Sonic Gets Bummed Hour

June 21, 2022

I feel like I need to journal and blog more, but it's always hard to start. Partially because it's hard to overcome the momentum of whatever else I happen to be doing/watching/listening to when I do actually have a window I can do it in, and partially for all the reasons I tend to always be occupying myself with something--from the basics of being ADHD and constantly in search of that good, good dopamine to the cacophony of badness brought to the table by my PTSD. It's hard to face either of those, even if "deliberately" and "through journaling" is a good avenue to do so. I've even put together tons of lists over the years of topics to tell stories about, or go off about, or that I think I have interesting things to say or vent about, and just...nope. That might happen in a batch of one or three and then piddle out. It kinda sucks.

The other side of wanting to journal, apart from the afore-alluded to processing help is just...with my PTSD, my memory is kinda shit. I have a lot of stuff I know I'm missing, including shit I journaled about and forgot was a thing until I went through my old notebooks and stuff again. Which is frankly pretty scary. And, especially now that I'm living in a way better situation, I don't want to just go through not remembering my life, or whatever. (Though admittedly there were years there where I was literally baffled by the assertion that I would want to remember whatever was going on in my workday. Like nooo, I wasn't gonna work to encode memories of working in customer service and being miserable. I took notes, check those.)

I'm still suicidal. Which sucks. Obviously. But aside from just being a shitty state in its own right, there's the whole, "Why do I even still feel this way?" of it all. Like, I'm away from my abusers. I'm out of the really dangerous shit. I've been away for a year. I live with people I adore. My job is hard, but it's actually usually something worth doing for its own sake, not busywork doing nothing or doing real harm while I get abused and can't keep up. And also I'm not usually failing all day every day, even if my old cycles of beating myself and feeling like that's what's happening still kick up every time I make a small mistake. But even that's getting better. I'm still super anxious about the prospect of going back next week. But, yanno, I have like 10 years of work-related trauma, so I'd probably feel anxious about going back to an even 100% good job, let alone the dysfunction we've got going on and the prospect of new trainees to come back to.

Aside from exercising, which admittedly I could probably do this week and not be in danger of kicking off a disaster spiral, I'm doing everything I know to do to work on getting better. I started Zoloft three weeks ago tomorrow/the Wednesday before last. I dunno, time feels squishy, is that 2 weeks or 3 weeks? IDK. I've got a therapist, and am trying to actively have appointments with her. I'm trying to confront, understand, and deconstruct whatever burbles to the surface, and get better about letting my mates help me without offloading the whole of the burden on them. I'm trying so hard...and I still feel this bad. Like, I feel better than I did...but I still feel frequently terrible. And tired. I'm trying to rest and also not just laze endlessly. But yanno. It's hard to feel like I've actually attained balance either way. And I'm sure I'll be so annoyed with myself that I didn't take this "free time" and use it to better advantage later, after I'm back at work and thinking about all the things I want to get done and can't.

I'm trying not to beat myself up, but I don't know if I succeed. Sometimes it just seems like I get passive-aggressive with myself over it instead.

Then of course there's the dysphoria. Which will always be here. Background radiation of my life, and all that. It's hard. It sucks to always either be so aware of it, or screening it out...it just doesn't stop. And it never will. And it isn't worth putting more thought into because it won't stop sucking. Because OH WHALE.

Like, I could write about how I experience dysphoria, but then I have to actually look at it. And as there's nothing I can do to make it better, it doesn't feel like an actually good use of my time. "Time for your Sonic gets bummed hour!" or something.

I want to go Home. I want to be myself. I want to be with my mates and family. I want to live in a world that's at least not as broken as this one, and preferably one that makes sense or that I know how to help fix. I want to stop feeling so trapped and helpless and useless. I guess it also keeps coming back to that, where a lot of my trauma is around not measuring up or being good enough, and being "useless", and then I've got my own standards for myself, where I'm supposed to be a superhero, and I'm supposed to be able to help people. And if I'm not doing that, if I'm not living up to those ideals, I feel useless to myself. Because I want so keenly to go on adventures, and explore, and help, and be an icon of hope and have fun and just live a life I can yanno, have more joy than pain in.

I rejected so hard the concept that life is pain. The idea that life after high school had to be worse than that cesspool was such an anathema to me I couldn't even stand it. It would take so little for this world to not hurt so many people so badly. I don't believe for a...heh, Sonic Second, that any of it is necessary.

And I hurt so damn bad every day.

And I don't know what, or what else to do about it. Like, okay, I'll keep going. But it's like that Hyperbole and a Half about depression. Fuck it. More dirt and rocks and shit, I guess. Why not.

...Why do I feel better now, like an hour after writing this?