we'll all float on, all right.
1. I AM SO SORRY YOU GUYS. I wish I had a decent excuse for disappearing off the face of the Earth but I don't. I just got distracted by real life.
2. I have a job! I'm a waitress, which is kind of meh, but hey, they pay me.
3. I also have friends now! (Well, friends that live in reasonably close proximity to me.) And a DnD group, which is awesome because my old group abandoned me. Granted, they've been playing for like forever and I'm still pretty new to the rules and such, but they're cool with teaching me.
4. I'm starting at USM on August 24th (assuming I can get FAFSA to actually acknowledge my existence) with something in the realm of 40 credits, depending on how things transfer.
5. I'm working on getting out of my parents' house. Due to #2 (and possibly with the help of overflow from student loans, depending on how much I need to apply for and all that jazz), I can actually do this. One of my coworkers is looking for a roommate, and my brother's girlfriend just moved up here (I think the plan is to save up money and then we'll get an apartment, because his house is cramped as all get-out, and they've only been together for like four months, so they're both a little leery of moving in together just yet), so hopefully I'll be moving out at some point this month or early next.
6. All of this is to say: Finally, finally, finally, after a year and a half of being stagnant and hating everything and being afraid of everything and feeling like a failure and trying to pull my life back together and more or less being tossed around on the stormy Sea of Mental Illness, I am better. I know there's no such thing as being "cured," but I can live again. I'm not suffocating under it all anymore. I'm not so afraid of screwing up again that I can't try.
And!
I'm more relaxed and happy now than I ever was before. I never thought I'd say this (seriously. Never.) but I'm actually glad for how it all worked out. I've changed so much in the past two years, and it's been hell, but I honestly feel like I'm better off having gone through it. I was a wreck long before my diagnosis, a bundle of anxieties and uncertainties, filled with self-loathing and self-doubt, and no that's not all gone and I don't think it ever will be, but for the first time in, well, as long as I can remember, I honestly feel like I can have a semi-normal life. I'm not trapped in my head anymore, like I always was before.
So. <3 to all of you, who put up with me and gave me encouragement and e-hugs and love.