It’s been awhile again since I have last blogged. I don’t know why I never make a habit of this when I love to write so much and I know it’s a strength of mine as well. It helps me process things and it goes right in line with my introverted self and needs.

I’m totally off of Wellbutrin now. I have been off of it completely for about two months now I think. A few months before that, I had gone about a month without it then too. I went to see my psychiatrist yesterday and let her know I was totally off of it now. She knew that I was considering tapering off of it and that I had gone off of it before. It’s so nice that she didn’t guilt me at any point about doing this. So many times they panic and think it means you’re not doing well psychologically. Maybe the difference is that I chose to go onto the medication in the first place, and I sought out the help without it being forcibly done for me. My oldest brother and my father did not have the same experience. There’s quite a difference between Bipolar type 1 and Bipolar type 2 (which is what I’m pretty sure I have even though I’ve only been diagnosed with Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified).

I felt really liberated having that quick talk with my psychiatrist and with her seeming to believe in me being able to stay off of it. After going through what I have gone through in the past with my psych issues and worrying that I might permanently need to be on Wellbutrin, I felt so free leaving that office. Only time will tell how I will be months from now, but all I know is that I never expected that I could come off of Wellbutrin so easily and barely notice the difference. The psychological reality that I was in before I started Wellbutrin was absolute rock bottom and I honestly never thought I would be anything other than suicidally depressed after that last episode. I had never been so low for so long and I also never thought I could be happy or at least stable again without being dependent on Wellbutrin.

This whole thing has me thinking a lot about the impact that your environment has on you. It’s HUGE. My circumstances were totally different when I went on Wellbutrin. I was still living at home with my mom and felt totally and utterly hopeless about my future. So many things have changed in my life since then. I have been living with my boyfriend Zak for a little more than 3 years. We have been together almost 5 years now. He’s helped me so much in reclaiming my sense of self. He’s a staunch individualist and I have always respected him a lot for that. He’s taught me how to develop and maintain healthy boundaries and how to work on not feeling guilty about doing so.

I also have kept a solid job for almost 3 years now. I transferred to another program in October 2014 but I’m still at that job now. Before this I couldn’t hold down a job either. This company, as corrupt as I have realized it to be, at least recognizes the strengths that someone like me has and it allows you to be an individual still. I do appreciate that and I fit right in working with individuals that are complicated and strange themselves.

I’m still a very emotional person but I reign it in a lot more now. I seem to have finally learned how to channel it enough to not let my issues spew all over whoever I’m around. I have learned when to hold my tongue and how to act in certain situations. It still tires me if I ever have to perform but for the most part I can be myself where I work and that helps a lot.

I got a bit off track here. I started talking about environment. Environment is huge. Now that I no longer live with the dysfunctional people in my family and I no longer am sucked right into their issues or their boundary issues (because I rarely seem or talk to them), I’m doing so much better. I’m am Empath and so growing up in the family I did and being around them far longer than I should have been really took a toll on me. I still have some trouble balancing family with my life except now it’s the opposite of how it used to be. Now I don’t make much time for them and I chose my own needs over theirs (which is exactly what I needed to do before but honestly couldn’t physically do it while still living with them).

Living with Zak has been really nice for the most part. He’s been healthy for me to live with, in that we are both introverts and both respect each other’s needs for time and space to do our own things. He’s easy to be around, he’s level headed, he’s pretty psychologically stable, and he’s really calm most of the time. That is so the opposite of what I grew up around. I feel like I finally got to recover from my past by living with him. He’s allowed and helped me to grow more into myself and my own interests, whereas my family always kept me so absorbed in their own drama that I eventually ended up not knowing who I was anymore.

I still have high standards for myself that I’m not meeting. But I’m not quite as hard on myself as I used to be despite that fact. I want to make more of a habit out of writing, reading, and making art. I love all three and I know I am good at them. It’s just hard being an introvert because my job is something I’m constantly having to recover from. Most of the time when I come back from work I just watch TV shows I like, smoke weed, and eat food. I tend to not feel like I have the energy to do my hobbies instead, or something. I’m on a mini vacation from work right now, which is probably why I actually started writing a post. I could write so much more but I’m going to leave it at this. As always, I want to strive towards self-actualization. I just need to find a good balance between being patient with myself and pushing myself to put time into my hobbies.

I have the next three days off. I requested today off because I won’t be off on Thanksgiving and so my mom threw an early Thanksgiving today. My brother, my cousin, his wife, their kid, my aunt, my uncle, and my mom were at this. It was overall pretty nice. I still always feel a little out of place because I’m significantly different from most of them. My uncle and my aunt who were there (very affluent people), spent a lot of time telling stories of their own success but also of how to be successful. It was more about how you can achieve your dreams and live the life you want to live. I wasn’t totally receptive to it because money is a huge factor in that (something they have never struggled with) coming to fruition. They don’t seem to understand the limits of barely having any money just living in your current situation, never mind having any way of saving money in order to do something drastic like move far away to a place you want to live.

I’m a pretty idealistic person so I never really meet my own standards. I have come to love myself though and I am proud of the person that I am now. I still always want to improve myself. I do want to become more disciplined in pursuing my passions such as writing, hiking, drawing, reading, and meditating. They did make a good point about how your thoughts formulate your reality. I already knew this to be true but it was interesting to actually hear that from older adults. It’s very true that what you think about and how you feel about things completely creates your perspective on life and the choices that you make. It’s hard to try to keep away negative or self-limiting thoughts but it helps to at least become aware of them and try to reduce them.

I have always been obsessed with the idea of balance in general. In this context when they were talking about these things I agreed with their general point(s), but then my mind was kind of questioning it too. I am definitely careful to never completely open up to someone else’s advice for how I should live my life, because no one knows that better than you do.

I found myself being skeptical of the people these words of advice were coming from. The reason for that is that like I said before, they are rich and they have *never* had problems with money. Therefore, anywhere they want to live or any life they want to live is realistically available. When you don’t have to struggle to financially survive things must be really different. I found myself questioning the source because these two really have no idea what it is to have a difficult upbringing, a lack of money, a lack of income, huge amounts of debt, serious family problems or mental illness, etc. I don’t completely absorb what they say because they have never had to really overcome any serious difficulties. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want because money is not a problem for them. So when someone like that tells you that you can definitely and very quickly move far away and achieve your dreams, I can’t take it seriously. They are leaving out a lot of details and the many roadblocks that get in the way when you don’t have any money to spare.

It also makes me question their motives because they were giving this advice to my brother and I without us asking for it, and of course they are coming from a place of viewing themselves as successful and living a great life to be the ones saying these things to us. They kept referring to their own lives and the only problems they’ve had is which house to live in and what location, how to sell a few of the houses they already owned in various states, etc. Their reality is entirely different from my own. I don’t like when people preach like that extensively because it’s also assuming that you need this information and that they are above you. It’s very ego based when you analyze it, although on the surface it looks like it’s coming only from a place of caring. I’m not saying they don’t care, I’m just saying I know the real reason(s) behind their fixation on constantly talking about their successes and possessions, whenever I actually do see them.

To me honesty and being humble are qualities that I value the most in other people. Being around my aunt and uncle and listening to their stories actually made me miss my dad and my other uncle. The two of them have more obvious personality flaws and can be really harsh, but at least they are sincere people. I know without question that when I’m taking to either one of them that they are down to earth and there is no bullshit involved. They don’t fake things and are brutally honest. I prefer that because insincerity is a deceptive trait and it’s often used to manipulate others. I also know that my dad and his brother grew up in near poverty, and have had many struggles to overcome in their lives. I take their advice or words of wisdom much more seriously because I know they are street smart and know a lot about life.

I’m trying not to judge my aunt and uncle but they kind of make it easy. They are people that I’d prefer to only see once every few years like it has been. They could never truly understand me and I could never truly understand them. We’re like a different breed of people almost. I’m trying not to by cynical or skeptical. I know this post may come across that way but really I’m just highly analytical when it comes to people, their personalities, their motives, etc. I can’t really help it. It was an interesting experience none the less, and at least the content of what they were saying was very positive and encouraging.

When I left I didn’t feel energized or like I was going to be able to change my life from what they said or something, because I have my own thoughts and feelings and I trust those more than anything else. I guess what I would prefer in terms of receiving positive conversation/advice is a balanced exchange between people that talks about the good things in life and in people, and where the people would exchange their thoughts and feelings about things like philosophy, art, music, etc. That would feel honest to me and balanced because it’s not done in the attempt to “teach” someone else and it’s not coming from a place of perceived superiority. People should treat others as equals whether or not they have different circumstances, are in different economic classes, or just have different upbringings. I do believe all people and living things are of equal value and that no one is truly above or below anyone else. We all just have very different experiences and backgrounds and thus we become different people who live different lives. At the core of it all we are all the same and we are all one.

I titled this post with the words guilt and stress because that it was I just absorbed so much of yesterday at work. It was potent and overflowing. We had a staff meeting as we do every Thursday. This time the new DO (Director of Operations) was there and this was my first time meeting him. He seemed pretty rational and also more stern in his views about the residents’ behaviors. He seemed like a no bullshit type person so that’s good.

He did end up proposing that we come in on one or more days to help clean the residents’ rooms. I of course was not interested in that at all because as is I am pretty ready to leave this place. I have already helped two different residents clean their rooms for multiple hours in a row for each guy. The new DO seems to think that if we clean and organize their rooms really well that they will maintain them. That’s a load of shit because these guys are terrible with responsibilities. You clean their rooms well and within days it goes right back to the way it started. Also, all of these men are full grown adults. They are more than capable of cleaning their rooms but they choose not to.

After the DO left the site manager started to ask the employees who would be willing to do some extra hours on one of those days. I at first was confused by what the DO said and I thought he was saying it was going to be mandatory. All I did was ask her if this was mandatory and then expressed relief when she said it wasn’t. She starts freaking out on me right then. She starts raising her voice and being aggressive. She said “God forbid you do any extra hours”. I responded with “Well I’m not management. And so I haven’t signed my life away.” She responds to that with “Yes I am well aware of that”.

This whole time her eyes are practically beating out of her head and she’s responding as if I just told her I was going to do jack shit at work today. I did nothing of the sort and I work harder while I’m on shift than most staff do. The difference is I’m smart enough not to sacrifice the two days I have off each week. She and another one of my coworkers have been doing a ton of overtime. As expected the two of them are by far the most irritable and aggressive as a result.

The thing that pisses me off is that the two of them keep making passive-aggressive comments or having passive-aggressive responses to things and are becoming work martyrs. I have received more than a few passive-aggressive statements from these two, any time that I take a strong or honest stand on my need to keep my two days off and not do overtime. The two of them take on much more work than they can truly handle, yet continue to do so probably for a number of reasons. We have been somewhat short staffed recently especially with all the activities that our boss started to set up for all of the guys before he ended up being out on medical leave for the last month or so.

They sacrifice their days off to do overtime, they have a wicked short fuse and snap easily, they continuously complain about the problems in the program, they frequently mention leaving, they use their own money in larger sums to buy things for the residents or the program, etc. They do this to themselves. Yes, the program does need more staff. Yes, their are many open shifts that need covering. Yes, there are staff that do more work than other staff. I don’t care if they want to put this heavy load upon themselves and want to act as if they are responsible for filling all the open shifts.

What I do care about is the remarks they have made to me that are said with the intention of guilting me into taking on overtime myself. For the site manager to say “God forbid you ever do any extra hours”, is a clear jab made to imply that I’m selfish and that I don’t work hard. You can take on as many hours as you want until your body and mind shut down, but don’t think you have the right to expect that I take on the same thing myself.

I’m sorry but I have learned over time how stupid it is to bend over backwards for other people or for your workplace, when you are not getting anything back and all you’re doing is burning yourself out. Yes it may result in the shifts being covered more easily but you’re getting next to nothing out of this. If working extra hours actually lead to an improvement in the program, or lead to a feeling of achievement or like you made a noticeable difference in the program or the guys lives, it would make more sense to keep doing so.

I think these two are making stupid choices that negatively affect their states of mind and also their bodies because of the levels of stress they are taking on and the lack of sleep they are getting. Of course they are also getting next to no time off because they are taking on so much overtime so then they have no time to even try to recover from all the physical and mental stress. Sure this shows a willingness to sacrifice your time and it shows that you can be selfless but in reality it’s starting to become more clear that it’s not done for those reasons.

It’s done because these people do not love themselves enough to care for themselves above all, and because they have voids in their lives that they are trying to fill by working all the time. These people also clearly want recognition for all the extra time and effort they put in, so then it becomes clear that it’s not an act of selflessness. If it was truly selfless they wouldn’t go looking for compliments and they wouldn’t expect people to feel bad for them.

I think they are making choices that above all hurt them. I don’t think they are wise decisions. The difference is I don’t repeatedly get on their case for not taking time off or for choosing to take on over time. I don’t try to make them feel bad for being a workaholic. I see it clearly, but I know it’s not my place to comment on. I know this because I have developed pretty good boundaries and put my mental and physical health above the needs of other people or workplaces. What is wrong is when they try to shame me into making the same stupid choices they make. 40 hours a week is more than enough for *any* person to be working. To do more than 40 hours a week unless you absolutely have to out of some emergency or crisis situation, is taking on much more than you should.

I love to write. I need to write more than I realize. I want to work towards writing every day. It’s one of the best ways I can process my emotions and thoughts. I excel more at doing so through writing than I do through speaking, and since I’m an introvert it works better for my needs than it does through speaking. My inner life is so rich that I should definitely be writing the stuff down that goes on inside my head. My inner life is much more active than my outer life so it’s best if I make use of that through writing.

I frequently think about how I want to want to improve myself. I frequently think about how I want to get back to having good, productive daily habits that are in line with my values and strengths. I was reminded of something I learned about years ago when I went to the training I went to last week. The speaker brought up “Flow Experiences” and I was reminded of how they really do increase your happiness levels.

Flow experiences are experiences in which you are fully engaged in what you are doing because you love whatever you’re doing. You end up losing track of time and are completely in the moment. Typically flow experiences result from doing things that you are passionate about or strong in, and so they are truly fulfilling experiences. Multiple Positive Psychology books talk about how the more often you engage in Flow Experiences in your day to day life, the greater your happiness levels will become. This is one way to slightly improve your baseline happiness levels.

My flow experiences include hiking, writing, reading, creating music, making art, and meditating. If I were to do these six things regularly, or atleast a few of them every day, I know I would feel happier. I would be doing the things that I truly love and am good at, and would be living a life that’s more congruent with my values.

One good thing is that for the past several months, whenever I have a day off, going hiking is a priority of mine. I don’t always make it since the daylight is gone by about 4:30 pm lately and I have a second-shift schedule, but I atleast have the internal motivation to atleast strongly want to go hiking on my days off. I also want to get to a point where I go hiking or atleast walking before I go to work too.

I forget what year it was in college but I think it might have been my first or second year when I started to really get into meditating. What motivated me to do so was when I start to get panic attacks a lot, and I also had tripped not long before then so that reminded me of just how spiritual of a person I truly was. Before then I was an atheist. During that trip I was opened up to the spiritual plane and it was the most amazing experience of my entire life. I actually saw energy itself, in everything. I saw the energy fields around the people I was with, I saw how people had different aura colors that were more predominant than other colors. At the time I didn’t really know what energy fields or auras were but I got really into them after that.

Everything in the room I was in, which was filled with creative/abstract/psychedelic art, was alive. All of the pictures were animated. The room itself was filled with this translucent yet multi colored goo type stuff that filled the room starting from the ceiling and was formulated in large cylindrical coil shapes. I understood this as matter itself, which I then learned that matter itself was composed of energy, which is primarily spiritual. This experience felt more real to me than any other “sober” experience I had ever had before. My ego was torn away and I was exposed to the spiritual realm, which was directly in conflict with the reality that the ego had formulated and controlled for all of my life before this.

I did experience “ego death” before the highly positive/spiritual part of the trip began. The ego death was the scariest experience of my life. It was like a panic attack times 10, and when I looked in the mirror I felt completely dissociated. I was sure I was going to die, so my panic got worse and I puked a ton. I didn’t know it then but what truly died at that time was my ego, and it’s scary as fuck when it happens because it questions your entire perspective and understanding of reality. The ego convinces you that are in complete control, that you are the center of everything, and that nothing is real except for concrete/factual based information. Ego death reverses all of that programming and so your mind and emotions are given a complete shock. The ego re-gained control later on, but this trip changed my perspective on life for good.

A bit later I went to get Reiki done. Reiki is a spiritual practice in which imbalanced chakras are balanced, blockages are opened up, and repressed emotions are brought to the surface. Your spirit is interacted with in a way that can be felt strongly, even physically. During this Reiki session my Reiki practioner told me that I was an Indigo child. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but I looked it up later and it made *so* much sense. The way that I had experienced my entire life was finally clarified and so instead of feeling like an outsider/alien, I felt like I was here for a reason, for spiritual and healing based purposes, and so I felt special. Again this was a complete turn around from how I felt for all of my life until I was given this information and this experience. After this session I started to meditate daily or every other day for a few months. I felt amazing and my external circumstances didn’t control my emotional state anymore. I felt at one with everything and that was exactly what I needed.

I want to start meditating every day again. I want to start writing every day. I want to start making art every day, like I did after my trip for awhile. I want to hike as much as possible, in as many new places as I can possibly find. I want to re-remember that these are the things that I am here for, these are the things that truly matter, and these things are what make life worth living. Of course having deep connections/relationships with others and spreading as much love and understanding as possible are equally important, but the aforementioned passions are all internal/individually based things that fulfill me the most without depending on any other people to do so.

It’s been a really long time since I last posted on here. I just re-read the last one I wrote, which was half a year ago. When I read my writing sometimes it seems as if I’m reading someone else’s thoughts or something. Maybe what I’m noticing is that the way I express myself through writing is very different from the way I express myself through speaking.

I went to this two day training last Thursday and Friday. It was on Positive Psychology and a new type of therapy. I wasn’t totally on board with everything I was presented with but there were some helpful elements to it. One thing the speaker went over many times and had as do many exercises with was Gratitude. Practicing gratitude and then sharing it with other people. It does have a very different effect when you share what you are grateful for with another individual than it does when you are just keeping it to yourself. I did also really like the high amount of vulnerability that this training opened up doors for. Since I have been working in the psych field for about two and a half years, this training was still one of the only times when I could really feel genuine vulnerable emotions being shared between people. Most professional environments highly discourage that.

I guess I will start out with writing what I am grateful for. This will be a general list rather than a specific one.

1. I’m grateful to have my boyfriend. We have been together for almost 4.5 years now and he has made me feel hopeful again about healthy relationships existing. I really needed to learn that and especially needed to experience one. I think he is the first boyfriend I have actually had a healthy relationship with.
2. I’m grateful to have a roof over my head and to have my basic survival needs met. Even though I struggle financially I am still much better off financially than a lot of people. I’m grateful that I don’t have to fight to survive every single day like so many people in the world. Basically I am grateful that I am not living in poverty and that I have never lived in poverty.
3. I’m grateful to be much better off psychologically than I used to be. I’m grateful that I no longer spend each day in a pit of hopelessness and despair. I’m also grateful that I no longer regularly experience feeling numb. Feeling numb was actually worse than any other emotion, other than feel dissociated. I’m grateful I no longer spend each day feeling completely dissociated and unreal.
4. I’m grateful for the existence of Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin is the a-typical antidepressant I have been on for a little more than 4.5 years now. Before I went on Wellbutrin I was in a seemingly endless severe depressive episode (see #3).
5. I’m grateful for my best friend Aubree. I really miss her since I have not seen her in over a month. She has been in various psych hospitals/respite during this time. She’s a great person and is so enjoyable to spend time with. Whenever we hang out I feel both of our energies being lifted to a higher vibration and we really connect. She has helped me to feel understood and to feel less alone in the way that I am.
6. I’m grateful for my mother. Her and I have had a long history of a turbulent relationship, but I feel her and I have worked things out a lot in the past couple of years. Although my mother and I are very different psychologically and intellectually, she has helped me out a lot in the areas that I needed, especially considering how much my father weakened those areas. My mother helped me to become a financially independent person and individual. My father tried to completely prevent this from happening by never allowing me to get a job and never allowing me to make my own decisions. My mother bought me the car that has allowed me to hold a job for the past two and a half years (longer than I have ever held a job before and the first time I’ve had my own car and lived in my own place). I still owe her a lot of money but she continues to help me out financially whenever I have another issue in this department.
7. I’m grateful for my father. He and I have not had a real relationship in several years but it’s better that way.  I don’t know if I can every truly forgive him for the agony he subjected me to for most of my childhood and teen years, but I have been becoming more aware of the good things he taught me. I didn’t agree with his parenting methods but he did have good intentions at the core of his methods. I’m grateful that he pushed me to value physical health/exercise. I’m grateful that he pushed me to value knowledge/intelligence. I’m grateful that he pushed me to question authority and the status quo. I have realized lately that he did not raise me in a military type way for malicious reasons. When I think about it more I realize that he pushed me so hard to be as close as I could be to excellent in so many areas, because he believed in me that much. He wanted me to reach my potential. He didn’t go about it in the healthiest ways but I think he did the best that he could. I’m grateful that he has pushed me to be a perfectionist, because even though I can never meet my own standards, it still gets me closer to my potential because I am always wanting to improve myself by living a life that is in line with my values.

I constantly have to put tons of effort into being more positive and into getting closer to staying with those emotions once they do come around. It’s not enough that I’m on anti-depressant, the only one that has ever worked for me. I haven’t been in therapy for a few years now, also partially because of the issues I have. I have a phone phobia and trust issues, so it’s insanely hard for me to even pick up the phone and call different therapists. I like to think that I don’t need a therapist anymore, that I have shit until control now, but I don’t. I need to admit to myself that I am still a damaged person, and that no matter what I do I will never fully be “healed” from the emotionally abusive and controlling childhood I grew up in. I can work on it, I can try to get help in various ways and try to help myself in various ways, but it’s never going to just disappear. It’s something I have to live with. When I started to have panic attacks in my early college years, I was driven towards meditation/spirituality. I sought out books on meditation, and I started to do these meditations fairly often. I started to eat healthier. I did get a lot of help from doing this. I was able to significantly reduce my panic attacks from this. It wasn’t until years later that I finally got on the anti-depressant that got rid of my panic attacks, and significantly improved the other psychological issues I had that lead to me functioning very poorly.

I haven’t lived with my whole dysfunctional family for years. My dad did the most damage on me psychologically by far. My mom did too, but in a pretty different way. After years and years of constant and frightening verbal arguments between my two parents, and years and years of being controlled in every way by my drill-sergeant-esq father, I got pretty fucked up. I also had to watch my oldest brother go through a few different mental breakdowns, as a result of our crazy upbringing. When I was 12 years old I went downstairs in the basement to find my dad holding my brother up against a wall by his throat. My brother had his face all painted up in Mudvayne-esq style. He hadn’t slept in days. My brother was having his first Bi-polar mental breakdown and my insane father thought he could fix him. The problem was that my dad was the one who needed fixing, and no amount of therapy and medications ever really did fix him, or get him anywhere near normal functioning.

I remember seeing my brother taken away by an ambulance. I remember visiting him in the hospital and my dad crying when he told me how my brother said “I’m sorry” to him when he got his first Haldol injection, to take him out of his psychotic episode. I remember feeling such intense sadness and sympathy for the both of them. They were both and still are such damaged people. I tried for so many years to make things better for them, to be there for them, to try to psychologically support and care for them in a way that most people couldn’t. What I did and what they fostered was mostly just a really unhealthy and psychologically dependent relationship with the two of them. I’d like to try to “re-frame” my upbringing but it’s really no use. The damage was done and all I can do now is try to heal. All I feel I can really do is try to learn how to cope in a healthy way. But at 25 years old I have still yet to learn how to do that.

I’m not the same exact person I was as a moody 13 year old. I don’t spend my time feeling sorry for myself or being depressed all the time. I don’t feel hopeless about everything like I used to. I’m free from the bonds of my family that lead to fuck me up so badly. But like I said before the damage was done, and it will last me a lifetime.

I believe I was born a Highly Sensitive Person and an Empath. Then I grew up in a household that was terrible for someone like me. My upbringing would fuck up people who are minimally sensitive, never mind someone as sensitive as I was/am. My parents were/are both really sensitive people as well. But something tells me they aren’t as sensitive as I am. I felt everything that happened between the two of them, between me and each of them separately, between my two brothers, between my brothers and my parents, all so strongly. I felt the impact of all of it. I’d rather view myself as a survivor than a victim but at the same time I don’t think I’ve loved myself enough to validate the fact that I was a victim. I

feel like no one truly understands me. I have felt like that for most of my life. Every time I get anywhere near close to feeling like someone understands me, I find out in one way or another that they don’t. They have no idea what my mind is like, they have no idea just how emotional I am. I know I can’t use this as an excuse for me to treat anyone any particular way, but I feel like I put so much fucking effort into treating everyone really well. I feel like I’m generally super caring towards most people, and I generally love people. I see the best in everyone, much more than most people I know. Because I have such a deep understanding of psychology though and of emotional sickness though as well, I can clearly see other people’s issues too. Because I am so empathetic and highly aware of how people can be emotionally affected by others’ words though, I refrain from criticizing people as much as I can. It’s really hard for me to be open and honest with people when it comes to their faults, even though I try so hard to be.

I hold so much in. Since I have taken the Myers’ Briggs Personality Test, and got the result of INFP, things make even more sense. I’m mostly introverted and also very much driven by my emotions, I internalize my emotions. I have *so* many emotions too, and I know the whole spectrum of them very well. There’s so much that I don’t verbalize to other people, for the sake of not bringing them down. I also don’t open up about these things either, because the last thing I want to do is be the way I used to be. I used to be so unraveled that I couldn’t help but talk in depth and way too often about my problems and what I’ve been through. I lost many friends and boyfriends for this reason. I had a close friend tell me that I needed professional help, and then he stopped being my friend. I’ve had many people abandon me. I understand why. Now I shut down more than ever when I’m emotionally upset or stressed. It’s been so rare that people would actually be empathetic when I did open about these things, and it’s also been so rare that I have not been judged or criticized for being as sensitive as I am. I learned not to trust people. I learned to put their needs and their emotions ahead of my own.

I am so tired of having to explain myself, and then that not even helping matters. I’m so tired of trying so hard not to hurt other people, and chose to hurt myself instead by bottling things up and being hard on myself. I have one close friend now who is the person I have felt the most similar to in my entire life. I don’t get to spend time with her very often though. She has yet to be confused by my reactions to things. She has understood where I was coming from every time, and has been more than empathetic and supportive. We’re so much alike. I think she has been through more trauma that I have though, and as of right now her life is much worse than mine. She tells me to contact her whenever I feel I need to, but I find myself refraining from this because I don’t want to bring her down any farther than she already is. I know she has so much stress and negativity around her as is, the last thing I want to do is add to this. I only want to help her. She’s the only other person in the world that I have actually felt is enough like me to understand why I am the way I am. She’s the only person who has ever actually completely validated the level of trauma I’ve been through. She doesn’t judge me. She just understands and listens. She knows what to say and when to say it. God I wish I could see her more often. But more than that I wish I could learn how to provide myself with that same level of care. I wish I could comfort myself when I get in a dark place. I wish I could make myself feel better, or regulate my emotions. I’ve come along way from where I’ve started but, I still have so far to go.

When things get extra stressful, chaotic, or just overwhelming, I retreat. This is what I’ve learned to do. I withdraw and shut down. Sometimes I will vent to people but that only helps momentarily, and even when I do vent I feel bad about it. I wish I could turn my emotional sensitivity down a few notches. I wish I could also become more assertive. I wish I could fully learn some of the Chakra rights. I need to learn that I have the right to speak and feel without fear of punishment or judgment. I need to learn that I have the right to be and to have. That I have the right to my own personal space and that I welcome and wanted in the places that I live or am. I was never really allowed that when I was growing up. I’m glad that I got into spirituality at that time when I really needed it, but I have lost touch with it again for years. I have been sucked into the responsibilities and realities of adult life. Everything is so serious and stark now and it’s hard because this is a new reality to me. My previous realities were terrible and I never did believe things would get better. They have gotten better but now I have a whole new set of harsh realities to face and I feel like I’m suffocating. I try so hard to remain positive. I somewhat succeed but a lot more so when it comes to other people. I can have generally positive viewpoints on people and I’m good at emotionally supporting other people. But I’m pretty terrible at emotionally supporting myself. I never did learn how to do that. I was never taught how because I was never given consistent and healthy emotional support. In fact most of the time I was just never good enough and whenever I did express emotion in the form of sadness it was invalidated and denied. I was told to stop being a baby, to get over it. I don’t know if I will ever will get over being told to get over it. It’s like the coldest thing you could say to someone in pain, other than worse things like telling them they are worthless (which I have was told many times over as well).

I just want to move into the new chapter of my life and get away from all that is negative or makes me feel hopeless.

I have been suffering from a sinus infection since about last Monday night. The odd thing was that I had run out of the SinuSoothe natural nasal spray that I have been using for months now (so I wasn’t able to use it for about a week). At first I definitely did feel the congestion coming back. For the last few days before it finally came in the mail I was surprised at how I actually felt like I was OK without it. In the early evening on Monday night though, I noticed that my nose was starting to run. I used my SinuSoothe nasal spray when I got home from work that night, close to midnight. Immediately I had a huge sneeze attack, tons of congestion, but also tons of drainage coming out of my sinuses. I found this odd because I didn’t even have that strong of a reaction the first few days that I ever used it. When I first used it I mostly had weird pain that radiated all the way up both of my sinuses and then went all the way back down my skull on both sides, where the pain settled at the base of my skull on both sides. I figured out that this was me actually feeling this natural nasal spray as it traveled through my lymphatic system and lymph nodes. As much as it hurt I was so happy to have finally found something that seemed to truly be attacking the actual source of the problem. I’m not really sure why my sinus infection came on full blown this time after using it after not having it for about a week, but I can speculate for sure. I think what really caused me to have this full blown infection starting on Monday night was because of the crazy happenings of the day before. My mother had pitched a serious fit and stressed me out to an insane degree.

My mother had been trying to reach me for a few weeks. She has this issue where she claims to literally worry whether or not I’m OK if she doesn’t hear from me. It is beyond clear to me that she has undiagnosed and untreated generalized anxiety disorder, and that she has had this for decades. All the while she has been completely denying that she even has an anxiety issue, when everyone in my family has told her this and she has been made more than aware about it. She is a very ego driven and ego centered person, so god forbid she ever admits that she isn’t perfect or that she has an issue that she needs to work on. My mother had been incessantly calling me, leaving me voicemails, and texting me for what felt like weeks. She was using every type of guilt and manipulation tactic that she could think of to try to force me to talk to her. This is her usual method and typically after a little bit of this I think “jesus christ ok I’ll see or talk to you just so you leave me the fuck alone”. I end up getting back to her and then going out to eat with her, out of what feels like pure obligation to me. I have read a lot about boundaries and about what are healthy and unhealthy boundaries. I have read that if you do something for a person because you feel obligated to, that is an example of an unhealthy boundary coming into play. I totally agree. So this time I did not allow her method to force me into doing what she wanted, and I stood my ground. She took it up another level in response. I had to work all day that Sunday. I got a text from my boyfriend telling me I should contact my mom because she called him, his brother, his workplace, and the main office at the apartment complex we live at. Apparently she was acting as if I had been kidnapped (mind you I’m fucking 25 years old), and she was trying to get people to actually go check to see if my car was parked somewhere. She caused a major scene and my boyfriend said that he felt like she was making him look bad because the way she was acting made it seem like he was being neglectful of me, or something ridiculous like that.

I was beyond embarrassed, but more than anything fucking livid. I texted her saying to keep the problems between her and I, between her and I. I said do not contact the people I live with and that she is causing a major scene. I told her how inappropriate and wrong this was. I told her she needs to see a therapist, because she is out of control. She literally expects me to fulfill her social and emotional needs. She has literally forced this into happening for years on end. Because I never wanted to deal with her ridiculous child-like behavior, I would eventually just give in and do what she wanted. I realize this is totally wrong and unfair to me. This is enabling her to continue to be a control freak, and enabling her to keep me under her thumb. I ended up texting her for about two hours while I was at work. I was very articulately describing to her what her problems are, what she needs to do to work on this herself, how her behavior was negatively affecting me and how it was poor treatment of me, and how exactly she could improve things for herself and for our relationship. As usual, and as she always done over the years, she entirely refused to validate anything that I had said, and continued to blame me for essentially being a bad daughter. She didn’t use those words but she said a few times “I don’t need a therapist, I need a daughter who cares and who will let me know once a week if she’s ok or not”. Round and around we went until I had nothing left.

I know what her problem is. I know that she is having an identity crisis because she lives alone now and because all of her kids have moved out. The only identity she ever had, was the identity of being a mother. She is freaking out because she does not have even a remotely close relationship to either of her two kids who live only a few towns away. The other kid lives in Denmark. She is freaking out and trying to control me because I would be the easiest choice. I am her youngest child, and I’m the only girl. I also live the closest to her. She will never admit this but she is just as much of a control freak as my father is. The fact is though right now I do not feel any resentment towards my father but I feel a whole shit load towards her. I’m only mentioning my father because he called me last Wednesday and I talked to him for about an hour. I hadn’t talked to him in something like a year because of issues we have had. This conversation actually went really well and he sounded like he was doing much better psychologically than he has been in years. He was very caring and he actually asked me a lot of questions for once. He told me that he loved and I told him that I loved him too. For this conversation I actually felt like I had a good, healthy father who treated me well.

My mother on the other hand, could not be treating me any worse at this point in time. She made the huge mistake of bringing up their failed marriage when she decided to text me *again* last night, to add in so more ridiculous behavior. She is now trying to take me off of her phone plan. She didn’t even say this shit directly but I figured it out based on how she’s been acting. She said “please call or text me when you have the time regarding your cell phone”. I KNOW she is trying to threaten to cut off my phone because I’m not meeting her requirements of checking in with her EVEN THOUGH I’M A FUCKING ADULT NOW. I know this is her last resort type method. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t working on me either. Before she could even start up her plan, I replied “I will get my own phone if that’s what you’re getting at, which I’m pretty sure you are”. I then told her she should know just how manipulative and controlling she is being because I won’t meet her requirements. I told her that she is proving the very points that I made before. I also told her how I have been sick essentially since she pulled that drama earlier last week. I have had to call out of work a few different times. I have spent the past few days (my days off mind you), sick because of how much she stressed me out. I think I may have been on the possible verge of a sinus infection again, but I don’t think it was going to fully happen until she created the catalyst for it surface. Basically, she is literally making me sick now. I am feeling the brunt of her tactics because I standing up to them. Emotionally and psychologically, my mother is a child. She’s a little over 60 years old, and she has had a successful job and has been successful with money mostly, but underneath that strong exterior is a weak, dependent child. I used to pity her and so I would allow her to treat me in this way. Now that i’m older I realize that this fact is no excuse for her to treat me like shit. I do not owe her extra psychological help and support merely because she refuses to work on herself at all. It is not my job to do this shit and it never should have been.

Basically what i’m getting at is that I honestly believe that her and my father, and the upbringing that they created for me and my brothers, is what has created my chronic sinus infection issue. I have had this issue for about a decade. It’s no coincidence that this fully started off right around the time that things in my family first started going to shit. My brother had a nervous breakdown when I was 12. My parents had an awful marriage, in which they fought on a regular basis, multiple times a day, for seriously as long as I can remember. I never saw it actually go physical but it *always* felt like it was right on the verge of turning physical. They’d fight a lot really late at night. Being the lucky one that I was, having my bedroom on the same floor as their bedroom, I was woken up on so many different nights, to screaming. I would immediately jump and run down to their room because I seriously thought they were about to kill each other. It’s again no coincidence that I developed severe insomnia later on in my life because of the years and years I had been subjected to this every single night trauma.

My house was also full of mold and dust, as well as dog danger and dirt. I was breathing in this stuff on a regular basis. I believe that I have fungus up in my sinuses from this, which is the physical cause for why I have had chronic sinus infections for over a decade. I have tried so many things to treat this, and only prescribed nasal spray made a *slight* dent in the issue. The SinuSoothe spray I have been using has overall worked a lot more than any other treatment I’ve tried. The trauma and stress that I dealt with for so many years, mostly at the hands of both of my parents, is what has caused this chronic condition. I also believe I have undiagnosed fibromyalgia. This is also caused by the traumatic upbringing that I had. My mother is addicted to drama and thus is still trying to keep the cycle going by acting like this towards me. She is insufferable. I have been reading about spiritual explanations for particular physical illnesses and one article said that the spiritual explanation for chronic sinus infections is “irritation to someone, usually someone close to you”. Hit the nail right on the fucking head!! How many years of my life have I spent stuck living with not just one, but often two to three different people who *all* irritate me because they are toxic people! This had to have had an effect over time. Ok I have a lot more that I wanted to write but once again it’s just too much to put in one post.

I had a really thorough and deep conversation with my boyfriend late last night about a number of different things. First we started off talking about our results to the Myers Briggs personality test. My result is INFP and his is INTP. He told me he took the test a few days ago. I had taken the test many times before. I told him that I knew that would be his result because we are really similar in the categories that this test covers. This test determines “preferences” for certain styles. One sub category is about how the individual prefers to process information. The preference is either for taking in information at face value only (sensing) or for using that information as only the starting point after which the individual further analyzes and adds meaning to that information (intuition). Another sub category is about the preference an individual has for how one will make the decisions that they make. This preference is either for making decisions based on logic, facts, and consistency (thinking) or for emphasizing a focus on the emotion-based particulars such as the people and subjective circumstances involved (feeling). The last sub category is about an individual’s preference in dealing with external stimuli and the external world. The preference is either towards wanting to be decisive about matters (judging) or wanting to keep things open-ended in order to leave space for other potential options or information to come into play (perceiving).

Since I had read so much about my results and about this test in general, I was able to infer what my boyfriend’s results would be. I was able to see this especially when we would have serious conversations/debates/or arguments about heavy topics. On almost every occasion, he uses the cold, hard logical lens in which to base his arguments. He has little to no tolerance for emotion-based arguments and opinions. I on the other hand do exactly that–with almost every controversial topic we discuss, I use the emotion-based lens in which to base my arguments. He wants facts, data, objective information, and linear thinking as the basis of the opinion or stance. I want a humanitarian basis, which includes focusing on the subjective information at hand. It includes the particulars, and definitely is based in my emotional response to the controversial topic. I have opinions that are mostly about the particular type of people and their subjective experiences/circumstances. Our debates turn into arguments due to our polar opposite way of creating opinions/stances. He will make implications that what I’m arguing is not backed by any proof or data, and will point out how what I’m saying becomes very abstract and emotional. I will make implications that he is being insensitive, close-minded and based in sweeping generalizations. Really what is going on here is that we are butting heads because our way of forming opinions are at two polar extremes. The Myers Briggs Test made that really clear to me.

I know that otherwise he and I share very similar morals, values, and perspectives on things. He and I clearly share the same need for down time since we are both introverted. He and I are both independent and unique in our sense of self. We both form our own opinions and never just completely go by what we’ve heard or read from somebody else–which would explain how we both share the “intuition” preference when it comes to processing information.

I was going to go into the heavy conversation that he and I had last night, but I spent so long just describing the basis of what lead to the deep conversation in such detail that I may need to just write another post up about the deep conversation. I do this every time that I write ha. I just draw so many connections to various things and they end up inspiring me to write a lot from time to time. That’s another interesting thing. I realized how much I love writing. I think being a writer is actually a potential career for me in the future. I never really considered that before. Pretty interesting since my current job and usual aspiration is to work directly with people with psychological disorders (which is rewarding but also very draining). Becoming a writer would be to do a complete 360 in a way. Being a writer is a very introverted and independent career. Writers spend hours by themselves, well writing. I don’t have a degree in writing, but I’m not sure one would be necessary depending on the type of writing I’d want to do. I can’t see myself ever being a formal writer of any sort. I’d love to write about what I’m interested in–psychology, art, philosophy, nature, and people in general. I would love to write about all of my observations and about all of the connections I’ve made between these subjects. To do that for a long-term job would be very therapeutic as well and I would finally get a break from all of the psychological energy I expend on a regular basis by doing the job that I do. I don’t know where I’d start with pursuing a career like this and it would require a lot of discipline/self-direction. Maybe I should just start by trying to re-develop the habit of writing on a regular basis.

I haven’t smoked weed in a month and a half. I stopped because I developed a horrible sinus infection that was entirely resistant to healing itself, and smoking weed would only make it worse. I also had a really sore throat, which felt insanely dried out too. No matter how much water I drank, it still felt beyond dry. I’m not sure if this was more of my body recovering from smoking, since it had not had a break from it in about a year. I don’t know if this was just part of the sinus infection. Either way I started off the new year in a pretty shitty state. I really did not like starting a new year on the wrong foot like that. Not a very comfortable feeling. I actually had to call out of work two days in a row (which I never do). On top of that I was fucking guilted about that fact. Of course when I got really ill my boss was on vacation, and the guy who was on call for him was a completely aggressive asshole (or so I had heard). Being the highly sensitive person that I am, and the highly traumatized person that I am, I avoid conflict like the plague. I will bend over backwards in my own words or actions just to avoid conflict with another person, especially when it comes to dealing with a highly aggressive and toxic person. I have had far too many negative experiences with verbally abusive people for far too many years.

My father was like that, for a lot of the time that I can remember for my upbringing. I felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. My brother became the same way. They are both Bipolar Type 1. My dad treated my brother worse than he did me and my other brother, which was really bad because the one he treated the worst was the one who was already headed towards having his Bipolar come to the surface. My dad tried to force him into being a complete copy of him. My dad started teaching him about computers, running, academics, intellectual stuff, etc at a very young age. He did the same with me and my other brother but, he put extra pressure and was extra harsh to my other brother. This brother has the same name as my dad too. My dad, being completely dysfunctional himself, in both actual psychological disorder and general personality, was so hard on that brother. I had this sense throughout most of my childhood, especially from about age 10 and up, that I was worthless unless I was perfect at everything. This was because my dad did not just try to influence us, but he actually forced us into doing exactly what he wanted us to do. My dad vicariously lived through his children. He tried to mold us into the person that he wanted to be but did not turn out to be fully. It’s very fucked up when you think about it.

This is why I have such a cynical view on having children as well. My general belief is that most people who decide to have children have a selfish reason behind this decision. I think they make this decision because they are bored, unhappy, or unfulfilled with their current lives. I know there are parents that do not have these fucked up motives, but I believe that most of them do, whether or not they are even aware of that fact. Having a child for an ego based reason is beyond morally wrong. If you decide to have a child because you feel you have reached your potential and because you have a partner who has done the same, then that’s great. I think it is insanely important that a woman make sure that she is as psychologically and financially stable and mature as she possibly can be before deciding to have a child. I think her partner needs to be at that level as well. I think that the two of them need to have a very healthy relationship, and they need to have the same values in life. They have to want the same things out of life, and they have to be able to see a fulfilling future together. Basically, I believe this couple needs to be at their best as a human being, before they can even consider bringing another life into this world.

Maybe I’m too idealistic about this, but I think that I think this way more because I hyper aware about my own upbringing. I am also an Empath and so I am hyper aware of other people’s upbringings as well. I can feel the trauma that they’ve gone through, even if I don’t know exactly what they went through. I just pick it up from their energy. Far too many times I have seen, read about, and come across people who are damaged from their upbringings. These people were fucked up at a young age and so they were unable to grow and mature in a healthy manner. They did not get to grow at the rate and in the way that they needed to as they became adults. It’s incredibly unfair to submit another human life to your own unresolved, toxic issues. There are so many damaged adults, who inside are mentally and emotionally stuck at the age that they were most damaged at in their lives. This is a huge reason why I work in the human services, and why I feel that I am here to try to help heal other people who have been abused whether it be physically, mentally, emotionally, or sexually. These people need to meet others who can teach them that all of humanity is not evil. They need to be able to see that not everyone will treat them like dirt and that there are so many people and things in life that are full of goodness. They need to have that hope re-instilled in them. They deserve that much. They deserve even more of that kind of support than a person who did not grow up being abused, because these abused people deserved just as much as these non-abused people to have the right to a healthy and happy life. They did not choose to come into this world, yet were submitted to a life of pain in one form or the other, all because of the self-centered choices that their parents made. It just isn’t right.

The reason I brought up the fact that I have not smoked weed in over a month, is that I have been feeling so much more since then. Of course almost all of that feeling has been under the category of negative. It made me realize that even though I didn’t think this was what I was doing, I was self-medicating. I used to smoke a lot more when I was younger. About 3.5 years ago I finally found a medication that worked for me. I hadn’t smoked weed for almost 2 years once I had started this medication. I was at absolute rock bottom. This medication not only pulled me out of this severe, seemingly terminal depression within the course of about a week (after I had been in that depressed state for close to 2 years), but it also shot me right up into hypo-mania. So, I went from my absolute low point to another cycle of one of my highest points. Right around this same time I met my current boyfriend, who I had met within weeks of starting this new medication. I was on cloud nine with this whole turnaround. I admit we both did rush into this relationship, but it felt ok. We talked for hours every day for like a week or so. We met shortly afterward. Not long after that we were in a relationship. I had also just got a job not long after our relationship started. I was thrilled. For the next like 8 months or so, I was still in this state. I don’t remember exactly when I came back down. I know that I had started to smoke weed again at some point, but I can’t remember exactly when.

I know this is rather personal but, during this hypo-manic time, my brand new boyfriend and I were so happy, and not just emotionally. We were hooking up for hours every single day. At the time I still lived with my mother, but I was going over his apartment almost every day. During what felt like months or more of this time, I was able to have the most orgasms I had ever had before in my entire life. This was when I was completely sober too. This was very unlike what I had experienced in the past. I felt that him and I were a great match and that we were a better sexual match as well. I remember that summer as being such beautiful weather too. I felt like someone had just infused me with this thing called “joy” that I had so rarely experienced before (especially over a long period of time). I was ecstatic.

For the past half a year or so, maybe a little less, I have felt a disconnect from my boyfriend but more just from myself in general. I had been content with my new job and felt I was a good fit for it. Late fall and then the winter just kind of took me down several notches. The whole not smoking weed thing was where I hit my lowest point. January was overall a pretty shitty month. I started to feel very conflicted and full of doubt about our relationship. I still felt (and feel), like I’m still in love with him. I still felt (and feel), like we get along wonderfully. I feel like I can talk to him about most everything. I feel like we view a fair amount of things in the same way. One of the shitty realizations though, was that most of what we shared in common was negative. We both were (and are) highly critical of other people and talked about them often. I don’t feel like this was unfounded since there are a lot of shitty people (hah), but still. The things we agreed on were mostly of a negative, paranoid, untrusting nature. I’m not saying this is all we agree on. We do have similar values that are positive in that we both strongly value our strong senses of selves. We both highly value independence and freedom. We both highly value the arts–especially music. I’m much more into art than he is, but we both are huge music lovers. He is an actual practicing musician who has recorded many songs, while I’m just musical. I can sing well and am able to play some instruments by ear (but I don’t know any of the actual notes and whatnot). Basically, he has followed through with his gift a lot more than I have.

It was uncomfortable for me to realize that we shared too many negative things. It was hard to tell if the positive outweighed the negative or not. It still is. I am very sexually disinterested and dissatisfied with him now. He still has an attractive face, but I do not find his body attractive anymore for the most part. This was something I realized from the get go but it didn’t seem to be a huge problem before. Now it is. Again, I am highly critical so that’s probably part of it. I am attracted to men who are tall and thin, yet toned and with little body fat. I am attracted to men with a well defined face/chin, and a long, toned torso. Even though I have gained a lot of weight myself and am dissatisfied with my own body, I still have such high criteria for what I find physically attractive. I am almost unable to look past the kind of big belly that he has, the double chin, the almost lack of a chin at all, and the almost man-boobs. I realize that within romantic relationships, my standards are overall incredibly high. I think this is where the confliction is coming into play.

I am unable to keep this realization out of my conscious mind. When him and I are just spending time together, I do feel happy. When we get down to becoming sexual, I feel we are incompatible. Even if his body were different I think I might still feel this way. I have even told him this, without using that exact word. I have told him that we have opposite sexual energies. I have told him that his energy is very aggressive and that it’s overwhelming to me. My sexual energy is very female. I want/need romance, gentle, slow touch, and a strong spiritual connection to feel sexually satisfied. For me I guess it’s apparent that I find sex to be very serious and I don’t view it as something that is “fun”. For me it’s a huge deal and maybe it has come to the point where in this area I realizing that he does not meet my standards. I feel conflicted though because at the same time he is the best I have ever had. I feel conflicted because I have not completely detached, and I still do feel love for him. I still do feel attracted to his kind, accepting, unconditionally loving soul. I still do feel like I need him. What is most disconcerting is that I realize that I will need to leave him, and that at this point I am putting it off. At this point I am feeling for the most part that I am incapable of doing this.

On top of ending the most serious relationship in general that I have ever had, I would be ending the most healthy one I have ever had before too (especially in romantic relationships). I would also have to move out. I would have to find a new apartment, and/or roommates. I feel like I’m incapable of breaking up with him but yet keeping the job that I have. This is also because my job is working with a house full of developmentally disabled men who are also sex-offenders/pedophiles. They are not horrible people but I know atleast a few of them “like” me. They are overwhelming in this way. I feel like I’d be incapable of keeping this job while going through this breakup, also because I don’t think I could keep the two separate. I know it would seep into my job. I do not have the type of job in which I can handle huge emotional upheaval in my own life while dealing with the emotional upheaval in the house that I work at. I just don’t know what to do. I can’t end this relationship, suddenly find a new apartment, *and* keep this job, which is almost 40 minutes away from me, without falling apart. I only have one other person in my life right now who I am emotionally close to, and she is going through much more than I am. I don’t want to transfer my pain on to her either. I am a codependent person, who has been trying to fight it off for awhile. I am less codependent than I used to be by far but, I still don’t feel like I can make it alone right now. I have a good bond with her but it’s not the same as the one I have with my boyfriend.

Him and I have been together for 3 years and 6 months. I find that I am putting this off until an ideal time, and there will never truly be an ideal time. I feel like I might have a breakdown when I do this. It’s even worse because he is the person I confide in when it comes to day to day stuff I struggle with, and he has always been able to calm me down and make me feel stable again. A few weeks ago I was at the worst point with all of these realizations. I am crying now as I’m writing about this. I feel like everything has just come crashing down on me and yet I keep trying to dodge the falling debris. I am trying to look away from it and am trying to hold on to the positive things, but I feel like they are just out of reach. I feel lost and I feel wrong. I feel like I being dishonest with him by keeping this secret from him. I know I need to do this. But I feel that I just can’t right now. We have been living together for about a year and a half now. If I have this talk with him and do this, then the two of us have to go through this horrible thing while still living together. Who knows how long I could still be stuck here. I feel like I need to set up a place to move to ASAP and then break up with him. I cannot handle being in limbo with this even after doing it. The thought of living with him right after breaking up with him for who knows how long of a period of time is complete agony.

I need to write. I was reading the other day about INFP’s (my results for the Myerrs Briggs Test). This stands for introverted, intuition based, feeling, and perceiving. Basically, the way that I am is *very* internal. I’m feeling this more and more as of lately. It’s isolating yet at the same time I feel such a deep need for solitude. I hate being around people that aren’t like me because they usually make a lot of noise and have superficial interactions and whatnot. They are not sensitive like I am. They do not need deep intellectual and emotional conversations like I do. They do not feel deprived if they don’t get this. In fact they could probably do without it. I wish I could be the type of person that could be carefree, but I’m not. I never truly have been. I’m a worrier. A constant analyzer. I’m an observer. I realized most of my social interactions/experiences are based in me empathizing with other people and listening to them. I’m the type of person that people come to to vent, to look for emotional support, and a listening ear. I’ve come to realize that despite the fact that I believe I generally have a strong sense of self, I don’t assert that self within my relationships. Even though my boundaries have become much stronger and healthier, I still put myself on the back burner most of the time. I find that within my relationships I am constantly asking how they are or I inquire about their current emotional state. Once they reply to me I listen completely and then I respond with mostly emotional support. At the same time, when I provide this type of thing, I also automatically am very straightforward and to the point with them. I essentially leave myself out of it. This is a good thing for them and a good trait to have as a person. However it is not so good for me. It makes it so that my needs and concerns are essentially in the background. On top of that I have an unassertive personality. So, basically I have a really hard time telling people how I truly feel in person. I think I even alter what I say in order to make it easier or less heavy for them. I used to do this with my therapist even. I didn’t want to show him all of me because then I thought he’d have a lower opinion of me and I really admired him. I definitely have a pattern of idealizing people and then devaluing them. Switching back and forth between the two. All the while I continue to put them first.

I feel like I have a pretty strong idea of who I am and why I’m here. I have had so much time and experiences already in the 25 years that I’ve been alive to figure this out. I’ve been through so much and I’ve empathized with others who have been through a lot to the point where it feels like I went through the same thing they did TOO. So, I have my own baggage and then I also have other people’s baggage. I feel I’ve gotten pretty good at not letting my baggage define me. But I still have a hard time not empathizing so strongly with people that I care for. I have created higher standards for myself in regards to what I will put up with and not put up with. I have made it clear that I will not keep a flaky, wishy washy person in my life. I also will not keep an overly aggressive, demanding, violent person in my life either. I used to put up with this shit so much before.

With the latter, most of that was not by my choice. I grew up in a house where my father believed and even said that he was the patriarch. My oldest brother grew up to be a shit ton like him. They both have severe cases of Bi-polar. But beyond that, they have very egocentric and aggressive personalities. They are the type to lash out at any and all people that are around them whether or not they’ve even done anything to warrant this. It is impossible to have a healthy relationship with either of them, so I no longer do. I tried really hard with them. But they took advantage of my sensitive & empathetic nature. They criticized me frequently and I never amounted to what they expected of me. Me being the way that I am (the exact opposite of their personalities), I of course internalized all of this emotional and psychological abuse.

I am the type of person that cares deeply for humanity and all living things. If you’re close to me I care about you even more and I let you know on a regular basis that I care and want to know how you’re doing. Basically after years and years of this shit I became increasingly depressed and eventually went pretty close to mute. My tendency to internalize my true emotions and needs only got stronger and then my inner voice also became a mirror of the way my father treated me. I beat myself up emotionally on a regular basis. I believed I was inadequate and incapable of becoming a fully functional adult. I believed I was weak and eventually I simply wanted to kill myself. In my mind I literally thought that I was now going to get revenge on the people in my family who hurt me so much. I had planned to do this is a discreet way, and I planned to take them down with me as far as how they were doing emotionally. I decided to give up on having hope of improvement and I decided that I was going to kill myself. I never thought out plans in detail as far as how I was going to do it goes, but I felt very strongly on a regular basis that I would rather not even be alive.

The only feelings that I could still feel consistently were negatives ones like sadness, anxiety, and anger. At the time I had absolutely horrible insomnia for over a year as well. I felt like a shell of myself and the person inside was just wasting away and useless. I physically found myself unable to read. Before this point in my life I was excellent with reading comprehension and words. I could no longer verbalize anything except occasionally talking about my anguish. No one took it seriously though. As usual the people in my family did not validate the fact that I needed to be hospitalized. I was never truly allowed to express my negative emotions and needs to them without it being disregarded, criticized, or cast away. Their emotions, their needs, and their demands were always expected to be the absolute priority. They manipulated the fuck out of me and I wanted to give that back to them. I wanted them to know how it felt to be me after being subjected to their treatment. I wanted to debilitate them like they did to me. Then again, of course, being the person that I am, I internalized this decision as well. I began to thoroughly hate myself and I honestly believed I was possessed. I believed demons lived in my bedroom. I believed that I had become evil. So, in reality, I was still destroying myself more than I was anyone else. In my family the only way a mental breakdown would be acknowledged and treated would be if the person had this break down in an extremely loud, outward way. My brother would have manic breakdowns and was hospitalized several times. My dad had gone through the same thing many times over.

The length and detail within this post itself just goes to show how internally I process and react to things. All of these stories and feelings have been building up in my psyche for so long, and I never feel I can truly share them with anyone else. Maybe I need a therapist again. I’ve never felt like I got true empathy from anyone else about what I went through. The only person who did that even minimally was my older half sister. But she was and is way more emotionally fucked up than I am. A lot of this empathy was through online messaging, so it doesn’t have the same affect either. I supposed I should start another post to complete the rest of what I feel I need to write about because this is already insanely long.