Full Circle
Hello LJ, it's been awhile.
I need to come back here. Back where it started.
You see, I have had a very unhealthy relationship with social media and the internet. It kinda started on IRC when I first got online but it really bloomed here. You see, my mental illness started manifesting in high school but it really didn't get into the full swing of things until I came online, circa 2002...right when I started this journal. I was depressed and anxiety ridden. I was desperate for connection and love and attention. I was needy. I was histrionic. and I acted out on it by posting things on here. and after this died, then facebook, then tumblr, then twitter, and then everywhere on the internet all at once, in chats, on social media...I screamed it from the rooftop; I was shit. I was worthless. I was ugly. I was unloveable. I wanted to die. all of that. and it kinda started here. and this pattern, and these feelings lasted for years.
It is now 2023. Over 20 years have passed since this pattern really got in full swing. And I became infamous in the online bear communites...as a joke, as a sad sack, as someone to avoid, as someone who hated himself so much that you really needed to stay away from him as much as you can. Yes, there are those guys (saints, really) who stuck with me and for that I am grateful, but there are several who ran away. And I don't blame them.
In February of this year, I started seeing a psych nurse, as my last ditch effort. I hadn't even tried any meds for at least five years...nothing really helped. Every SSRI they threw at me just made me sick and lose my boner but nothing offered relief. I eventually gained the label of "treatment resistant" which really made me feel hopeless...the next step would have been electroconvulsive therapy which, for obvious reasons, would not be ideal. I told the nurse this, who had asked me questions about my medical history, and my family, and I had disclosed that my sister was Bipolar, so was my aunt, and my father definitely had some sort of undiagnosed mental illness. The nurse thought about it, and then came to me with a solution the next session: my mental illness might be Bipolar II, which causes the depression and the manic episodes manifest more like anxiety and irritability. I was put on a mood stabilizer, lamictal, and as I titrated up on the dose, a black veil started to lift. I was finding myself in better mindsets, more able to roll with the punches and deal with adversity without crumbling immediately, more able to look at the bright side of things. Right when the full dose hit, I left on a road trip from Denver to the Grand Canyon and that trip was transformative. I had never seen the canyon, or Mesa Verde, or the Four Corners, or anything like that. It woke my soul up to a state which I had truly never known as an adult. Now, six months later, I still have some of that fire inside. I'm finally healing. I'm finally correcting my path. At age 46, I feel like I have finally quieted that voice inside, the voice that says that I'm trash, because I'm not trash. I am loveable. I am worthy. My life is finally on the upswing.
So why write this now? Maybe I'm writing to put this out there into the void. Maybe I'm posting this here so that I can bring closure to this. Maybe I'm posting this here so that I can release the regret that I hold in my heart; I regret acting out on social media. I regret pushing people away from me. I regret making a fool of myself in the public eye. I regret how I acted to people who didn't deserve someone unleasing the full force of mental illness on them. But regret is regret, and the best I can do is say "I'm sorry. I'm getting better. I am better. I Don't Do That Anymore™."
I have no idea if anyone is still on this platform. I could have just as easily written this in my private journal and left it at that, but I felt the need to put this in the public forum, regardless of whether or not anyone reads this. This will most likely be my last entry on this journal. I just wanted to close this chapter of my life for good.
I am no longer the man who started this journal. I have changed. I am different. I am better.
Godspeed everyone.