#legit if anyone has advice about this shit hmu i'm a little bit desperate.

[necromancer-nonbinary]

i know this blog has just been My Breakdown Zone for the past few days, but to be fair, that’s all my brain has been too

like. it’s complicated. i can’t really say that i thought i was gonna be a functional adult, not because i didn’t think that, but bc even now i can’t really conceive of myself as an adult. I didn’t think about the future when i was a kid. only time i distinctly remember thinking about growing up was when i read peter pan in elementary school and broke down crying because i didn’t WANT to grow up. but as high school ended, and thru college, i kinda got the impression that i was doing okay. because of little things. i was driving but a lot of my friends weren’t. i could cook for myself. could more or less keep a place clean. those things haven’t stopped being true. i can keep my apartment in a decent state. there’s cat toys all over the floor and three different books and two notebooks and a sketchbook and any number of writing utensils on the kitchen table, but it’s only disorganized, not dirty. i remember to go to the grocery store and do my laundry, i shower and brush my teeth and feed the cat on time and wash my dishes. all that is grown-up stuff, or it’s supposed to be. i can do all that, so i should be fine, right?

but once i add work to that equation, everything starts to feel like it’s slipping. Nothing actually does. one of the reasons i feel so confused about all this is because despite how stressed i get, none of those basics stop happening - i still clean, i still cook, still get myself out of bed. which somehow means i’m not really struggling, i just expect everything in life to be easy. i don’t need a break or a change, i just need to get over myself, put up with it like everyone else does. so i do. so i keep going to work and try to ignore my exhaustion and ignore the fact that i haven’t been able to write in months, and i barely draw, and turn my music up and squeeze my eyes shut when the lights at work become too bright, and it seems to work fine. except it doesn’t, because all i’m doing is forcing myself to ignore a very real problem. i seem to be doing fine right up until the moment i collapse completely, like i did last night. like i did during my internship a couple years ago. like i’m afraid i’ll keep doing over and over again until things end, one way or another.

the simple answer would be to go home to my parents, try to rest, try to work part-time and accept that maybe i just can’t do things the way everyone else seems to be able to do. i can’t do that. i love where i am, i love being near my friends, and being at my parents’ house is almost as exhausting as working full-time. at some point i’d probably wander up into the woods, despite the fact that it’s december and said woods are in the mountains of colorado, and just not come back. i *am* home. but i can’t slow down here. not for long, anyway. i still have some money left from the g.i. bill, i wouldn’t be in immediate danger, but the thought of dipping into it any more than i already have scares me. i already don’t really make enough to be able to afford this, and my attempts to get a roommate have been unmitigated disasters. i’ve entertained the thought of trying to apply for disability, coz if this little experiment in independence has taught me anything, it’s that being autistic actually really truly does get in the way of me being able to support myself, but there’s at least three different things making me hesitate about that. one of the biggies being i am pretty much certain you need an actual paper diagnosis to apply for that, and trying to get that any time for an adult is hard, and in pandemic times? fuck that. no chance. my preference would be to go thru vcu bc it seems like they’ve got a decent assessment process, but they aren’t doing it right now. because pandemic. also it’s a difficult process that i’d probably have to go thru several times because it’s like 30% of applications that get approved first time around? and also if i’m worried about not having enough money to get by, like.

don’t even really know what i’m doing here. i think i’m either trying to convince myself to quit this job or to stay on until i find something else. i have been applying to other jobs, mostly remote work. but the fear is still there that anything i do, i’m going to burn out again. and again. I don’t know how to take a break. i don’t know how to half-ass things - it’s all or nothing. i don’t want it to be. don’t know how to change that. i really do want to leave this job. it’s okay some of the time, but the schedule has started to kill me again, and i never wanted it to be permanent. i feel guilty leaving this job, not just because it’ll make me dip into those savings, but also coz i don’t have any reason to give except that i can’t do it anymore. i don’t even want to go back tonight because i have no explanation to give my manager about why i was no call no show. and even if/when i leave, it won’t really be a break. it’ll be back to stressing on job sites - not that i’m not doing that now. I am so tired. I want to rest. the world won’t let me.