20 years on
I started my LiveJournal in 2001. I only remember this because I can, oddly, picture myself in my college, senior-year dorm room, writing about how I'd probably forget that I had an LJ within a few weeks. Instead, I kept it regularly for more than a decade. I made online friends and kept in contact with IRL ones.
But what I remember most about LJ is that it saved me. During the long slog that was summer 2001, when I was incredibly depressed but didn't have the language (or diagnosis) for it, writing and getting responses saved me. In grad school, when I got so depressed that I stopped eating and lost enough weight that people thought I was anorexic, writing and getting responses saved me.
Now it's 2020 and I don't think anything can save anything anymore. And I know that writing here, on DW where I've never had a community and where I don't think community exists anymore anyway, isn't going to garner any responses at all, but I suppose it can't hurt to write.
I'm a mess. I haven't been okay since 2016, not really. Not since Tamnonlinear died. Not since election night. Though to be fair, those two are one and the same. After a time (months? more?) I became functional again. (I don't remember November 2016.) But that time broke off a piece of me. I used to believe people are basically good, especially as individuals. I don't anymore.
I knew this autumn would be bad. I planned for it, in fact, saying no to work things that I would ordinarily have said yes to. Paring back where I could in order to give myself room for, well, me, I guess. But I didn't expect a global pandemic. (I'd say no one did, but that's not true. Epidemiologists have been predicting something like covid19 for decades.)
In the past few months, panic attacks have increased substantially, so my doctor and I upped my dosages. It helped. No longer was I freaking about every set-back, every time something raised a bit of uncertainty. When asked, I would have said that anxiety was my main concern; the depression was under control, more or less, other than how the two work together.
But that's not true anymore. The way I feel today-- the way I felt last night-- was like being thrown back into summer 2001 or fall 2016. I've been crying for hours for no particular reason other than the general existential dread that has settled over me and become a companion these past 4 years. Yes, I have specific worries, but nothing that should have been sobbing all the time.
I went to bed early and took Advil pm in the hopes of just ... not existing for a while. It helped and I slept and I woke up feeling very slightly better. But I also spent significant time wondering what relief there would be in not existing at all.
Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy, ends up deciding that the reason we don't all just kill ourselves is out of fear of not knowing what comes next. I would disagree. For me, it's more about not wanting to cause pain to my parents or Pyrite.
I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!
But what I remember most about LJ is that it saved me. During the long slog that was summer 2001, when I was incredibly depressed but didn't have the language (or diagnosis) for it, writing and getting responses saved me. In grad school, when I got so depressed that I stopped eating and lost enough weight that people thought I was anorexic, writing and getting responses saved me.
Now it's 2020 and I don't think anything can save anything anymore. And I know that writing here, on DW where I've never had a community and where I don't think community exists anymore anyway, isn't going to garner any responses at all, but I suppose it can't hurt to write.
I'm a mess. I haven't been okay since 2016, not really. Not since Tamnonlinear died. Not since election night. Though to be fair, those two are one and the same. After a time (months? more?) I became functional again. (I don't remember November 2016.) But that time broke off a piece of me. I used to believe people are basically good, especially as individuals. I don't anymore.
I knew this autumn would be bad. I planned for it, in fact, saying no to work things that I would ordinarily have said yes to. Paring back where I could in order to give myself room for, well, me, I guess. But I didn't expect a global pandemic. (I'd say no one did, but that's not true. Epidemiologists have been predicting something like covid19 for decades.)
In the past few months, panic attacks have increased substantially, so my doctor and I upped my dosages. It helped. No longer was I freaking about every set-back, every time something raised a bit of uncertainty. When asked, I would have said that anxiety was my main concern; the depression was under control, more or less, other than how the two work together.
But that's not true anymore. The way I feel today-- the way I felt last night-- was like being thrown back into summer 2001 or fall 2016. I've been crying for hours for no particular reason other than the general existential dread that has settled over me and become a companion these past 4 years. Yes, I have specific worries, but nothing that should have been sobbing all the time.
I went to bed early and took Advil pm in the hopes of just ... not existing for a while. It helped and I slept and I woke up feeling very slightly better. But I also spent significant time wondering what relief there would be in not existing at all.
Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy, ends up deciding that the reason we don't all just kill ourselves is out of fear of not knowing what comes next. I would disagree. For me, it's more about not wanting to cause pain to my parents or Pyrite.
I have abandoned LJ, alas. Find me, comment to me, on DW, please!