Clearing House

Well, got a lot of mental housekeeping to do, so I think it is high time I dusted this thing off and wrote for a little while in it. I don’t write here as often as I should, nor do I really want to update this thing at a pace that I had years ago; it kind of diluted what I was doing with it. But I do need to get better about using it more than once every few months, only when I am feeling overwhelmed and just kind of need to shout into the ether. That has been… A lot lately, and about a lot of things. There is just so much going on with me that I can’t hope to keep it all straight in my head, as much as I wish that I could and have been trying to. It isn’t an easy task, but I have been managing as best I can to keep everything all sorted out… It hasn’t been fun or easy, and with no one to really talk to, it kind of makes things a lot harder for me. I am the one that people come to in order to talk, and not the other way around. I am the rock for a lot of people, their one that they cone to when upset or when they need to get things off their chest. Hell, I discovered that I am that to my parents to a certain extent earlier today. It… Well, it isn’t something that I really enjoy in the slightest. I need to have my own vent, and I really don’t. I have people that offer, sure, but when push comes to shove and I try and talk about my issues, it turns into them talking about theirs and me helping them out. And ugh… I kind of need my own pressure valve as it may be, since I have felt like I am going to blow for months now.

I am not just emptily complaining here either, I know it seems like that, but I am not. I try to give to everyone, and to not take any more than I need from someone, if I take anything at all; accepting help is the hardest thing I do. I have struggled with suicide for years, and when I tried to talk that out with people… Well, I got labeled as someone who was always depressed and shoved a lot of friends away. Were they real friends for saying that? I don’t really think so… Especially not when they would do the same to me. But I can see their point, so it isn’t something that I can fault them for. I have severe, manic depression that means pretty much every day is a real, honest-to-god struggle for me. Waking up is hard, doing anything is hard, thinking is hard, writing is hard, just existing is hard… Not in the sense of adulting either; it’s genuinely a struggle for me as there is no small part of me that always, ALWAYS wants to say fuck it to life. I have battled that demon for almost 20 years now, and it has won more than once… It was why I drank as much as I did at one point, why I am as behind on commission work as I am, and why I struggle to do much else than just sit and try to cope nowadays. I have tried various things, including therapy, to help with this… And well, nothing has really, truly helped. I don’t know where to go with it, and talking to friends won’t do for it since I can’t be that burden; I need to be the one who is there, not the one who needs someone. Is that kind of selfish? Maybe… Well, not maybe. It can be taken as such fairly easily honestly, but I need to be a little selfish there in order to just make sure that I can keep my head above water. Doing that is the hardest thing for me nowadays, and as much as I just want to sink into obscurity and let everyone forget that I even exist… I think that I have already gotten that taken care of in some respects. People reach out a lot less to me than they did, I haven’t really gotten nearly the following I had when I was writing as much as I could years ago… It’s kind of like I have faded into the background, and I guess that I am okay with that.

I mean, I really am okay with it if I think about it. Fading off means when, inevitably, that darker part of me wins… It won’t affect as many people. Selfish, again, I know it really is… But it is just something that I have to cope with again. I don’t want to be selfish; hell I hate being selfish. It’s one of those traits that I really abhor in people and in myself. I mean, if everyone stopped for even a split second and just thought about someone other than themselves for a solid moment… The world would be way better all over. I struggle in that I basically think too much about others. Pain in my shoulders? Okay, sure, it’s debilitating and a real struggle, but I have conventions to work at and people to help in my daily life. A day where I wake up and want to put a gun in my mouth? Okay, fine, but someone else is having a rough day at work and they need me to be there for them. Arthritis in my hands acting up? Okay, whatever, I have commissions that need writing. That has been my mentality for years, and I struggle to look outside of it to see anything other than the need to take care of those around me. I overextend so often for that honestly too, and well… Fuck if it doesn’t break me sometimes. I know I was broken most of March from just struggling to keep up with everything that was going on in real life. April? I pushed way too hard at FWA then the weekend after working on my truck, and paid for it by basically being bedridden for 2 weeks. We had a SasukeCon in there, but I was in screaming pain the whole time… And admittedly, I took some of it out on Kita. I wasn’t at my best, and I was trying, but I was struggling and Kita was there to take some of what I was struggling with. He did it… Well, not great, and we fought a fair amount, but we came out the other side and we’re alright. He and I have made the fact that I am like this work in some way. I don’t really know how… He is selfish nearly to a fault in many ways, but he does TRY, and fuck if he isn’t loyal. He’s kind of finally figured out what he needs to be with me. I am a complicated mess of emotional, angry, depressed, and agonizing faults, and I know that I am. Relationships aren’t easy for me because I bite off more than I can chew then get upset when the other can’t do the same, and… Shit if that doesn’t make things messy with he and I. He is just lazy and carefree and wasn’t raised with anything less than a silver spoon in his mouth, the polar opposite of me. However, that balances me out… And it works. It isn’t pretty, and we fight, and a lot of the time I really just want to wring his neck or yell… But it works, and it is at least something to keep me on an even keel. It isn’t enough though, I need something a lot stronger to even try and start fighting back against the demons I have been struggling with for years.

The point of this long, kinda winding rant? I’m not okay, haven’t been, and don’t know if I can be at this point in my life. I am trying to be okay, really I am, but… It’s a lot easier said than done. I am trying to write more (Case and point, I am updating this aren’t I?), and did get some stuff done in April. Not what I was shooting for though… And I am taking a few months off from really doing anything aside from writing and being home to get more stuff done. The truck is at a point that I can leave it be for now, the car needs a bit of work done to it but nothing I can’t muster. My brother is leaving his truck be and at a point now that I don’t need to keep an eye on him as much, and Kita and I are at a point now that things… Well, they’re better than they have been in a pretty damn long time. Things are looking up for me, I can’t lie and say that they aren’t. I need that, but at the same time me personally is just… Well, I am hanging on by a thread. I am trying, but a lot of things is the fear of failure that I am suffering from. I feel like if I write anything, I will just disappoint whomever I am writing it for. Why do I feel like that? I have no idea… But I feel like everything I touch is just going to disappoint or let someone down or just turn out like crap. I have been battling that feeling for over a year at this point, and I haven’t solved it. I WANT to write, and proof of that is in the fact that I have a few stories that are finished and need to be posted… Eventually. But, I am still afraid of putting them out because I feel like they are just crap. And while I know they aren’t in at least some capacity, I still have that worry, and it makes me just terrified to write. I have to, I want to, but… I’m scared, and I feel like I have no one in my corner in that respect. It isn’t laziness, or lack of motivation, or a scam, or anything else that I have heard people tell me that I have to deal with. Nope, it’s fear and depression, pure and simple. I am trying to work past it and get better, but every step I take, it feels like I take two steps back and just kind of fail even more. I don’t want to… I feel like I am at a crossroads. Do I keep on trying on something that I don’t even know works anymore, or do I give up, admit defeat, and start over? I am leaning in that direction… But… I feel doing that would let people down too. So what I do is kind of scary. I don’t know where to go from here. We will see. So I guess ciao for now, more later.