There's a sort of achey breathless weight in my chest that I'm not totally comfortable naming right now

Hi diary

Well, this has been pretty weird, hasn't it. i'm hiding out from covid in an apartment furnished by my company because my normal apartment's space and wi-fi capabilities are laughable at most. i have to go up there about once a week to check my mail because forwarding addresses for the duration of a national emergency doesn't really have a solid precedent in the USPS.

the apartments are unsettlingly big for one person, and I've also realized that they're kind of unsettlingly big for two people. we've set up in the living room where we do our best to stay productive in a traumatic bewildering environment (the current administration)

when we want to be unsupervised we hide in the other bedroom like i am doing now.



I think anxiety - my anxiety - seems to thrive best in routine. when everything is upside down and on fire, I'm fine. i have a plan, and i'm able to figure out where to next put my feet. when it's a matter of knowing that the plans are changing constantly and that i just have to stay on top of what the next step is going to be, it's fine. it's almost a relief when everything goes to hell.

(the fact that my contingency plan has always included suicide, for when everything is truly fucked beyond what I see my capabilities, probably has to do with that, to be honest. at this point it's more of a well-trodden path in my brain than a real plan. why am i trying to convince my blog, readership 0, of my mental well-being. it doesn't matter. this part of me will always make people vaguely uncomfortable and I can, haha, live with that)

But when we have a plan, when there's a solid day to day routine, my ability to cope with anxiety takes a nose dive.

brains are weird, full of expectations.

all i have to do is make sure I don't let mine shoot me in the foot

and they let me be their friend

Okay well apparently I can’t focus until I write this

I keep getting the feeling that people are just tolerating me, that one day I will say something wrong or do something wrong and then pam I’m out of their life

This is frustrating

Things that I do wrong:

I get angry at things and people a lot even though I’m getting better at pretending I’m not. Sometimes I have a bad day and I can feel everything tipping and anger balances it out again.  I think I heard that people react to anxiety in different ways and one of those ways is anger, and that’s how I react. 

(sometimes I feel very similar to a lot of the portrayals of bucky in fanfiction, because everything is loud and unpredictable and everyone expects you to know what the rules are, and you know some of them but if you get them wrong then everyone thinks you’re an idiot, and anger can reset that.)

I tell jokes that are rude and offensive, but sometimes the rude and offensive jokes that make me feel bad make the people who don’t like my rude and offensive jokes laugh.

I think I worry too much and too vocally about getting left behind or left out of things, and that makes people not want to include me in things

I went in to get tested for adhd and apparently I don’t have it, I just have a “creative personality” that means that I find it difficult to justify doing things that I don’t want to do. My big thing is novelty. If I have novelty and control, then I have motivation. If I do not, then I am fucked.

So I know I am broken but not in a way that I can fix.

I am bored almost all the time and I know some of this is depression and some of it is anger and some of it is both but the only times I can break through that is with violence – either in paper or skin

Sometimes the things other people do make me angry and then I feel bad for being angry, but I am still angry.  I don’t like it when other people breathe too loud, or break my schedule, or aren’t interested in something that I think they will be interested in.

I can tell when people think I am being an idiot about something, and that makes me angry, which makes them nervous, which makes me angry again.

I don’t like it when other people remember something that I can’t remember because I have a bad memory and if I don’t remember something how can I apologize for it? I used to have friends who would remember things I said that I didn’t remember saying, and I still don’t know if I actually said them or if they just said I did to gain advantage over me

I don’t trust people, I think, is the biggest issue, but I don’t see any way for me to trust people when people are generally untrustworthy.  I can usually trust people to do what I expect them to do, but if someone tells me they will or will not do something, I have to make plans in case they don’t.  What does “trust” mean? How do you do it?

I had a very good day today until I was suddenly having a slightly less good day. I want to leave. I want to move away from here. I feel like I make people uncomfortable here because I am wrong. It makes sense in the story in my head for me to be the anti-hero, and so I don’t know how I portray myself to everyone else.  I am an awkward adult growing out of a broken child and I wish I had the manual.

Things I do right:

Lying

Being manipulative

These are the two things, I think, that you need to be good at in order to hold a conversation and have friends.  “No, I don’t mind.” “It’s ok if you say no.” are pretty good examples of this.  I don’t see much difference between “bad” manipulation and “good” manipulation, because manipulation is getting other people to do what you want. I also don’t see much difference between “bad” lying and “good” lying, because lying means you aren’t telling the truth, and I don’t think anyone wants to hear the whole truth and nothing but the truth except maybe our most idealized version of the justice system.

I am good enough at lying that I do it to myself all the time and sometimes I don’t notice. When I was twelve, I said to myself I know you lie to other people and that’s ok I guess but stop lying to yourself so I did that for a while, and then I started telling the truth on the outside and realized how much I still lied on the inside.

Facial expressions unless I am sad and angry, and I guess I do those right because I am communicating very well that I am sad and/or angry.

Finding connections between people or things. Sometimes if someone is looking for help with something, I am able to find them help with that thing. It makes me feel good.  I like buying people things. It makes me feel good not to be selfish.

Being selfish is like white bread, I think. When you eat it, it reminds you of your childhood, and it is so tasty that you could eat a lot, but when you do, it sits in your stomach and you regret it. Sometimes it is better to pretend you are eating white bread while instead you have wheat bread or a salad, because you feel better about yourself.

I do sometimes think the people around me would be better off without me, but I think that is a white bread thought. It’s okay to think white bread thoughts but still eat salad.  The truth is that there are a few people who were worse off before I was here, and there are a few people who were better off before I was here, and there are a lot of people for who it wouldn’t have mattered either way.

The way I am writing is the way I think when I am sad or off balance or angry sometimes. I didn’t intend to write this way, but it helps me to tell the truth better than if I wrote long flowing sentences.

Once I sat down at a table and the other people at the table said so what’s wrong with you

And I was confused

And they said oh basically all of her friends are screwed up somehow, so what’s wrong with you

And I said I get depressed and then I get depressed for being depressed and then it turns into a big spiral of badness

And even though I sounded like an overdramatic 18 year old (which I was), they said oh, ok and they let me be their friend