Been a while, hasn't it? I hate talking about myself as I have painfully established so many times now, and that is once again is acting as a justification as to why its been so long since I updated the diary section of this website. The excuse is getting old, at least for me. I know that the bulk of the people who read my website mainly read it for my opinions and creative writing, not the diary. In that way, the diary is self-serving; solely acting as a means under which I can get more comfortable talking about myself. With that out of the way, I can go to updates.
I'm getting a therapist. I'm sure to the people who've been following this blog for a while, this will come as no small relief. With the amount that I express suicidal thoughts on this blog, I'm sure that me getting a new therapist will be an important step in not killing myself. I don't want to die, at least logically, so that's good. My friend might be dying though, so that's pretty fucked up. I haven't seen them in a few weeks, and we don't talk as much as we used to. Its getting harder and harder for them to get the energy to talk, and its painful watching them fall apart. I very much hope that they don't die, but at this point, I don't know.
I'm tired of this year. The election has been a nightmare, and I just want it to be over. I very much want Harris to win, the security of my future depends on it, but there's no telling if that will ultimately be how the election goes. I'm so tired.
Beyond that, my writing has slowed down a lot. I haven't worked on my projects in a while, and I feel guilty for it. I have so much more to say and so much more to write, but it feels impossible to get myself to actually sit down and write these days. I barely have the energy to get out of bed, let alone write. I feel myself slipping in a lot of ways, like the essense of who I am is draining. I feel like an empty vessel living out the motions of my routines.
I've started going to the library to write, and to get out of the house more. Whenever I'm working from home and am not dealing with HIPPA sensitive documents, I just work from the library. I don't really care for it, there's too many people, shockingly too much noise, and its too bright. That being said, I think its healthy for me to be exposed to other people and be out of the house, so I've been coming here anyway. Its forced me to write when I don't want to, so that's something. I also do some coding when I'm unable to write. I don't know why you people wread this site, yet clearly some people are. Even if I assume most of my traffic are all bots, I know that there are at least some people reading my stuff, and I don't get that. I know very well that I'm depressing. I have more mental illnesses than I do cells in my body. My Persistent Depressive Disorder makes me an especially miserable person to be around. I've been in a continual depressive episode for years now, and my antidepressants only manage to keep me from actually killing myself. They don't make me happy. I don't know if I've ever been happy for an extended period of time. I just have sections of time in which I've successfully distracted myself from how fucking sad I am.
I sometimes wonder if I should start going to shul again. Start engaging more in my Judaism so I can distract myself longer. There's no way I can trick myself into believing there's a God, but maybe I can trick myself into thinking there's a community of people who give a shit about me. As of now I mostly just attend virual services during the high holidays.
I recently read a paper that argued that happiness is largely heritable, and the level of happiness that people have is somewhat dependent upon their genes. Depression runs in my family, as does everything else wrong with my head, so I've been feeling particularly helpless. I keep hoping that one day I'll be happy for a longer period of time than a day or two. But every time I think that I might finally be happy, whatever I was distracting myself with ends, and I'm back to the reality of my own misery.
Maybe being in therapy will help. I hope it will. My last therapist didn't make me happy, just helped me accept that the things that happened to me as a kid did indeed constitute trauma. Maybe this time will be different.
I just wanna be happy, but I consistently fail to.
Someone I know in relation to work is unusually good at detecting when my mask of normalcy slips, and will comment on my "vibe being off", and I don't know what to tell here. I want to die? I'm constantly unhappy? Its difficult for me to experience positive emotions of any kind? I'm in a constant state of physical and psychological pain? Every muscle in my body feels like its being electricuted? Yeah, I don't think that would fly. I generally just say I'm tired. I don't want to lie, but I also don't want to hear from my boss that I need to improve my mood at work otherwise I'll get fired. I've had too many conversations with too many bosses about how depressed I am. I don't want that conversation again. All I care about are the kids that I provide care for (I'm a pediatric therapist). That makes me happy, seeing improvement in them. Seeing them happy makes me happy. I just wish I could be happy outside of those moments.
I wonder if this was a common experience from teachers or therapists I had as a kid; if they were depressed too, but were able to escape that depression when they work with their kiddos. Something about the hope of a brighter future for the kids I work with helps me escape the pain that I'm in. Like I don't notice the pain so much when I'm helping make sure that these kids don't go through what I'm going through now. Like all my pain and suffering will have been worth it.
Still, I feel somewhat sour that the only purpose that I have is to make sure that others don't go through the shit that I've gone through. I need a therapist so fucking bad. There's a pain that I've been experiencing lately; an extreme guilt for what I've gone through, and my failure to protect others going through the same thing that I was going through. I don't have anyone that I can talk to about it. I don't wanna be a burden on anyone by talking about it. That's the great thing about therapists, I'm paying them to deal with my shit, so I don't have to feel shitty about going to them for help.
Someone accussed me of sounding like an AI on reddit the other day. Its stuck with me in a way that I didn't expect. I hate that the one thing that I can do on my own without anyone else's input that makes me happy is so indistinguishable from the thoughtless yapping of an AI that I can be accussed of being one. Someone replied under it that I didn't sound like AI, but they only said that because they agreed with me. Although I suppose that the other guy may have said that I sound like AI because he disagreed with me. Glass half empty situation. All the same, the point stands. I am replaceable by a fucking computer program.
That's enough depressed venting for today. Sorry if it made your day worse. I hope it didn't. I love you.