I haven’t posted anything for about a year; there was no need to, I had nothing to say. This post is a few things that have been playing on my mind lately and I know these are things that affect other people so hopefully this will come out in a string of coherent sentences but we’ll see.
This year has been a hell of a year, so many things have happened and changed and I guess made me grow also, but at times it doesn’t feel like growing, it feels like regressing. I guess it’s a matter of remembering sometimes regression is necessary to move past a block in the road and be able to grow. This year I’m completing year 12, a block in the road that I never imagined to be this damaging. I remember starting this year off thinking I was going to divide and conquer, not year 12 because I knew it would be stressful but I never imagined it to be such a tribulation. I was naive enough to think this year I would divide and conquer in the mischief I would get into with friends, the illuminating moments with family, the freedom I’d develop and the achievements I’d be proud of, from which I’d finally reach that point of feeling I am enough. A notion so flawed, a belief that couldn’t have been more wrong. However it seems more like this year has divided and conquered me. This year has probably been the hardest year I’ve ever had to wade though. There are aspects that I know I should give myself props for and I know I should give myself a break once in awhile, but they’re overpowered by the aspects that leave me questioning and terrified.
This year has been a year of learning, of falling and breaking and having to hold it together by like that really crappy glue you used to get in primary school which never actually stuck anything but you had to use. I’ve come to question my core beliefs, my judgement and even my sanity. I think my worst judgement call this year was my decision to come off my anti-depressants before starting year 12. My big reasons weren’t the right reasons and the other reasons I told everyone, they were things I often mulled over, but they could have waited. I’d been on anti-depressants before I even started high school, I was on them for about 4 or 5 years and I didn’t feel like they worked because I’d still have at least 2 breakdowns each term from not coping with stress. I was so wrong, when I first came off them it was like a sensory overload, anxieties and stresses that had been background noise, that were always there behind the scenes, were suddenly blazing buildings and shattering glass. They were inescapable and I was thrown into a state of drowning. This lead to the deepest feeling I’ve ever had of actually going crazy, not the cute film ‘oh I’m so stressed I’m going crazy’, but the literal, real, ‘is this really how things are or am I going insane’. I retreated to my hibernation state of sleeping whenever possible. I lost friends from it and other people who cared, I got insanely behind in school and the pressure of school and of doing well in school pushed me to the point of seriously considering dropping out. My family who saw my state didn’t cope well with it, that only made being awake so much more difficult. I stopped functioning as a human being. Things got to the point I was convinced I was a waste of everyone’s time, convinced that people who I allowed myself to trust and need were untrustworthy and that I wasn’t going to get anywhere in life. Some of these delusions I’ve moved past, some I still see in my rose tinted glasses and others I’m still unsure of. While I hit one of my lowest points I do need to give myself props. I eventually sought out help and pulled myself out of it and although at that time the thought of relapsing into my old coping mechanisms of self-harm occurred I pushed past it and didn’t relapse.
That was the beginning of the year, literally the first term of school (February – April) the rest of this year has been a constant fluid state between regression and trying to pull it together enough to move even a step forwards. It’s also been a fight to change my outlook on things. I mentioned I lost friends this year, that was difficult to lose a whole group of people I’d become attached to, but specifically one who I thought I’d grown to need. I was torn apart by it and I allowed it to ruin me. Since, I’ve had moments of clarity, each coming at random times and giving a piece of the bigger picture. Now I look back on it and the only regret I have is the terms on which that friendship ended. In these clarifying moments I realized that I was comfortable in my situation, but I wasn’t growing anymore, everything was static and it had been for a while. As humans we don’t like to leave our comfort zones and I was never going to, not without being forced out with a crowbar. Growing since, I realized that although I used to think I was independent and comfortable with myself, with being alone with myself, I really wasn’t. Learning to be alone and to be comfortable being alone was difficult and probably something I wouldn’t have learnt if I wasn’t forced to. To finally get to the point that I could sit on my own without friends around and not feel awkward took a while, but it was peaceful once I got there. After that I fell back into finding a place among people where I feel like I fit in, in a place I feel like I’m growing as a person.
(There’s a little something about school also but I decided to post is separately.)
This year I was taken aback by the loss of a close family member which was followed by 2 more deaths in the family within the span of 2 months. I’ve seen grief before, but feeling it is completely different, it’s disorientating. I’ve always been a person with a lot to say and it was rare for me not to be talking; my Pop used to say I could talk under wet cement. But there wasn’t anything to say and suddenly silence seemed so much more valid and necessary than words. The ‘should haves’ and ‘could haves’ take over, the plans that never came to conception died and suddenly there’s just nothing. All the while watching the people you care about most breaking and broken, knowing you need to be there for them, just hold it together for them, just get through the day for them.
This year is in it’s final stages. Year 12 is at the race to the finish line and university applications are due to be submitted by end of this month. I’m terrified. I’m not so much scared of the next chapter as I am of the next page as well as the previous ones. Ever since I was little I had one driving force, I wanted to go to university, I was adamant and passionate and I was going. So much has changed and now I’m just unsure. I don’t know if I want to go to university anymore, if that’s the right path for me, but decisions must be made in literally days. Recently I’ve looked back over school work from previous years and other random things I used to do that weren’t for school. I used to be so passionate about so many things, I was interested in so many things, it was like an insatiable hunger. Bonnie and Clyde, Jack the Ripper, criminology (I really wanted to learn how to profile people), psychology, writing, Nostradamus, philosophy, painting, photography, movies, literature, learning to pick locks for the hell of it (not to actually use but just because it was interesting)…. Anything and everything. It was like a blazing fire that consumed everything and couldn’t be calmed. Somewhere along the way over the last year I lost that. I don’t know when or why, but it’s gone. Is it my mental illnesses or just part of growing up? Is it just because I’m burnt out from this year or is it gone forever? Are there still embers of this blazing fire or is it just soot? I don’t know and that scares me.
I know this post has been a long ramble, hopefully it’s somewhat coherent. The point of this isn’t to get attention, or sympathy, or to go “oh poor me”, if that was the point I’d just keep wasting away sleeping. The point is that I’ve never been overly secretive of my mental illnesses, I hate them but they are there. I don’t talk about them often because I’m trying to do what people say and not ‘define myself’ by them. The thing is mental illness is such a prevalent issue in today’s society and so many people don’t talk about it for whatever reason whether it’s because they’re trying not to define themselves by it or they’re ashamed of them or think they’ll be ridiculed for it. Mental illness exists and while things seem to get better they can fall apart again really easily, it’s a constant struggle between being okay and falling apart. This is a topic that needs to be discussed without shame and without degradation. So many people still don’t understand mental illness and while it’s something you can never truly understand until you live through it, you can try to understand it. One of the biggest people who have helped my this year doesn’t really completely understand it, but he’s trying to understand it, he’ll listen and ask questions without being condescending and knowing someone will take the time to try and understand helps even if they don’t get it.
That’s the other thing, so many people are scared to ask questions about mental illness afraid to offend people and people with mental illness often forget that not everyone knows what it’s like or understands, not from a lack of trying but it can be such an illogical thing it’s difficult to understand. So ask questions, ask politely without being patronizing and at appropriate times (i.e. not with a big group of people) and don’t push when the other person has had enough. As for the person trying to explain, try to breathe through the frustration and remember that they’re at least trying, they’re trying to understand. I know it’s difficult and gets immensely frustrating because the other person doesn’t understand but also because it’s so difficult to explain especially when you, yourself don’t fully understand it.
The Story So Far is a rock band from California who formed in 2007. Since then they have released 11 Albums (including their EPs). The most recent of which being The Story So Far which features songs such as ‘Smile’, ‘How Are You’, ‘Nerve’ and ‘Phantom’.
If indie rock is your thing then Typhoon is for you. An American indie rock band from Oregon consisting of 11 members. Typhoon have released four albums and two EPs since the band was formed in 2005. Their album White Lighter consists of the songs ‘Common Sentiments’, ‘Hunger & Thirst’, ‘One Hundred Years’, ‘Post Script’ and ‘Dreams of Cannibalism’ as well as my favourite, ‘Prosthetic Love’, which was also featured on the Veronica Mars movie soundtrack.
Another American rock band, Train originated from San Francisco in 1993. With 15 albums (including EPs) to their name Train is pretty well-known. Their 2014 album Bulletproof Picasso features the songs ‘Angel in Blue Jeans’, ‘Son of a Prison Guard’, ‘Just a Memory’, ‘The Bridge’ and ‘Cadillac, Cadillac’. 
Excitement about going to Comic-Con. 
moment nothing is happening with them. They have not been deleted, there have not been any issues with the sites, they are still active and able to be viewed. My very first blog is even still online.
Pyjamas O'Clock 