Addiction

I have been having a pretty good week. I haven't been getting sad, I have been talking with people, I made some new friends. I am waiting for it all to crash down, so I'm not building it any higher. I know that good things end, so I am afraid to make good things into great things.

I was talking to someone about addictions a few days ago, and I came to the realization that I have never been addicted to anything. I have smoked before, drank before, I have been on medication before, but I have never felt a constant pull to continue smoking or drinking or anything. And I think it is more than that. I go through phases of liking things, but I have never had a problem not having those things that I like. When I think of addiction, I don't just think about drugs or bad things, but good things too, like love, friendship, people. I have never felt an addiction toward any good things either. And I really want to.

I did try once, to become addicted to smoking, even though I knew it was bad for me, but I never could. As soon as I wasn't thinking about smoking, i would forget about it until someone else brought it up, and then I was like "Okay I guess I will have one" but it was never a constant need for one. And you might think it is a good thing to not be ale to get addicted to things, but I hate it. I will never have a strong purpose in life because I can't become addicted to anything, good, or bad. So yeah, I cut out that bad part from my life, but I can't get the good part without the bad, so I cut that out too. And I just sort of drift through the middle of life, without any pulls towards anything else. I want to be addicted to something, because I think that if I knew what that was like, I would have an easier time applying that to the good things, like love and friends and stuff.

All I want from life is to love and be loved, not necessarily romantically, just love. And I can't have that, because love is an addiction, and I can't become addicted. I hate it. Out of all the people who have problems with addiction to things, I had to be the one person who wants to be addicted, and can't be. That is my life I guess. If I could let myself be ruled by something else, a desire or whatever for something, let myself be addicted, I wouldn't have messed up all of my relationships in the past, and maybe I could have a good one in the future. But I doubt that will ever happen, and some part of me doesn't want it to.

Guys Make Me Uncomfortable 05/18/14

Hello. I have realized in the last few weeks that I am extremely uncomfortable around males. Of any age, except maybe young children. I mean, I am uncomfortable around all people, but guys just make me extra uncomfortable, and I'm not really sure why. I automatically assume that everything guys say is meant to be creepy. Like, all complaints, or just general comments I take as them being creepy. Even if they don't say anything, i am just nervous around guys. For example, if I have a choice between a guy and a girl check out person at a store, I'd go through the girls lane even if I had to wait longer.

I had a normal childhood, it was probably good, nothing traumatic happened or anything, but for some reason guys attention in any form makes me extremely uncomfortable, to the point that I avoid all guys. My friends think it is funny that I am easily startled, and I am I guess, but it wouldn't be nearly as startling if they weren't male. Like, I know none of them would ever do anything bad or whatever, but I just automatically think that bad things will happen or something. I don't know what I am trying to say here. Anyway ,I am going to try to stop automatically assuming that all guys are creeps, or weird, or whatever.

I got this idea from a video on youtube that I am going to start doing, basically, you have this bracelet, and every time you complain about something, you switch it to the other arm, the goal being to keep it on one arm for 21 days, because that is how long it takes to form a habit. Doing this is supposed to get you out of the habit of complaining, and make you start to think more positively. I am also counting things I write, if they are negative, since I don't really do a lot of talking. I have only had to change it once today, so I guess I'm not that bad, I used to complain about everything, not in a complaining way, just as a 'I'm just saying' way that other people took as complaining. So I am trying to break that habit. And once I get to 21 days, I am going to start doing it for every time I think something negative or complaining, because I think a lot of things I don't say.

Well, I don't really have anything else to say, so bye for now.

Music Part One 05/17/14

Writing everyday is not working for me, it feels like a chore now. I think I am going to change it to whenever I feel like writing, which will probably be every other day, or every three days.

So I realized today, as I was driving to the grocery store, that I haven't actually listened to music in almost two weeks. That is a super long time for me. I mean, I have had it on in the background, but I haven't been listening, not really. When I hear songs, I usually just automatically start dissecting them, I listen to all the separate instruments and then all the different notes that are sung as well, and I find whichever one I like best, and from then on when I hear that song, that is the part I hear, which is why I think that I can like almost any music, because I twist the song so I can hear what I want to hear from it. I found myself doing that on the way to the store, I think the song was by the Dave Matthews Band, I don't know what the song was called though. I've heard it a few times before, and I really like the first three or four lines, but the rest of the lyrics aren't good, so I don't usually listen to them when I hear the song, I actually listen to the drums, which I don't usually do, usually it's piano or guitar that I listen to when I don't like the words, but anyway, I found myself doing that, realized that it has been a very long time since I have done that, and instantly my day was better, like I was finding something about me that I had forgotten so now I feel more like the person I used to be two weeks ago, and I was happy with that.

Also, it is nice to get out of the house sometimes, I don't do that often here because I don't know anyone here, and I don't really know any places to go to. I only went to the grocery store a few blocks away, but it definitely boosted my mood some. I have decided that I am probably going to start going on walks or something, because it seems to help a bit.

Okay, I found the song on YouTube, it's called Crash Into Me, and I relistened to it, and I really like the first few lines, like a lot, but the rest of the song isn't good. Sometime, I am going to make a list of all the lyrics I find that I really like, and I am going to put them together into a really great song.

 I also have been watching a lot of Alex Day videos on YouTube, that has consumed my free time the last twoish days, and I love all of them, like every video is hilarious, so I think that contributes to my good mood.

I still haven't been sleeping much. I fall asleep hours after actually going to be, and I wake up a lot throughout the night, and then I have to get up early for 'work' but for some reason, this hasn't made my good moods leave the last few days.

So yeah, I only started writing this because I wanted to say that I am not going to write every day from now on. But I started rambling about music.

Music is the biggest part of my life, it has been since grade school. As a child, when I was bored I did this thing where I would try to hum the exact note of something that was around me, usually this was on the bus to of from school, but I would hum the exact note of something on the bus, like the engine running, or the tires on pavement, and I would just try to match the pitch. I did it around pretty much anything electrical that made a constant tone, or cars running, pretty much anything. And I would pick apart the things that made that pitch, and try to figure out exactly what it was that was doing it. In a noisy place, I didn't like noisy places as a child, they would scare me, so to avoid being scared in loud places, I would pick apart everything that was making noise, and I would find one thing to focus on. So now I do that with music, just subconsciously.

Well cool, that's something about me. And I could ramble on about music for a very long time, and maybe I will do that soon, but not today, because I really actually just want to go back to YouTube to watch more of Alex Day's videos, because they are very very addicting. So, bye.

Mostly Useless Rambling 05/16/14

So I have realized in the past that when I watch things, or read things, I get very caught up in what is happening. It's why I cry when I read sad things or laugh out loud when I read or watch movies, stuff like that. Yesterday, it occurred to me that most people don't do that. I wonder why? It also was pointed out to me yesterday that, someone said I should respond, and I already did that. Like, when I am watching things, mostly just videos from people I know well, but sometimes from people I don't know, I think of responses, I nod or shake my head, sometimes I follow along as if I were sitting with them actually talking to them. And usually they respond to my response. And I guess that is weird. A bit. I can sit down and watch an hour long video from my friend on youtube, and we will have a conversation that I feel a part of because when I am listening to it, you are just saying it. Timey wimey.

Anyway, I have always been really over emotional, it sort of runs in my family I guess. I cry at everything. There are times in the past where I have almost cried while watching the news, or commercials, and a while ago, like 5 or 6 years ago when I was on medication for depression and anxiety, she told me I have lot serotonin. I didn't pay attention to it at the time, because I didn't know what the hell serotonin was, and I didn't really care, I was only there because my parents made me go. I stopped taking the medication after three ish months, for multiple reasons, and didn't think about it again for a very long time. Recently though, I was looking through files I have kept for years because they were at one time important, and one of the files was my prescription for my medication and stuff, so I started looking up serotonin and stuff, and I basically just got this whole list of things to eat or do that increase serotonin which increases your mood. I guess I will find out if it works. I don't really know what this has to do with anything at all. Whatever.

I am listening to the hour long youtube video as I write this so I will probably be jumping around a little. I will probably relisten to it a lot, not really because I need to in order to remember what was said, but moreso because it is like hanging out with friends again.

Maybe I will just write from the journal again. A really short thing I wrote a while ago when I was unsure whether I was getting worse or getting better.
"I can't tell if I am looking up out of the dark or down as I'm falling deeper into the dark. Am I okay now? Am I making this worse for myself in the long run or can I let myself feel better? Happy. No. Just okay. Because when I feel happy, I have to ruin it. How will I know if I am dreaming or awake? I don't know."

I don't feel the need to elaborate or rant as I type this, which is odd, because I usually do. But, maybe from the lack of sleep I have been getting, or something to that extent, I have been in a, not a good mood, but more of an I don't really care mood. Like, I don't feel the need to explain this much, because I think I have in the past, and also, I write this for someone who doesn't read it, and most of the time I don't care, because I figure that someday when you get bored enough you might, and if you don't, in my head, I still told you, so you understand. But today I just don't feel like putting much effort into it. I feel like, if I took out all the boring stuff, the me thinking of what to say parts, like you do in your videos, I would have about two or three paragraphs of things i think you would find interesting enough to read. But I don't edit past the superficial, I just ramble on. So here is my unedited thought stream, to me, it is much more interesting than an edited one would be, because seeing the train of thought that led to a very interesting subject or sentence, is the most interesting part. Free thought or free talk or whatever, is my favorite thing to read or listen to. Because, while I might agree with something you think, I came to that conclusion from a different way, so I see it in a different light, so I might not actually agree with what you said, because you take a different meaning out of it than I do. but if I can see the thought train that led you there, then I can see it from the same angle you do, so I could actually agree or disagree. I don't really know if this has much of a point. I will stop rambling now.

I Am Anxious To Write This 05/15/14

I have been waiting to start writing so I could watch a friends video on youtube in hopes that it would give me a subject to write about, but he is taking to long so I will maybe just write about it tomorrow.

I wrote this a while ago, during a panic attack; "I can feel it there, pushing me down. Every second, every breath, every move. It's still there. It's always there. I can hear it still. Whispering. Always whispering. Why? Why?
Discouraging. Always saying no. Don't try. Not good enough. Why? Not good enough.
It hurts, everything hurts. Ignore it, ignore me. Live. I can't. Why? Why? I can't. It hurts. Everything hurts. I don't want to. Why? I'm not good enough.
Not good enough.
It's there again. Pushing. Why? Who am I? Who would I be? No one. I would be no one. I would not exist. I can't be happy. It's always there, keeping it from me. Everything. nothing. It hurts. Why?"

I really don't think a lot of people understand anxiety and what it feels like to always have that on your shoulders. Everywhere I go, no matter what kind of mood I am, there is this little voice in the back of my head telling me that I am not good enough, all these people around me know that I am not good enough, and they don't want me around them. When I go to places where there are a lot of strangers, especially if I am alone, I get so nervous that my hands shake and I will start sweating at the prospect of talking to any of them. I walk with my head down so they don't notice me. I stutter when I have to talk. If I am in a crowded area too long, it becomes overwhelming to the point of panic. And through all of that, there is a pressure on my mind, it tells me that every person around me notices every single one of my flaws and they are all judging me the same way I judge myself.

If I am around friends, or people I have known for quite a while, it is substantially easier to talk to them, because if they have stuck around long enough to become my friend, they have earned some level of my trust, enough that I only rarely get nervous to the point of having to leave and be alone.

And, contrary to popular belief, being alone when you have social anxiety isn't really much better than being around people. Yes, when I am alone, I no longer feel the pressure of constant judgment, but I instead spend my time over analyzing every single word I said or movement I made that day, trying to see if anything I said or did was wrong. And if i find something that was wrong, I spend hours in my head imagining other possible ways that that specific situation could have played out.

If there is a situation that I know about in advance, it is significantly worse. I will spend hours and sometimes even days, trying to think of every possible circumstance, every possible conversation and I plan my responses to all of them. And then of course, when the time actually comes, I stutter and can't remember what I was going to say before. And then I hate myself for it later.

And always, there is a pressure around my heart. It's always there, squeezing, making me panic. Every time I breath in, it is a struggle, and with every breath out, it pushes harder and I sink lower. Once I get started, I can't stop, and it leads, most usually, to a panic attack.

I hate panic attacks. I always think that maybe if I let myself freak out for a while, I will feel better afterwords. But it never works that way. After a panic attack, not only do I still spend time thinking about what started the panic, which can be something so small and stupid to some people that it doesn't even seem like a legitimate reason. I spend time feeling stupid and selfish and just over all dramatic, because of the panic attack.

I don't think people realize how difficult it is for me to do simple tasks like go to the store, or go to the bank, or walk down a hallway where other people might pass me. Anxiety isn't just something in my head, it's not just something I can ignore, or get over, it's always there, it's always pushing me back, it's always telling me that I am not good enough, that I am doing things wrong.

So stop telling me that it is time to "grow up" or "move on" I am sick of hearing it. If it were that easy to do, I wouldn't feel like crap all the time.

Social Acceptance 05/14/14

Hello again world of internet. I am in a very good mood today, and I have absolutely no idea why. I haven't left the house today, I got woken up earlier than I would have liked, and I haven't been sleeping well, but for some reason I am in a cheery mood. I will just roll with it. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to write about today, and the next few things in my journal are not happy things and I don't want to bring myself down from this quite yet.

I found something near the current "end" of my journal that was written a few days before I moved, and I was sort of in a high mood, I guess.

"I try to be accepted, socially, so hard, but I always feel like I'm in a slightly separate space. Like I'm in the same place as them, but in a just slightly different dimension or something. I'm always watching what I say or what I do, and it's never enough, it seems.
And they talk about me. I know they do, I hear them, and even if it's just a passing comment or something that's not even mean, I still can't handle it. I can't. I stay up and think about it when I am trying to sleep. Why do I try so hard?
I just want them to like me, but no matter what I do, it's not enough. It's never enough. Why not?
Even when I do exactly what I think they want, they still don't like me. I'm not accepted. I still don't fit in. I still don't feel like I'm their friend.
But it doesn't matter anyway, because I'm leaving. And I won't see them again. Any of them. And I will miss them, but they will forget about me after a while. Which is fine. They always do. and when I think this, I know I'm just seeing what I think is true even if it's not. But it feels true. It feels real. And I hate it. Maybe I'm not feeling like their friend because I make myself not a friend. But I can't help it. Am I depressed? I don't think so. Because if I were, I wouldn't know that I am being stupid by thinking this. But I can't stop."

I know this doesn't sound like it was written in a high mood, and maybe I just remember it that way because I am in a high mood now.

My room mate for the last two months I lived in my apartment used to get drunk quite often, and sometimes if I was also drunk, we would sit down and have some of the most fascinating conversations I have ever had, maybe they just seemed that way because I was drunk, and I don't exactly remember a lot of what we talked about, but I do remember feeling completely at peace talking to him, which is weird because before he moved in, I'd know him for about two weeks maybe. But I could identify with him so easily, I think that was why I enjoyed the conversations so much. Eventually he didn't talk to me anymore, I'm not really sure why, but whatever. Anyway, during one of these conversations, he told me that everyone he considers to be a friend just ends up leaving him. And I remember telling him something along the lines of "Maybe your friends leave you because you make yourself unavailable as a friend." After I said that, I really thought about what I said, and I started applying it to my own situations, and I realized that that is exactly what I do. When I think about friends I had in the past that I no longer have, I automatically assume that they no longer wanted or needed to be my friend and that is why we don't talk anymore. And I still think that. But now there is that seed of doubt in my mind. What if they stopped being my friend because I stopped being theirs?

I know that when I get to close to people, I subconsciously start pushing them away, because I expect them to hurt me eventually. In the past, I only applied this theory to people I date, or my closest friends, but now that I think about it, I have done this to every person I have met, no matter how close I get to them. And somehow, I still let them hurt me.

I am going to start making a conscious effort to not do that anymore. I am not going to push away people that matter to me anymore. Because being hurt by them, in the long run, is so worth the happy times that I could have with them.

I say that, but it probably won't happen. Recently, the thing that has hurt me the most, came from someone I thought couldn't hurt me anymore, or wouldn't. I don't know why I thought that, maybe because I thought that I was so used to them hurting me that I wasn't letting it bother me any more. Anyway, he said to one of my other friends that he thinks I am just a whore who sleeps with anybody. There are two reason this bothers me. First, if I show any amount of affection toward anyone, it is because I trust you enough to like you, and that only happens when I have known you enough to trust you, which doesn't happen very often. Second, this was said by one of the only people who I knows that the word Whore bothers me so much more than anything else you could call me, and he knew why, I thought. Maybe not. I don't really know now. And I am done thinking about it.

I have so much more motivation to write when I am not in a high mood. I wonder why that is.

Fears 05/13/14

I have come into the habit of every morning when I wake up, I think almost immediately "What am I going to write about today?" But somehow, when I actually sit down to start writing I can't think of anything, so I will take out of my past written things again.

On this particular page, I drew, which I don't do often, but anyway, I drew a door. It is a fully closed door. On the front, there is a number to mark it as mine, and that is all. I captioned the door as "I don't know what's inside."

This theory of the door and what it represents actually comes from a show I watched a while ago, and I liked this particular idea so much that I began to for a concept around it. The door is there, and there is a room on the other side, and my complete life is on the outside of the door. The door is in my mind, and it stays closed, and locked, because the room behind it contains all of my fears. Everything that I am afraid of now, or have been afraid of, or will be afraid of. The number on the front to label it as mine is 43, which is my birthday 04/30 but only the significant numbers, 43. I wrote at the time, that I don't know what is inside, and the drawing stayed like that for almost three days, just empty, but I spent those three days thinking subconsciously about fears, and I went back later to write over the entire top of the drawing.

I wrote: "That's a lie. Of course I know. I don't fear death, I never have. So what am I afraid of? Being left behind. Being unneeded. Unwanted. Forgotten. I'm afraid of myself. What if I do everything wrong? What if I become someone I shouldn't be? What if I don't find my purpose in life? What if I find it, and don't like it? What if I find it, like it, and fail? What if I spend all of my time, my whole life, working at accomplishing something worth living for and I never accomplish it? What if I am dreaming? What if I don't exist? What if my whole life up to this point has just been a story in someone else's head? What if I wake up some day in my past and I don't remember all of the things and people that make this life worth sticking around for? That is what is inside my door."

I have many other things I could have added to this list of things that would be inside my door, but I ran out of paper. Which is probably good. Fears are hard to think about and they leave me in a low mood when I try to think about them.

There are so many things in life that I am afraid of, none of the usual things, spiders, heights, superficial things, I used to be afraid of as a child, they don't bother me any more, I hardly even think about them any more. My worst fears are not being wanted, and finding out that I am insane. There have only been maybe a handful of times in my life when I have felt wanted, my childhood wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly warm hugs and family bonding. And a thought that continually passes through my mind at the strangest of moments, when I least expect it, is "What if I don't actually exist?" Followed by "What if everything I know is just made up?" and usually followed by "I am insane."

Why do I think this way when society deems that as insanity? Anything abnormal just automatically makes you less of a person. I must not be fit to function with normal people, because I have depression and social anxiety. Obviously those are errors in my brain, something I have that is wrong with me, something that normal people don't have. I'm not that different from anyone else. In fact, I am unbearably ordinary. I have never done anything original in my life. But I feel like I am separated from everyone else. Like I don't think on the same wavelengths that they all do. And sometimes I am fine with that. Why would I want to be so dramatic, let such little things bother me and ruin my day, like all of those other people do? Why is their life so difficult? Because they let every stupid little thing into their mind and they focus on that, and they let it eat at them, and they let it change their moods, and they let it ruin their lives. I can't do that. If something starts to bother me, I immediately reason it out. I don't even notice the little things anymore. Like people making rude comments, things not going how I originally thought they would, the little things that people seem to take negatively. I don't even notice them anymore, I must have trained myself not to. Why would I want to spend my whole life getting upset over things that don't matter? I don't. So I don't let things upset me.

If I do all of this, why am I still unhappy? I have no idea. It isn't something I can even pin point. I am just generally unhappy. Like there is a layer of unhappiness blanketed over my entire life. There are moments when I forget it is there, when I feel happy, but they are fleeting and as soon as I start to think about anything else other than that one moment I was happy, it settles over me again.

I am really bad at ending posts, but I think I have put everything I can into this one.