Things have been improving for a long time now. Immeasurably slowly, I cannot see the changes in myself as they happen. Only in retrospect.
I no longer fully recognize what I have written here. It makes me incredibly grateful to my past-self for recording it.
I have forgotten where I have been and did not know where I would go.
At the time I wanted so much to know where I could go from where I was. I wanted to know what was possible, and how long it would take, and how to get there. I anguished and grasped and flailed and cried and tried and beat myself up for stumbling in circles. Later I accepted the circles were part of the path forward, and that I could not detect if anything was getting better until well after the fact. And I still pushed and tried and was lost and despaired.
It's hard to compare, because my life circumstances changed. They changed everything about the world around me, my perceptions, and the limits of my highs and lows. But still, in this other set of circumstances, I continued to improve inside of that state. I am proud of that. I am proud of where I am and where I have come from. I was never proud of anything before.
Enough side-stepping, here is the path it took:
I tried to remember and believe in the good times or the good people said about me.
I wrote and tried to capture what was happening, and work through it, and remember how I did so.
I tried to push myself away from the senseless self-berating. And to break away from this feeling of what others expected, demanded of me.
I tried to be patient with myself, and give myself time, forgiveness, and gifts of free time and acceptance.
I tried to turn thoughts around and find positive true things I knew.
I called people. I talked to people when I felt alone. Mostly one, a small group of three or five in total.
Then
I stayed in the same house as my love.
He stabilized me, as being around him always has. But now it was consistent and not a buoy tossed to me when I was struggling to stay afloat. That made many things easier. That doesn't mean that I wasn't working on improving myself, and certainly I still did many problematic things starting out. Things that have gradually been erased.
I have gotten better about being good to myself. Eating, resting, keeping warm, taking care of headaches, taking care of my needs.
I have gotten better about doing errands alone, and doing things that are intimidating to me. I am okay getting groceries or shopping or picking up prescriptions on my own now.
I talked about these types of typical career and approval fears with my roommate. I walked him through how I dealt with some things and what I'd advise to do or not do for a better way to go about things. It was cathartic.
I decided early not to feel bad about the goals I set or the work I got. I wanted to get hired. I didn't feel (that) bad about getting work slowly, and I didn't feel (that) bad that it wasn't in my subject area of choice right away, and I didn't feel (that) bad about other people being "ahead" of me in my field. I felt really good after my first job. People would hire me. I was a good worker. I could earn my way and pay for myself. It took me months to apply for work, and months again to apply for work later, and again for the third time. But each time was faster, more comprehensive, more unrestricted, less cautious, less daunted. By the latest time I was sending in multiple in a day, and maintaining one a week for a while. I agonized over every sentence less. I asked over and over for basic advice and approval, but less. I cried with frustration about not knowing what people want to see and not knowing how to give it, but it was a smaller deal than before.
When he left for a week to travel, I broke down immediately. I can't remember if it was a day or mere hours after he left. I was inconsolable. I missed him, I didn't want to be without him. It was a gutwrenching loneliness. It could not be put aside for a moment or removed with any amount of reason or knowledge. It passed over the span of a few hours.
I would watch hours of online streams after I ran out of better ways to spend my time (games to play and books to read). I would not have a good idea of what to look forward to, what to work toward in my life. I got better about that, and I now have much more glimmers of what I want and like and look forward to. I did not spend time out of the room or with friends, but that wasn't really a goal of mine/I am just like that??? I did have a goal of volunteering at the pet shelter to clean the pet rodents' cages, but I was too shy to ask the shelter to do that for a year or two.
And now I have moved out and been on my own for three weeks. I still don't know if I will become lonely again, or lose my self-care. I still don't know how low my lows will be on my own. But there is no denying what I have done. I interviewed, and packed all of my things, and found a place to rent, and filled out job paperwork, and took my car in to the mechanic, and drove 700 miles, and started work the day I moved into my new place (which I had never seen before), and bought food, and set up my room, and set up my mailbox, and went to work 40 miles away every day, and reset my sleep schedule to be 3 hours earlier, and met my coworker, and worried about why my car smokes sometimes... all in the span of two weeks and all totally by myself. And I have been doing pretty well for myself. I certainly have been doing many things and quite self motivated to get out and explore exciting things. I have tried hanging out with new friends, I have been reading and taking care of chores. I have not been eating very well. But, well, here I am. This is where I have come to so far.
And things seem like they will only keep improving. Slowly as ever.
It's not really the crazy adventure I am on that I wanted to know back then. It was the daily level of contentment I have reached. It was the hope that has budded within me. It was the fears that have eroded and faded, if only a bit of weathering. It was the ways it happened and the rate it happened I wished to know. Even if the news was bad. Even if I never got better, or it took decades. Really. I wanted to know even that. I wish I could reach back and try to communicate it.
I don't know how much it would have helped, but I wish I could try.
I had so little comfort. It was so empty for so long. I'm sorry. I don't know why they were so cruel to you. I'm proud of how you fought and felt and suffered and were iron determined to make something, anything fracture, break, breach and give. Sometimes like a frantic animal, but more often with the fierce unforgivingness of a plant root. I wanted so much to know what it was like to feel proud. And I did not know how to. I could not. If only I had known that the very moment I was sobbing, frightened, resentful, fuming, empty, and barren, I was giving myself that pride I craved... even though I would only feel it years later.
It is vague.
It is aged.
It is weak.
It is warm.
It is rooted.
