The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Today I had a little breakdown.

I came home from a busy day in St. Louis to find my mother in the computer room, having disassembled the modem and router setup. This strikes fear into my heart. I try not to react too harshly, as I know she’s trying to help. I ask her what this means about me relaxing with my food before work. She tells me I can’t relax, and that if I have time to relax I should help her, because I need to unhook everything else in the room and get it out of there so she can work.

I freak out even more at this, because the carpeting isn’t getting put in until Thursday. I’d be computerless, probably, until at least Friday afternoon under this plan. I attempt to figure this out, and she tells me that she needs the cables out of here, but that I should hook the router back up so she can use her laptop. I know this is her trying to lighten the mood, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

I decide to try to compromise, and start taking apart all my game systems and my TV. I won’t be able to play any games, but I’ve been too depressed and busy to anyway, so maybe that’s fine. In doing this, I knock over the closet door she has precariously perched on the wall next to my computer. It slams into my computer tower. I freak out, and turn on the computer to check it. It makes a horrible noise. I open the case, see no issues, close the case, it still makes the noise, I freak out more. Finally I notice a wire knocked loose. I fix it. It works. I start crying.

In some ways, I feel kind of lame for reacting like that. In others, I feel completely justified. Life sucks right now. I am trying my best, but fuck. I am pretty unhappy. I can only really unwind in here. This is where I can hide from things and recover. This is where I can calm down. But I can’t even have that anymore. I can’t even have anything. All because of this stupid carpet, and everything going on. Everything. I can’t have anything.

I mean, that’s not true. But fuck. Everything I have to fight for. Every little thing.

After this silly thing, people were asking me if I was okay. I was shaken. I’m still shaken, though I’m steadier now. Being able to type like this to you, having access to my friends and my daily routine with this computer… it is a lot of what keeps me balanced. Steady. Stable. It helps me not be completely depressed. I just…

Fuck.

Lately, my life has been lead by terror.

It’s weird, though. I have so much like… actual stuff I could be scared about. I have actual shit going on in my life. Transitioning, graduating… all this shit is terrifying, potentially.

But I’m getting panic attacks about not formatting informal notes correctly, not being early enough to have enough time to sit around and be early, or a non-important radio message not going through on the radio that never works anyway.

It is beyond stupid and I hate myself for it. But these are like… well, okay, I’ve had worst “attacks” in the past, but I seriously have to stop and just breathe for a bit to calm down, and I’m left with this sense of dread over the stupidest things until they’re done. I had to ask how to STUFF ENVELOPES like three times today because I had to head off the feeling of slightly stuffing an envelope with a flyer wrong before it made me even more useless than I already am.

Best guess is that I’m projecting issues related to passing onto all manner of other things in my life. I certainly know that I was projecting my anxiety about my shopping trip today onto Cara, when it was just a thing we were going to do, as far as she was concerned. I’m sure this stuff is fairly similar. I’m worried about some bullshit like “letting people down” with what I’m doing, and that translates into panicking about letting them down in dumb ways which would never happen. That makes a level of sense.

But dammit. It is frustrating. Makes me want to just sleep for a few days, or stay inside. Bleh.

I’ve had a line in my head all day. It’s a good line. I’m not sure what I’d use it for, and I keep trying different variations. Basically, it’s, “When I’m cold like this, I can’t tell if that’s why I’m shivering.”

I’m shaky.

Have I not been sleeping enough? I’ve been trying to sleep in and rest. I’ve been trying to give myself time to relax while also doing a lot of work. I’ve been trying to get a lot done.

That’s just it, though. I’m always trying, aren’t I?

At some point I will get this shit figured out. I will be solid in what I need to do. I will make it work. Sometime.

Until then I’ll just have songs stuck in my head and be overly emotional with kittens and hide and stuff. I’ll keep that going. I’m good at that. I’ll watch cat videos and not watch the television shows I should and I’ll curl up under covers and that’ll be that.

Also the covers might be warm, so I’ll know why I’m shivering.

I fucking swear, there’s a mind-blowing line in a poem in that somewhere. I’ll figure it out.

I think it’s silly that one of my auto-responses to being depressed and stressed is to buy things, especially when a factor of said stress is potentially monetary. I could make more smart decisions, like relying more on Gamefly or finishing games I really wanted to finish but never did, like P3P. Instead, I buy limited edition copies of Marvel Vs Capcom 3. I am simply excellent like that.

I mean, I know why I do things like this. It’s because most of the time, my depression stems from a perceived lack of control. I lack the control necessary to correct people’s views of who I am. I lack the control necessary to make everything not pile on me at once. I lack the control necessary to make people not break from how I perceive things to go. Of course, things like that last one are not powers I’d particularly actually use, but being unable to affect a situation, or convincing myself as such, is a core issue that makes me depressed.

Purchasing things, and bringing more things into my life, well, that I have control of. What I eat I also have control of. It’s proving I can affect the world around me in a silly attempt to feel better. So I buy an extra game I don’t need, or I buy a book I may never read. It’s a stupid coping mechanism, though, thankfully, cheap downloadable games have honestly given me a better outlet for these urges, most of the time.

Then again, my overall goal is to get more stable so this stuff doesn’t crop up, oh, every week.
Sure have amassed a nice collection of toys, though.

At any point I will break. I am at the point where getting new carpeting put in upstairs feels like it will destroy me. I will admit that I really, really hate this feeling, and I hate that I feel this way. I hate that I feel so lost here. I hate it.

I hate it.

I fucking hate it.

It’s not even funny breaking. It’s not useful. It’s not a motivator. I just feel crushed. The thing that crushed me was fucking new carpeting. I feel like such an idiot.

I’m empty and stupid and my life feels like way too much for me. I want to hide in bed until everyone goes away, for at least a few more weeks. Maybe then things will work out, but hey, I’m not holding my breath. Nothing works out.

I’m a functional, fairly hard-working person. Why am I so crushed? Why do I feel like this? I should function. I should work. Things should work out. God fucking dammit.

I now have functional, working teeth.

Well, okay, I mean, they were working okay before. They just were overdue for maintenance. But now I did that, and now I’m cavity-free, and have functional teeth.

Huzzah.

I’m glad my parents helped me out with all this, and I am doing more to take care of my teeth now. Had been for awhile. Still, I had taken so long, and neglected everything about my personal upkeep for such a long time, and they were kind of completely shitty. They’re fixed, though. That’s a thing.

My own weakness and self-issues keep coming back to haunt me like that. Even if I say that I’m doing better, and I’m moving ahead, and things are happening, stuff like that still makes it clear how fucked up I am, to some extent. Hell, I should have been applying to colleges and shit over the past few weeks, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t add another worry to my pile. There is way, way too much shit going on, at least internally. I needed to clear something off the pile before I try to add that to the list. But that’ll have consequences, you know? Who knows what will happen?

I’ll be fine, and I’ll survive, but, you know… it’s a thing, for better or worse.

I have been having nightmares about things not working out, to top it all off. Dreams of plans falling through. Things failing. Me failing. Again and again. I’ll wake up at 9 and force myself to sleep for a few more hours, but I’ll simply toss and turn and worry. Again and again.

Something has to give. Something has to improve…
Right?

There’s a thing going on with Brer. Not going to get into it out of respect to him. Ask him yourself. The important part is, the end result is that, unlike what was to happen before, he probably won’t be visiting me over Christmas break, and future plans are also now questionable, though not impossible.

It makes me feel pretty awful.

Until this happened I wasn’t aware of the number of silly little things I have acquired over the last few months to share with him when he gets here. But I have. There’s a lot of stuff. It’s all around in here, on my desk and so on. Video games. Movies. So much stuff I bought purely to sit on a couch and share with the guy I love.

I want stability in my life right now, and the feeling like everything is going to turn out alright, but I don’t have that. My thesis as it stands now got a bad, but fair reception. Lots of work to do on that. I still feel like I’m being stonewalled on my transition, something I need to start, preferably yesterday. Now my life with my boyfriend is in question, and I no longer get to show him off to my friends and family and show them all that not only do I have a significant other, but he’s here, he’s awesome, and I have a life, a female life, that I am going to lead and he is part of it. I wanted that so badly. I wanted to be with him. It’s been so fucking long.

I cried on the way back from St. Louis because I couldn’t talk to him like I do every week on the drive. I called up my Mom, and she didn’t know what to say or do. She has to stay distant. That’s okay, I suppose. It’s no help to me, though.

So I wrote this stupid, depressing fucking blog. Bleh.

I promise content the next two days. I have reactions to Lords of Shadow and Medal of Honor that should be showing up. I’m sorry I keep posting stuff like this. I just… don’t know what else to write about when I sit down to make myself. It feels like all I am is sadness. It’s so stupid. Every little 2-player video game I bought for his visit is a reminder of how I continue to fail to get my life in order. It’s just another problem in a string of constant problems, and I don’t know why I keep trying. Some days I really don’t.

I wonder about the fact that I am constantly finding myself thinking about the nature of happiness. I feel this urge to define it, so I know what I’m trying for, and what I’m working at to get. I want it to be something with rules, something that, if I just do the right things, I can pick it up and have it. I can just take it, and then things will be fine. I’ll transition, or move out, or have my boyfriend around, and then it’ll be okay. Things will be okay.

I don’t know if that’s true. I’m sure those are the right decisions, but I don’t know if it just happens that way.

In any case, sitting in the office today, I fell asleep trying to get my work done, and in thinking about the fact that this happened, I came up with a new potential definition of happiness that I want to run past you.

Happiness is not being so physically and mentally tired that you fall asleep any time you stop for a moment.

When I write it and look at it, it seems so stupid. So simple. It also seems to not be what happiness is. Happiness is bigger, isn’t it? Happiness is something that makes you feel good, not stable. It makes you feel like everything is alright, yes, everything’s fine, and so on. It makes you smile. Right? Something like that?

That seems so impossible in so many ways. I just want to get to the point where my very body isn’t trying to escape what I’m doing, black out and leave, much less me in general. I want to feel in control. I want to keep it together. That’s what I want.
Maybe that’s happiness for now. Maybe. Maybe I don’t know what it is, and maybe I never have and never will. I can never be sure. It always seems unreal, when I try to pull up in my head times when I was happy.

Maybe that’s just me feeling bad talking. I don’t know.

I wish I had other things on my mind than this stupid bullshit.

Have a nice day. Be happy.

The future, right? That’s certainly a thing.

There was a time in my life where I never felt like I had one of those. Nothing in my life was going right, and there felt like there was very little I could do about it. Every day was simply another day. I’d think about what I needed to do that day, and do it. Sometimes not do it. It was pretty bleak I guess. I didn’t feel like myself, and nothing I did felt significant.

Then, for awhile, progress was made. I started accomplishing stuff useful in moving forward in my life. It was crazy. I started thinking about jobs, lives, futures. It was scary as fuck, sure. But finally I felt like I had some control over who I was and what I was doing. It was lovely.

Recently, I’ve lost that again. I’m doing things that are important. I’m preparing for the party this weekend. I’m continuing to kick butt at my continuing education. There are things going on that I feel are very important, but my actions feel completely disconnected with the bigger picture. I feel like I don’t have a grasp on that bigger picture, and all these other things aren’t helping me find it.

I feel like this keeps happening to me. I make some progress, and that feels great. But I don’t finish becoming myself. Things aren’t done. But I become unable to take direct action. The vision of the future fades. I’m left with nothing. I’m left in depression.

That’s really fucking frustrating.

I’m not out of the woods. I’m going to keep going. But it’s annoying it’s so hard. It’s annoying I can never seem to accept the things I have done as significant. How many times have I written this blog post? How often do I feel like this? It’s so stupid.

I tell Brer, and I tell my little blog, but I’m such a broken record that that doesn’t do as much as it should anymore. I debate doing things like talking to Mom, or other friends, but I get scared. I don’t want to burden people with this stuff. My mom would focus on less what I wanted to talk about and more her reaction to who I am, which is understandable but unhelpful. I don’t feel like the dynamic between my friends and I leaves me open to just throw out topics like that, even though I know they’d listen and support me. I always feel like I’d be ruining a good time. I tell my psychologist, but sometimes I feel like I’m preparing so much for our talks that some of these feeling stuff gets missed, because it gets to the point almost where I’m giving a speech because I don’t want to forget to mention “relevant” information.

As always, the solution is to just keep going. I always keep going, and I never stop. It’s hard not to wish to stop sometimes, though. Just as a fucking change of pace. Then at least it would feel like I did something. Something happened. “I ruined my education, lost my job, or worse, but hey, that’s something!”
That’s horrible depressing talk I shouldn’t engage in, though. I should just keep going. Always.

Sometimes I forget why I play games, I guess. I do it because it’s what I do. I mean, I enjoy myself, but often it’s not so much a thrill as a way to pass the time. I don’t always realize it, of course. It takes those rare moments to smack me out of it. Whether it be a game that’s so frustrating, I question why I’m using my leisure time on it, or a game so fantastic, it pulls me out enough to make me go “wait a second, this is so much damn fun!”

I don’t know. I got DJ Hero 2 in from Gamefly, and immediately after putting the disc in, I was thrilled. It drew me in. It made me feel excited and energized. After playing for hours and stopping, I stepped back and went, “Holy shit, I was having fun.”

I remember other moments like that in life, where I’ve looked at myself and realized, “Oh, this is happy, I guess. Crazy.” Like, say, the first time I saw They Might Be Giants in concert. I was completely lost in it. Completely happy, and it was extended over a long period of time. At times, the nostalgic feelings that creep up on me when I view a Christmas tree does the same thing. I feel fantastic. I feel loved. It’s great.

There are times I wonder if the fact that I feel this way indicates how horrible I feel most of the time. “Does everyone normally feel like this on a good day?” I wonder. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I’ve got lots of good in my life. It’s pretty solid. No, it’s just a heightened sense. A sense of getting away from everything, and of being completely free. It’s great when a good game experience can give you that rare moment.

Needless to say, I paid to keep DJ Hero 2. I’m really loving it. I’ll write more about it later. But it just reminded me how rare that feeling is. I guess I’m lucky the game gives it to me, at least for a little while.