Well.
I suffer from anxiety and depression. I don't know how to put it any other way. Some days I just burst out crying and sob for a good half hour and hide it from the people around me by leaving the shop. Or my anxiety flares up (thankfully not panic attacks, which I've only experienced once at a completely random time) about my future that I only know how to remedy by suppressing and ignoring with instant-gratification distractions.
I'm 20 years old. I'm not enrolled at a college or university, despite performing in the top fifth percentile of my high school class, getting accepted to the best university in the state, and qualifying for the highest tier of my state-level scholarship regime. This situation alone - and it's only one of several factors contributing to my bad situation over the past few years - is responsible for more nightmares, shame, and unrelenting anxious breakdowns than any reasonable person should experience. Even as I type these words, I'm fucking crying my eyes out. It's something I've gotten so good at suppressing that returning to it, like I am right now, feels like falling into a black hole I can't even begin to climb out of. I just cry and and cry and think about the bright futures of all my friends, the elite collegiate experience of the best and brightest I was inundated throughout my entire life to value and anticipate and prepare for, and how my own anxiety and depression ruined it. I know it's not reasonable to think, but it is what I think.
I don't have a support structure. The only family member I'm even remotely close to is my father, who is a chain-smoking Joe whose only idea of supporting his child is bringing me nice restaurant meals a few times a week. He is a tradesman in his late forties who has never once had any credit cards, bank accounts, savings, financial paperwork, or dealings with the IRS. Nor is he inclined to learn how to do any of those things, up to and including squaring away his tax history. This is why I can't get federal student aid as a dependent, which is why I can't apply for a federal or state student aid regime. That, and the very idea of finances (especially scholarships) has always filled me with a pervasive and insurmountable dread, even in high school. Every little fucking grant seemed like it was designed to reward leadership and extra-curricular activity and social activism and I'm just a quiet person who stays inside and does his work. I'm not the type of person to bullshit on forms or whatever, so I just ignored it all, as that was what was comfortable. A reasonable person would think of loans or school scholarships, but I wasn't reasonable and I had no reasonable person in my life to tell me at the time. My father cared little as long as I kept breathing. In the end, I spent over a year sitting at home, post-high school, without a job or job prospects, or a license or a car, screwing around on a computer and having horrible nightmares about school.
Then we became homeless. It was sudden and I still don't fully understand why, both myself and my father being the last people to ever talk about ourselves, especially to each other, but one day we lost our apartment and have spent the last year and a half wearing out the patience of whatever horrible friends of his would have us. For the past eight months or so we've been living in an auto repair shop owned by a horrible old friend of my dad's who berates us into doing free work for him in lieu of rent. On a physical level, it's nicer than it sounds. There are beds, a shower, air conditioning, an oven, a refrigerator, a sink, a nice desk, and a microwave, which is enough. It's bad, but I at least am forced to socialize with people on a regular basis. The mechanic, the boss, customers, my dad, workers from the other businesses around here. It's better than absolute isolation, which is the only good thing I can say about it. The boss is the worst. The most emotionally manipulative dick you've ever met, and worse, because he's brilliantly intelligent and canny at the same time. He mocks me for being a shy and quiet guy and pressures me to manage his shop on an unofficial basis because I'm too weak-willed to do otherwise and too poor to leave a relatively good lodging for nothing. If you're wondering, I get food from food stamps.
I took a lot longer than is reasonable to realize I am also depressed, and have been for probably a while. My default emotional state is cold and dispassionate. Time slips by without even realizing it, days, months, and weeks of the same bad routine. When my anxieties about my life flare up, I have blinding crying episodes and feel like anything I do any choice I make is insurmountably difficult and worthless. When I'm not having anxiety attacks about it, I can't be bothered to learn programming or be productive because I don't value my life or future enough to care. I feel like I don't have the energy to, and succumbing to procrastination and living on autopilot is too easy. I don't know who to talk to for help and I'm scared of reaching out to strangers, who are the only people who CAN help me. I'm just not the kind of person who opens up about himself to others, but I know that I need to, but there's no one to force me to. I don't have health insurance, and I don't know how to get any, and I don't know how to get a real therapist, because I have no money.
Reading this over, it seems more heavy on the anxiety than the depression. I hope this is still appropriate for this sub. I know I am depressed. I have a thing where when I'm not immediately experiencing it, I feel sort of skeptical about the validity of it and try to deny it. It's not clinical, it's not major, it's not constant, I'm not bed-bound and catatonic with psychic pain, and all those other things David Foster Wallace wrote about, but it's real.
Submitted April 23, 2015 at 04:41AM by Suckymcsucksuck http://ift.tt/1HWo5hF depression
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