Pak
vortex
I honestly don't even know where to start, but here we go. I've been depressed off and on since roughly my junior year of high school. It's been especially apparent recently and I've been feeling myself start to spiral again, so I guess I just felt compelled to formally get down my thoughts somewhere to know what I need to do to get back into one of those elusive positive swings again.
I've always been a really quiet kid and a lot of it has been due to accumulated social anxiety. Growing up, I always had my tight knit group of friends through elementary school and middle school, at least on a social level. We'd hang out and do whatever, mostly just fucking around and having a good time. The thing is though that while they all evolved into the people they eventually did, I just grew further and further away from all of them as we moved into a huge ass high school. Despite being 'well-liked' a lot of those early years, I always had this deep-rooted fear of getting bullied. I mean, it makes sense given all the horror stories and shit, and I'm not trying to belittle anyone who's been through those kinds of awful situations, and that's exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to avoid. From age 15ish on, I just had this natural fear of not being accepted in whatever capacity, so therefore I would never feel good enough for those around me. I'd be on the same 'level' or whatever as whoever I'd talk to in that time frame, but I progressively just got worse and worse when it came to social anxiety and simply being comfortable in my own skin. Now, I always had my group of friends and all that, but it was really just people I'd play sports with or talk to in the halls or whatever. I was all but closed off emotionally, due in large part to just wanting to be universally accepted and liked, which of course isn't 100% realistic.
I could make this part like 500 paragraphs and have to a decent amount of people on this site, but I ended up going away to a college where I didn't know anyone beforehand. It was a smallish private school (which naturally was not cheap by any means), and in my head, it was the perfect setting to 're-invent' myself, and be that kind of person I always hoped to be in high school. Very very very long-story short, it didn't happen. In fact, it would've been really flipping hard for it to have gone any worse. As many dingus 18-year-olds do, I was wayyyy off when it came to picking my initial major, and jesus christ I nuked almost all those classes out the gate. Luckily, I did have a solid cushion from gen ed dual credit classes from high school, but between my shitty grades and eventually switching majors down the line anyway, it essentially boiled down to a lost year academically. So, based on that, you could objectively say I threw money on a fire for a year, but it was college, at least I had fun right?
Simply put, no. That aforementioned social anxiety just kept compounding on itself, especially with the constant feeling of the academic failures looming over my head. Like I said, I could go on and on about this whole year, but I'll try to keep it shortish. My first roommate was international, and he naturally got pretty close to the other international kids, and I was kind of the odd man out in those circles despite my initial efforts. He ended up moving out, and after living on my own for a bit in the dorm, I was assigned a new roommate. We actually hit it off pretty well and I consider him to be a pretty good friend to this day. The thing was though, that despite our common interests and social chemistry, I always had that looming feeling that I'd be stepping over some kind of boundary or whatever whenever he asked me if I wanted to do something with him and his close circle of friends. The thing was that I actually got along well with all of them, but that feeling just wouldn't leave me. Blah blah, I kept turning down offers to hang out and he eventually stopped asking me because he just expected 'no's after a certain point. It remains one of my biggest regrets to this day, because by the time I knew I wouldn't be coming back to that school 100%, I really just started to give less of a shit and ended up having some good times with all of them.
The thing was, it took a lot to get to that point. I had never ever ever felt more alone, and this is coming from someone who'd never had a 'close' friend and never really realized it. Like I said, I had been all but closed off emotionally, and didn't see anything all too off about it. It took a lot of miscellaneous crying random nights to come to the conclusion that I wasn't right mentally. I sought out therapy through the school, which was ultimately kind of fruitless to be completely honest, but exploring my own mental issues at the time was a positive in of itself. Speaking of, a big part of this recognition was ironically my roommate's girlfriend. She was legitimately the first person I opened up to and grew an attachment towards, a feeling I had unknowingly desired after all this time. Naturally, feelings started to develop, but out of respect for my roommate and her, who were by far my best friends on that campus, I kept my feelings in check and simply tried to enjoy the academically-meaningless time I still had left that second semester. On top of that, there was always this feeling that she had developed some sort of attachment to me, which I tried to ignore, but many of my friends that I talked to about it were pretty keen on her showing some signals. Again, I tried to ignore them and moved on.
I've talked about this a lot more in depth with some people on here, but I don't want to include all too many details. Long-story short again, I was pretty drunk one night late in that following summer, and she snapped me. She essentially led me on, purely to find out if I had feelings for her, and it really really hurt me emotionally considering she was the first person I had ever really confided with on that kind of level. I blocked her and tried to forget about what I considered to be a 'rock-bottom' of a year for me. I transferred to the college in my home town, moving in with my parents again, and basically went through the motions, still reeling from that interaction over the summer. I legitimately hated my life.
Fast forward to the following fall, where I was still not 100% alright emotionally because of what had happened, and I had a very forgettable year which happened to be fine academically. After a super tough summer of working roughly 65 hours a week between landscaping and dishwashing, it my freshman year of college started to weigh heavily on me again. I made the decision to reach out to my old roommate's girlfriend. I just wanted to get everything off my chest, about why and how what she did hurt me. The thing was though that she was the only person there for me when I needed it more than ever, and I told her because of that, she could always talk to me if she needed anything. I'm not going to go into detail of what she said, but she had long been through depressive stages herself and that year hiatus of not talking to her saw her in some deep depths of it. Ultimately, it felt like a huge huge huge weight off my shoulders, and that I could finally accept all that happened my freshman year, whether it was the 90% bad or the 10% good. All that suffering brought about an important lesson. The hard times are shitty of course, but you can't just put your tail between your legs and try to forget about it. It's especially crucial to take whatever negative experience and try to make something positive of it.
Here we get to the last year or so, which up until coronavirus happened, was one of the better times of my life. For what seemed like the first time, I was happy with who I was, and at my new job, which constantly forced me to interact with new people on a daily basis, I ended up meeting some really good friends. As one could expect, coronavirus did kind of derail all my progress to that point and I found myself in that same type of isolation as I'd grown accustomed to for years. A big thing though was that I really wasn't expecting to stay with this grocery job for so long, hoping to get an internship or something over the summer, but those hopes were completely thrown to the wayside.
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Alright so here we are today. It seems like there's always some kind of tipping point for this stuff, and for me, it was Sunday the 4th, when I found out that one of my old high school friends, as well as another really good family friend, had both passed away over the weekend. This high school friend wasn't someone I was particularly close with, but he was another one of my friends that I was constantly talking and laughing with. The key connection here was that he was one of the first people I ever worked out with around age 15 or so. If you know me in any capacity, you're probably familiar with just how important fitness and lifting has become for me over the years. It was especially apparent that god-awful freshman year, where it was my only outlet to do something productive and get away from the day-to-day pressures for some period of time. I spent what was basically late Sunday to Wednesday just crying and crying. Every time I would go to work out, it would be impossible not to think of the amazing times we had together. Back then, as a very skinny kid, it was one of my life goals to bench 135 lbs, as limited a goal as it may sound. I must've failed it 10 different times with him spotting me, a smile on his face every time. Needless to say, I've come a long long way since then, but those are the types of memories that really stick out given my passion for the activity. He was just such a positive influence on everyone around him and it was completely devastating to find out that he had overdosed.
Like I mentioned, it served as some kind of tipping point for me. For months and months, I had felt that something resembling that same gradual downward spiral which crept up that hell-spawned freshman year of college, and it all came to a head as of late. I'm not afraid to say that over the last couple weeks or so I had been drinking out of nothing but pure angst or sadness. I don't believe I'm anywhere near the level of depression I felt back then, but it's honestly my worst fear to fall into that same feeling of uselessness and eternal depression. I don't want to fall into that same cycle where my only fulfillment is hitting x arbitrary number in whatever lifting exercise. Where all this ties in with those 19 context paragraphs is that the worse my depression/anxieties start to creep, is the worse my social anxiety is. This is especially apparent given that I'm supposed to graduate college roughly a year from now, and I don't have any experience in the field. Also, moving out hasn't been made any easier with the current climate of things.
Idk who the fuck would read all this, but it was important for me to get it down somewhere to reference in the future. The thing is, it's so so so so much easier to get down on yourself and be sad than it is to go the other direction. I don't know what it is, but it's just something I've noticed over the years. Like I've said to this point, there are people I've told all of this shit to some extent, and shockingly, most of them are friends from this website. I'm not scared or embarrassed or whatever else to say that my closest friends on an emotional level come from here. I can't thank them enough for their time and willingness to give me guidance or simply an ear to bitch into, but at the same time, I'm tired of doing so. I hope this marks a point where I can legitimately pivot and shift things back into the right direction, and for Logan's sake, I swear I will.
If anyone on here needs someone to talk to, I know what this type of worthlessness feels like, at least to some extent, and I can't stress enough how helpful it is to practice introspection and simply talk about all your bullshit from time to time. For those purposes, my discord is pak#1187, don't hesitate to reach out if need be.
Alright we're back. So as I said in this other post like 6 months ago, the biggest issue for me was always just not liking who I was, whether it was how I acted socially, my voice, being too skinny/unathletic in the old days, etc. etc. For whatever reason, I just couldn't allow myself to be happy or satisfied with who I was. I knew for years and years and years that quite literally no one actually cared about all this stuff even close to how much I did, but idk man it just happens. Couple that with the fact that my school work ethic has never been anything spectacular despite doing really well on all this standardized test bs that would indicate my grades should be really good too, and it always felt like I wasn't living up to my potential, socially or academically. I mean in any setting, it's hard not to look at some of the people around you, and most of the time you only see their Ws and not their own shit they're going through and simply feel insignificant or like a failure as a result. This is the kind of stuff that endlessly haunted me for a solid 21.5 years.
But here we are today. At the end of my last post, I mentioned meeting a good group of friends at my job. Well, in the last few months with coronavirus starting to cool off a bit, I have been much more active socially, especially with them. Ever since basically new years day on the dot, following a horrendous hangover, I've, for the most part, just been happy. With these people, despite the fact that there have been 500 different hiccups along the way, I truly feel like I can be myself and not worry about all this bullshit that's held me back in the past. It's been such a big contrast, as for so long, I would try to avoid any social situation purely so I wouldn't have an opportunity to fuck it up, or turn down going to a party because I wasn't sure if I'd fit in well enough or whatever else. Things along those lines.
I don't want this to sound too cringe or preachy, but these last 3.5 months have made me realize some stuff that I just wanted to share here to help even 1 person who may have dealt with similar issues in the past, and as far as I know, it isn't all that unique. I've thought about this a lot, and the conclusion I kinda reached is that it's not like I'm getting validation directly from this group of friends, but they allowed me to see that if I simply gave myself a chance all these years, maybe things could've gone much differently. It's so easy to confine ourselves to these distinct comfort zones because shit is fucking scary. I mean, it is, no way around it, but it's no excuse to deny yourself whatever it is that you truly want if it's in reasonable reach. It isn't going to be an overnight thing obviously and it's much easier said than done. But again it goes back to what I mentioned 6 months ago about getting down on yourself when shit goes sideways. It's so much easier just to let all these negative thoughts and feelings snowball, but in the end that isn't going to solve anything. If there's an issue, then try to take some sort of step in the right direction day by day, week by week, whatever. It's the only way to change things for the better. Again, I can't stress enough that I have the utmost respect for everyone here, especially those who have gone through situations undoubtedly much much worse than mine, so hopefully this didn't come off as 5000 cliches, just some stuff I wanted to share that's helped me personally. All I can say is, for the first time in probably 6 years or so, I can wake up, look in the mirror, and be content with who I am and all the struggles along the way were entirely worth it. I'll inevitably have some rough patches again and I'm still not perfect by any means. Still, get some positive momentum going, and I swear it'll compound on itself and leak into other aspects of life. Please just give yourself a chance.
There aren't a ton of people I've talked about this with, considering I don't have a ton of serious convos on here besides with my really close friends. Basically, and I know already I'm not close to alone on this, my relationship with this game was so bad for so long. As some of you may know, I've been getting back into playing again after taking a step back over the last year-year and a half or so. Before that hiatus, I had a number of issues that constantly irked me about this objectively dog shit game I was pretty addicted to. The first one was my utter lack of confidence. I had a good amount of tour success, whether it was in the UU community or officials from like 2017-2019, but the only fun I really ever had was in two departments: talking with friends and building. When it came to the games, especially on the official level, I'd be a nervous wreck at all times, constantly pushing into my head that I wasn't good enough or that I was a fraud or whatever else. This is such a subjective game in the battles themselves, you can honestly convince yourself of any narrative you want, for better or worse. For every loss, it'd be the end of the world. I'd be irrationally mad / sad / whatever for days at a time or more. For any win, the satisfaction I got was probably 20% as good as the feeling of any loss was bad. Shit, even in the wins, any singular misplay would like burn itself into my head and ultimately ruin any enjoyment there was to be had. I mean, in a way this aspect was good in helping me to try to constantly improve, but at what cost?
The other big one that jumps out was using this game as some sort of medium for validation. I had no confidence in this game or in real life for essentially that entire run, so admittedly, some degree self worth was associated with winning a given variance-based Pokemon best of 1. That is fucking stupid. I mean, it's going to happen here and there since we're all competitive and all that, but you should never feel exceedingly worse about yourself because you double switched on the wrong turn or because some dude on the internet you'll never meet doesn't think you're good enough. Who fucking cares. This game is a hobby. Maybe .0001% of us can make a living off of it, so use it for what it's actually intended for: an avenue for fun, whether it's the game itself or the amazing people you meet. It is so impossibly easy to forget that with this dog shit game, and for the first time, I feel like I have actually enjoyed it. It's no coincidence that in this same 3.5 month stretch or so, I've simply been more confident with this game too and not been beating myself up over tiny little mistakes or losses that will inevitably happen from time to time. There's nothing wrong with going back and finding ways to improve of course, but it shouldn't consumer your entire experience. We come on here for enjoyment above all else, and I just wanted to tack this on here to give another reminder.
Alright so probably the last follow up on all this. The long story short is that a lot of what I said in my last post has held up. The last twelve months or so has been full of a lot of ups and downs for me, but ultimately, it has been the best year of my life and it hasn't been close. As you could probably tell from the first fucking novel I wrote in this thread, it wasn't all that expected. A big reason is just that there was so much uncertainty going on. I didn't like who I was. I still felt like a lost kid. I didn't know how school would wrap up (especially with the additional pressure I put on myself after throwing money on a fire to hate my life my freshman year). I didn't know if I could make it in the real world when the time comes. Really it just felt like I had all these Super Important things that seemed so far off into the distance not that long ago, but deep down I knew they were right around the corner and I'd have to answer them eventually.
The funny thing to me with all this is that despite the more tangible things here coming to a head with me very recently graduating college, I've never felt better about my situation. Sure, I still worried way more about all this stuff than I should have, but this has been a year of tremendous growth for me. I've only gotten more and more comfortable in my skin, and it's allowed a lot of things I never would have expected previously to fall into place. The main thing is simply coming to terms with what went wrong in the past. I've reflected on things like what I mentioned in my first post a million times by now, but I feel like I never appreciated those admittedly terrible experiences for what they did. It was the worst portion of my largely-uneventful life to that point by a wide margin, but it made it all the more clear what I needed to do to get a more worthwhile life going for myself. It would be so easy before to look back on whatever happened and be like "why did I say that" or "why would I ever do xyz", cringing about it and wondering why I couldn't seem to fit in or whatever. I would feel worse about myself as a person, which was only natural I guess with basically no confidence at all. These negative thoughts would just snowball and I'd end up even more anxious, whether it was socially or feeling like I wasn't good enough in whatever setting.
That freshman year I dealt with, where I basically failed all my classes, felt like a total outcast, and wasted a shit load of money at a private school was legitimately traumatic. Trying to block it out did nothing but leave me with a lot of emotional baggage for a couple years as I became more and more accustomed to processing those kinds of feelings and what they meant. Once I had truly accepted what had happened for what it was, then it was mostly uphill from there. I realized that despite it not being the easiest thing for me historically and that it would be much easier to avoid entirely, I do need social interaction to be happy. To no surprise, despite all this scary stuff creeping up on me with having to be an adult soon and all that, I have only gotten happier with the more socially active I've become. My confidence has only grown, allowing me to like myself again and it has bled into basically all areas of my life. Additionally, a big issue for me was that I had way too much time and as a result would have nothing productive to do on a regular basis. Again, it's no coincidence that this year has been my busiest by a lot, yet the most fulfilling. Those are pretty broad examples and it is much easier said than done to fix in most cases, but I credit dealing with those issues alone for a lot of my own happiness as time has gone along.
With all this said, it's not like I've been living in some perfect fantasy land. As mentioned, above there have been some down moments along the way as well. Life is hard, and I'm an overthinker by nature. A lot of it tied back to that aforementioned uncertainty about what the future would hold. It would be especially apparent when I'd be doing some brain dead task at my current job in a grocery store, where I'd constantly feel like I was wasting my life doing something any random high schooler could despite being 22 years old. I'd get in my own head over and over, feeling like I was just wasting time and potential, while I could be off doing something more meaningful with respect to the future as opposed to getting some half decent money to help pay off school. Another thing was that I felt like me and my stepdad had more and more tension between us. I assumed he just wanted me to move out, which in my mind was understandable. It wasn't until my mom told me they were getting a divorce a couple months ago that I pieced together that there were bigger issues going on. Ultimately, despite me and him not getting along that well, it just makes me sad to see my mom go through this whole process again after all the good she's done for me and the world around us as a whole. I've felt and still do feel like I need to do more to help her in this time of need especially.
While I do intend to leave this job as soon as possible with my recent graduation, eventually I just had something click. It really wasn't that long ago that I was scared to function as a regular person, let alone be a successful and independent person in the future. It felt genuinely good that I wasn't happy with things how they were/are. For the first time it felt like I had real ambition and that I was capable of much more than my actions had been letting on. In a sense, all these things that I was worried about along with this newfound confidence came together to feel better about my position than ever. I was more active socially than ever, getting better grades than ever, making more money than ever, doing better lifting than ever, even being more satisfied with my fucking Pokemon performances than ever. It all just kinda built on itself to outweigh some of these continually recurring concerns in the back of my mind, whether it was not working good enough of a job, still living at home, graduating college a bit later than I should have, etc. These kinds of things would've previously destroyed me mentally, so more than anything I'm just happy with this recent progress. I'm still not perfect and never will be, but realizing flaws where they are and making some effort to improve on them has made a world of difference.
I'm genuinely optimistic for what the future holds. If you told me this is how things would have progressed just 2-3 years ago, I would've thought it was impossible. Instead of freaking out over what's going to happen, I'm actually confident I can make the most of it with whatever does end up happening. Perhaps the biggest takeaway in my mind is just that I don't feel like I have major regrets anymore. Things happened for a reason and I would not have reached the far superior state of mental health I have today without those past experiences, no matter how shitty things were in the moment. Ultimately, that's what I wanted to share here along with getting some of these other thoughts down formally. Hopefully this didn't come off as too much of a look at me blah blah type of post, but it's been such a huge adjustment from the timeframe of that first post in here compared to now, where I am actually excited for the future.
edit: got a job in my field shortly after posting this, very excited
The funny thing to me with all this is that despite the more tangible things here coming to a head with me very recently graduating college, I've never felt better about my situation. Sure, I still worried way more about all this stuff than I should have, but this has been a year of tremendous growth for me. I've only gotten more and more comfortable in my skin, and it's allowed a lot of things I never would have expected previously to fall into place. The main thing is simply coming to terms with what went wrong in the past. I've reflected on things like what I mentioned in my first post a million times by now, but I feel like I never appreciated those admittedly terrible experiences for what they did. It was the worst portion of my largely-uneventful life to that point by a wide margin, but it made it all the more clear what I needed to do to get a more worthwhile life going for myself. It would be so easy before to look back on whatever happened and be like "why did I say that" or "why would I ever do xyz", cringing about it and wondering why I couldn't seem to fit in or whatever. I would feel worse about myself as a person, which was only natural I guess with basically no confidence at all. These negative thoughts would just snowball and I'd end up even more anxious, whether it was socially or feeling like I wasn't good enough in whatever setting.
That freshman year I dealt with, where I basically failed all my classes, felt like a total outcast, and wasted a shit load of money at a private school was legitimately traumatic. Trying to block it out did nothing but leave me with a lot of emotional baggage for a couple years as I became more and more accustomed to processing those kinds of feelings and what they meant. Once I had truly accepted what had happened for what it was, then it was mostly uphill from there. I realized that despite it not being the easiest thing for me historically and that it would be much easier to avoid entirely, I do need social interaction to be happy. To no surprise, despite all this scary stuff creeping up on me with having to be an adult soon and all that, I have only gotten happier with the more socially active I've become. My confidence has only grown, allowing me to like myself again and it has bled into basically all areas of my life. Additionally, a big issue for me was that I had way too much time and as a result would have nothing productive to do on a regular basis. Again, it's no coincidence that this year has been my busiest by a lot, yet the most fulfilling. Those are pretty broad examples and it is much easier said than done to fix in most cases, but I credit dealing with those issues alone for a lot of my own happiness as time has gone along.
With all this said, it's not like I've been living in some perfect fantasy land. As mentioned, above there have been some down moments along the way as well. Life is hard, and I'm an overthinker by nature. A lot of it tied back to that aforementioned uncertainty about what the future would hold. It would be especially apparent when I'd be doing some brain dead task at my current job in a grocery store, where I'd constantly feel like I was wasting my life doing something any random high schooler could despite being 22 years old. I'd get in my own head over and over, feeling like I was just wasting time and potential, while I could be off doing something more meaningful with respect to the future as opposed to getting some half decent money to help pay off school. Another thing was that I felt like me and my stepdad had more and more tension between us. I assumed he just wanted me to move out, which in my mind was understandable. It wasn't until my mom told me they were getting a divorce a couple months ago that I pieced together that there were bigger issues going on. Ultimately, despite me and him not getting along that well, it just makes me sad to see my mom go through this whole process again after all the good she's done for me and the world around us as a whole. I've felt and still do feel like I need to do more to help her in this time of need especially.
While I do intend to leave this job as soon as possible with my recent graduation, eventually I just had something click. It really wasn't that long ago that I was scared to function as a regular person, let alone be a successful and independent person in the future. It felt genuinely good that I wasn't happy with things how they were/are. For the first time it felt like I had real ambition and that I was capable of much more than my actions had been letting on. In a sense, all these things that I was worried about along with this newfound confidence came together to feel better about my position than ever. I was more active socially than ever, getting better grades than ever, making more money than ever, doing better lifting than ever, even being more satisfied with my fucking Pokemon performances than ever. It all just kinda built on itself to outweigh some of these continually recurring concerns in the back of my mind, whether it was not working good enough of a job, still living at home, graduating college a bit later than I should have, etc. These kinds of things would've previously destroyed me mentally, so more than anything I'm just happy with this recent progress. I'm still not perfect and never will be, but realizing flaws where they are and making some effort to improve on them has made a world of difference.
I'm genuinely optimistic for what the future holds. If you told me this is how things would have progressed just 2-3 years ago, I would've thought it was impossible. Instead of freaking out over what's going to happen, I'm actually confident I can make the most of it with whatever does end up happening. Perhaps the biggest takeaway in my mind is just that I don't feel like I have major regrets anymore. Things happened for a reason and I would not have reached the far superior state of mental health I have today without those past experiences, no matter how shitty things were in the moment. Ultimately, that's what I wanted to share here along with getting some of these other thoughts down formally. Hopefully this didn't come off as too much of a look at me blah blah type of post, but it's been such a huge adjustment from the timeframe of that first post in here compared to now, where I am actually excited for the future.
edit: got a job in my field shortly after posting this, very excited
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