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the-kolorful-kumkwat-blog · 3 years ago

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TW: Depression, Anxiety, Bullying. Just in case anyone ever sees this. I’m adding the tags as well, so that if someone has them blocked, they won’t somehow see it by accident

What can you do when you figure out what your problem is? Why you are the way you are, or why you like the things you like? When you remember why it is you’re afraid of something, or hate a certain food. Does that mean you can address it? Can you fix it? Or has it just been this way for so long that even though you have the self-awareness to know what’s wrong with you, you just don’t have the ability to do anything about it?

I’ve been depressed for an incredibly long time. Growing up, for my entire school life, I was bullied. It wasn’t anything physical, like you see on TV. It was just ridicule. Constant ridicule, day in and day out, for 12 whole years. When I think about this, I think “Well, I could have it worse. I know lots of people who got bullied worse than me. Or had worse home lives than me.” I always think about this from two standpoints, from the emotional standpoint and the logical standpoint. On the emotional half, I just feel like I’m making a big deal out of nothing, because so many people have it worse. On the logical half, I know that’s entirely wrong. You shouldn’t compare pain to each other, because they’re all horrible, and just because someone has it worse than you, doesn’t mean your pain is invalidated. It just feels different when you’re talking about your own experiences.

I hear about trauma responses online, and hear about what people say when they were in horrible situations, and a lot of those responses and thoughts are something I mirrored at one point or another. And I feel so stupid for it. These guys are in one of the worst types of situations imaginable, and I’m just upset about bullying? It’s not like anyone’s hitting me or anything, these guys have it way worse, I just need to suck it up. I keep thinking this sort of thing, over and over again, and I know that’s wrong. I know that I have the right to feel like this. I know that while my situation may be objectively better, it still sucks. I still went home crying too many times, because someone said just the wrong thing to me, and it felt like they were right.

It’s been a long time since all that happened. I’m 26 now. And time and time again, I think that I’m better now, even though I’m not. I know I’m depressed, and I have been for too long. To the point that I think most of my emotions are just muted to the point that hardly anything makes me happy or sad or anything anymore. It just seems like I’m numb. Not the kind of numbness that you imagine when you think that. When I imagine someone saying they’re numb, I image they look sad, or dejected, just by themself, unable to bring themself to do anything. But that’s not what it really is, I guess. For me, it’s just absence of other emotions. I’m not sad. I’m not happy. I’m not angry, or scared, or anything. I’m not even content. I’m just there. Nothing seems wrong. Nothing seems right. It just seems. It is. I am. I hate it.

There are some things that make me not feel numb, but they don’t really make me feel anything else either. Just occupied, I guess. I’ll play a game, maybe get excited for a moment when I do finish something in it, but aside from that, it’s just something I’m doing, and not actively not enjoying. The only time I really feel actually happy is when I manage to draw or animate something. That’s really the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that makes me feel actually excited for a moment. But then it passes and I’m back to being.

There are plus sides to it, I guess. Anytime I am sad, it passes really quickly. I guess that could be the ADHD, but I don’t really know. I could get the worst news of my life, and start sobbing like a baby, but then five minutes later, the only signs I was actually sad is my horribly red face and eyes. This has actually happened before, with the worst news of my life so far. And I hate that it happened the way it happened. I know it sounds weird, but I hate that I don’t get sad the way that other people get sad. That I when I showed up to my own mother’s funeral, I was the only one of her children who didn’t cry.

Something occurred to me earlier. I was listening to this book, about a kid who was in a bad familial situation. And like most things that seem sad, I felt like I might’ve cried, but I didn’t. I was really surprised that this was able to make me feel kinda sad. My family situation wasn’t like this, at least. Sure it wasn’t perfect, but it certainly wasn’t this bad. The only thing that made me feel as bad as she does was when I was a kid, and getting bullied constantly, and worrying about what other people were saying about me when they thought I wasn’t listening.

And I don’t know how I got to this point. But I finally did. Years and years after the fact.

Growing up, when I was younger, before junior high, I kinda considered myself a leader. I thought of myself as the person who needed to help other people who were in the type of situation I was in, who didn’t have that many friends. I used to be able to stand up for them and help them when I could, but at some point, most of those friends moved on, or moved away. At some point, maybe a year or two into middle school, I actually did start to care what people were saying about me, and was more worried about how I appeared to other people. And this part only just occurred to me tonight, but I think I was hoping for some help.

I like to read, I always have. It’s one of the things I got bullied for, actually. But recently I’ve found myself attracted to these stories, where someone’s trying to escape a bad situation. And I know that a lot of people hope for a person to be able to get themselves out of that situation, and I do too, to a certain extent. But I still always liked the idea of someone coming in to save someone, or at least stand behind them to help. And now, at 26 years old, I think I realized there’s actually a reason for that.

When I was younger, I would stand up for people when I could, but I think I realized that no one was doing the same for me. Maybe they didn’t think I needed it. After all, if I was able to help them, I should be able to help myself, right? I guess from a logical standpoint, that sorta thing makes sense. But I think for a long time, I was hoping that someone would help me.

By the time I was almost done with middle school, my friend group was down to one. Another girl, who I’d been friends with for years, was the only one who would talk to me. It took a while, but I realized that she wasn’t really my friend. People would talk about me, and if I ever asked her what they said, she would say that she couldn’t tell me, because she promised them. She promised the people who were bullying her “best friend” that she wouldn’t tell on them. There were times they’d be bullying me right in front of her, and she never said a thing. Even though I’m almost positive I tried to help her. I’ll admit now that a lot of my memories from back then are hazy. Apparently this is a long-lasting trauma response as well. But there are still certain memories that are crystal clear. Like when she left a building after me, but forgot her bag inside, and the door was locked now. She screamed at me, asking why I didn’t get it for her, saying I never did anything for her. But I was just confused. I left before her, how would I have known she wasn’t gonna get her bag? And not just that, but I’ve been getting food for her after school because we were hanging out and it didn’t feel right to be the only one who was eating. All she said was that she never asked me to do that for her and ran off crying. I just sorta froze up, as my little sister, who was there for the whole thing, just glared at me and ran off after her. On the way home, she’d asked if I wanted to say anything to my friend, but I said no.

It hurt me a lot, that my sister was willing to stand up for her before me. It especially stings, when I remember that a few years before, I had cut off an old “best friend” because he was bullying her. I don’t even remember what he did, but it was her first day of school, and he was picking on her. I wasn’t gonna stand for that, and I let him know. We weren’t friends after that, with him actively antagonizing me. But I didn’t care. He messed with my sister, and you can’t do that. I think that’s why it hurt that my sister wasn’t willing to at least help me, choosing my friend over me. She later apologized for all this, she did eventually realize that my friend wasn’t a good person. But it still stands out to me, a lot.

And this isn’t to say no one ever helped me. My older sister would almost always jump to my defense when she was there to. But she wasn’t always there to. She didn’t always know about what was happening. I know one time, when I had one of my first boyfriends, he broke up with me because his friends were making fun of me. I was crying in my room about it, and she heard me, asking what was wrong. I don’t know what she did, but he did text me to apologize at one point after that. Idk what my sister did, and I’m not sure she even remembers it. This wasn’t the only time she had done something like this. This is what my sisters did. My older sister would stand up for me when she could, and I would stand up for my little sister when I could.

But like I said, they weren’t always there. I obviously can’t blame my sister for not being there, we were three years apart. It wouldn’t have happened.

It wasn’t just my sisters either. One of my earliest memories as a kid, was when I had first started living with my dad again. And he was staying with some cousins of ours, I guess to save money. At one point, I had accidentally picked up their remote from in the kitchen, and one of them snapped at me, yelling not to take their stuff. Almost immediately, my dad was in there, screaming at them not to yell at his daughter. I was a little scared at the time, but it always stood out to me. Because of that, I knew that my dad would always be willing to fight for me, to help me.

Which is why it hurt so, so bad when he didn’t.

When I was in high school, he started dating someone. We were all happy for him at first, because we’d been wanting him to have someone for the longest time. But she quickly started pushing everything. I don’t want to go into everything here, but she just isn’t a good person. There was one point, after I had graduated. I was working somewhere, where a neighbor of ours happened to work too. And so did a cousin of mine. (Ironically enough, the same cousin who yelled at me about the remote before. She was a lot nicer now, and helped me out a lot) At one point, I guess that cousin said something about my dad’s girlfriend, and she misunderstood that I was the one who said it. Somehow. She came in the house, yelling at me, asking if I talked about her at work. I didn’t know what it was about, but I knew she was being hypocritical, and asked her the same question. Which she obviously denied. Eventually she started yelling, saying that I insulted my dad, which is the only thing that actually got me mad an yelling back at her. I just looked at my dad, who was there, and didn’t say anything. Just that alone is what made me start crying, and I ran off to my room. He came to my room afterwards, and I asked him how he could just stand there while she yelled at me, and he just said that she wasn’t supposed to yell. The damage here was done though. And even though he would sometimes say something to her, it happened infrequently enough that I just wished that he was the same dad who yelled at someone for just snapping at his daughter.

Now I’m at the point where I finally figured out what’s wrong with me, and I just don’t know what to do about it. It was just earlier, when I driving down the road to pick up some food, when I realized it, and realized what I had needed back then. I started crying, and hyperventilating to the point that I think I almost blacked out. My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t really feel my limbs the way you’d think of. I felt almost physically numb. I was able to pull off into a nearby road that was there, thankfully, and I was able to compose myself enough to know I wouldn’t pass out if I started driving again. This is actually the first time something like this has ever happened. I don’t even cry that often anymore. But when I was younger, I would do that thing where you start having those breathing hitches, and I couldn’t talk because of them. It was like that, but cranked up to 100. I couldn’t stop breathing like that, and everything started looking wrong, and I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. I’ve had panic attacks and anxiety attacks before, but never this. And it’s only been an hour since this happened. But just like I said before, I don’t feel sad anymore. Just numb. That’s the only reason I’m even able to write this the way I am.

But I wasn’t crying because of the realization. It was from the helplessness. I know what’s wrong with me now, I guess. But I don’t know what to do about it. What can I do? Can I even do anything? I don’t even wanna talk about it to anyone, because I don’t want them to worry. My older sister called me on the way home, and I couldn’t say anything to her. My husband was sitting across the room while I was writing this, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Strangely enough, the only person I wanted to talk to about it with was my younger sister. She was the one I used to talk to when really bad things happened when I was a kid. But she has other things to worry about now, that I haven’t been able to help her with. I couldn’t do that to her. And I don’t have any friends I can talk to about it either. So what can I do? All I can do is write this down. Maybe post it to an account I don’t use anymore. That’s all I really feel like I can do anymore. I don’t know if it’ll help. I don’t know what’ll help. I just have to get it out somehow.

If anyone actually read this, I’m sorry for the rambling nature of it. I actually cut out some of the stuff I was writing about my friend before, because it was just more and more rambling that was getting off-point. I’m not writing this for anyone to see, but then again, maybe I’m hoping someone will. But that feels kinda attention-grabby, I guess. If you see this, don’t feel obligated to acknowledge it. I don’t mean that as a reverse-psychology tactic or whatever you’d call that. I mean it. But thanks for reading this far anyway, if you did.

#Mental Health #Depression #Anxiety #Bullying #TW #I really don't think anyone'll ever see this #I just needed to say it

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