heyitsharbor

I'm trying to get back into journalling - and, frankly, doing it in a way that keeps me motivated with a nifty little display on a website (such as my neocities), but without the eyes on it if I were just using a social media platform.

Disclaimer: This is largely private in the sense that I don't actively share this with anyone. However, it's obviously not really private. If anyone who knows me is reading this? You're my friend. I love you. My mental health and how I write about it here is not a reflection of your friendship, nor is it a reflection of anything but my oft-uncontrollable feelings, and how I am trying to learn from, accept, and handle them so I can be a better friend and a healthier person. That being said, if you'd like to talk about something you've read here, you are welcome to.

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I've been struggling a lot with mental health lately - most notably emotional regulation particularly in response to perceived rejection and, well, actual rejection. Mood swings and social avoidance, and now the upswing of.....being almost too positive and too happy and too 'up' around people.

I think what worries me in a way I hadn't realized before is that I'm seeing mood and emotional patterns - and the behavioral similarities - to people in my life whose very same have really hurt me, and I know have hurt others. I also know that what I'm dealing with - and have been - is hurting me and my own friends.

The cycle - and it's upsetting but honest to realize that it is a cycle, or at least has the potential to become one - is that somewhere along the way, I start feeling lonely, unliked, not good enough for the people I spend time with. Maybe this is because they're busy - because I'm not the absolute top priority (of course not!). Maybe it's because I really am not as close to some people as others, and the only people I happen to speak to for a while don't know me very well. Maybe it's because this all coincides with my struggling creatively - and feeling like my work isn't worth sharing.

So I don't. And I avoid people - and simultaneously, try desperately to engage them. It's a weird impossible dance where I feel lonely and also cannot bear to be around people. My attempts to talk to anyone are half-hearted because my desperation is clashing with self-defeating methods to, I assume...protect myself? I can't open up to people I'm convinced don't feel I'm worth their time.

It gets worse. I don't know how long this lasts - but usually until I can no longer bottle up. Unfortunately, what this means (or has meant) is a vent, public, and usually more intense than it would have been if I'd addressed this earlier. I still am in a state where it feels absolutely criminal - not to mention useless - to address someone, anyone, directly. At this point the feelings feel so much more universal that it feels not only unfair to address any particular person, but impractical. And, again.... not 'safe'.

What this means is I vent and I vent until someone sees it. And they talk to me. And then we talk. And then I feel better - and then, a bit later, I feel on top of the world.

But that's not a pattern that's healthy or fair, and it's changing that pattern - breaking out of the early, immediate avoidance that only gets harder to crack, that I hope to sincerely and effectively work on. It's not the only thing I need to do for my mental health - but it's a big one.

This has been a big year for me. It really has! I'd felt like I was in a rut for a long time, and I finally sought out therapy, and while I won't be able to continue that for much longer, I feel like in the past year...no, two years, I've made a lot of important progress, found new interests and worked on exploring old ones, as well as really found my place with some wonderful friends.

First things first, well, I have this blog! I have this blog because Twitter seems to be imploding, thanks to the arrogance, idiocy, and greed of a billionaire (though fingers crossed he can't call himself a billionaire much longer), and I wanted to make a website to simply collect the links, store pages, etc. of various artists and creators I might otherwise forget about.

So to do that? I made a Neocities! And then I found a tutorial on how to use Dreamwidth and some Javascript to display blog entries here on that website via RSS.... so long story short (ish?) I've been practicing HTML, CSS, and sort of kind of JavaScript too!

It's been a lot of fun, though this has only been the last week that I've messed around with it. I really hope to keep it up. I think keeping a little blog-journal will be good for me, and maybe even help me get away a bit from more....current, monopolizing social medias, which I'd like.

I've also been rediscovering, with the help of my brilliant and talented friends, my love of TTRPGs, and roleplaying in general. I'm in a Pathfinder campaign and it's one of the best things to happen to me in a long time, probably only beaten by, well, making the friends who I'm in this campaign with to begin with.

I'm also uncovering so much of what I now know to be symptoms and habits as a result of ADHD, and trying to figure out how I can help myself succeed, do what I need to do, not be harsh on myself, and that's been...difficult, but important. I'm barely over a month away from my last semester in undergrad (no plans to go to grad school. Nope. No way) and... I can't believe it. It took me a while to get here, it's been weird these last couple of years being older than 99% of my classmates, but it's been worth it so far to power through, I think. I hope.

But it's a huge end of an era, because I've been striving for this for.... this is the sixth or seventh year since I first took classes. When I started college, I was barely an adult, and in some ways college has put my life on hold, and I feel underprepared for the rest of my life....but at the same time  I can't deny how much I know I've grown and learned regardless.

Anyway, I'm trying to be positive, and part of that positivity is in recognizing accomplishment. I'm here, I'm doing better than I was, and I'm looking forward to the next year. To my first trip....er, not overseas, but over borders, at least! To my first real non-self-employed job that I can keep up with without having to worry about college. To maybe another TTRPG campaign if I can fit the time in. To getting some fuckin' guns! (I'm working out again)