For the longest time, I have lurked this thread. A number of people I am close to both on here and IRL struggle with mental health issues; I feel for each and every one of them and try to give my support whenever possible. Through all of that, I never believed I would be the one posting here. But here I am -- never assume you are "above" anything in life.
I tend to be pretty open about my life with people on here on the surface. A lot of people throughout the OU, NU, and tournament community have seen many pictures of me (even pictures turned into memes) or my obnoxiously unhealthy food over the years. On top of that, I have discussed pretty basic aspects of my life with plenty of friends over the years, but I always kept a certain level of personal distance in order to let this still function as a hobby and an online friend group as opposed to something overly personal. This post will probably be a bit of a departure from that previously established norm due to the subject matter being highly personal. Please do not use this as a call for help or a reason to treat me any differently though. I am still me and I love my experience on Smogon for how it is.
To start, I do not have clinically diagnosed depression and honestly there is a chance I do not have that, but I am beginning therapy in early January and I am suffering from numerous symptoms of an individual suffering from some sort of mental health problem -- I am not huge on labels and pin-pointing right now, in part because a lot of this is fairly new to me. I guess I should get into what "this" entails for me personally, so here goes.
Ever since earlier in November, I have been suffering from stress-induced insomnia. Normally I only require 5-6 hours of sleep to function during the week, especially if I am able to get closer to 8 during the weekend, but most nights I found myself unable to fall asleep for 3-4 hours after going to bed, if I even fell asleep at all. While it did not cause much of an issue during the first week due to sleep being cumulative, it added up and eventually proved to be a major problem. I was regularly spending 3-4 hours a night struggling with thoughts that went through my mind instead of sleeping during the middle of the night, when I should have been sleeping. This led to my overall functionality being compromised overall and just generally uneven throughout a lot of individual days.
For those of you that do not know, I am a senior in college currently studying Finance. As I write this, I am between semesters, but this was during crunch-time of the semester that just ended. Historically, I am an above average student, but I was struggling heavily in a Finance class and as my sleep routine turned into a struggle to get any sleep, my performance declined even more. I did poorly on a major assignment and between this issue and some others that I will touch on later, I lacked the motivation and energy to successfully study for the final, which is ultimately going to lead to me failing the class when I get my grade back tomorrow. I have never failed a class before and I know that it is not the end of the world so long as I pass it again next semester, but it feels pretty awful in all honesty.
While I was struggling in this major class and failing to sleep, I was also trying to maintain aspects of my social, romantic, and prospective professional life that made the first couple of months of the semester the best of my life. Going into November, I was very happy with my life. I had a girlfriend (since mid-April) who I was very happy with, I had a group of friends I had grown quite close with, I had a seemingly happy and healthy family, I had a very promising job prospect, and I had a lot of other small things that I periodically involved myself with that I enjoyed (couple community service things through a class, I am on the Executive Board of the Pokemon Fan Club at my school, and I play Club Softball at my school). Historically, my sentiments towards life as a whole toggled between slight happiness and neutrality, but ever since earlier this year I had been experiencing more positivity and happiness than ever.
And then, much like my ability to sleep, it all fell apart and I felt ridiculously helpless throughout it all. On November 22nd, I had a final round job interview in the city for a Financial Advisory position; it went as well as it possibly could have and I got the job offer. At that moment, I was still very happy despite being close to perpetually exhausted. My relationships (romantically and socially) were in tact, my future was promising, and there were no imminent problems on the horizon. The day prior my Grandpa back home, who I am very close with, fainted out of the blue and it was very worrisome, but he recovered pretty quickly and was even brought back home that night, when I was able to see him before I went back home to finalize my interview preparations. I was very worried about him initially, but seeing him that night brought me a lot of hope and happiness.
It all started to go downhill a couple hours after my interview concluded, unfortunately. And I feel like it has just been an uncontrollable free-fall ever since then. It was like 2pm that day, November 22nd, when I was waiting for my bus at Port Authority to go back to school when it pretty much began, I suppose. For some context, my then-girlfriend was already having a very stressful semester and personal matters (ranging from what she had to deal with responsibility wise to what her family situation was to avoid too many specifics) kind of limited our relationship throughout that month, but she had made it very clear that it was not me or our relationship so much as it was her own situation and that we would be fine. I think she was kind of telling herself that for a while and then eventually realized otherwise, but did not want to derail my thorough preparations for my interview that week. Sure enough, she texted me that afternoon saying that she was not entirely confident in how she was feeling about being in a relationship anymore. Of course, I told her that she had to prioritize herself and her well-being because it was already very clear to me that she was struggling and had enough on her own plate to begin with, but that was essentially the start-of-the-end. After a Thanksgiving break that felt like forever, she broke up with me the night we returned, essentially saying that while she still felt strongly about me, she could not be in a relationship with anyone and that she had to deal with a lot of her own personal matters before moving forward.
We agreed to remain friends as we both cared deeply about each other, the door was not closed on the future, and our friend group was shared, but they were her friends first and she has needed a fair amount of time and space, which pretty much ruined my social life over the past 3 weeks -- I do not know if it will return to "normal" next semester either, which is honestly kind of a scary thought. It also pains me a lot to not be as close with her. Simply put, we spoke about dozens of different topics, ranging from very personal matters to fun things like music and sports. Not having that same presence there anymore has been a struggle and ultimately hurt my level of happiness. She already was not herself during the last weeks of the relationship and knowing that there is a possibility that we will never be on that same level again pains me. Those were the happiest months of my life to-date and I cannot go a waking hour without remembering some happy memory that is now just a sad reminder of my current reality. I probably am taking this a lot harder than I should or than a rationally minded person should at least, but we had a pretty serious, committed relationship and this was my first true break-up, so it is hard, especially considering that I am very in-touch with my feelings. Truth be told, I put too many of my eggs in one basket because for the first six months of our relationship, things were all good and there was no sign of that changing, but circumstances beyond my control impacted matters and obviously that is part of life. I cared about her more than anyone, even myself a lot of the time. I went well out of my way to bring a smile to her face on countless occasions and honestly I derived so much of my own happiness and value in life off of that, which probably was an unhealthy dynamic of my experience in that relationship looking back at it. While we were great together, I should have made sure to carve out more space for myself as an individual and priority in my own life than I did during the relationship. Now that the relationship is over, I no longer know how to prioritize myself and I feel so lost in so many different aspects of life as a byproduct of that. With her not currently being in the picture moving forward, I have found myself struggling to motivate myself to position myself better in other aspects of life. With her not currently being in the picture moving forward, I have lost my compass on rational decision making and I am afraid that I will dig myself a deeper hole in life. With her not currently being in the picture moving forward, I am just really sad a lot of the time because I do not know what to make of my future in general. Life, at times, feels like a constant reminder of how unhappy I am right now, especially relative to how happy I was during the vast majority of our relationship.
Speaking of the future, this is not only me being sad over a break-up that was ultimately out of my control. Yea, that has been really hard for me on a personal level and I still struggle with it each day, but there is a lot more going on here that has factored into me being in a negative, defeated head-space. Over the aforementioned Thanksgiving break that felt like it took forever, I also reviewed the job offer I got from my interview and it honestly was pretty awful. After discussing with my family, we all agreed that the pay and reliability of it simply did not meet our standards, which was a really deflating feeling considering I had worked so hard to get to that point and I had done well over the years academically. Searching for internships and jobs has always been a struggle for me as I fear rejection, I am worried I will not be happy with whatever my job may be, and I just never felt 100% confident about careers in finance in general. I have improved over the years in terms of handling rejection and confidence in a happy future -- although some of it is just blind faith that I have adopted through hearing countless professors and family members telling me that it will all work out without actually being in my shoes, but finally getting accepted to a job and having it not amount to anything hurt me a lot -- I felt like I had taken a step back instead of a major step forward. I find myself helplessly contemplating the what-ifs and even wishing I had settled for a job that is honestly a bit beneath me, which is a horrible thing to wish upon yourself at the start of a promising (!?) career. I am currently unmotivated to even apply to more jobs, which I absolutely have to do to get a satisfactory one to start my career. I am hoping that this passes over time, but I am worried that it will not. At some point, I am going to force myself to and that could be a healthy way to start myself going down the right path, but it also could just lead to me being even more unhappy and uncertain, which I am very scared of as my future is pretty much all I have right now seeing as the present is not a particularly good time for me.
Beyond this, my family/living situation has slowly been deteriorating in front of my own eyes. While my Grandpa has physically recovered, it feels like he has lost a step on the interpersonal side ever since then and that is really unfortunate as we talk frequently. My grandma on the other side is also afraid she will not be able to travel to see us for the holidays due to her being physically limited, which she has done each year for as long as I can remember, so my mother is now very worried about her. My parents, being worried about these things and my own state of well-being, are under a lot of stress and have consequently not been happy in general, making my household a pretty negative place. Honestly, it feels like my life is just full of negativity and that makes proceeding in a normal, optimistic fashion such a challenge. Each and every day, I try to set goals for myself or do things that will make me happy, but I ultimately find myself struggling to get out of bed or to gain the motivation to accomplish whatever it may be. I decided that I needed therapy because of this and my inability to be happy without my ex-girlfriend being in the picture, which will be starting during the first week of January, but in the meantime I am miserable during portions of most days. I still am not sleeping well and feel perpetually fatigue and exhausted, to the point where I am physically sick more often than not, which is completely new to me and requires a lot of adjustments unfortunately. With this said, I have been getting at least a few hours of sleep every night and through research, I have strong reason to believe that between adjusting some habits, giving myself time, and going to therapy, my sleep habits will return to normal over the next month or two.
Regardless of that, I find myself waking up content some days, but then some event or some sweeping sentiment makes the rest of my day full of sadness and desire to just not be around anyone. On other days, I wake up feeling miserable and it takes something good happening to break me out of that little funk. Today was my first day where I was not miserable throughout the entire day since late November, which I am honestly proud of. A win is a win -- this was a win for me and honestly this win has given me the motivation to even post this to begin with. It feels good to share this and it feels good to talk to people. Perhaps that is something I should have been doing more often over the last couple of weeks as I have only talked to select individuals/one group chat in particular, but it is never too late to start making good habits for yourself. I am still not my full, normal self though and I do not know if I will be next week, next month, etc. This worries me as I was so optimistic about my future as recently as last month and now I am just left to pick up the pieces that I do not even feel I broke apart myself. I feel so helpless about my own fate and feelings. I just want to get back in control and be my normal self. I have been and still am happy with the individual I have grown to be. I am a good person and everyone around me knows me. Lots of people love me for who I am and I value that so much, but yet I cannot use that as positive fuel whatsoever in my current position and I just feel stuck and out-of-control.
Obviously, there are a lot of problematic things / red flags I brought up within the last few paragraphs, so I am hoping that between having time and going into therapy, I can get myself back on the right track. In the meantime, I have been spending a lot of my time on here because I actually feel like I can make a difference within the confines of this community and to the friends I have made throughout it. It has been really cool doing tiering stuff and helping out in the OU subforum because it has given me a bit of a purpose throughout this hard time, but I am fully aware that I am going to need to extend this attitude out to real life once I get back on my feet and I am just hoping that will be fully possible for me soon enough. Thanks to anyone who read through this and I hope everyone (myself included) has either a happy/happier holiday season!
