god, i am exhausted. the evils of the world are both vast and unrelenting.
there are many things i've wanted to write about lately, and it isn't so much i haven't had the time as i haven't been in a mental headspace for them. even now i feel numb and like my brain is full of static. it's difficult to even think or form these sentences, but i also want to actually write something.
i suppose the thing that's been on my mind that's most relevant for how shit this past week has been is the whole... i don't know. the notion of purpose and what we live for.
i have to admit that has always been a struggle for me. to be frank, my life has felt like one long traumatic event as the individual occurrences blur together, stretching all the way back into my childhood as far as i can remember. every time i recover from the last life-altering destructive thing another occurs, keeping me locked in the cycle, feeling like i can never recover fully. everything always both re-opens old wounds and forms a new one. it's difficult to feel like there's any kind of escape.
a year or so ago now, or well more than that but less than two, shit finally hit the fan badly enough it ruined my ability to feel human connection. i feel the gravity of this may be lost simply to leave it at that, and also maybe gives the impression that i'm not worth trying to connect with on a personal level, so i feel compelled to attempt to explain...
the people i value in my life i still value and cherish as much as i ever have. the connection simply feels one way. i am very aware it isn't and that people are generally (not always, but generally) not lying when they profess that they consider me an important person to them. i try to believe them. i simply take their word for it and logically try to set this against my intense anxiety and also that. i just can't feel it. i don't feel friendships anymore. i don't feel loved. i don't feel that warmth in my chest, that feeling of connection and being valued. it's gone.
i don't know if it'll ever come back. i've spent many months of this past year privately panicking from how isolated and lonely it is to be broken enough you can't feel connections at all with other people. it means i have to spend some of my precious, spread thin energy to also manage this now, to consciously tell myself that my feelings do not match reality and just because i can't feel the connections doesn't mean they're not there. but it's still terrifying and draining. i've just gotten better at managing it, and more recently have gotten used to and made peace with that i may never regain the ability to feel connection with other people again. but that doesn't change how awful and lonely it is.
that combined with the immense soul-crushing amount of shit i've had to deal with has made me constantly have to re-evaluate my life and what i value in it and what makes this life worth living. i guess it's why i find a lot of things for suicidal people trying to convince us them there's things to live for in this world to be irritating in how condescending they are. so many of them promise a better life they aren't able to give. like unless you're some kind of magical genie who grants wishes, you are not capable of giving someone a better life. you can't promise them that. you don't know what their future holds any more than you know your own.
i can't say i have hope anymore. it's been crushed out of me by the world and all its many evils. and to a lot of people that sounds shocking, horrifying even. like i've given up. like i chose to give up.
and i think that's a facet of what i hate about so many things that try to address depression. so many treat this as if we chose to have this life, as if we had a choice in experiencing the fucked up things we have. as if we didn't have to sit helplessly by and watch other people's choices ruin our lives regardless of what we do to stop them, what measures we took to prevent catastrophe from happening.
there is no god damn choice in these experiences.
what will help. is sitting down with yourself. and going. well. what now? what does my life look like after this? after being ground to dust and everything i thought was holding me up razed to the earth?
and being truly honest with yourself.
there is life after hope. there is life after losing the ability to feel. there is life after everything and every experience. but you have to give yourself time to grieve for what you've lost, and you have to be in a space in your life where you can safely grieve for those things. i'm not in a better place because the horrors and fucked up stuff both on a personal and global scale ever stopped, but because i was able to escape people who were abusing me.
i think that's maybe all some people need to hear. not a passive promise of a better life, but an active one. there's a better life out there, but i'll sit with you while your life is shit now and listen. there's a better life out there, and when you're ready to move on i'll be here to help you along, to help you build it for yourself. you don't have to be alone.
and there is life without hope and life without feeling because i looked into myself and asked myself what i'm still living for. what's keeping me going. the list was extremely short, count on one hand levels of short, but this website is one of them. who will update it exactly the way i want when i'm gone except me? who will add to it and improve it only in the ways i want to except for myself? it doesn't matter what it is that keeps you going, what matters is that you identify and cherish the things that keep you going. they will carry you through the darkest of times, and the people who truly matter and care about you will try to help.
i didn't remember to mention this earlier, and i can't seem to find the post anymore, but i know i saw an ask someone sent to the tumblr of Natalie Ironside (seriously an incredible writer, please go check out her tumblr and written works if you feel inclined.) i don't remember the exact wording of the question but it was something about how crushing it can be to try and keep going while living as a trans woman and dealing with transphobia, and what her advice is. (Natalie also being a trans woman, in case that wasn't clear.)
i also don't remember the exact wording of her response, but it was basically to find something, a hobby or interest or something, and let yourself be consumed with love and passion for it. she went on to explain that this is likely why so many trans women have "weird" or niche hobbies they're very into, because it's what keeps you going at the end of the day when dealing with the violently transphobic world.
this post still crosses my mind sometimes. i think i was already somewhere in the field of feeling that way when i saw Natalie answer that ask, but she was very articulate and her words just nailed me right in the chest. she gets it, and i say that both as a trans person and as someone who continues to deal with depression and severe anxiety. she understands, and i hope her answer helped both the lady who asked and also her herself as much as it helped me to read. thank you Natalie.
anyway. i don't know. i'm not sure where i was going with this. maybe it's that there's a life worth living out there, you just gotta find what it is that gives your life passion and chase it as far as it takes you, whatever it is. ignore anyone who would try and stop you or try to demean you for it, because finding things to give your life passion are what make this shithole world worth living in.
or something like that.
