oversharing on the internet time ( ﾉ ﾟｰﾟ)ﾉ

!!TW: depression, mention of s*lf h**m & s**cide
i'm sorry this is long. i've just been wanting to get this off my chest for years.

i've been awkward and tense around ppl since i could remember. actually, i think i was pretty energetic and outgoing when i was younger but that changed when i entered grade school. it pretty much spiraled from there. i became awkward namely bc, as lame as this sounds, i never really had friends so i didn't properly develop social skills. I mean, ig i had school friends but they were judgmental and two-faced. they always made me feel like i wasn't enough. i always felt like they hated me and didn't know why. yet, i had no one else so i clung onto them. i attempted to appease them by slowly smothering my personality. there must be something wrong with it. it must go. then i can be liked. i killed my personality and in order to create a new one, i collected "normal" and "likeable" traits to jumble together into a disjointed mosaic.

to be frank, i was jealous. i wanted lots of friends who had the same interests as me. friends who wouldn't talk about the things i wasn't invited to right in front of me. i wanted a best friend who would also call me their best friend. i wanted someone who would accept me unconditionally.

desperate to quench my jealousy, i devised a trick to making friends: mimicking others. i figured out how to be amiable and "normal" by changing my behaviors to suit each person/group. it wasn't until years later that i realized that this was typical response from a child who was neglected and hated without being told the reason why.

it worked. come high school, i started making new friends who actually liked me. ofc, it came at the price of constantly putting on an act. i didn't even realize how exhausting it was because my inner lonely child was overwhelmed with joy. friends! a big friend group! people telling me i'm pretty, smart, funny, cool, and creative! i felt like i finally fit in. or at least i maintained that façade. that ugly gnawing feeling of worthlessness did not subside. it gnawed at the makeshift mosaic of personalities i'd come to call myself. i felt empty and fake. i wanted something, but i didn't know what. yet, i had to maintain the mosaic. i couldn't let ppl get a glimpse of the utterly pathetic child cowering behind the mosaic. the mosaic was glued together with fear.
"these friends could leave you at any moment," it said, "if you falter, they'll realize that you're not worth their time. they'll abandon you. they'll leave you for someone better and then sneer and giggle at you."

not surprisingly, i'd developed anxiety and depression. i loathed myself. i'd internalized the hate i'd received.
then the pandemic started. i was so busy running around, jumping from one distraction to the next, that it was like hitting a wall at 300 MPH. being isolated from everyone during quarantine started to chip away at the mosaic.
what did i really like to do? how am i supposed to act now? what am i doing this all for? who am i?

things... spiraled. i tried several things, many that were very unhealthy and that had significant consequences, to distract myself. i scrambled to construct another personality. i couldn't stand the discomfort of stillness. i didn't want to confront my issues.
in the fall of 2020, after a disastrous summer, i came down by force. mostly bc my parents dragged me down. i was in a shit ton of trouble. not only with my parents, but with the shitstorm of neglected feelings that flooded me all at once.

i became extremely depressed. i started avoiding all of my friends and lost motivation to do my schoolwork. it didn't help that my parents didn't take my mental illness seriously. it hurt being invalidated like that. i was so desperate to prove myself that i convinced them to set up an appointment with a psychologist. (i'd been going to therapy since 8th grade but yk how american therapists can be. they told my parents there was nothing to worry about so my parents took that as a cue to write it off as "puberty") two doctors prescribed me antidepressants. i didn't start taking them bc my mom was scared of letting me take them, but the prescription was enough for me. it was nice to feel validated.

but, it got worse. my parents made me go to a foreign country for a few months bc they thought i was going down the wrong path. ig they wanted to force me to reset. they were overwhelmed too.

ngl, at first i was like fuck yeah! i get to run away from it all! admittedly, i'd made a bad habit of avoiding discomfort by running from mentally challenging/emotionally cumbersome things. yeah, well, that was only fun until the whole country went into quarantine. by the time my return trip to the US came around, i was a sleep-deprived, demotivated, and apathetic husk of a human. i didn't want to go back to the US yet i didn't want to stay there. i didn't know where i belonged. i didn't know what i wanted to do with my life. i couldn't even imagine myself as an adult. i felt like a failure.

"even tho im fortunate enough to be considered a priveleged individual, im still a failure. how? why am i like this? how could i be so ungrateful and let my life slip away?" these questioned ricocheted inside my mind.
another emotion slithered into my life: guilt.

even tho i hadn't even graduated high school, i didn't want to keep on living. i had nothing i was really passionate about. nothing felt "mine". everything felt like it was something i'd picked up to appease people. my grades plummeted. i ignored my friends' texts and my teachers' emails. i closed myself off from everyone. at a time when i should've been talking about my emotions, i kept quiet about them. i didn't feel good enough to burden others with my problems.

i choked every time i tried to talk to ppl about what i was feeling. something had wrapped up the words inside me and refused to let them out. something was keeping them hostage.
"you're just faking it. they'll know it. they'll think you're an attention wh*re. that's right: it's just another trait you picked up for attention. plus, what makes you think they care enough to listen to you? don't expect ppl to reciprocate your feelings; to lend an ear, to lend their heart, to extend a helping hand like you do. they're not obligated to. so keep quiet," it hissed, keeping a tight grip on my throat.

being in such a dire mental state, i made another appointment with a psychologist. i needed help. i was pretty much s**cidal. it terrified me that i could c*t myself and feel relief from it. i didn't want to exactly k*11 myself, i just wanted to stop existing. i wanted my emotions to be caught by a n00se and h@nged.

i started taking antidepressants. shortly after, i was diagnosed with ADHD. "oh. that explains a lot," i thought. i'd been sitting on the idea of me having ADHD for a while but was doubtful. (a given, since i doubt everything i think of, ofc.)
the question of whether depression caused my executive dysfunction or if my executive dysfunction caused my depression became one i couldn't ignore. ofc, wedged into that equation was my anxiety. what a pesky little thing.

that's where i am currently. idk what will happen in the future. i can't fathom how i'll go about trying to assimilate into normal life. idk how i'm going to return to school in-person or act around the people i used to hang out with. my grades are a mess and, even tho i still have a while until i graduate from high school, adulthood looms over me. im constantly wracked with anxiety and dissatisfaction. my body seems to be giving up on me, too. i'm fatigued and plagued with migraines on the daily. and the back pain...jeez, listen to me. when did i suddenly hit 70?

it's messy. but, eventho it's messy, i think i'm slowly getting better. all i can do is try to get better. afterall, i'm still being yanked along by the child named Time in its endless romp. i can't holler for a time out or to be subbed out, for that would be the equivalent of a permanent forfeit. but i'm scared. i'm scared of how fast everything is going. i'm only now picking up the pieces of my younger self's trauma and reconciling with them. yet, time keeps moving. i want to slam on the brakes. when will i get a brake. lol, sorry, i had to.

but, at least that ugly mosaic has finally been torn down. maybe not in the best way, but it's gone. of course, its remnants are still engrained in my mind. with some work, i hope they can slowly be sanded over to form a base for my new mosaic. even tho i can't look upon my old self fondly, it doesn't deserve to be hated by me anymore. instead, it can act as a lesson to guide me towards a happier place.

if you've read this far, thank you. this was kinda scary for me to post. if anything in here resonates with you, i hope you can find comfort in knowing that you're not alone. (‾◡◝)