i wrote a whole entry about how i don't want to live. i deleted it. i don't want to die, but i'm too lazy to live. there's always a lot going on and it's the average amount of things i should be able to deal with. most of them are positives, even, like hanging out with friends. i'm worthless. it sucks that every second of every day is an active drain on somebody whether i'm aware of it or not. if i had any spine, i'd kill myself. i don't, so i don't.

it sucks pretty bad that evrything in the world is my fault and problem. it stresses me out to no end and eats up all my time, leaving literally nothing for me to take care of myself beyond what will allow me to look presentable. my partner pointed out a few weeks ago as a joke that i need to do things for myself sometimes, like buying a glasses kit and getting a haircut, but i avoid them. it's not an active choice to punish myself, it's just that i have so much more shit on my plate that i'm not even addressing, and i'm supposed to find time to get a haircut? again, they were joking, but i realized that i seriously just don't want to do these things until i've taken care of everyone else first. i can't. it's selfish.

again, not actually, but it's like, damn. you want to spend an afternoon (it did not take an afternoon) fixing your glasses when you could be using that afternoon to go check up on your friend whose sister just died and who you cleaned the house of then ghosted for a month and are still ghosting? you want to go spend the money and time on a haircut when you have to clean the kitchen because there's crumbs fucking everywhere, or the bathroom because you only get the energy once a month at best so it's filthy by the time you get to it? you want to deep clean your room when you could be using that energy to call your mother? i haven't called her in a month, either. i'm just so tired.

that's the whole entry, i guess. i'm responsible for so many things that "aren't my responsibility," but it's not my place to wholly neglect them, either, and that means that everything i need to do to make myself more presentable is falling by the wayside. my room is full of food i put in places then forget about, my hair is fucking disgusting because i haven't cut it in two years, i haven't gotten my testosterone, i've been cooking way less, and now i have to focus on classes, too. thank god classes at least cost my parents money- otherwise, i would have dropped out a long time ago. i wish i could, still, but whatever. i wish a lot of things about myself. i wish i wasn't neglecting my friend, i wish i wasn't neglecting my mother, i wish i wasn't neglecting my roommate, i wish i wasn't neglecting my medication, i wish i wasn't neglecting my room, i wish i wasn't neglecting the house. sigh. oh well. nothing to be done for it but keep that nose on the grindstone as best i can.

got a 0% in that summer class. i swing wildly between caring about everything so much i have panic attacks and not caring at all about anything. i've been drinking too much. apparently my partner put in a new bag in my trash can and i threw up in it. when? i don't remember. too drunk. could've been any night in the past two weeks, honestly.

my mom's going to find out i have a 2.4 gpa soon, i think. that's unfortunate. oh well. the apartment sprayed for roaches and they started dying for three days before coming back like nothing ever happened at all. my roommate has been gone for the last bit, but she's going to be coming back soon because her girlfriend is going to be working more. i'm definitely going to have to take an extra semester of classes because i need 41 credits and have a single year to get them.

my job has no future. i don't speak enough japanese, and translation is being consumed by ai anyway. i can't teach a class; i'm too unintelligent and nervous. i guess i'll just be a janitor forever, or i'll go to trade school. regardless, i'm going to waste the thousands of dollars my parents sunk into the college education of a useless, lazy, selfish asshole. it's kind of freeing to realize that i have no present and no future. nothing matters except supporting the people around me anymore. that's cool. i can't actually do that, but i guess i can try. given that i can't kill myself, that's all i can do.

my partner insists i have some kind of disability, but i don't think so. i don't think being completely unable to make myself do things i don't want to do is a disability. i think that's just being lazy. i know it. oh, well.

i should definitely stop using this damn public journal, but whatever. dude, summer classes have been kicking my fucking ass. well, one of them already did, and i got a 56%, sorry for wasting your money mom. the other i currently have a 0% in and until next friday to do 3 essays for. i've been trying to do the essay all day, and what i have is a single page of notes. that were incorrect. because i misread the prompt. bro.

i know it's not kosher to call myself lazy or whatever, but i'm so frustrated with myself. i don't understand why i can't just do the things i'm supposed to do. i hate staring at the reading and not being able to connect ideas. i don't even know why- i just can't. it doesn't click in my mind. i've tried pomodoro, i've tried staring at the wall for 10 minutes beforehand so my brain will seek any stimulation, i've tried caffeine, i've tried no caffeine. nothing works, except for when i have random bursts of productivity that let me get a normal amount of work done in a normal amount of time.

"ah," i hear you say, "surely this is not laziness!" well, i also did have an entire month and a half to do this class, and i only buckled down really last week. i have spent so much time just staring at these fucking readings. i literally don't know what to do. i can't withdraw. i can't write the essays. i can't not try. i mean, i know what to do, which is keep my nose to the grindstone as best i can, but holy shit. it's so frustrating and stressful, which distracts me from actually writing the essay. urgh. whatever. short entry, because it's literally just me lamenting the hole i dug myself into instead of fixing it. graaagh.

hi. i used a lot of very-descriptive vomiting imagery in this entry.

at the airport right now. i took a dramamine for my first flight (there's always a layover) so i'm pretty tired and SUPER loopy but i was tired anyway because i didn't sleep last night. i mean, i did, but it felt like i didn't. i woke up every hour from the heat and from my possible-ocd.

the first time i heard the term "ruminate," it was... well, the first time was definitely as a synonym for ponder. the first time i heard it in a medical context, it was in the context of rumination disorder, a neuoropsychological disorder characterized by the unwillful explusion of food after eating. what it made me think of, though, was the idea of vomiting and swallowing food over and over. rumination is partially characterized by the fact that food is undigested, meaning a lot of increasingly-dull-flavored food already emulsified and coagulated with your saliva and mucuc going up and down and up and down and up and down the elevator of your esophagus. this is not how rumination disorder works, but it is how i imagine the form of rumination that i engage in, which is to say, the psychological kind. it's a surprisingly apt metaphor.

1 AM. you decide to go to bed, so you lay down and close your eyes. you were already worrying about going home tomorrow; continue doing that. repeatedly imagine the worst possible ways for your family to receive you, and feel like it's happening right now. repeatedly reassure yourself that you are the worst person alive and you deserve it. repeatedly inform yourself that that's not a healthy mindset to stop the compulsion, and sit in the shame and guilt and disgust with yourself until you have to verbalize it, then you can sleep.

2 AM. finally get to sleep.

4 AM. wake up; it's hot. check the time. check your flight. check your messages and don't open the ones you see because you're scared of what they say. you're afraid your friend knows you didn't want to hang out like the selfish sack of shit you are. think about how you abandoned that friend; think about how you're abandoning your roommates right now. agonize over the heat. try to go back to sleep.

5 AM. "wake up." you never went back to sleep, really; your dreams were stress nightmares about failing to find something. seriously consider just leaving to pick up your medication. decide not to, because if A catches you and insists on driving you, wasting her time and making her late for work, you're going to inch ever-closer to that terrible cliff's edge over which you are no longer a forgivable person. remember you paradoxically were never forgivable and that you need to constantly scrabble for your morality. repeatedly imagine the worst possible ways for your family to receive you.

6 AM. alarm goes off. get dressed robotically and sit on your bed. you have fur beetles in the carpet you're too afraid to tell A about because you're hoping they'll go away. you know that's how infestations get worse. push the thought away; it hurts like staring at the sun. you found a roach under the sink hiding between where the landlord shoved some plywood and the sink itself. you soaked it with bleach, but it's a fucking cockroach. you know it didn't die. lay back down and wait.

7 AM. wake up- you feel like you finally drifted off. whatever; that's always the case. it's just confirmation bias. scroll through instagram (it's owned by meta, you piece of shit) until it's time to leave.

the thought spits up, weighty and tasteless and pasty. you swallow it back. the thought spits up. you swallow it back. the term rumination is derived from the latin word ruminare, which means to chew the cud. the thought spits up. you swallow it back. chew your fucking cud, cow.

what else is there to do with it? i keep talking about the same shit. these entries are all the same fucking shit repackaged over and over and over. all i ever do is repeat myself, and even if it's not OCD, it's inarguably self-made. i have done all of the positive and negative reinforcement for myself. whatever the fuck is wrong with me, i did that to myself.

and i mean, it's not like, terrible. i eat. i sleep. i shower. i drink like half a gallon of water every day. i play dnd. i dm another system. i go to work. i do enough of my schoolwork to squeak by. i can function just fine. i'm a functional person.

but it still sucks. now that i know it isn't normal to constantly repeat the same terrors over and over in your mind, i wish there was to way to express how awful it is to other people. it is constant. spit it up, swallow it back. spit it up, swallow it back, spit it up, swallow it back. even when you are talking to somebody, even when you are at work, even when you are doing schoolwork- especially then, actually. just this unending nonsensical narrative piecing itself together in front of you, and you can see it constantly being made and re-made to suit whatever fits you best.

it ruins your family life, it ruins your social life, it ruins your grades. well, not "ruin-ruin." like i said, i'm personally fucking functional in every sphere except that of the social, where i am passable albeit so noxiously irritating that i even get annoyed with myself. but it is there. constantly. all i want to do is escape; all my hobbies just let me escape. i can't do art, because that comes from me. i can cook and bake and play video games, all while i blare music or podcasts or whatever else in my headphones so i can't think.

but it's not leaving, and neither can i. i want to see an OCD specialist so that i can say for sure whether i have it--i know i'm pretty textbook but if i say i have it when i don't then i will deserve castration--but that requires telling my parents. my parents, by the way, whose only experiences with mental health issues circle wholly around police dramas, particularly criminal minds. there was an episode where a girl with OCD committed arson whenever she saw a multiple of three of some shit. my mom already asks me on a regular basis if i want to kill people because i listen to metal and had an emo phase.

plus there's the problem of how to talk about it. i may be being insane, but if i start using this as an excuse, i'll kill myself. not literally. but A seems to have a lot of the same problems i have and she refuses to change despite knowing they're unhealthy. it hurts her and everyone around her. i'm much the same. how can you take responsibility for needing too much coddling while needing to do that all the time? where is the line between reason and excuse? at what point am i bringing it up too much? i mean, it's not like i NEED to. i just want to try and communicate with others, which means clarifying action and intent sometimes. i would never say, "i might have OCD; i can't be held responsible," explicitly. how often do i say it implicitly without realizing?

this entry is so long and unfocused but whatever. that's one of the worst things about the fact that A shit talked me to my partner behind my back: she proved me right. she proved that i hurt people without realizing. she proved that my social incompetence can lead to immense mental and physical distress in others. she proved that the implicit/explicit divide exists and i don't know where it is anywhere.

spit it up, swallow it back. thinking about how badly you hurt her feels like staring at the sun. not thinking about it feels worse. is there "worse?" which is better: forcing her to constantly coddle your questions, or not giving her an avenue to give you criticism? which is better: make her complain to your partner about how annoying you are, or what a pig you are? spit it up, swallow it back: how much are you allowed to think about this? remember how your ex would hold things you said once against you for months? is this the same? is it different? why? if you think it's different, of course you do; humans have a bias towards excusing themselves of wrongdoing. if you think it's the same, why are you still doing it?

why are you still doing it? why are you still doing this? why are you still doing that? you know it's bad. stop it. if you know the thing you're doing is bad, and you don't want to be doing it, and you know how to stop, why don't you? spit up, swallow it back. what the fuck is wrong with you? how much longer do you think you can get away with doing this?

so like i might have ocd? i think i'm, like, compulsed to hate myself or else i will cause what i think of as "social radiation poisoning." any time i get upset, i just think "i'm a terrible person" over and over, or "stupid piece of shit," and it instantly helps a little bit, especially in cases of what i now know are magical thinking, like "i'm giving my friends 'social cancer' because i'm so annoying." like, i genuinely get so stressed about that. my stomach clenched typing it, because i know it's true, but i know it's not true.

honestly, i almost hope i do. it would explain so much. it would explain why i agonize over calling my mom at the same time i agonize over not calling her; it would explain why i cannot even begin to take steps towards hating myself less; it would explain, well, the fact that i think i'm giving my friends social radiation poisoning; it would explain why i have to cater to my roommate or i become positive something terrible will happen. but also, what if it's not? things like this happen all the time; i thought i had asthma for years until i realized i was wrong. i don't know, though. today i tested it by forcing myself not to repeat the mental phrases when i thought about a social interaction i bungled, and i felt like a murderer. i felt like if i didn't remind myself of that, if i didn't keep myself in check, the guy i had been talking to was going to die or get sick. or both.

it's probably not normal to have to purposefully move your mind away from the same cyclical racing thoughts all the time. i've asked my partner, and they said no. i've googled around, and it seems to be heavily emblematic of pure ocd. (semantic clarification: pure ocd is known as "pure obsessive" ocd, but this name is a misnomer; what it actually means is that your compulsions occur in your head.)

i might have ocd, and that's insane. it's completely nuts to me. it's like unmasking the scooby doo villain and realizing the villain is a fucking slug. like, what?! is THAT the thing causing this?! what the hell do you do about THAT? i mean, ocd has management strategies, but what the fuck! what if it goes away now that i'm aware of it? i don't think i'm a person if i'm not constantly hating myself! how will i keep myself in check? what if i'm telling myself this to mask the fact that i am just truly a terrible person? what if i'm trying to be lazy? what if i'm just trying to shirk responsibility again?

graaaagh. that last paragraph is frustratingly emblematic of certain kinds of moral/responsibility ocd, but the problem with ocd (if i do have it) is that i think i'm going to think i'm making it up forever if i do have it, because an excuse for the horrible, horrible way i am is just too nice. it makes me so afraid i'm going to wind up hurting people. i guess that's the bottom line: i'm afraid. i'm scared all the time, and the only way to make myself less scared is to make myself not think. rub a salve of repeated phrases over the horrible fear that all you do is hurt people; get high; play mindless video games.

welp, that's this entry. i hope i don't have it! i hope i do have it! i hope i wake up tomorrow and the problem is gone! i hope i wake up tomorrow and all i can think about is what a fucking terrible person i am so i don't hurt people more than i already do!

oooooh girl. my roommate kind of makes me feel like an insane person. like completely fucking insane. it's so fucking funny she singlehandedly ruined her relationship and doesn't even know it. before my partner moved in here, she went on a drive with me and expressed an anxiety that "things would change" between us. then my partner moved in, and after a few months, it did, because she spilled months of resentment and self-pity onto them. i'm still so hurt by it. all my life, my family told me i was lying when i said i was socially incompetent and obtuse, and i believed them, because i purposefully had zero friends. then, in one night, A indirectly tells me that i was always right. i do miss dropped hints. i am thoughtless and lazy. and she didn't even tell me. she told them, and told them not to tell me.

the roach problem is slightly worsening, so we get some roaches in the kitchen. i usually can kill them before she sees, but this morning, there was one trapped underneath a custard dish on the counter. is she trying to tell me something? is she trying to tell me to clean up more? the kitchen was filthy; i know. i forgot to clean it up two nights in a row because i worked until 9 last night, which doesn't excuse not cleaning it, but it's misery-inducing that i have to constantly guess whether she was just stressed about it or trying to tell me to clean the kitchen without doing it herself. to punish me? to punish herself? to punish me by punishing herself? she seems the type to do that. "look at what you've done to me; i can't focus or sleep or eat when the kitchen is dirty, and yet you refuse to clean it..." or maybe i'm reading into it too much. or maybe i'm not.

god damn i am pretty lucky i'm not allowed to kill myself anymore. between failing my family, failing A, and being a burden to my friends, i could see myself making a more serious effort now than i did in the past. obviously i'm not going to, though. this is temporary, probably--besides the family shit, but that's never going away--and i have a partner that i do love more than i hate myself. well, whatever. i'm like going insane or something, but i got homework and shit.

i've been sleeping like shit lately because all i can ever think about is what a bad person i am. i want to stay in my room all the time to prevent other people from being forced to interact with me, but abandoning the people i care about would make me a bad person. i want to get things done like homework and looking into internships, but does a bad person deserve good things? on the flipside: only a bad person would stop doing everything they're supposed to because of that shitass excuse. that's literally some bojack horseman shit, which is who i compare myself to a lot, because i am a bad person on the inside.

like, it's so wild. i literally just realized that being unable to sleep because you're tossing and turning over what a failure of a child and sibling and friend you are every night is kind of unusual, i think? but yeah. it's hard to do homework or schoolwork, too, because i'll be researching like the tao te ching and having to ignore this background hum of 'you need to do something for the good of the world, not just for yourself,' and it's like, awesome. well. i can't fucking focus on my schoolwork and if i do something else then i can't focus on that because i should be focusing on my schoolwork so i wind up just taking two shots of sleep medication and possibly a few shots of alcohol (haha i need to stop doing that!) and just going to sleep. trying to sleep.

trying to sleep then playing games or staring at a blank page or doing a million other inane things. why can't i stop myself?! it's so frustrating! i've deleted games i find addictive, i've locked myself out of timesinks like instagram reels, and nothing has changed! nothing changes with me! if i don't spend an hour mindlessly scrolling through subway surfers i spend an hour in bed telling myself what a piece of shit i am for not doing anything productive when my computer is RIGHT next to my bed. it is RIGHT there. i have my homework to do. i have other shit to do. i just don't. i just don't!

even right now i am supposed to be doing homework, but the constant hum of 'you're a terrible person you're a terrible person you're a terrible person' is so distracting. i feel like by existing, i am a sort of social chernobyl, which makes no sense. i have no real logical proof behind that. yeah, i've done a lot of shitty things, but like, chernobyl, bro? like, an unprecedented disaster that can only be recovered from through time? resigning yourself to being that is literally quitting at the idea of getting better, which i disagree with on every level, but i still constantly feel like that, so i guess that makes me a bad person, but your thoughts don't dictate what makes a bad person, but does that change anything when you have to live with yourself forever? all your irritating mannerisms, all your unfunny jokes, all your stupid useless uninteresting pieces of information you force people to respond to, all your self-pity, all your caloric intake and oxygen that should be used on someone else, all your hoarded money, all of your stupid hobbies and interests and addiction to video games like a manchild, your addictive personality, your constant need to force people to compliment you, everything? forever. this is forever.

anyway, the good news is that i'm at least going to pass all my classes this semester. my gpa is coughing and wheezing while i kick it in the ribs repeatedly, but Cs get degrees, babygirl.

i've been thinking about physical therapy a lot lately. i try not to do it, because as soon as i think about it, it's all i want to talk about, but rehashing it won't help at all. it just has to like, sit there in my head. that's how trauma works i guess, and it is the only form of trauma i have that i can confidently say that yes, it traumatized me, because physical therapy was literal torture. it was nobody's fault, really. i had a break that seven other people on the planet had had on record, and nobody knows why i couldn't get full range of motion in my arm. but it was torture, and i have nightmare about it sometimes, which is why i try not to think about it, because it is one of the two kinds of nightmares which i actually do not like to have.

i don't even know what to say. it was torture. that's one of the biggest problems i have with it: i just want to keep saying it over and over, because i don't know how to describe it. i would lay on a bench and the therapist would push my arm out as far as it went as i writhed and swallowed wails of agony. i know it wasn't that bad. i know there are forms of torture so extreme you cannot help but scream. i know that, beyond that, there are forms so extreme that it completely blots your mind out and turns your mind into nothing but a receptacle for pain and even screaming is beyond you. that's not how it was for me. i was there, and i recall my mind feeling oddly clear. i expected something else- a narrowing of vision, a complete eradication of thought. nothing like that happened. i was there, and i was in pain.

that's it. it's just pain. "what was so deeply traumatizing about it?" i was in pain. it was constant, and it weighed on me, and i knew that no matter what i did or said, it would keep happening. i had a friend once who was traumatized by having to live in poverty for 6 months after a hurricane. i'm sure that's how i sound to chronically ill people when i keep reiterating that i was in pain and nobody cared and the pain was necessary. i'm sorry. there is no appropriate place to talk about this, is all.

it changed me as a person. my mom would get mad at me a lot for "letting it destroy my confidence." she thought the break did it. i don't care that i broke my elbow. i don't even know if i care that much about the pain itself. i wasn't allowed to cry. i wasn't allowed to complain, because it was expensive. i had to keep playing soccer even though the pain was all i could think about. it dominated every fucking second of my life for an entire year and not one person gave a single shit. every time my sisters talk about it, they say how terrible it was to hear me cry the one time they came into the building during physical therapy. was that terrible? was that so bad? do you remember telling me to stop crying when i put the brace on because it made you uncomfortable? i do. i shouldn't be bitter about it because we were kids, but i will always remember.

i guess i just don't know how to talk about it. i don't know if i want to. like i said, there is nothing but the pain. i constantly thought about how i would say or do anything to make it end, but that i couldn't. there was nothing i could do except keep going. i had to contribute. i had to push my arm with its screaming muscles while my sister yelled at me for "fighting against it" even though i couldn't control what my arm did. i had to put my arm in a brace that sent it to full range of motion against its will, and i was expected to do my homework while i did. i wanted to. like i said, my mind was oddly clear, but it spent all of that clearness on begging me to stop, and i couldn't, because that would be wasting my parents' money and time.

anyway, that's it, i guess. at least it's over now. i really hope i never have to go back for something unrelated that would definitely be less painful because i don't know how rational my reaction will be.

i have to call my mom today. technically, i have to call her today or tomorrow, but the idea of telling my mom i'm becoming the failure she tried to convince me not to be and then dming a shitty blades in the dark game makes my stomach churn. the idea of telling her at all does that. she called me yesterday and left a voicemail saying she'd call me, which means that worse- i didn't come to her. she came to me.

i don't even know what to say about it. it makes me terrified, inordinately so. my reaction to fear is to ignore the source of it, which makes doing things like this hard. it can make it easier to go to work or hide my emotions when confronted with things that make me afraid, but it means my mother is the only thing in my life that i have to face my fear of, and i always fail. i failed when i moved into an apartment without telling her, i failed when i got high in her house without telling her, and i'm failing now, and i have been failing ever since i got back to laramie.

i'm gaining weight, too, and she will see that and silently take account of it. the worst part is that she's just going to be judgemental. she's going to be supportive in her own "why-didn't-you-tell-me" way, and she's in the right for being hurt by that. i'm really lucky for how supportive my family is, and i'm still afraid for no reason. i don't know why; i think i know this fear will turn to guilt after i call her, and i'll be stuck in the impossible situation of knowing i've already broken her heart and having no way to make up for it.

that's what it's like to be a kid, i think. your mother abandons her selfhood to raise you and you are not what she wanted. you are not what she wanted, so you are wasting her life. she had dreams for you, and you are dashing them. she wants what's best for you. she's not a gothel. she's not malicious. she loves you. everything she's ever done has been because she loves you and she's terrified of raising you as something that cannot function in this society, because she can't analyze it, because she gave herself wholly to it in order to survive.

the fact that you can realize things she's done are unhealthy and bad for you means that she succeeded in being better than her father who beat her and her mother who also beat her, but mostly relied on emotional manipulation. and you can't face her, because you're not like her, and you're ashamed that you couldn't take everything she's poured into you and make it better. you can't face her because you're always going to remind her of her pedophile husband.

and there is nothing else to be done. you are born, you are a failure and disappointment to your mother, and then you become your pedophile father.

the worst part of being depressed is how boring it makes you, frankly. i don't want to do anything. i don't want to do homework; i don't want to do dnd; i don't want to do anything. i don't want to rot in bed all day, either, but that seems the most appealing option given the fact that everyone is equally likely to make me feel anything at all.

didn't do my assignments for this week. not really. i know i should have. i had time. i had the physical energy. i just don't care. at all. i know i'm being dramatic, and i know i'm being lazy, and i know i'm being too soft on myself; the thing is, i can't bring myself to care about that, either. the only things i can bring myself to care about are others, because my actions have consequences far outlasting me when i do things that harm others. this is a rational piece of fact that i can grip onto like nothing else when i don't feel like doing anything at all.

it's not a big problem, really. i know i'm just describing symptoms of low motivation and anhedonia, both of which are symptoms of a depressive episode. i don't care about the games i like. i don't care about the games i don't. i don't care to read. i don't care to write. i don't care about anything at all. anhedonia. the inability to experience pleasure; though, thinking of it, i definitely still do things that bring me pleasure. i can't think of any right now, but they're there. i like to eat. that's good.

here's the thing: i am experiencing one of the most common symptoms of depression. here's the thing: it doesn't help. i'm too lazy to be alive. here's the thing: why the fuck does the severe shit still last so long. it's been a month. spring break is coming soon and i need to put my nose to the grindstone so i can have savings. i don't have savings because i have no willpower.

regardless, i'm doing the same shit i did at the beginning. nothing has changed. i guess i'm less on top of my homework- causation or correlation? only time will tell. i guess i'm doing less homework with the same amount of time allotted. correlation or caustation.

so that's this entry. big news: it's the middle of the semester and i'm depressed.

there used to be an entry here about something else, but it was cringe, so i deleted it. anyway, here's this entry: work!

i'm going to try and keep a calendar to keep track of how bad/good i'm doing. it will not work because i will always err on the side of telling myself i'm doing well because i get embarrassed, but i have to try. something's gotta work! something, has got, to work. dear god something has to work.

uhhhh. honestly not much else to say. it's hard and sucks but that's how it is because of the way the world and also life is. also i have to call my mom tonight. i have to. i don't want to, but i have to. i think i just need to tell myself that more. "yeah, you don't want to. tough." also i should probably cancel my campaign i'm dming which sucks but i think i'll stop dming after this. i don't have the energy or motivation. i've stopped joining fansessions, i can stop dming too. also i should be doing homework right now. so, toodles!

i've always held the opinion that i don't do well with positive feedback. "wow, you're so good at [x]!" isn't a compliment to me. it's a burden. now, this is wholly in my brain and i am aware of that, but when i hear, "you're so good at [x]!" or something along those lines, i implicitly hear, "you're going to fail at [x] and i will forever be disappointed by you!" along the same vein, when someone tries to talk to me in a positive way, i want to throw up. i would rather someone yell at me than try to have a conversation with me. i would rather be scolded than complimented. if you begin at a negative state, then your movement backwards isn't at bad. when you begin from a positive one, there is nowhere to go but down. which you will. i'm talking to myself even when i'm saying you here.

i walk an hour to my dungeons and dragons game on tuesdays. every tuesday, they remind me i can ask for a ride. every tuesday, i remind them that i prefer to walk. i prefer it because that is the time i take to do deep breathing exercises so i can fucking cool it, because i know the other foot will drop. these people are the closest things i have to real-life friends besides my partner, and i do not know how to talk to them at all. i don't know how to talk to anyone. it's easier with them, but that's partially because they're in a group, and largely because i always, always, always, always drink at least a little bit of alcohol at dnd. i'm certain they think i'm an alcoholic, and admittedly, this is a deeply unhealthy way to cope- but the alternative is that i don't go at all.

i hate it. i hate knowing things will fall apart eventually, because it will. we are all in college and graduating at different times. then the friendship will slowly fizzle and die, and i will struggle more and more to know what to say to them. i will stare blankly at them in response while i'm trying to think of something to say more and more. they will think i think i'm too good for them. that's what always happens. that's what i do.

i'm terrible with strangers, too. my go-to options are a too-loud laugh and a half-assed comment on something that doesn't contribute to the conversation and doesn't tell them anything about me. i don't want them to know about me. they think they want to know, but once they learn about what a pathetic freak i am, they'll be sorry i asked. but being like, "me being a terrible conversationalist is protecting people!" is an insane thing to say. it's not like i'm going to kill them, but it's also not like they'd be glad to know me. so i guess it's just saving us both some trouble.

and that's not being like, "everyone sucks! blegh! i don't wanna know them!" i mean, i am kinda picky with friends, but it's not about them being bad. it's just that i know i'm a burden on people socially, emotionally, and financially. for lack of a better allegory, it's like if you were buds with bojack horseman without the horrible shit he did. like, if you remove that stuff, he's still irritating, whiny, self-pitying, and self-centered. you wouldn't want to know him, and he'd be impossible to get rid of because he doesn't listen when you drop hints that you don't like him. i'm like that. i don't know if someone doesn't like me, even though that's most of the time, and i always guess wrong.

ugh. i dunno. i wish i could just... snap my fingers and make it so everyone hates me. that would be so much easier, and so much less scary.

man, i've been such a sadsack lately. i dunno what it is. it could be any of one thing, it could be a combination of factors: being embarrassed abt the fit i threw over having to clean the house more (it has not been hard; it takes an hour tops), Puberty Two hormones making me angsty, stress from actually having to stay on top of hw, or maybe even an actual depressive episode. i get those sometimes, so it's fully an option.

i dunno. i don't really care. i'm stuck in this weird in-between of caring so much about everything it's like nothing matters at all. the days pass by in a blur. i space out in the middle of conversations, sometimes. i'm exhausted 24/7, but i can't sleep. i feel like that one bit in bojack when diane calls him about his book and because herb just yelled at him he's like, "nothing matters. it doesn't matter." and hangs up like the pissant he is. i think the house is cleanish, but i dunno. i feel like a ghost or something, except i never died. i was just... never really there. i can interact with the world around me, but i can't feel it. a part of me thinks that's maybe for the best.

i wanted to leave the entry off here because i don't care enough about it, but then i realized i should probably keep this for posterity's sake. so, for posterity: i don't like anything. dnd is fine; i do it so i'm not leaving the DMs hanging. the ttrpg i do on sundays is... fine. i don't care about the music or podcasts i listen to. i don't care if i'm hungry or thirsty or need to piss beyond the fact that if i stop taking care of myself, people will know i'm being lazy. everything is... fine. there are a few things i find intolerable, like my international relations class, but those are usually like, The Worst. that class is straight-up literal american post-cold-war post-9/11 propaganda. we haven't even mentioned colonialism, because i guess the two dominent IR theories don't care about it or something.

ultimately, it sucks because i know i'm being pathetic and lazy, a real fuckin' sadboy type, and if i slip up, it's because i'm not trying. i guess i'm not. can you really "try" when you feel like you can't think straight? except i can. it's just hard. my thought processes naturally terminate at, "therefore, i should just do nothing." and i gotta be like, "dude, if you do nothing, then you're letting your coworkers, your boss, your friends, your partner, your best friend, and your roommate down." so then i do the thing i'm supposed to do and hope my robotic effort is going to be sufficient. it won't. that's fine.

oh, and if i'm ever looking this over for possible causes of depressive episodes: i drink an energy drink before 1 o'clock every day, generally nursing it between the hours of 9am and 1pm. i spend about an hour on homework every day. i theoretically get 7 - 10 hours of sleep a night, give or take a few hours because it takes me a long time to get there and i wake up a few times some nights. i do take a sleep medication for that, though, which i definitely should stop doing. i spend about 30 minutes to an hour each day cleaning, with about 2 hours on weekends. i may find a more efficient schedule for that. i dunno. i'm working about 20 hours a week. i have 2 in-person classes. i'm in 4 ttrpg games. i have lunch with guil every day. i'm ~6 weeks on T. i'm eating 3 meals a day, sometimes 4.

i officially have to do all the chores in my goddamn apartment, and it is ONE of my roommate's fault. unofficially, i will not, which i am deliriously grateful for, but the fact of the matter is that my roommate who i will call A wants me to do all the god damn chores because she has too goddamn high of standards.

the thing is, i want to be mad. i know i SHOULD be mad. mostly i'm scared. i guess i'm hurt, too, because for all my efforts to be honest about house stuff with A, she hasn't made a single effort to be honest back. she didn't even tell me she wants me to do the chores. she told my partner (which she does NOT know we are), who told me. awesome communication skills.

she said she "feels like a neglected wife" or some shit. not that i know the direct quote because she didn't fucking talk to me. regardless, the reason she feels like that is because she has self-professed insane standards for the house that she does not have the time to uphold because of her three god damn jobs. apparently, she can't function when they aren't met, so who does it fall back on? me. i have to make dinner, do the dishes, clean the wall behind the oven, and sweep every night. then i have to mop at least once a week, vacuum every other day (which i am NOT doing; i'm doing it twice a week with the help of my partner), clean the couches every other day (ditto), and clean the bathroom. oh, and she clearly expects my partner and i to not keep food in our rooms (nevermind the fact that it's a fucking trauma response from my partner, also we're adults?), and to clean our rooms more. the last part isn't explicit, but she doesn't give a shit about it so it never gets done. personally, i'd rather not clean myself in a soapscummed shower.

the only thing that DOES make me mad is the shitty situation this puts my partner in. they have arthritis, and she has impossible standards, which means they are not allowed to do certain chores. that's right, you grown-ass fucking adult: you're not allowed to do the dishes, even after you explicitly said that if you don't help out somehow, you will feel like a leech and a parasite. sorry, grown-ass fucking adult, only my trauma matters. you really need a growth mindset! anyway, grown-ass fucking adult, watch your friend do all these chores after you told me shit like that triggers you, because you're not allowed to do them! the funniest part is that the reason i have to do so much cleaning is because of her trauma. so, the world revolves around her trauma, but my partner's? meh. "have you tried, like... not talking to your mom anymore? just don't!" < BASICALLY A REAL QUOTE THAT I COULD WRITE ANOTHER ENTRY ON, BUT WON'T BECAUSE IT'S NOT ABOUT ME! STILL, SHE DOUBLES DOWN WHEN WE PUSH BACK AS IF THAT'S NOT A FUCKING MEAN-ASS THING TO SAY!

they are going to help regardless, which like, cool. i wouldn't mind either way, given the arthritis and the soothing area of effect they have and the fact that it's really not that many chores and the fact that i love them or whatever gay shit, but i know it will also help them deal with the fact that A is INSANE. like, what kind of situation is that to put another human being in, asshole?! oh, wait. she doesn't care, which i literally just realized. she assumes my partner just won't care, the way she does. prick. i hate when she projects her feefees onto them.

back to the "neglected wife" thing. that's so fucking funny, because she is more fem and me and my partner are more masc. i'm on T. i wonder if that plays into it at all! a roommate who calls women who don't conform to gender ugly, who claims to be butch despite wearing visible makeup (i don't care if that's not kosher to say- and of course drag kings are excluded here), and who is only attracted to waifish tiktok lesbians who also wear makeup SURELY would NEVER have internalized shit she needs to work through. certainly a person whose favorite movie is "the old guard" on netflix, an imperialist white savior shitstorm wherein she views the trope of a black service member who used the military to escape poverty as a GOOD thing, would never have anything but an objective view. yeah, A, even though i'm cooking and cleaning for you (i DO clean; i just don't do it every night because i work until 8 and have DnD tuesday and saturday nights- it usually gets done within 48 hours at the latest) and you're at your three jobs all the time, YOU are the "wife" here. YOU, who are forcing your insane standards of what the house should be onto me and my partner, YOU are the woman, AKA the victim. (not to say i'm a victim here- she just instantly aligns herself with any victimized class she can. trust me.)

i should get some sleep. i have so much shit to do tomorrow. and the day after that. and the day after that. this semester is going to be terrible, but at least i have my partner to bitch with. plus, my partner and i agreed we're moving out. this is untenable.

i should be washing dishes, making dinner, and doing homework, but instead, i'm thinking about ballet.

ballet is a dance art that requires grooming children into it. i have mixed feelings on those ethics, but no matter what way you spin it, that is a requirement to become a prima ballerina. you have to stretch and act in a certain way while your bones are growing and your ligaments are still flexible such that your body can do things like go en pointe. if you are going to become a successful ballerina, you must be raised into this, groomed into this. you must love it with every droplet of blood in your body, because the amount of grit it takes cannot be won on pure stubbornness. you must want to embody the sport if you want to be successful.

i have a fascination with ballet, because it is a sport that requires the kind of childhood i had. now, full disclosure: my childhood was, all things considered, good. (there was a rough part at the beginning but i'm talking about shit i can actually remember here.) i always had a roof over my head, food to eat, and my parents yelled at me the regular amount. i never suffered neglect, nor did i suffer physical, sexual, emotional, or verbal abuse. my deep, dark childhood trauma is this: i was forced to play soccer.

i know, right? why didn't anyone call CPS! but back to my topic. i was trained under a regimen that occasionally bordered on the kind that professional soccer players undertake, and i hated it. generally, i had soccer every night, and without realizing it, i would have a panic attack every night. i always thought i'd had very mild exercise-induced asthma, because when i ran my lungs would close up and i would wheeze and gasp and feel humiliated, but never risk my actual health. looking back, i'm embarrassed i used a serious, life-threatening medical condition for my own comfort, but i didn't realize that's what was happening until much later.

granted, it wasn't every night. it was just most nights. feel free to skip this paragraph, because my partner talked about how going over trauma verbally can be soothing or something, so i feel like i can tolerate this degree of self indulgence. i would go to team training monday night. tuesday night, i went to goalkeeper training until i was about 15, at which point i stopped. (or sometime around there. i don't remember soccer much.) wednesday, i would go to training, and i would also go to goalkeeper training. this was different than the other training, naturally, being club-sponsored rather than private lessons (CPS!!!!!), and that was also where i realized that i was visibly autistic because most of the other goalkeepers would ridicule me. thursday was another team training. friday was private goalkeeper training, which i never stopped until i quit. saturday and sunday varied a lot, which sucked. sometimes it was team training, sometimes it was fitness training, and sometimes it was a game. the worst was a tournament, though: an entire weekend of your coach reminding you of what to eat and drink and think and do so that you can maximize your performance, on top of a bunch of heaping reminders that you should be doing this the rest of the time. tournaments were usually 5 or so games, then finals- if you got there. i was also expected to train on my down time. one time my brother yelled at me for not visualizing soccer plays in my head while i was at school. one summer, i had to do professional-level physical training every day on top of my regular soccer schedule. i was thirteen, which i recall because the trainer repeatedly compared my sisters to prodigies.

all of this is to say why i like ballet so much. when i played soccer, i was so sure that if i got off my lazy ass and trained, i would feel less like some kind of idiotic slob yelling bullshit from the goal. it never happened. i never burst out of my cocoon and became the beautiful, graceful butterfly who knew when to come out of the six and could always block corners and didn't yell things to my teammates they already knew. (fyi: i was supposed to do that. i hated it and did it as little as possible.)

ballet, for me, promised an alternate world where this had happened. when my eating disorder got to be its worst, it promised a place where i would magically be thin and beautiful and cis and everything my mother wanted me to be. those are why it still enraptures me- it's infamously racist, infamously transphobic, fatphobic, ableist, and basically every other thing you can be. yet: people still do it. yet: they are still beautiful. yet: i wonder if the ballerinas ever feel how i felt, knowing what everyone needs them to be because of the time and money and heartache sunk into the machine that is their body. yet: when i watch a prerecorded video of mikhail baryshnikov dance, a part of me wonders that if i could still be that. i can't, as i said at the beginning. i wasn't groomed right. but it's a nice thought.

the reason i hate myself is because i was raised to have discipline, and i don't have any, but i need to start having it. baby steps. this isn't a new year's resolution, by the way- there's just two times of year i have the energy to think about this stuff, and those are during school breaks.

my first step is so silly and privileged, but here it is: i'm gonna stop consuming content that i know is bad for, like, the earth. i'm not going to play stardew valley anymore. i'm not going to listen to mcelroy podcasts anymore. those are my two big ones, i think. maybe i'll hate myself less if i stop being a hypocrite, you know? haha, i wicked won't, but at least i'll cringe less in retrospect.

kinda cringing at how long it's taking me to do this, honestly, but easy come easy go. RIP my constant listening to MBMBaM on a loop since 2016, literally 24/7. i had some of their episodes basically memorized. embarrassing. i'm going to try new podcasts if i want noise, or listening to more albums straight through. i'm not sure this will work, but fuck man, y'know? i'm tired of being embarrassed of every single thing i like. i already have a bunch of things i know i'm never going to stop being embarrassed of, so i should at least stop listening to that one podcast made by three yellowbellied neoliberals, one of whom has a latina fetish, all of whom are friends with lin manuel miranda. i don't even know why i listened so long! i HATE them as people!

autism is a hell of a drug, i guess. i already am kind of nervous about what i'm going to use to fill the void for when music is too much and actually listening to a podcast is... also too much, because my brain gets tired. like, i'm so nervous i'm making an entire blog entry about it! i've been almost wholly reliant on them for a while to let me function, but i functioned tolerably before 2016, so...

side note? so fucking funny this takes discipline from me. girl what? it is funny, though, because i actually have zero discipline. i think some people would argue i do, but not really. i'm just pretty scared of letting other people down. the definition of discipline duckduckgo gives me is: "training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement." that is NOT why i go to work and school. i don't care at all about my character or mental improvement. but i should, because the word moral is in there, too. so i need to stop being a weakass.

it'll be fine. i can do this. stardew's also gonna kinda suck, but only because it's one of the only games my computer can run right now, and i need brain breaks between my winter break work. i guess i can just do itch.io games, even if they lack the familiarity that counts as a break. i could do minecraft, i guess? or hades? yeah, i'll be fine. my constant external monologue is gonna be tougher.

really funny i decided to do this on new year's day. ugh. i'm listening to johnathon coulton's discography instead right now. not a fan! he has a few bangers, but the way he talks about women is really weird. like, dude shut up and do a song about mental illness that you can do because you are clearly deeply self-centered (which i can relate to because i am also clearly deeply self-centered; check out these agonizingly-long monologues!). anyway, i guess this will probably also help improve my music taste, because i'm really embarrassed of that, too. i can't start reading better, yet, but i can get there.

yeesh. looking over this, it's striking me how terminally online that is. maybe that's what my new inner monologue will be: you're a piece of shit you changed all your interests to be more morally pure you terminally online fuck you're a piece of shit. lol. music is different, though. all my friends agree i have dogshit music taste, so maybe i could argue to myself that that's to be more likeable? sound less pathetic at family gatherings?

whatever. anyway, yeah: no more constant, incredibly-predictable noise. a new incredibly-predictable noise will inevitably fill its place, but hopefully it's 1) actually funny 2) not something i'm deeply ashamed of and 3) something i actually like. like, putting mcelroy podcasts on my interests page never even struck me as something to do because i don't really LIKE them! as i've said multiple times. but really.

anyway, happy new year to whoever reads this. or happy day, if you're reading this later, for some weird reason.

i hate being home, bro. i hate it. i hate constantly feeling sick with nervousness, i hate doing things i know i shouldn't because they're the only thing that makes me less scared even though they make me more scared in the long run, i hate giving attention to the dogs and feeling guilty about it because my family hates that i give the dogs attention but i don't give it to them.

the most frustrating part is that i have no reason to be like this. there's no deep trauma, no specific reason. just a piling up of tiny things, and you know what the kicker is? i can look at my siblings and know, objectively, i have no reason to be like this. i am a self-victimizing, self-loathing piece of shit. me me me me me me me. it's all about me, baby!!!! i don't care that my parents need me to be home because i don't want to be! why not? fuck you, is why!

i want so badly to hate them. i wish i could write my parents off as pieces of shit, and i mean i guess they are. they are pieces of shit. they're racist and close-minded, so i should hate them. but the thing is, as my parents, i can't. i can't hate them for the way they raised me because they actually thought they were doing a good job. holding the knowledge that they're morally evil in one hand and the knowledge that they're doing their best as parents makes me sick with confusion. i don't know what to think or feel.

i just wish i knew what was wrong with me. i wish i could tell why my siblings seem to be doing okay-ish, why they can work themselves so hard, and why i'm... not. i do drugs every other night to the point that i sneak liquor here, i get terrible grades, and i'm the laziest person i know. whenever i say that, people point to the fact that i work and i'm a student, but i do that because i'm lazy. if i don't have an external obligation, i will not do my schoolwork. i won't go to class. it sucks, because my parents are paying for me to go to college, so i'm lazy and selfish.

i'm not going anywhere with this. i wish i wasn't here. i wish i could just detach from the family. they would all be better off if i'd never existed. i wish i could ethically kill myself without hurting every single person around me, which is so goddamn funny because it'd be for the best, for everyone.

call me andrew jackson jihad the way i never write and never call or think about anyone at all, because i don't. i never call my parents. i never check in on my siblings. i never even write to my extended family, which i wanted to start doing. there's just so many of them, and i'm getting worse at pretending to be like them. it's humiliating. my hobbies make me introverted and f@t and stupid and unable to associate with reality.

it doesn't matter. being home just makes me remember all the cool ways in which i'm a fucking failure. once i get back, i'll be fine after a few weeks. it's selfish i'm even focusing on myself here, because my roommates aren't going to eat without me in the house. > talks about its eating disorder > doesn't mention other people exist, as usual. i don't know what to do about that, though. i don't have the money to order doordash every day, but fuck i wish i did. i wish i could do anything besides know what a piece of shit i am, because change actively makes me worse.

20 days left. not even a month, and i can go back to pretending i'm not a fucking poison to everyone i care about.

my eating disorder is never worse than when i'm home. even when i'm purging every day at the apartment, i never feel constantly sickened by myself there. usually, i view it in a detached, logical way: i will likely vomit regardless, so i may as well make sure i don't feel sick for an hour or so before i do that. it makes sense. i may as well.

at home, i am constantly hyper-aware of it. i am hyper-aware of the caloric content of everything i eat and drink. i am hyper-aware of the fact that many men would consider me fat. i am hyper-aware of the fact that i am a reflection of my mother, and her only vessel for self esteem. when i was working out twice a day, she would comment on how muscular my legs looked, clearly proud of me. when i was playing soccer every day, she would say i could eat what i liked, because i was burning off the calories. now, i'm constantly aware of the fact that i'm not, and i won't, because every time i try to exercise i have a panic attack.

to clarify, this isn't fatphobia. fat is normal and healthy and good. there's this comics author on instagram, memoircomics, who used the delineation f@t. f@t is not fat, f@t is this monster that forms in the minds of those with eating disorders even when they believe in fat liberation. f@t is about the loss of control, and the societal shame, and in my case, the pitying looks from my family. "poor [deadname.] she got addicted to sugar and won't exercise, even though she was raised on the knowledge that exercise was good for you."

it is. i like exercise, actually. well. i like it in theory. i like the first part, up until my breathing catches and i think about how fucking stupid and f@t and ugly and stupid lazy stupid stupid lazy lazy lazy i look. i can't even be bulimic right because of it. most bulimics are exercise bulimics, oft-ignored and struggling with being deified for their self-loathing. i literally got into the habit of sticking a toothbrush down my throat because i knew i was too goddamn lazy to be bulimic in a way that i could ever talk about. i'm lazy, and i'm gross, and i'm going to regret doing this in 10 or 20 years when whatever the fuck is happening with my digestive tract catches up with me.

seven years now, going on eight. seven years of secretly eating entire packages of oreos and making myself throw up until my nose bleeds. seven years of purposefully reaching for ice cream first, because it comes up easier. seven years of knowing i need to stop, knowing that if my mother found out she would be furious that i don't just get off my ass, knowing that i am contributing to the worldwide oppression of fat people by being so terrified of f@tness i cried myself to sleep when i realized i'd hit 150 lbs.

i'm 160 now. i used to tell myself that if i hit that, i'd stop eating until i was down ten pounds. it's not hard. i lose weight easily. i work on my feet. the only thing about it is that it is hard, because i get irritable and foggybrained when i'm hungry.

we're far enough down that i think i can be not-kosher. here is me being not-kosher: i am insanely jealous of autists who can't remember to eat. they are valorized in the mind of tiktok, instagram, and tumblr. "nobody talks about this!" they cry, even though the opposite is true. everyone talks about the poor, skinny autists doing what is valorized under puritanical and capitalist body ideals. nobody talks about the fact that the vast majority of autists and depressed people overeat instead of undereating--and when i say that i refer to a kind of eating that makes one feel phyiscally ill, NOT eating when you're hungry--because it makes them fat and ugly and gross and lazy in the minds of the average person. and we can't have that, can we?

this is a mess, but i don't really care. i can't talk about this to anyone. i get overwhelmed and frustrated with myself, and the conversation ends. the other person feels slighted, i feel stupid, the cycle continues. it doesn't help that the average bear feels the need to fix it. oh, yeah, you telling me to stop purging is definitely going to fix it. why didn't i think of that! you should get mad at me when i don't tell you every time i purge, even though i know from experience that is likely to give you an eating disorder! that's what the solution is!

on a more positive note, i really am better than i used to be. there was a two-year period where i ate ~500 cals a day. despite all the positive attention i got, i was constantly miserable, constantly furious with myself for "binging" when it was my body's natural defense against me dying. whenever i'm tempted to do that, i remind myself that the people around me don't deserve the irritable person i was then. it's not healthy to only be motivated by others, but sometimes that's what you have to do.

besides. it's christmas. if i limited myself to 500 calories a day, i wouldn't be able to drink enough alcohol to ignore my parents.