thoughtsofeucatastrophe

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

It’s too early for the antidepressants to work, but I feel more alive. I made some desserts for fun. I started watching a movie I actually really like. I have an art project.

Nice 👍🏻

I think the momentum of doing something for myself (reaching out to dr for antidepressants) was helpful.

But I also am gaslighting myself, like, did I need meds? Am i depressed or just living wrong? I think anyone would be depressed in my position of having no close friends.

My dad pointed out today that I looked better than the last time he saw me, and I was like, duh, that was a bad day. I’ve had good two days in a row now. I have both good and bad days, and it’s somewhat random. When I have a weekend or break, it tends to be bad, (due to lack of structure) so this weekend has been surprisingly good.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

I’ve always felt bad for people with schizophrenia or bipolar where they can’t trust themselves day to day.

But being maybe autistic, depressed, and socially avoidant is a pretty shitty combination on its own.

I would probably rather have a worse mental illness if it meant i wasn’t alone? I would pay a lot to fix my loneliness issue.

It’s a useless thought.

A yt video i watched said autistic people need their workplace to fulfill what they are missing if they want to avoid burnout. Without a doubt, what I lack the most is social connection. Meaning, it’s less about what job I get, and more about who I’m working with.

It’s tiring to try and figure out tbh.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Silent home

Same chairs

Stuck staring

Still waiting

No feeling

Ready for something new. Not sure when it will happen. Maybe it'll just click one day. Maybe it'll happen without me even noticing. But right now, this just isn't it.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Somehow I feel better today. Not good, but good in comparison to yesterday, and especially compared to this morning. I can’t explain why. I can’t explain anything.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Hi, having a life crisis. Again. If I admit that the way I’m living is probably not normal, and definitely not acceptable anyways, then I must pursue ways to fix it.

I’ve already been trying to fix it, even though I don’t know what is wrong. I’ve always had a feeling I am different from others. I constantly have been looking for self help books and videos to fix my life. All of it for happiness or to make me more capable or effective.

So what’s wrong? On the surface, i don’t have friends. I don’t talk to people. When I do, I’m inconsistent over time. I don’t feel connected to other people, even my parents.

I don’t do stuff. I just go to school and work. I don’t have projects or events or calls with friends. I sit in my chair and literally feel stuck in my home.

I have a poor memory. My few friends I talk to from high school, literally 2, will mention crazy things I completely forgot. As a result, I have a poor concept of self. It makes it hard to figure out what is wrong with me!

My sense of self is fucked up and that makes it really hard to share myself with other people. The only way I know how to fix that is to go out and experience life.

I don’t have the will or energy to do that. Things sure suck.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

I’m thinking of changing my career path.

Again.

I have to be careful about how I play this. I see the strain in my parent’s faces every time I make a change to my career. It affects their finances as well as my future.

I have no doubt I could become an occupational therapists. I doubt whether I would be happy.

I have a theory that any job where I’m socializing and communicating the whole time will be unsustainable for me.

Considering that, it doesn’t seem wise to invest the remainder of my college fund and 3 years of my life for something I’m weary of. I’m not confident enough in my enjoyment of the career to take that step.

I think I’m kind of stupid. In a head-in the clouds type of way.

I accept my naivety, and I’m not critical of it. All i can see is what’s in front of me. I want more life experience in different areas so I can begin to see more.

The question is, where do i want to end up? How should i go about looking? Who might I ask for help? How much money do I need to make? What is a dealbreaker?

The reason I’m not looking at OT anymore is because i realized that less socializing (burnout) is more important to me than doing meaningful, direct work.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Weighing on my mind currently:

Expensive dentist appointment due to absentmindedness, overwhelm, and them not having my email

My dog is out of it after her tooth extractions

Three A&P tests in one week

Failing my social summer challenge

Knee feels unstable

Eating way too much

Didn’t sleep

House needs to be cleaned for housecleaner

Lonely

That’s it. I don’t feel alright. Everything feels crazy. I don’t know what to do with myself. I need to sleep. Thank god i’m decreasing to only one day of work per week.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

To some extent my life feels like a weird extended nightmare. Nothing is the way it is supposed to be.

I didn’t make friends in college like i was supposed to. I’m not close with my parents. My home feels like the twilight zone. I spend hours every week rotting into a chair or the floor. I lack several skills that are important to connect with others.

My answer to all this, occasionally, is to say something like, “I wish I could go on a raft into the open ocean.” Obviously i will never do this. But I just want to be anywhere else but here. I lack the execution to do anything drastic. Fuck this. I don’t know what i’m trying to say.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

I suck and everything is hopeless

I’ll never get friends because i wasted my time on useless things like grades and work and now it’s too late

I could have at least invested all those hours onto a campus job. Then i would have been around people my age

I can’t turn back the clock. I resent my past choices.

I thought he was giving me a second chance at forming friendships. I was wrong. I fucked that up too. I couldn’t figure out how to be an equal.

I’m so fucking stupid. Every single person in this world can say “Hello.” “Goodbye.” I can’t manage even that.

So what if I’m autistic? That doesn’t get me friends.

I have a huge hole in my heart and it’s a lack of human connection. I don’t see the point of temporary bandaids on this gaping wound. I hate this shit and i hate everything. I don’t think it’s ever going to get better and I hate that nobody around me understands how dire this situation is for me. It’s like they don’t care to understand or are turning a blind eye and i hate that lack of care or honesty.

So I’m smart enough to get on the top honor roll but too stupid to make AND KEEP a single college friend. Fuck me, fuck my life, fuck everything.

Here i am losing my mind about it. Useless. All I’m good for is following directions and entertaining children. Who gives a fuck if I’m good with kids? I want friends. I could do any random job.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Got frustrated today with my mom. Guess I haven’t grown up as much as I’d thought.

I assumed as I got older, my relationship with my parents would improve linearly. Like, parental relationships are very strong for babies and kids, then teenagers hate their parents, then become independent adults and like them again!

I guess the last part doesn’t happen for everybody. Not everybody has good and loving parents.

I always thought I was lucky in that respect. Even if we got mad at each other, at least I wasn’t stuck with a drunkard or abuser. However, my relationship with my parents doesn’t feel quite right.

Especially my mom. I feel distant from her.

My dad… i also feel distant, but closer to the way I feel distant from all of humanity (except S for a few fateful weeks.)

I hope as I learn to connect to people, my relationship with my parents will improve. I don’t have much social connection, so I want to savor these connections with my family.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Today, I’m in pain. I guess I can call it a migraine. My head hurts, and I feel irritable because of it.

Years ago, my head hurt. It hurt every day, all the time. For years, life sucked. So I think I can suck it up for one day of pain.

I would like to accept the pain, the same way I accept my insecurities, my faults, and my true self.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

I don’t remember why I decided to write this today. Last night, there was something pressing on my mind. This morning, my brain feels hazy. I don’t remember what it was.

I’m surprised it took me so long to realize I have some amount of alexithymia. The issue I run into is being unsure about my own desires. This makes me indecisive.

Now that I am aware of this, I can choose to move in the right direction. I’m really trying to be more self aware.

I think this is why typical self help methods don’t work for autistic people. I literally have to solve the puzzle of what I feel.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Summer 2025 is my Social Summer. I’ve spent four years in isolation. Every attempt to connect socially in this time ended in grief. An awkward party, texts to nowhere, and social embarrassment.

I learned that I don’t deserve affection from others. I’ve learned this my whole life, but it sharpened to a point when I spent so long alone. I’ve spent time feeling bitter about it, and I probably will feel bitter again. I lost four years of life, during what should have been the launch point to my future. I can’t help but feel failed by my parents, universities, and peers. Worst of all, failed by myself. I did this to myself. I gave up on connection.

That left me vulnerable to a relationship that wasn’t right for me. Now, I’m learning the type of relationship I want with my friends:

Caring

Consistent

Equal

I’ve been adopted twice by extroverts. If it happens a third time, I will be twice as careful. Even though I am slow, and too careful, I still deserve agency. I don’t deserve to be yanked around however they please. I deserve ti be listened to and understood. I will always return the favor.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

If I’m autistic, maybe that’s why I can’t seem to grasp my own sense of self. I can sometimes come up with little rules: bright lights bother me (sometimes), i need rest after socializing, i mask when meeting new people.

I am made up of hundreds of statements like this. It’s hard to get a full sense of myself. I feel confused about it. I think it makes it harder for me to connect to others when I do not know myself.

Solution? Don’t know. I am considering taking the time to write the hundreds of statements. However, I think I would go crazy organizing these, and making sure they are all independent statements.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Nothing got better until I gave up.

I tried so hard to lose weight, get strong, be charismatic, make money, and go to school, all at the same time. I wanted to be a hero and save my school. It was literally impossible, at least for me. I was talented at dreaming up ideal schedules that would ‘fix’ me, but terrible at following through in the long term. And it led to constant exhaustion. I thought that was just how life was destined to be for me. Maybe I have an energy deficit. That’s false. The problem is how I squeeze myself into a little box.

So I gave up. I couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t fit in the little box I gave myself. I needed to have days off again. It took months to feel happy again. I stayed at home doing nothing, and I was still exhausted. My mom seemed to think I would be happier if I did more things, but I was simply depleted. There was nothing I could have done to feel something.

It’s inconceivable, but I’m doing great right now. I had a freakout last night and this morning, and you know what the solution was? Not pulling myself up by my bootstraps. I don’t have boots. The solution was lowering my standards and taking a break. In other words, so what if the assignment is late? I’m not going to get anything done when my body feels like it’s made of 30 snakes.

And I’m happy, somehow. I have 1 friend. That made a huge difference.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

Analysis of the chalk pastel portrait era of my art

I think it started with jellyfish. I had to figure out how the medium worked, and jellyfish are so easy. Blob plus strands. They’re real, but they seem fictional.

A moment i deeply regret: my grandma asked for her chalk pastels back after giving me a big new set, and i resisted. Hers were better than mine. They don’t make them like that for cheap anymore. After that, she let me keep them. I should have given her back the pastels.

Art is good. Bad art is good. Inspiring my grandma with the art I make and watching her use chalk pastels would have been great.

Why is art good? I don’t know. What is the meaning of my art?

I started with a color portrait, but it was bad. At least, i thought it was bad. Now I see it for what it is, and I know it’s just part of the process. Then i went on to my monotone series: blue, red, gray, green, orange. The yellow one is last and it’s the only one. In the blue one I look depressed, the red one still depressed but a different air about me i can’t explain, green one I’m contemplating. The greay one i’m completely blank. But i think it’s the same photo as the blue. It comes across different. The orange one, i look happy.

All of these depictions are genuine copies of what I think about what I feel. This is what I think it feels like in visual form. The sad and empty ones are an attempt to express what I was identifying over several months. It was depression. The contemplative one is about me feeling confused and stuck.

I’m not sure what the orange one is about. I guess i can still be happy even when I have a shit time.

I rarely smile in my artwork. It feels more interesting that way. It feels more real that way. The best thing about my art is that nobody gives a shit about it except me, but I did it anyway. I mean, my family does care, but i don’t think about their perceptions when I’m drawing. I think about my face and what it looks like, which color to put where. I’m in the process, and when I’m done, i have something to look at that I made. Pretty cool.

[thoughtsofeucatastrophe]

My parents changed when they got divorced.

Instead of cooperating, they were suspicious towards each other. They could no longer tolerate the slightest injustice when it came to the other.

For a time, they became worse people. My mom shrank and became depressed. She did less and moved less. Meanwhile, my dad expanded. He took a long trip overseas and changed careers, and started overhauling his life.

It’s like my dad was sapping her energy, a vampire standing over her despair. On the other hand, his vigor made him almost manic. He backtracked a big decision he made during this time.

I watched this with little understanding of why. I thought marriage was a partnership that lasted forever in my dad’s eyes. I asked no questions and didn’t even learn who asked for the divorce except through context of who was happy and who wasn’t.

I sensed whatever was happening was toxic, and my involvement would poison me too. Over the years since, any mention of my parents from each other was like a political cartoon. They exaggerated each other’s deficits and could not see good in each other.

It’s so strange because they are such kind people so often. What happened?

I blame humanity