I’ve abhorred anything with excessively high emotion for quite some time, but I feel like it might be easy to take as hatred of a people or person.
The mood’s about to go down, so if at any time you find yourself going somewhere mentally you don’t want to go, give this a watch.
Recently, upon being asked to make a Tumblr account, among a huge post, I said the following things:
“…Tumblr is absolutely full of emotionally charged and irrational teenagers, most prominently is the HUGE demographic of girls that post the same crap that I /remove/ people for on Facebook…” “…But hey, I know for a fact that’s not everyone. Being on FunnyJunk has taught me that the ignorance within an internet community TRULY shines brighter than the good will and humanity, not because there’s a greater amount per se, but mostly because when people are ignorant on the internet, they’re /OVERTLY/ ignorant. It’s practically a law…”
And now, at 2:30am on a sleepless night, I’ve started feeling really bad about saying that.
I faced a horrible and grueling battle against my own extremely emotional nature all of my life. If you’ve read my ‘About Me‘ page, or are a good friend of mine, you know that I’ve suffered from OCD and depression to very severe degrees all my life.
When I was only 5 years old, my neurological and hormonal issues were already in full swing. In my Kindergarten class, after being given an assignment to just write down on a piece of paper what we wanted to be when we grew up, I gave it a serious 10 minutes of thought, before sprawling “I want to die.” awkwardly across the paper. I once wrote out a sort of ‘state-of-my-life’ story detailing my maturing process over the course of my entire life and how who I was has changed, and I used that anecdote as a central point for focus, because it serves to me personally as a reminder that nothing was ever fine at any time in my life. I wrote this about it:
“…I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted to be when I was older. I didn’t really even know what you could be. So I looked into myself, and had a deep think about it. I came to the conclusion that I hated my life, I hated myself, and I didn’t think I deserved to be anything. After I realized that, I wrote down the best way I could think to describe it. Writing across the lines of the notebook paper at a weird angle very small, I wrote: “I want to die.” I turned it in, and I got in trouble.”
I know, right? Cry for help and people yell at you for it?
How ridiculous, anyone would say, that a child with issues would make suicide threats and people would look down on ’em for it.
Well, it appears it is exactly this that I’ve become guilty of.
A long time ago, I tried to join Tumblr. I didn’t like any of the design themes, so I didn’t like having my own page (Although I do now). Most importantly to me, when I looked at any of my friends’ Tumblr pages, I found myself cycling downward through page after page of confessions of self-loathing, suicidal and self-harm tendencies, emotionally charged statements of anger or lust or hopelessness, reblogged quotes that seemed only to relate to the most depressing ideals, and every once in a while, maybe one or two uplifting posts of a cute animal or something.
Having OCD makes you have a lot of different habits that are uncontrollable. However, now that I’m being properly medicated, I’ve found control like I’ve never had before. (One of these days, I’ll write about that. This is going to be my downer-post for a while.) One of my worst habits has always been self-projection. I take the whole “Treat others like you want to be treated” as “I’m going to treat others like I would treat myself.”, and what that does is cause me to be in a constant state of judging things that I’ve been fortunate enough to now be able to begin my escape from.
I will always reserve that I do my absolute best never to judge people by who they are, but to base reactions on understanding the linear logical process of the actions of others and how I feel about the action specifically. I believe it is right, for me, to never show disdain for someone just because they’ve done something bad without full understanding of the context of the situation, and therefore have in just about any case found creating a secular paradigm with which to treat someone specifically instead of holding a general outlook on all people worthless and impractical.
However, I judge myself vehemently and without restraint. It hasn’t been all that bad of a thing, it’s made me very strong mentally. However, it is purely the nature of someone who is depressed or generally unhappy and as such, is detrimental to your mind to self-analyze so thoroughly. It creates even more habits that are far worse than the benefits of self-awareness can make up for, and eventually, exist.
So when I see all these intense cries for help, I immediately project them onto myself and view them as a past me that I wish to forget.
When I look back at myself, how I acted back when I was going through all of these issues, it’s hard for me not to be disgusted with myself. Things that I now consider inherently ignorant things that anyone with a lick of common sense wouldn’t do are things that I’m extremely guilty of.
I find myself unable to read some of the things I’ve posted or said because the thought of me still being like who I was is truly one of my only fears.
I’m better at this now. I’ve learned to stop analyzing things, because I don’t have a screwed up system (other than good ol’ teenage hormones) messing with me all the time, and I’ve made peace with a lot of things in my life.
It seems like the only things I still have to make peace with are the things that I didn’t feel like I had before being medicated. One of those things is my inability to separate other people from myself. I don’t value being able to relate to people enough, because in my mind I’m just constantly taking everything people say/do, saying it to myself in my inner voice, and deciding whether or not it’s something that I find bad for me. I don’t even know how to explain the level at which I don’t judge others.
I pretty much just can’t. I never feel any reason to. People that do things that I would absolutely hate myself for doing, I can just let it go without a second thought. I’m not trying to sound pretentious or entitling, because I honestly don’t like that. I don’t even think it’s a good thing. It keeps me from formulating ideas about others, and as such suppresses any notion of opinion inside me, perpetuating shitty habits. For example: It genuinely annoys me 99% of the time people apologize to me, because I hadn’t even thought about them inconveniencing me for a second, and then not only do I feel obligated to tell them it’s fine when nothing was ever not ‘fine’ in the first place, I’m stressed out because I feel like I’ve made them feel bad about themselves, and I know that I’m not going to chastise them or tell them not to tell me they’re sorry, because that would just be making the situation worse.
I cannot stress how much all of these behaviors have drastically improved since starting medication, but they’re still there, wanting desperately to be the commanding choice as to how to react. When people say they’re sorry, I say no problem, and move on. When I look at myself when I was a kid, I have no regrets. When someone does something I find uncouth, I take a nice deep breath, and let the self-projecting go with a big cathartic sigh.
But I’m not without issue. Not one bit.
What truly and honestly hurts me about a lot of these girls on Tumblr is that I know exactly what they’re going through, and I know there’s nothing that I can do about it.
Professional help from mental health specialists is the only way to fix any serious or clinical issues we have, and I’m not that. Any other personal issues or habits that we ourselves have fallen into are our responsibility, and are up to us to solve if we’re to truly learn from them as mistakes.
So I have to sit back, knowing that all of these girls are going through all these things I’ve had to go through, and they feel completely alone like how I did, and I can’t intervene because what it is they need is something I can’t offer.
A friend can be many things, and sometimes, people can find solace in coping mechanisms that healthily deal with their problems, but the only surefire way of dealing with a problem directly is either personal life experience with it or mental health institutions and professionals.
I know for a fact I wouldn’t have ever been happy if I hadn’t gotten medicated.
So to every girl, not just those of you on Tumblr that express yourself, that feels alone, feels misunderstood, feels depressed, feels like ending it all, feels like a failure, feels unattractive, feels worthless, feels guilty, feels like you’ve screwed yourself over, feels like that person you like doesn’t care, feels sorry, feels empty, feels pathetic, feels overwhelmed, feels anxious, feels worried, and feels like crying but can’t get anything out, I understand.
I really, truly do. And I know what it’s like to escape from that kind of mental hell. Yeah, everyone feels sad, and anxious, and unattractive, etc. at some point. Not everyone goes through having all of those things, as well as way more, be your default setting of life. It just makes it so much harder hearing all the “Don’t do this or don’t do that, because rational reasons that make sense to you that you can’t do.” Hearing people tell me what I shouldn’t be doing was always the hardest part about not being able to stop doing it.
Or perhaps, a close second to the feeling of being completely alone. Crying into your pillow is immeasurably worse than crying into someone’s shoulder. It’s feelings like these that no one likes to think about. The kind of thing that makes you want to scream “I’m getting fucked from all sides.”, but keeping it inside knowing that people would probably hear/see you say that, and think “Geez, someone’s way too emotional. Grow up, and join the real world.”
I’m so sorry. Not just that you have to go through this whilst I get to move on not having to deal with it anymore, but that for so long I’ve made an effort to slander you in my head by removing your individuality and projecting myself in your position.
School’s almost over. I’m about to have all the time in the world, and that means that I’ll have plenty of time for anyone that needs some.
If you are one of the people I’ve just talked about, please, I implore you, if you don’t want to tell me about it, tell someone. You’d be amazed at how not alone you are in all of this. I would love to listen to you any time you needed to say anything. If I know you personally, you can reach me on Facebook, Skype; pretty much anywhere convenient. If not, my e-mail is in the ‘Contact Me’ section at the top of the page, and you can ask me about getting a contact you could talk to me with.
If you happen to be someone that sees getting professional help as an unattractive option, I understand that, too. It wasn’t too long ago that I passionately showed disdain for for psychopathic drugs and mental health officials. It wasn’t until I was inspired by Dan Avidan of Game Grumps to see how medicine might help. And you might have already tried to no avail, which I understand as well, and you have my full sympathy.
Never give up. I believe in you.
To close this off, I humbly bow my head in recognition of my hypocrisy. As much as I jabber on about respect and understanding, I’ve shown quite little of either to people with emotional issues exactly like I had/have. I have come a long way, and reached a huge peak which has placed me somewhere I would never for a second wish I was anywhere else or have any regrets, but that doesn’t excuse me from being a flawed young newly-adult canvas which is still being painted. As assertive as I’ve become, there’s a lot of room for improvement as far as being the guy that steps up and talks to someone they know is having trouble.
I think not of myself as a role model, but I have succeeded over myself, in a way I know many of my peers pine for.
I say that, and leave you with this quote.
“As you are, so once was I.
As I am, so shall you be.”
Charles Adkins 