Skip to main content

I guess I should be doing stuff shouldn't I. Sigh.... :)

I "couldn't" get to sleep until 3 and regained consciousness about half an hour ago. Goddamnit, haha. I'd love to beat off but my roommate's asleep just over yonder. I think it'd feel kinda weird. Oh well, if I ever date someone with a cum fetish, they'll be happy if this keeps up.... XD

MEANWHILE I've been really good. My biggest dilemma is what to do if I get that office job (my therapist and sponsor both made really good arguments for it...between the hours and the pay I'm starting to agree with them more and more...).

"o exploitablez!  i can haz 2 jobs--but which should I take??"

As ever, that's all assuming I even get the job.

But really...as I shared at my sort-of home group last night, it's kinda hard to believe, you know? Only a few months ago, when I was still pretty new in the program, I came to the brink of wanting to hurt myself. I'd spent so many years avoiding so many responsibilities and any accountability, and I got good at it. But when I came into the program, I had to face them. And being new and stubborn and stupid, I was trying to work my own program instead of asking for help--I was trying to face all that stuff I'd gotten so good at avoiding on my own, only to find I had no idea how, I'd never learned.

I got to my breaking point when I became fixated on everything I'd done wrong, and all the futile attempts to change that inevitably failed, how long it had gone on like this, further feelings of futility and inevitability as I dwelled on the probably broken syllogism "Unless something changes I can't go on living like this/This shit never changes no matter what I do//I can't go on living". I got to a point of wanting to hurt myself. Closer than I'd been since...well, a really long time ago. It was scary--that I could find that kind of despair and have no idea how to deal with it.

Of course I 'went back out' in april (tho i set my date to may, long story XD); but in the 4 months since I've found a lot of humility and a lot of happiness. I've learned to do what I can and trust the rest to God or a higher power or whatever--it really doesn't matter what as long as I trust it. I've learned to take (healthy) risks to challenge myself and grow. I've learned to appreciate life and those around me, resist passing judgment, accept shit I can't change, and so on.

And some of it was as easy as writing that post a few weeks ago about coming to terms with needing to change, and suddenly things that used to terrify me weren't so overwhelming. I finished my resume, which I'd been sitting on for like 3+ years; I sent it out to, like, 9 craigslist listings. I applied to, like, 12 jobs at a local mall. I've had 4 interviews in the last week, gotten one job with the possibility of getting another. I have an awesome roommate who supports and amazes me. I'm looking around at apartments--mostly for research's sake at this point, but what I've seen has sometimes really amazed me. And I'm happy, mostly. I'm not perfect, I'm only human; boys still turn me down, poetry still frustrates me, stress still gets to me. But I actually enjoy life instead of just living it, perfunctorily.

A couple people told me they were impressed/proud/amazed by the changes I've demonstrated these last few weeks/months, but it wasn't until I was sharing about it last night that it really struck me how much it amazed me. Not even 8 months ago or so I wanted to hurt myself because of the hopelessness and shame I was so overwhelmed by; in the 4 months of working an earnest program as best as I could, I've been able to find the strength to tackle several of the things that used to paralyze me with anxiety, and I've learned to be happy.

Frankly, I think it's pretty badass.

Comments

Other things that might interest you...

On aging, and fear.

To begin with, I’m not sure you’re aware of it, but I’m middle aged. Oh? What gave it away? Using a blog as my primary literary medium?¹ Hm. But in fact, the APA defines 35 years as the end of “young adulthood.” Yeah. I found out via some shitpost on twitter when I was already 35, so it didn’t sit well with me then either. But my worries about aging began much sooner than that. See, even in my 20s, I feared I’d been wasting my life. I’d struggled with school and life and everything since graduating high school, arguably sooner, and nothing seemed to be going anywhere meaningful . I felt I had a limited social life, a dead-end job, no money, no great travels, a limping love life; I was, generally, a loser, wasting away... There were none of the usual hallmarks of success or happiness. And that scared me. Would my life have been worth it if I continued in this direction? Would it have been a “life well lived” by the end? So, this is my existential struggle. Even now, as I lurch ever nea

Changing lanes.

I was driving home in some traffic last night when I drifted, in my mind, a long way back (about 20 years) to high school. I was caught in one of those periodic traffic slowdowns as I floated back; you know, those waves of congestion that seem to pass backward through the columns of cars in each lane. (I've heard they start because someone switches lanes, and in response, a rippling emergent slowness travels backward and outward as the cars behind it accommodate the change, one by one.) What drew me back to those younger days was that, back in high school, similar phenomena of congestion took place in the halls between classes, when eddies of young humans would get caught in and around those clumps of those chatting by lockers or retrieving books. Occasionally, backups would occur when groups of people got caught in these eddies, or collided with other groups by the lockers, and slowdowns would ripple back from there. Maybe it's not exactly the same, but as I drove it seemed si

Oatmeal is tasty.

{slurps up berry-oatmeal-deliciousness} Indeed. I need to work on rebuilding a morning schedule. I can be zombie-like enough that I'll waste a perfectly good morning, and have often slept through many. And, really, it's such a useful time of day.