Where do I go from here?

Yo!

Yup, despite my absence, which Blogger tells me has been for almost a whopping three months: I am not dead. Well, I'm not dead, but I certainly don't feel like I'm very much so alive either.

Where do I begin?

The past few months have been especially rough. When I say rough, I particularly mean that I feel as though I've been body slammed by a monster truck that -when seeing my twitching limbs denoting just the tiniest spark of life left in me- it then decided to do a complete u-turn and then ran over me again, and again, and again....and one more time for good measure.

In other words, as of right now, my life stinks right now. I am a few months shy of reaching my 25th birthday and I think it is officially time to declare that I am having a mid-mid life crisis. And it stinks, in case I haven't mentioned that enough times already. Oh, I did? Too bad, because you'll be hearing a lot of that because despite its simplicity it's extremely accurate as well as loaded with all sorts of emotions.

If I had to put the emotions that I've been feeling lately into a neat little list, they would go as followed, in chronological order:

1) OVER IT
2) Fed up
3) Tired, so, so tired
4) Depressed
5) Lonely
6) OVER IT
7) Angry
8) Confused
9) Lost
10) OVER IT
11) Not like myself and generally disconnected from everything around me
13) OVER IT, hm, I think I'm starting to see a pattern here...

I'm not okay, I haven't particularly been okay for a while, which is a decent chunk of the informational pie as to why I have been gone from the blog for so long. I'm like 90% sure that once this blog post is up and live that my mother and sister will read it and probably feel bad and junk that I haven't been talking to them about how I feel, so let me write this now and get it out the way.

To my mother and sister, whom I love dearly:

I'm weird as shit, you guys should already know this by now, ya think? I don't always like sitting down on the couch, bed, kitchen, living room or whatever the hell and just opening up about my feelings. That shit is stressful af. Like, the amount of stressful that is is pretty ridiculous. I'm an introvert, I'm quiet yet loud, I'm open, yet helluh reserved: I'm....me. For some Rachel-y unknown reason it is eighty times easier for me to pour my heart out to a computer screen where I don't have to deal with interruptions, platitudes/"mom statements" like "I'll always support you/be there for you/love you/ you can always come to me, etc." Yes! Those things are lovely to hear but are typically the last the I want to hear, like, at all. I have anxiety, guys. When it comes to my emotions, I'm a picky conversationalist, and usually writing out how I feel and letting you read it and talking about it afterward so I don't have to go through the physical exhaustion of trying to explain it to you face-to-face, and make all that awkward eye contact, and feel all those squishy, sentimental bonding feelings when I really just want to rant and rave and explode and then sit there in a heap afterward.

So, in short, I freaking love you guys. I really do. My unwillingness to come to you guys for comfort has nothing to do with you, anything you did, have down, or will do. I know this sounds like a super cheesy "It's not you, it's me," break up type deal, but it's honestly not. I'm just a weirdly open, not open individual. So just think of this blog post and my ability to put my personal business on the internet for -god only knows how many people to see- as my way of also reaching out to you guys. Trust me, it's super better this way.

Love, Rachel

And done!

Now, what was I saying? Oh yeah, my life kinda stinks right now. There's a lot of reasons for that, goodness, but I think that can be broken down into three effective categories: love, passion, and time.

1. Love

My love life is in shambles, yay~ story of my freaking liiiiiiiife. My love person? Friend? Ex? I have no idea what we are right now. I have no idea what we will be in the future, if we will even have a future: I am currently in an agonizing love Purgatory and, guess what? You guessed it: it stinks. Shit has been rough for a while with us. Hm, by while, I more so mean the past two years of our existence together. I could probably fill up (and will in my private time) an entire five subject notebook on my feelings toward the state of my love life right now. Here is the condensed version which puts my, our, business out there but not too much; she and I have a lot of fucking issues and recently she has undergone a series of serious health complications that make us being in a relationship right now a really terrible idea. There's a lot more to it than that but that's letting everyone in just a tiny bit too much, yanno? But to keep it condensed lets just say that relationship goals, some major and varying boundary issues, respect, body image issues (on both our parts), sickness, and active listening issues are the broad, volatile factors that play a key role in our break up, separation, break: whateverthefuck this is...

However, as you can imagine from the bit about Purgatory, I still love her, dear god, I still love her with every ounce of my being. I also just kind of hate her a little bit too. Love is messy and complicated that way, isn't it. I love her with all my heart and despite our many, many, many, many, many problems my heart is still like "go get'em champ," while my soul and mind are more like, "bitch, here, please take several seats. kthankbai." As much as things turn to shit, as much as I want to kill her sometimes [ memo to self: edit out incriminating evidence in case of premeditated murder charge]; she is the absolute love of my life. I know that I'm young and most people will tell me "you don't really know anything about true love yet." To the people that have that bit of advice to say to me, I will kindly ask that you fuck off.

I'm an extremely emotional, empathetic, deep feeling, personal, and soulful person. When I feel things, I feel them to the absolute divinity of my core self. As you can imagine, this makes having Depression and Anxiety, super happy fun tines...but that's another grueling story for another day. That being said, I have a very old, archaic notion of love; I want to grow old with someone, I want there to be that "one", I want to have someone be "my first, last, and only," heaven forbid but I still believe in monogomy, I want to know someone on a level of totality that no one can touch: spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, soulfully, I want to be a priority, a first choice, I want an "old school" kind of love that the era of fuck boys, side chicks, and cheating through "sliding through" someones DMs rarely affords anymore. And for a very long time, I had that with her, we had a crap which seems like absolute child's play to the issues we face now, but once upon a time she and I were happy, people in our community that knew us looked at our relationship with pride because most lesbian relationships in our town don't make it past six months let alone a year, two years.

We've been together for five years. We have broken up both publicly and privately a lot within that time, if I had to say how long we have collectively, legitimately been together without the "off" part of the on again, off again relationship thing getting in the way; I'd say it's really been more like three and a half years. Relationships are tough, and they can be especially hard when one person is fighting more than the other but I'm like Drake in his verse in Rihanna's new chart topping single "Work."

"When I see potential I just gotta see it through, if you had a twin I would still choose you."

As much as I mildly hate her guts right now, I still want her, so bad. I spend night alone wishing that I could put all of our problems on a gigantic white board between us and just wipe them away, literally just put them in the universe and wipe them away. But life doesn't work like that. I just want us to be okay, but I'm not sure if we can be and guess what....that stinks.

2. Passion

Another thing that really has me down is that I feel a major disconnect from all the things that once used to make me so happy. I know that part of it is due in part to my relationship, another part to my depression, but damn it, I am just not as invested in my passions as I used to be and it stinks. I feel like I have lost a piece of myself and struggling to get back to that has been a major pain. I used to write, draw, do nail art, and within the past year blog: A LOT. Now, I hardly ever do it. I feel like a ghost of my former self a lot of the time. 

I feel like life has just....gotten in the way of me actually living my life. I feel like my life has become this pitiful mass of going to bed early, waking up early, going to school, doing homework, taking care of my partner while she was going through her sickness, missing homework, playing catch up, being stressed out about playing catch up, breaking down, building myself back up from backing down, the continuing to play catch up, and repeating the process. Before my partner got sick, there was always something that was keeping me from my passions. Last year, it was my involvement in a group on campus that literally ate away my free time quicker than Pac-Man could gobble up white dots and fruit. The year before that, I was coming out of a supremely long depressive period that just hindered my entire existence. 

It was ALWAYS something, it's always been SOMETHING, to the point where I don't really know if I want to even pursue these things anymore. Which is a BIG deal for me, because no matter where my life has taken me up until this point I have ALWAYS wanted to be a writer. Writing is what I'm in school for, it's been the only thing keeping me going for years and now it just seems like something that is so ridiculously un-me, like my memories of loving to write aren't memories but just something I remember a friend telling me about their life: not mine. The mere thought of not wanting to write anymore, kind of floors me.

3. Time
  
I've always been a bit of procrastinator, who isn't, am I right? But within the past three years it has gotten ridiculously bad. This is due in large, major part to my depression which has been a nightmare off and on for the past two years. My depression leaves me completely unmotivated. I mean, unmotivated to the point where GROSS ALERT:  my record for consecutive days without bathing because the thought of standing in the shower for 10-15 minutes was unbearable: 12. When my depression is waltzing in like a 'roid monster and screwing up my motivation it leaves me feeling like I have no time for anything in my life that makes me happy: at all. That's kind of where the whole eat, sleep, go to school, play catch up at school, come home, go to bed early mindset comes in. Time is our most valuable asset and I know I'm not alone in feeling like there is never, ever enough of it. Especially not when it takes you three hours to gather motivation and then four to eight hours to complete a long string of tasks, or it takes you two hours to commute by bus after you've spent four hours on campus, and then still have to come in, cook dinner, and then do homework before going to bed. Feeling like you are constantly running out of time is seriously a good way to put yourself into an early grave, because man I swear, some days I feel like I'm just going to be on the bus and just plotz.

So where do I go from here?

So, I've finally shared with you guys why I feel like absolute crap as of late, why I've been gone so much despite the fact that I've posted semi-frequently on the Facebook page and while hemmed up in the hospital with my partner last week also created a Tumblr page (which is oh, so uncensored) and now I bet you are expecting me to say something truly inspiring and beautiful and uplifting....

Sorry to disappoint, guys, but the truth is "I have no fucking clue." I wish I could tell you that I'm super far down my mental health pathway but the truth is I'm only 24 and I'm struggling and just trying to find what works for me. There's no right or wrong way to get better, by get better I mean feel better because there's no easy, permanent fix. However, the most important thing to do is try. 

Actually, legitimately try. No more baby steps, no more tip-toeing into the murky, muddy waters that is self care, body love, mental health, and generally fucked up emotions: it's time to cannonball into that shit and dive in. Grab your issues by the nape of the neck and repeat after me:

"Listen here, you little shit....."

When I'm feeling especially down, even though I LITERALLY have to force myself to function....a lot, I find ways to live my life. I try to find JOY, meaning, I actively look for it. I use uplifting essential oils (which I can do an entire blog post about if anyone is interested), I make things, I write, hate what I write, and throw it away, I draw, hate what I draw, and throw it away, I watch Netflix while I do my homework, I read a book (currently been reading "Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls" by the phenomenally amazing babe Jes Baker, more on the awesomeness later), I listen to Spotify on my one hour bus ride to school, or the hour long bus ride back, sometimes I take a shower and just sit in my room naked; I search for happiness.

Will that work for you? Probably, I don't know, but there's only one damn way to find out, huh?