#havent recoveredx from the dont dead - open inside kind of thing that happened during seanior year

[a-rain-atherapy]

so i recently got validation and reassurance on something that had been (and still kinda is) bothering me, suffocating me for the last three years... and it feels like both a metric ton of weight got lifted off me and like i swallowed a giant ton of molten-cooling lava

for the last three years id be lying in bed and then the depression negative thoughts would come flyin in my mind, esp around times when i was super stressed or worried or had like a bunch of shit backed up with looming deadlines, and the one thought that would always stand out to me was

‘Am I making you (my parents/family) proud of me?’

and the urge, the need to call and ask for validation was so strong i had my phone in my hands with my finger kinda hovering over the call button several times.

but it was usually anywhere between 3-6AM and even though theyve told me multiple times that they dont mind me calling them in the middle of the night for something , i still felt bad and didnt. id turn my phone off and put it down and just lie in bed until i passed out somehow or try to distract myself with my phone games until it got to the ‘i need to go to sleep now to be functional’ time and then fill my head of nonsense and entertainment shit i absorbed until i passed out somehow (who knows how falling asleep works i would love to knock out as soon as i touch the pillow but no. gotta lie around for half an hour almost unconscious but then gotta change position cuz the last one got uncomfortable suddenly or its too hot or w/e)

so this kind of mental tug of war kept happening and i never told anyone because why would i? that would be admitting to my feelings and i couldnt do that without taking the time to understand why i have these feelings and where they came from and that would 1) take a lot of time and 2) make me fucking emotional and cry. neither of which i could afford in college so i put it aside and never acknowledged them like the unhealthy coping mech it is. (still actually havent had a good self maintenance yet)

it was the worst senior year. i stopped taking my medication (with the hesitant ok of the psychiatrist) and things were ok for a bit and then it tanked and just kept falling and i didnt do anything except take my hands off the wheel and just watched myself falling. classes? skipped. meals? instant/super quick unhealthy shit or order-in. energy? barely. motivation? absolutely none. 

everything was tiring and too much and i essentially shut down during the last half-year of school beause it was just Too Much and i couldnt cope well enough. big shoutout to my homie roommates who were pretty supportive of my lazy lifestyle and supported my random super blaze passions including kpop and gaming.

but yea about a week ago woke up early for my ddads bday to make him an omelette as per his request which was then postponed till lunch but meh. had a chat with the mother about something i cant really recall but it somehow spiralled into me talking about my motivations and how i didnt really have any. going back to that one mean teacher of mine in 6th grade who made us write out our goals and hopes for the school year before/during/after the year and me being a simple child who just came to school day by day and did things day by day without really caring much about antyhing else wrote N/A on all 3 boxes because it was true. i didnt come to school with goals for learning anything because it was school? i didnt know what i was gonna learn? and i didnt really have anything that i wanted to learn? so no goals???? and she saw it and was all ‘this is impossible your’re lying’ or somethin. point is she made me take it back home, had my parents read and sign it ( my no goals) and change it to tell the truth. i wrote some bs i dont recall and handed it bakc with my parents signature (i dont think they really understood? and i dont think my teacher really looked at it again after that>?? so???? why bother???????) 

and my mom was all ‘yeah ok what about now though? are u ok with what u are now?’ and im all ‘yea i think im ok’ 

she asked me’ what about u is ok?’ like clearly shes fishin for some answer- my weight/hygeine/social abilitity whatever i guess

‘well im not dead right?’ was my reply no hesitation. and as u can geuss it, her response was ‘why is that ur first repsonse?’ and honestly i dont know? its true though? im not dead and thats ok. im decent i can still move i can eat if i want to, im not struggling as bad as i could be, so isnt that ok? theres nothign especially great or bad in my life right now so i guess im just ok. im middle grounding like i have for my entire life. and thats ok to me for now.

which prompted her responses+my dads that you know, i graduated college in 4 years thats an acoomplishment i should be proud of that because not even dad did it in 4 (it was 5) 

and then out of left field she comes in with the ‘im proud of you for that’, ‘im reallyt proud of you’ and it hit me like an emotional runaway train of feels. the validation that i had been wanting to hear for the last three years, just kinda thrown out there casually in conversation like it was a compliment. like a ‘oh ur hair looks nice this way’ or ‘you cooked dinner really nicely today’  it made me emotional enough to cry a bit, like the silent 1-2 tears, is still making me emotional remembering it. 

like truly. thank you for being proud of me, for barely dragginb myself through this last obstacle and for giving me a respite before i start tryin the next obstacle that is a fuckin job. im sorry if i made you worry about me before and im sorry for giving you stress about my stress too. 

(but what if she just said it but not really meant it? what if she lied? the way it was said was so casual what if she didnt really mean it? but the thing about validation is that i cant keep requesting it-it doesnt work that way. the first few times is ok but then at what point, what number of repetitions does the ‘Request validation’ button stop working properly? if at all? i think thats how i lost a friend in 7th grade, i asked her too many times if we were friends and she kinda gently? blew up on me and we havent talked since, so>????)

its not like theyll ever see this and im not really a personal feelings sharing kind of person so i dont think that ill tell them this either but its nice to get all my feelings out there.