02 December 2021 @ 12:51 pm
is it the chicken or the egg that I should throw out with the bath water?  
I have been rather discouraged lately.

In the sense that, once again, it feels like no matter how I try to break free of stagnancy, I exert myself a lot without getting anywhere. In my eyes, this isn't madness, because I'm not trying the same things over again expecting different results... but it sure as shit feels like it.

I've spent an more time on Tumblr than I'd ever care to, and followed maybe 20-25 new blogs. I joined something like eight different discords, a couple for each topic (Phantom, Japanese, Disney, Alice)... and none is very active or engaging. I joined an Alice in Wonderland collection/trading group on FB.

During all of this, I realized that it's majority teenagers in these domains, so not people I'm wanting to be friends with, no offense to them. Though I accidentally called a teenager "hot" in a Phantom discord because they posted a picture of themselves covered head to toe in a costume and I honestly couldn't tell and was just trying to be complimentary... so that was awkward. Having minors around kind of feels like a field of landmines, and they're not relatable, and more and more the spaces I'm trying to interact in don't feel like they're "for me" anymore.

There was also a weird few hours I had at the tail end of my last weekend, when there had been so much silence and alienization after all those efforts that it kind of felt like I was not part of reality anymore. Even sticking my head out the front door to escape the dead-silent living room, the fresh air and sounds of activity in the nearby parking lot weren't reaching me in the same way. My friend said it sounded like her episodes of depersonalization, but it was not that extreme - just slightly jarring and hella depressing.

I don't think I'm going to get that job, either, since it's been... 18 days and I've not heard back. There have been some people who have been telling me to just "keep applying" to positions that are similar, and I was like "that was IT. That was the first time in years that I have seen something that fits me; there are no similar positions."

* * *

Anyway, I will see a neurologist soon to address my almost daily headaches/migraines. I'm 12% hopeful, but 88% preparing to hear that nobody knows why I'm having these, or that it's stress, and "perhaps therapy will slightly reduce the frequency of them, twenty years from now, if you manage to find a therapist you click with, and after spending all that money you don't have on appointments that would be often enough to be effective."

A therapist: "BTW, what is it that stresses you out, anyway?"

Me: *shrugs* "Being alive, apparently."

Therapist: "Oh, okay. have you tried... not?"

Me: "Have I tried dying?"

Therapist: "Oh wait, no, that's not what I meant. Well, what is it about being alive that's so stressful?"

Me: "These fucking migraines are what's stressful. And being alone so often, without close connections or a sense of belonging. Life is just not comprised of very meaningful experiences for me: it's mostly meh or unpleasant, unless I stir myself into a numbing enough obsession. Basically I have to try to not participate in reality as hard as I can, and retreat into my brain. There is still some magic and wonder in there."

Therapist: "Well have you tried... making close connections and belonging?"

Me: "..................................................................."

Therapist: *tilts head*

Me: "Yes, but the world does not seem to want me to have those things. People I want to connect with don't want to connect with me, or don't exist, and places where I would belong don't want me there, or don't exist. It seems like I won't find peace until I stop wanting or expecting those things to be happy. Like, if I could just find a way to contradict the human state of being, and not require closeness or meaning in what I do. Do you think that's possible?"

Therapist: "No."

Me: "Well unless you have a better idea... damnit, that's what I'm going to try."

Therapist: "Well maybe you're actually afraid of trying for those things. Maybe you are inhibited in some way, guarded." <-- what the last therapist I talked to was suspecting, based on very little knowledge about me

Me: "You're wrong. It's everyone and everything else that is inhibited, guarded, insecure, fickle... and highly mysterious."


And I stand by that, I really do.

</3, J
 
 
Current Mood: bitchy
 
 
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Igenlode Wordsmith[personal profile] igenlode on December 4th, 2021 01:37 am (UTC)
Mixing with teenagers (especially on Tumblr, which was basically a feminist dystopia when I last saw it) is fairly non-relatable. Although groups of middle-aged 'moms' aren't much of an improvement; you probably want to be looking for a more academic slant.

I ended up in a Facebook writers' group as a substitute for FFnet writers' forums, which does at least slant slightly older (although a lot of people there are either 'young adults' or trying to write 'for young adults'). However, in both places I'm afraid the most congenial -- and by and large the most tolerant -- people turned out to be those in higher education; there is a great deal to be said for being taught to think, or at least to think before you knee-jerk.

I'm not sure the old-style fannish spaces really do exist any more, judging by what I've seen of people complaining about it. That culture was mostly gone before I ever came on the scene anyway, so the only experience of it I ever had was Usenet circa 2005 -- I've done a lot of looking on at the echoes of long-gone conversations... Most of my fandom interaction has been on a one-to-one basis or simply as private analysis, either sparked off by or itself sparking off fiction. The 'spaces' involved aren't much bigger than my inbox :-(

People I want to connect with don't want to connect with me, or don't exist, and places where I would belong don't want me there, or don't exist. It seems like I won't find peace until I stop wanting or expecting those things to be happy.


I'm afraid that's pretty much the conclusion I came to. (And also, my -- unfavourable -- impression of therapy has been that what you actually want is for the intolerable things about the world to change, while what the therapist wants is to change *you* so that you don't care about them any more.)

I thought I'd found a place where I belonged, and someone I cared about, for the first time in my life. I lost both (or lost one and consciously threw away the other), and stopped expecting to be happy. And I am absolutely inhibited from ever trying for those things, or any emotional or physical closeness at all. I stumbled into something I wasn't looking for in the first place, and don't have any tools or intention to go out seeking substitutes.

(It turned out the one thing I couldn't burn out/turn off was my writing tendencies, which I suppose is as good a way of finding out what really matters to your subconscious as any.)



Migraines, on the other hand, I would assume are *probably* physiological in cause, although that doesn't by any means imply 'curable'. (My father eventually worked out that his migraines were caused by *release* of stress; every time he tried to relax, he got a crippling sick headache. Very inconvenient when it predictably incapacitates you almost every weekend and on holiday. In the long term, they stopped when he was no longer under high daily levels of stress and his body (presumably) got used to being without the constant overdose levels of adrenalin. I inherited them but simply grew out of it at a fairly young age -- I still get the aura from time to time, but the actual migraines haven't manifested in twenty years or so now.)
darlingdeathbird: Cheshire Cat - Not alll theereeee[personal profile] darlingdeathbird on December 5th, 2021 09:32 am (UTC)
Yes! I think that was once a cause of my migraines, the release of stress. I used to go back and forth between ailments: stomach aches/reflux, then migraines. Once I was feeling better after one, the other would start up. Sometimes in the same day. That is why I worry that the doc might say I need a therapist, because I'm somehow interpreting everything I have to do outside my apartment as extremely stressful, when it's really not. But obviously it is to me, subconsciously, if my migraines have worked that way.

But then as of late they don't? I used to be able to say they never happened at work (when I was "going through the stress"), but now they do. And they happen at home on the evenings of my days off, after I've had almost no stress at all. We're supposed to find our triggers, but for me it seems whether I'm home or at work, whether I'm exhausted or just awoken from a solid night's sleep, whether it's dark or light, quiet or noisy (usually never is it noisy)... etc. etc. etc. How does one figure it out when there isn't a reliable pattern anymore? That's why the migraines seem to be the symptom of something else. Woah I didn't mean to write so much about this. XD We opened a can of worms.

We probably should not be encouraging each other, though -- RE: to swear off so many joys. I know it's not the answer, but it's all I can come up with at the moment. There's got to be something more for us.
Igenlode Wordsmith[personal profile] igenlode on December 8th, 2021 03:23 am (UTC)
Another thing associated with migraines is clenching your jaw/grinding your teeth, which can either be a stress response or a boredom response, so crops up in different contexts...
But of course repeated headaches can very much be an indication of brain tumours and stuff like that, so apart from anything else it does pay to get it checked out just in order to be sure :-(

In terms of swearing off joys I'm not a good role model, because I made a deliberate decision to do so ('I don't want to find pleasure in these things under these circumstances'). I actually spent quite a lot of time in my twenties suffering from the anticipated inevitability that my body would betray me; 'people don't live like that long-term'. Turns out they can.
Perhin Madoc Gamgins: Alice Bitch Please[personal profile] perhin_madoc_gamgins on December 4th, 2021 05:08 am (UTC)
I absolutely hate stupid therapists. They only suggest stupid, shitty ideas, because they have no idea what to say to help out. -_- You think you could find a better one to see?

I like tumblr, but are right about too many teenagers running the place. I rarely make comments, and all I do is download pretty pictures to use as wallpapers anyway. I can say I found some nice YouTube people to subscribe to....and that's about it for tumblr.

Disney? Ever seen Pocket Princess comics?
darlingdeathbird: Alice - haaaalp[personal profile] darlingdeathbird on December 5th, 2021 09:35 am (UTC)
Oh, he isn't a therapist I've seen any time recently. After only a couple of sessions, I never returned!

Can't say I'm familiar with Pocket Princess. I mostly joined the discords because I like the classic Disney films, and the parks. Ahhh, nobody was talking, though! It was a bummer.
Perhin Madoc Gamgins: Alice Cake[personal profile] perhin_madoc_gamgins on December 5th, 2021 10:22 pm (UTC)
Pocket Princesses is a comic about the Disney princesses. You can find it on Tumblr and Instagram. :D

I have been hunting for your Alice icon forever! I've gotta save it before I lose it again.
Mandy B: chester[personal profile] mistressmandoli on December 6th, 2021 05:04 am (UTC)
I'd rather have your therapist than the one I'm currently trying to get away from right now. His way of therapy is to do ART to try to erase negative memories. If I could, I would rather do talk-based sessions. The last time I was in a session with him, he literally wanted to just do ART for the hell of it. Pissed me off.
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