious to talk to my teachers about the material and quizzes i missed, i was constantly feeling physically ill and vomiting in between classes, i was finding it difficult to communicate with my friends, if i was sitting in one of the student lounges by myself and another person came and sat down at another table, i immediately felt like i had to leave, i was in the way, i was out of place, it was wrong of me to be in there, my general anxiety/insecurities concerning my appearance spiked and i became obsessed with all the things i wanted to change about my looks to the point where i didn't want anyone to see my face at its current state. i was completely ruining myself and my performance in school suffered. my grades slipped and i eventually fell so far behind in my classes and was overcome with such extreme despair and anxiety and stress over this that i just dropped out.
the anxiety didn't stop there. as soon as i dropped out, i was buried in questions and concerns--what was i going to do now? would i ever be able to go back to school? how was i going to pay back my grant? what was wrong with me? all the while, i was humoring myself with frequent passively suicidal thoughts. i stopped leaving my house. i stayed in my room and hardly ate a thing. i slept for up to 18 hours at a time. i looked and felt horrible. i lost contact with the people who i held dearest.
my friend jessica had been living in new york for about a year, pursuing her ~broadway dreams~ and she asked me if i would want to move up there, get a job, and be her roommate! well of course that sounded like an excellent idea. i talked about it with my parents and moved up there around... late summer-time, 2010, i think. very quickly, one of my mom's friends, a jewelry designer, offered me an internship. i mostly did deliveries, organized around the office, things like that. things were going well! everyone in the office loved me and wanted to help me get settled in the city and become stable and comfortable with a job i liked. i loved them and trusted them and they took very good care of me. jessica and i actually communicated well at this point in time and things were pretty sweet!
then i went home for christmas.
this was the first time i had seen my parents or any of my friends in so long and i was pumped! i couldn't wait to tell them about my super cool internship and all the awesome things i had been doing in the city! my dad brought me home and the first thing i noted was how icy the roads were. it was really bad that year. that night, i fell asleep in my mom's room with my little brother and sister in a big comfortable pile. i had already began making plans with so many people who were so thrilled that i was making an appearance on planet earth again after so long.
the next morning, i woke up to a text message from my friend, ashley g., saying that she wasn't sure if i'd heard yet--but our dear friend melynda had passed away late last night. my heart immediately shattered. melynda was such a good friend to me throughout high school, one of the first friends outside of my school group of pals. i went to her birthday parties, had a number of classes with her, and was constantly amazed by her brilliance, shared music with her, loved her with all my heart. she had been walking on a back road around her home and our friend, mike, accidentally hit her with his truck. at the time, we were all made to believe that mike had been drunk and acting carelessly, people called him a murderer. i felt angry at him for so long when i knew i shouldn't. he had known melynda for so long and loved her with all his heart. i knew that he was torn up over this, but i still felt angry at him. i attended her memorial and as soon as i got home, jessica called saying that her family wanted to leave for new york !!!tonight!!! and i almost didn't go back. my heart was broken and i felt like i couldn't even move. i couldn't wrap my mind around the loss of one of the most wonderful people i ever had the honor of knowing, but my mom said that she felt it would be best for me to go back, because if i stayed at home, i would crawl into bed and dwell and dwell and do nothing but that. so i went back to new york and back to work.
i was on a new anxiety medication at this point. when i started back at work, i talked to one of the girls in the office, jen, about what had happened. my mom sent an email to kimberly, my boss, and explained everything. they were all very understanding and willing to help and be supportive while i recovered. but my mind felt hazy and foggy. i couldn't focus on anything. i was constantly zoning out, moving around like a zombie, and i was nearly unresponsive. after a couple of months of struggling to even complete simple tasks, i caved under all the stress and resigned from my internship, a decision which i still to this day regret.
i don't remember much about the next few months after that, i spent most of it sleeping.
but i know sometime during those months, i started becoming closer and closer to megan. for the first time in my life, i opened up and told another person everything that was going through my head and i am convinced that if she hadn't been there for me at that time, i would have killed myself. it was around this time that i found out that my aunt shannon's breast cancer took a turn for the worst and she didn't seem to have much time left.
my mom told my doctor about my mental fog and she suggested that i stop taking my anxiety medication and next time i was down in tennessee, we would try something else. i felt scared of the idea of not taking it anymore and then one night i decided to take more than i was supposed to. for the rest of the night i was sick and shaking and crying. i called megan and probably said a lot of stupid, contradictory things. (i want to die. i don't want to die. i want to die. i don't want to die.) i finally vomited and somehow managed to relax, but my body took a few days to recover.
in august, megan and i officially began dating, and there was finally something stable and steady in my life. i don't think i realized at that moment exactly how much i was going to need that to get through what was coming around the around the corner.
two days after that, i took a greyhound bus home. shannon had gotten a surgery for her lungs which was supposed to help. everyone began talking optimistically, but it was still important for me to be home. my dad picked me up from the bus station with my little brother and took me home. we talked about my trip and things like that, nothing serious really. when we pulled into the driveway he told me that shannon had passed away a few hours before, while i was still on the bus. he wanted to wait until i got home to tell me. i wasn't even able to say goodbye. the surgery hadn't helped. it was the surgery that had killed her.
my mother was, and is still, devastated at the loss of her baby sister. shannon left behind a beautiful baby boy named camden and the beautiful home which she bought to share with him. it's been almost a year since this happened and my family is still heavily grieving.
for the next five or so month, i stayed with rita, my grandmother, in shannon's home, to help her with the task of getting settled in as camden's guardian. it was emotionally exhausting. i don't want to go to far into it, but one of our distant, previously well-liked relatives has caused my family great stress--what started out as him helping shannon with paperwork and other things that she didn't have energy to handle in her condition ended with him somehow influencing major medical decisions and having them withhold medicine from shannon so she could sign "agreements" that she actually had not written and was not aware of the conditions of that would guarantee him being paid quite comfortably after she passed away. as you can imagine, things with this relative turned very sour and it caused everyone quite a bit of emotional stress.
during these five months, i saw a decrease in my energy and general will to live and an increase in my anxiety and obsessive/compulsive behavior. i genuinely thought i was going crazy. never in my life had i experienced such unhappiness. i couldn't talk to my family about it because they were wrapped up in their own grief. i dragged myself through the best i could.
i finally decided to come out of the closet to my family, and though it wasn't the best situation at the time, i am happy to say that the dust has settled and it's not so bad anymore. my parents accept megan as my girlfriend and a part of my life. (though it was never an issue with my dad--when my mom freaked out and screamed at me over the phone until i finally had to hang up, he called me back a few seconds later to tell me that it didn't matter, he loved me just the same.) my mom and i are incapable of speaking with our actual voices without fighting so we had a long conversation via fb message and she finally calmed down. most of my family knows now. that took a huge weight off of my shoulders. i hadn't realized how much of my stress and depression was being caused by keeping that part of my a secret from the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally.
after christmas, i went back to new york. megan came to visit and i spent the happiest two weeks of my life with her.
but i was still heavily depressed and unmotivated, but eventually, i found a job at a little vegan place that i loved very much. for the first time in so long, i felt like i actually wanted to get up and do things! i loved the people i worked with, i was finally able to support myself, i was on a schedule instead of just rolling around and doing nothing much at all. i was happy. i felt amazing. everything was looking up.
however! jessica was upset about a few things.
she told me how she wanted to handle me contributing to rent, and when i did exactly what she asked, she got mad, but didn't say anything about it. she was mad at me for shutting the bedroom door and not letting the dogs in there (where she wanted to keep their training pads disregarding how dog urine and dogs in general irritate my allergies) she was mad at me for not cleaning up her mess while she was at auditions. (disregarding that i was usually always at work.) she was mad at me for not paying for groceries that i didn't eat. she was mad because over the course of two months i had used two dishes and put them in the sink when i was done. she was mad because she thought i expected her to "do and pay for my laundry". (disregarding that i hadn't done my laundry... in so long... and the last time i had at this point, i paid for mine and hers.) she was mad at me for making unhealthy decisions as far as my diet went. she was mad at me for making an effort to set aside money for my interests and hobbies (because she thought they were dumb.) she was mad at me for always "making excuses" to not do things in the form of my anxiety and social phobia. she didn't think my job was going to be worth it in the long run because she didn't know how it would "propel my career." she was mad that i didnt go to her auditions with her to help her sign up.
it eventually dissolved into a huge fight. she was unwilling to admit that she was out of line and wrong about everything. i was unwilling to let her disobedient, horrible dogs jump all over me, bite me, eat my food, and destroy my things. i was unwilling to live with a delusional, borderline white supremacist femmeshaming homophobe any longer. if she felt that i was taking advantage of her family without even giving me a chance to start contributing with my NEW JOB which i was SO HAPPY ABOUT (mind you, she does not pay her own rent) then i was going to just go home. she expected me to give her half of my paychecks to rent out the bedroom, which she would REQUIRE me to leave the door open to so that the dogs--HER DOGS--could come in there to piss and shit, obviously not aware of the fact that if she were just renting that room out to ANY OLD PERSON, those conditions would NOT be acceptable at all. she told me that what she does--going to auditions, going to dance classes, was a job. i couldn't make her understand that a job is something that you get paid for, and relying on mommmy and daddy for everything in your entire life is not, in fact, a job! so i packed everything up and i left. i have been in tennessee ever since. i have removed her from twitter and facebook because i don't want to expose myself to someone as vile and cruel as she is. i already have too many things to worry about.
i will probably go back to school soon. but as far as the near, NEAR future goes, i'm going to see my wonderful girlfriend in july. throughout all of this, she has been here, holding me up and supporting me. she gives everything she has to make sure i am happy and healthy and stable. i have never in my life had someone who is so willing to lay themselves down for me and work, work, work so hard for my sake. i can hardly vocalize how much she means to me and how lost i would be without her. she is the reason i am here, alive, and able to reflect on everything that has happened these last two years. with the loss of loved and the betrayal of someone i trusted, with feeling like i'm constantly being shoved off from person to person with no real place call home, with my inconsistent moods and my instability and crying and screaming, she has been here. i love her so much! so soon i'm going to have to decide what to do with myself, my life, my future. but right now, at this moment in time, i have something to look forward, and that's seeing megan again. no matter where i decide to go after this, i know that she will be here with me, so that makes everything seem a lot less scary.
these last two years have been something. i haven't had the best experiences but all that badness and bullshit is over now, and at least i made it here in one piece. it's a bit of an uphill climb, getting better and stabilizing myself, but it will happen. and i can't wait.