It’s close to 4 AM right now and I’m having serious trouble sleeping, it’s really pissing me the fuck off. Every time I switch sleeping positions something different on my body hurts, muscles that I am laying right on or straining just by being in that position. I have to wake up early tomorrow as my brother is coming to pick me up so that him and I can bring our dog Maddy to get euthanized. She’s been doing pretty badly lately and it’s sad, she’s such a sweet dog but it is her time to go. It would be unfair of us to keep her alive and suffering when we can tell that just basic movement/functions are exhausting/nearly impossible for her now. I feel some guilt though about how much she’s declined in health since I moved out of my mom’s place (where Maddy still is). I know it’s irrational for me to think I should’ve stayed there for Maddy’s sake because I was utterly miserable there, but I know that me leaving is a chunk of why she hasn’t been doing well. I provided a lot of the social/nurturing needs for my dogs, I took them on nice long walks and I let them off their leashes so they could run free. I was very gentle with them, I felt a special bond with them. I feel more similar sensitivity and need-wise to my animals than I do to my fellow human beings. I know they are even more sensitive than I am, they just feel it in even more internally than I do–since they can’t verbalize their needs or discuss their problems. Then again I’m not very good at doing either of those things myself.

Last night I caught myself thinking a whole slew of negative thoughts. About so many different things. I kept doubting a lot. Thinking “How can I be sure that I’m on the best or right path in my life right now”? “People cannot be enough for other people. We all struggle just to keep our own sanity, and when we’re really stressed we can barely be receptive to relieving others. We can’t truly give someone our full attention in regards to their emotional turmoil, when so much of the time we are consumed by our own stressors.

I don’t know how to be. I don’t know what is right or what the right way for me to live is. I don’t know if I’m being selfish by moving in here with Zak, after knowing how much he struggles financially and how I still have no income. My quality of life is a bit better now than when I was living with my mom but I’m not getting that much better at being productive or feeling motivated with job related things. I still feel it takes so much of my energy just to keep myself afloat emotionally. I feel that my emotional storage functions much like my financial bank does. I’m constantly draining it just to get by, but nothing is going into it. There are rare times that I do some things that increase my emotional strength, but they don’t last for very long. The weight of my thoughts/feelings/level of sensitivity is much greater than the small improvements that I make.

I’ve also been feeling hopeless again. Feeling like the things that I need to change aren’t going to be changed, thinking that if I have to move back in with my mother I will likely attempt to kill myself or will give up entirely and return to the same state I was in at my absolute deepest depressive episode. Still doubting my ability to hold ANY job, nevermind a job that is actually suitable to my skills and in alignment with my personality. Greatly doubting my ability to even GET a job, let alone an interview. I still feel next to no relief or sense of accomplishment even when I do make small progress or meet small goals in relation to my job search. Nothing will give me that feeling until I actually get a job that I can handle and that I can function well enough at so that I won’t get fired again.

I feel I cannot meet my own standards, and it really bothers me that a handful of these standards did not originally come from me as an individual. Many are from my dad. Ones I heard so damn much about that I still can’t stop internalizing his expectations, I still can’t shut off what are actually HIS criticisms and HIS way of letting me know that I’m inadequate. I can’t get these thoughts and expectations out of my head and I can’t communicate them to others because they don’t understand the concept. They’d say simple shit like “Well just ignore those thoughts” “Just focus on other things” “Don’t be so hard on yourself” “It will get better”. I’m sorry but none of that shit helps whatsoever.

In fact it makes it even worse to know that no one is willing to or capable of just fucking listening or simply validating how you feel. Validating that you go through a lot in your own head even though you don’t have the same exact obvious stressors like other people. Validating that just staying sane and staying alive is a job in and of itself, and that I don’t need to have a job to qualify for feeling so intensely like this. I also really hate that nobody really fucking asks how you’re doing, what’s been going on in your head, what have you been thinking about lately. If they do ask how you’re doing they don’t really want to hear the truth. They want a positive or neutral answer that is extremely brief. They don’t really want to listen. People are so shitty at this sort of thing. People suck at noticing that you’re struggling, people aren’t attentive enough to recognize when someone needs emotional support or someone to just express that they genuinely want to hear how you’re doing. Most people just want to talk about their own feelings or thoughts with little regard for the status of these things within other people.

If I have to fucking ask you to inquire as to how I’m doing or if I have to blurt out every single bad thing I’ve been thinking and feeling in order for it to be noticed or acknowledged at all, then fuck it. People should be more mindful of how other people are doing, and they should be less obsessed with their own thoughts and feelings. I’m including myself in this, but I still feel like I’m more attuned to and aware of the signs of emotional distress than the average person. I still feel like I absorb every one else’s moods, so much so that I sometimes just want to tell people to look outside of themselves occasionally and to invest some energy in the state of other people’s minds.

I know that I’m part of the problem here, that’s for sure. I know that my expectation of other people sensing what I need is a sign that I have weak boundaries. I know that I expect people to sense them and be attuned to how I’m feeling because I suck so much at regulating my own emotions and I need their help. I know it’s because I have spent large portions of my life feeling ignored, disposable, worthless, and inferior.

It would just be so fucking nice if people could sometimes pick up on when I’m not doing well and if they would ask me about it in an unassuming and gentle/patient way. It’d be so nice to finally see that other people are paying attention to your psyche, to finally know that they believe your struggles to be valid whether or not they can personally feel if it is reasonable or not. If someone would just inquire about my emotional state, if someone would recognize that I struggle so much with outwardly expressing how I really feel and think in all of its complexity, so much so that they’d put in some extra effort to help break me out of my emotional prison.

Maybe that’s asking too much. I know these are all really high standards, and I know that I don’t provide other people with these same things I’m asking for on a regular basis. The fact that I hardly ever get some space and time to just open up about the intense things in my head makes it so hard for me to give people the same thing when they need it. I generally will validate their struggles a little bit after they talk to me about it, like through a text or something. I have so much repressed and recurring emotional shit going on in my head on a regular basis that I often just listen to people like a therapist, I just say yeah once in awhile or ask a question that follows up on the topic. Lately I’ve just been saying yeah or nothing at all because I don’t have the fucking energy or extra emotional energy to be genuinely empathetic and present. I’m screaming in my head for someone to notice that I need their emotional support, but of course they can’t hear it. So instead I just remain quiet and listen to them go on and on about their problems. I don’t feel I get the same amount or quality of interest/support.

I know so much of what I just wrote about, what I’m struggling with, are things that only a good therapist could really help with or provide. I know I need to get a therapist again, I need to find a good one, I need to go to therapy relatively often. I have put off pursuing this because now that I’m done with umass I can’t get the same easy/cheap access to psychological health services. I’ll likely have co pays again, of $20 for each therapy session. I also don’t even know where to start to FIND a good and nearby therapist, that I will be able to walk to or take the bus to. I think of this stuff as secondary to my job search, which it really isn’t, especially because that isn’t even valid because I’m not really prioritizing getting a job or focusing on it either. And I think not having a therapist is just making it even harder for me to focus on and feel motivated to regularly look for/apply to jobs. But I have this thing in my head that makes me not exactly able to act on both of these things or even able to try hard for a therapist too when my mind is so damn consumed with knowing I need a job very badly.

It’s 5 AM now, I have to be up in 5 hours to do something depressing and stressful, then a few hours after that i have to do another stressful/draining thing. I feel a little less irritated now that I just wrote for a fucking hour straight, so I suppose I’ll try to go to sleep again now.