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Mental Piranhas
3 years ago2,411 words
I'M MENTALLY ILL. Did you know that?? I might not have mentioned it hundreds of times before, I forget. It's been worse than usual this week, so here's some venting about money woes, and how toxic communities have and continue to exacerbate the social anxiety that's already prevented me from seizing so many opportunities...

I've been trying to write about this for days... It's not that it's some big reveal or anything like that - I've talked about most of this stuff openly before - and only a handful of people are even going to see it, but, well, I'm depressed, so I've just started half a dozen times and run out of energy half way... Let's see how far I get this time!!

I've done very little work this week. I can take 'mental health days' off if I need to since there's nobody telling me otherwise, but I'd really rather not. I really want to finish Atonal Dreams, since finishing that will address some of the issues that constantly get me down. Either it'll succeed financially and I'll have confidence that I can keep on doing the game dev thing, or it'll be a complete flop and I'll have confirmation that I should give it up (again) and try to do something else with my life. But currently I'm stuck actually doing the work every day - which is a loooong process - and sometimes the constant uncertainty of that piling up with other factors means I can't do anything despite trying. When that happens, taking time off game dev seems the best thing to do to prevent burnout on this project and on life in general.

So I've been spending much of this week doing other stuff instead. Creative stuff, personal projects like drawing or music composition. I can't remember the last time I had a day where I didn't create anything, so that's something... Though those things help alleviate stress only because they're for my eyes only, because I don't have to worry about satisfying anyone else or dealing with potentially negative feedback.

But that's such a shame. I wish I could just put out, say, music regularly or something - I've been wondering whether to at least put those albums, or maybe individual pieces, on YouTube - but I listen to my music a lot, and negative or lack of feedback interferes with its value for me. Plus I feel I have to worry about how to potentially monetise everything, and that's not something that'd make money at all. Unless it somehow attracted new people to my Patreon, which I doubt.

It's looking very unlikely that I'll reach the £20,000 goal I hoped to earn this year. I might earn about half that, if I'm lucky, unless I manage to get another alpha/demo build and run a Kickstarter by the end of the year, which... isn't impossible? But I wouldn't say it's likely.

So money-related woes have been hanging over me. That's one thing.



Another though is the chronic loneliness, which normally lies darkly dormant, but which spikes sometimes, usually prompted by something or another. This week's been one of those spikes.

Dealing with loneliness as an awkward man is hardly rare. I just opened Reddit, and within seconds I saw ∞ this post about someone finally starting to make a friend at work, only for it to end before going anywhere ∞, and ∞ this one, about how men don't reach out to people when they're at their worst, where people are talking in the comments about how this isn't because of 'toxic masculinity' discouraging them from opening up, but because if they do try to open up, nobody - male or otherwise - cares ∞.

I'd say I have three friends currently, maybe? Which is more than I had for years before. But... I've been thinking about what I mean by 'friend'. A lot of gamers seem to have mostly-male friend groups who they play multiplayer or tabletop games together with, or Discord groups they share memes with maybe, which is something I can understand as appealing from a distance, but which I'm not really drawn to myself. What I value - or feel a strong 'need' for - are like-minded confidants I can form close emotional bonds with through one-on-one conversations, mostly about shared mental issues. People I can ramble openly about my deepest woes to - and who'll do the same with me! - and be met with compassion rather than pity, dismissal, criticism, or unwanted advice to 'fix' me. I've been on the lookout for such people for years, and these three friends fall into that category, mostly.

I prefer women for this because they're more likely to empathise than to do the problem-solving thing, but there also seems to be a whole lot more drama and intensity with opposite-sex friendships, at least if both parties are neurotic. With mostly-agreeable introverts, like myself and the like-minds I've tried to form these connections with, this drama is less screaming and gossiping and more furtive fretting born of negative assumptions, unspoken so as to avoid potential conflict or offense... but which fester into something far more wounding in the end anyway.

One of these three friends - who I met in my third year of university - has been doing a Master's, and needs to find somewhere else to live soon. We got talking about finding a place together! Nothing romantic, or permanent; just somewhere she can stay while she gets everything sorted out, which might give me the push I need to find a place myself.

But we also agreed to do some video calls, with an appointed weekly time to fit into our schedules and to work around our social anxieties. I did a couple! I wrote about at least one a while back. But I ended up cancelling a couple of others due to anxiety, she cancelled a third, and then a fourth didn't happen either...

Now I think she's just given up on me, and it's looking very unlikely that we'll find a place after all. So that's another thing.



I've been thinking a lot about why I've ended up here. I suppose it's hard not to, with so much time to just think. Why did I chicken out of those calls? If I hadn't, might things have gone differently?

A lot of it's to do with poor upbringing and biological factors - that's why I have the anxiety in the first place - but there are specific life events that have conditioned my mind to expect negative reactions too.

After school, I worked on games rather than getting a 'normal' job because MARDEK had been relatively popular and it seemed like something I could do without having to face other people. But I had to face a lot of other people, online at least, on my websites, and the toxicity of all that has left lingering scars.



I've continued following the UFO stuff, mostly via subreddits, and recently there's been some... thing that's been discussed a lot in those. Basically some woman claims to have met aliens in some mountain base who gave her a message about love and peace and how humanity needs to transcend, and other generic spiritual stuff, and she's aiming to go back in there with a team to gather proof that they exist and their message is true (∞ this post has a summary in the comments ∞). She even did ∞ an in-person 'press conference' in the US capital this week ∞, which I watched a livestream of as it happened; it started an hour late, about a dozen people showed up, and the content was mostly the same as what she'd already posted on Reddit, other than her openly doxing herself to show how serious about it all she was. Bizarre.

Since that, people on UFO/aliens subreddits - mostly the one that spawned following the Throawaylien 'larp' I talked about a while back - have been basically tearing her to shreds... and (disregarding the actual topic) it all reminds me so much of the Fig Hunter days. One person dealing with a swarm of critics, well-meaning or otherwise, who chip away at their patience, revealing frustration, which the critics calmly, probably smirkingly pick at further as signs their prey's no good. They only have to deal with this one person, but that one person is having to deal with dozens or more of these critics all at once, and those critics don't get why she's not as composed as they are.

(As for how I feel about that specific situation, I suspect she's mentally ill, but I'm curious to see where things go.)



Chris Chan also came up in the news recently, as you may already be aware. Last couple of weeks? Feels like forever ago, with how transient news is these days. Absolutely bizarre, seeing some infamous internet weirdo making international mainstream news (it was reported here in the UK too; my mum literally asked me about Chris Chan).

That person's a mess. I remember becoming aware of him - he only declared himself a woman to hopefully have sex with lesbians, or so I've read - many years ago; I even mentioned to a counsellor that I was terrified maybe other people saw me like they saw that joke of a human. I'm hardly a shining example of a live well lived, after all. Or if I wasn't there already, maybe I was on the path that would take me there.

He was arrested for raping his elderly mother. I haven't done anything that bad, I hope!! Or as bad as much of the other stuff he's infamous for. Still, while he's probably the most extreme example you could ever give, I suppose it gets to me since I'm worried in general about how anonymity allows for swarms of internet piranhas to gleefully pick apart any weirdos who dare attract too many eyes to them (as if they're such saints themselves).

So reminders like that have sort of built up the insecurity pile.



After all the Fig Hunter mess, I again spent years trying to get out there, to find people, fruitlessly... until I finally went to university and found the first close platonic opposite-sex friendships I'd ever had. I had a 'best friend' and everything!!1 But that turned sour eventually, with her ghosting me in the end while accusing me of a bunch of terrible things that very much confirmed a lot of negative thoughts I already had about myself and added a bunch of new ones too.

That continues to traumatise me every day, especially since I often browse Reddit while procrastinating and many posts there are apparently triggers for me. Reddit overall isn't kind to certain kinds of people, and every time I see some post universally mocking some loathsome 'nice guy' or even an outright predator, I worry that maybe I fell into one of those categories - or will one day - without ever meaning to or even knowing until much later.

Am I a monster? A manipulator? Should I just go and hide in a cave, or jump off a bridge, so as to never inflict my toxicity on anyone ever again??

Thoughts like that swarm around in my head all the time, and sometimes their intensity becomes too much. It'd be easier, in some ways, if I were indisputably the victim of some other person's foul behaviour, but instead I feel I was blamed for everything - including by myself - so it's not as if I can escape the monster and heal if the monster is me.

I'm especially prone to guilt and shame in general though. I see vile people every day on Reddit ranging from ∞ the openly monstrous, like this woman who was apparently happy to beat her spouse while spouting slurs during a stream ∞, to the more common anonymous posters who casually argue or tear others down as if it's nothing. It all feels so alien to me; I beat myself up for days if I say some minor thing which is awkwardly received. I wonder what it's like to not fret about your every word. The idea of hurting anyone tears me apart.



So yes... bleh. Ugh. I feel I'm such a mess of a person, so broken down by a life of terrible luck. Even when I try to get out there and connect with people, it leaves me worse than I was before I started. It's very difficult, then, to want to keep attempting that. But since I don't, the loneliness is chronic and flares up occasionally, and there are times like this when it just distracts me from doing anything to crawl out of the hole I'm in.

I should probably go and see a therapist... yet again, though I'm sceptical about how much it could even help since I already know the psychology and most of my issues are situational. Finding a therapist takes months, though. One of these friends recently mentioned that her counsellor told her something or other, so I've asked where she found that counsellor; that's a start. Better than nothing.

(She said that when she called me out of the blue after weeks of silence to vent about her own problems, and during the conversation I hinted at my own woes but was largely shrugged off, and we haven't talked since because - despite being an awkward person herself - she has so many (mostly male) people reaching out to her in her time of need that she's literally never alone. Most young women could experience that; few - if any - males could.)



Doing personal creative stuff is at least a distraction, and I feel better now than I did last weekend, at least. I'll have to hope I can get some work done next week...

9 COMMENTS

LightAcolyte22~3Y
I believe because of my account on this site you already have my e-mail address if you would like to reach out to me anytime. I would be open to videoconferencing or videocalling on Skype if you would like to do that instead of email as well. I want you to know I am here and listening to you, but am also happy to share my life experiences and foster a friendship. While I do have many years of experience as a certified professional providing both financial counseling and life coaching services, my only intent is to offer a friendly face that is not seeking to "fix" you, since you indicated that has been a problem in the past to find. If anything, in both of said capacities, I've never found trying to "fix" anyone was either a successful outlook or endeavor, so hopefully telling you that gives you a little extra confidence that you aren't going to find that feeling with me. (smile) My best wishes to you on your future endeavors with this!
3
purplerabbits148~3Y
For me on Reddit, I find that if you don't curate what you look for , you end up with a lot of vitriol because algorithms have determined that anger gets more views.

"Am I a monster? A manipulator?" That right there puts you at odds against the actual monsters. Because the monsters don't have the self awareness to look at themselves to see if there is a problem. You on the other hand, have a tendency at looking inward with a self awareness that others should follow.

I remember back when you talked about incels and the manosphere, to me too many guys there blame external factors for failing to find a partner, but there is an undercurrent of entitlement that more than likely contributes to why women stay away from them. I can say personally that even if a guy is a model with a million dollars, entitlement and selfishness is one of the biggest turn offs for me and I won't even touch him with a 10 foot pole.

I remember a now recently banned sub r/MGTOW (Men going their own way) those guys seem to have an internal issue where they have sworn off women because of a really bad experience with women in the past. At least that's how it reads to me: them putting a blanket experience as true for all men, when in actuality only some women are as they describe.

In the various relation advice subreddits, there are other men and women that have had really bad experiences with the opposite gender, but not everyone stays miserable and some even find a partner that treats them well. Those that self improved are the ones that found happiness.

The Chris Chan situation is really sad since everyone failed him. His parents never gotten Chris help when they got his autism diagnosis, he failed himself by "feeding" the trolls, and the state failed him. It's just really sad since he seems to live in a delusion as a way of self defense from the horror of the reality he lives in.

It's interesting how you describe the need to vent, while the "fix the problem" mentality grates against you a bit. I remember a friend sharing an meme/comic with me where a woman with a nail in her head is complaining about a recent headache she has, while her male companion keeps trying to tell her that she has a nail in her head. Every time the man tries to tell her, she keeps saying "It's not about the nail!" Eventually the man just sits there and listens and the woman completes her thoughts with a "Thank you for listening I feel much better." As a female myself I can relate a bit to the female since some issues I know how to solve, but I'd rather deal with it later than right now. On the other hand though, I do relate very much more to the man because I want to never have to deal with issues again if there is a clear solution.

I do remember something where a group of friends have a system set up where they post an emoji of an ear to let the rest of the group know they just want to vent, and they post a wrench emoji if they want help find a solution to their current issue. That kind of communication helps keep that group together since no one is a mind reader and knows which form of help they need: an ear to listen to or a solution to a problem.

I'm not sure how much it means to you, but I am cheering for you.
3
LotBlind53~3Y
Having been quite lonely most of my life, I've at least recently found a good friend. I put out an ad on a mental health -related forum devoted to personal ads, looking for someone to play games with about once a week and the second person who contacted me stuck. I can speak my mind to her and her to me. I dunno if it's a venting thing but just having someone like that to share the experiences with at least is a fun change (used to love it as a kid), and she's not a complete dolt. Last time she said our sessions are her only hobby (at current), but then she's working while I'm not, so I won't hold that against her.

We've played mainly adventure games and one puzzle game so far. She's not playing, she's just taking notes and keeping things in mind for me, occasionally having an insight to help us advance.
2
Tobias 1115~3Y
That's genuinely great to hear!! I know if I'd managed to find something like that, I'd definitely feel a deep sense of... relief, I suppose, and appreciation.

Seems a lot of people bond by playing games together, but it's something I've never done myself for whatever reason. Maybe it's worth thinking about... Something like that sounds better to me than playing some team-based thing with a group of guys though.
1
LotBlind53~3Y
Heartily recommend it. Just send out a bottle on some obscure forum or two, give your terms, you never know...
1
Gremia2~3Y
If you need someone to reach out to, my email's open (though I'm not confident at being a good conversation partner). I can resonate with many of the struggles you described. I'm self diagnosed with autism (and in a 2 year long queue for official diagnosis :/) so I tend to get pretty intimidated by people.

I used to browse a lot of tumblr and twitter, but recently I've been steadily weeding them out (tumblr to an lesser extent, since it's much more bearable) due to the reasons you described with reddit. I can't constantly feed myself negative information about peoples and places that don't even concern me. It's not only very self-destructive, but also can turn me into a boomer! We're not responsible to bear the weight of every misfortune in the world.

Speaking of misfortunes, the whole chris-chan deal stresses me out on a personal level, since as a wanna-be creator I sometimes fear I might end up like him without even realizing. So that fuels my anxiety about ever publishing anything I made. Public reception is a pesky thing - many will claim that you need to show off your work for constructive criticism, but when you look at how for example Undertale went from being praised to despised simply due to being popular and back again, that conclusion is suddenly not so obvious anymore.
2
Tobias 1115~3Y
Thanks for the offer! But it's unlikely to be one I'll be taking up any time soon, unfortunately... Many people over the years have found me through my work and reached out offering friendship, but for a bunch of reasons it doesn't really work out, so the 'friends' I have are people I've connected with as peers in the Real World.

Undertale was despised? News to me! I don't know anything about how Toby Fox dealt with or felt about the enormous and varied reception that game got... I suppose it'd be easier to deal with negative feedback if you were sitting on a mountain of cash though.
0
missgms7~3Y
Well, I just joined this community so, if anybody needs advice, I guess I am good at that! Also, Tobias, to be fair if you recognise the chance that you might have imperfections then you are already on a good path, so just keep the self-care and seek a professional, they will help you for sure and it works for the long run, saying from experience here!
0
hmmplushlore23~2Y
What happend at Fig Hunter?
0
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