PERSONAL

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I'm still mentally ill

5 years ago1,010 words

At least if the brain cancer kills me, I won't have to inflict my broken mind on the world anymore.

Or so the demons have been saying recently.

In the previous post, I said that I didn't want to talk about that political stuff anymore because my mental health has been particularly poor lately. So, of course, the comments section ended up full of detailed comments about political stuff. I haven't actually read some of the recent comments because I can't bring myself to do so. I have to manually approve them though so I've at least seen little bits of them and have a general idea of what they are. Some seem to have quite a bit of thought and effort behind them and I feel bad about being unable to read them. But I just don't have the mental strength at the moment.

Originally I was curious to talk about the nature of belief and things like that, but it just ended up feeling like being ganged up on by multiple people, again, where everyone agrees with each other in disagreeing with me, giving each other high fives about how well they've disagreed with me, and while I doubt my interpretation matches the intention there, it's still an uncomfortable position to be in. You presumably all have loved ones you can talk with about that and other things, people who agree with you and make your thoughts feel valid and sensible; someone to formulate new ideas together with perhaps. I'm alone. I don't have any of that. When I do try to talk about things using the only real outlet that I have, it ends up feeling less like a discussion and more like people patronisingly correcting me. Obviously that feels much different.

So while it'd be admirable to be all airy and abstractly intellectual and challenge my beliefs and all that to form a potentially better worldview, it's difficult to get to the state of mental security required for that to work when I'm so mentally unwell. I don't have the luxury of any kind of stability - mental or life-wise - or direct daily social support, so it's easier instead to just have all the extremely negative thoughts about myself exacerbated, which leads nowhere good.

Last night, I lay writhing for ages, my mind full of thoughts and my body full of anxiety symptoms about how something I said probably made it sound as if I think all women should be legally compelled by the government to meet some "sex with incels" quota or something, which isn't remotely what I'd ever mean or think and... sigh. The only reason I said anything at all in the previous comments was because I felt I had to defend where I was coming from so I seemed less abhorrent than I might have, then I only ended up putting my foot in my mouth even more and probably seeming even worse.

It just makes me want to say nothing at all, and maybe that really is the best course of action. At least regarding these political things. Not that I even knew that Jordan Peterson was political to the degree he seems to be, but apparently I don't know much at all. Who am I to think I can say anything about anything?

I've been too busy recently anyway wondering whether this cancer will kill me, and what that'll be like if it does. Would it be a slow decline, a gradual loss of senses or cognitive abilities? Prolonged pain? Who'd be there for me on my deathbed other than my mother? All I've done is burned bridges with my broken mind. I've been wondering recently whether the traumatic memories I experience every day, triggered by all kinds of things, are more in line with PTSD than 'just' avoidant personality disorder. Certain memories come up again and again and make me just want to die, partly to escape the pain, partly so then I never inflict myself on anyone ever again. I deserve that rather than anything resembling success. Making things and sending them out into the world isn't the right thing to do; all I'll do is maybe draw people to me who'll see what a monster I am and hate me for it, and it's not as if my skills or ideas are good enough to make things people will actually enjoy anymore anyway. I should just go and hide in a hole, disappear, meditate my days away in silent solitude.

...Or so the inner narrative goes, all the time. I'm clearly not well. I should probably be seeing a therapist or something about this, but it's been months and I've not heard anything back about that yet. It takes forever.

I've been trying to brainstorm ideas for my next game, but with all this recent negative stuff about feeling attacked or misunderstood or like a naive idiot, it's been hard to focus on anything. So I've gone weeks without doing anything meaningfully productive, and that just makes me feel a whole lot worse. Why do I even get up in the mornings?

I'll probably decide on something eventually, then once I get started I'll have more of a purpose again. But brainstorming takes time. I don't know how much time is normal. Apparently some professionally-made games take months just during the brainstorming phase. But I don't know. I'm not lacking in ideas. I just don't know which would be best to devote months to. Perhaps I should post about them on Alora Fane to see what people think, but seeing what people think on these blog posts hasn't exactly been a joy-filled experience so that's been getting in the way.

I've been wondering whether writing a miserable post like this would be a bad idea or not, but it's a reflection of how my mind is at the moment, so here it is. Maybe it's yet another misstep though and I'll feel even worse afterwards. Self-sabotage is certainly one of the things the demons do best.