Type what you're thinking about right now (11)

[Deer]

I'll save you all from my ramblings today

I was tempted I have to say but don't feel comfortable doing it when people are in festive mood. Felt abit bad about doing it yesterday actually ha.

If anyone is feeling miserable or sh!tty or lonely over this period and need someone to reach out to, you know where I'm at. Like, really. Not just saying it to be all nice. I know it affects slot of people this time of year.


For everyone else, I hope you choke on your turkey na, have a good'un folks.

[Deer]

Well, no sleep for me tonight. Might as well get up and make a wee cuppa.

[Tembo]

Hope everyone manages to have a good day today, regardless of your situation. Whether you are with your family, alone or still working.

I’m certainly thinking of those lorry drivers stuck just a few miles from me. Must be really tough for them. Thankfully it seems many local people and charities have been showing the kind side of Britain.

[Dougella]

^ I saw that people had been lowering supplies to them over bridges and others have been bringing them meals, there certainly are some good people here.
Hope you have a good day too Alex

[Amara 94]

Has the news became more of a source of entertainment since social media became big.

[Merritt]

^ I think it's become more about giving people regular short emotional tweet-sized hits similar to entertainment.

I was just wondering if there's a term for having two mutually exclusive worries. Like, worrying that time is both moving too fast and too slow. There's probably a German word for it, or a Japanese proverb.

[Amara 94]

Maybe I’m meant to be a loner. Maybe I’m just not good with people. That sounds depressing. But I like to spend time alone, do solitary activities but still like interaction. The rare occasion that I get interaction calms me down.

[Deer]

It's funny that now I don't drink and the more stable I feel the more I see potential hazards that might knock me off course.

If I venture further out with travel or if I push myself to meet new people I know it will be a huge challenge when it comes to certain situations.

Something as simple as freaking out in the town centre would lead to me running for the pub. So it does make me wonder how I will cope when I go into situations where my anxiety will go through the roof and I go into autopilot. It will be a challenge most definitely. I'd be stupid to think otherwise.

The good thing now is I detest the idea of getting drunk now. It terrifies me. Waking up and not knowing what I've done, who I've upset or the times I woke up in a cell, and then drinking again to deal with hangover and shame and anger for humiliating myself again and again and again. Thinking I had got a grip on it then falling back into it. Building myself up again from every fall I had. Feck thatlifestyle, man.

Today is the only day in a few weeks that I've felt angry or above average irritated.That's a huge difference for me.

The challenge now will be weighing up how much to push myself to do stuff and when to be patient.

When I left mental hospital, I promised myself I'd never do something that made me anxious just to please people. Now I just tell family straight if I don't want to visit or want them to visit. A fella round my neck of the woods wanted to become friends and invited me over his sometime. I refused because of my anxiety. I would have struggled to do that in the past. I'd be worried I'm case he'd think I'm weird or something but now I just know it's me who suffers and goes down a dark path when I accept shit I don't feel comfortable doing.

I feel quite positive going into 2021. My plan for 2021 is to let loose abit and by the end of the year be at least semi prepared to look for work again. I don't think I can work amongst a group of people anymore. I just can't and that's that.

I have to accept though that I might never be able to stick to a job. I might have to start contending with the idea that I might be on benefits for the rest of my life. Bittersweet really. Benefits just ease the pressure of worrying about whether I will be able to behave appropriately in a work place. Not overreacting and taking things too personally. Starting work and then leaving. Then starting the whole benefits process again. Staying on that until I'm convinced I can work again only to find I'm much weaker than I thought I was.

I sometimes think maybe it is not people that I hate. Maybe its what they reflect back to me. They reflect to me the worst aspects of myself that I find most difficult to accept.

I am super fecking grateful for the good fortune I have had this year though. I find myself thanking, feck knows what, for the good fortune. I just kind of salute life. A bit of a cheers for the help randomness.

[Deer]

Nervousness is fear at a crossroad.

[Amara 94]

My cousins post live WhatsApp status videos almost everyday. I have turned off the statuses for my sanity in the past. Today they posted the family at the arcade and a few other photos. At the time I didn’t mind seeing it. Now I think I feel a bit envious because I lack such social situations in my life.

On the other hand I wonder if they are intentionally showing off and how true it is what they portray. My cousin complains sometimes about how hard Nigeria is but looking at the statuses she seems to have much more social support than I have.

[Amara 94]

Moving out

[Amara 94]

My extended family share so much on WhatsApp. I think in the uk people don’t fully use WhatsApp like in a developing country maybe???

I have a mostly love but also a bit of hate relationship with them.

I don’t know but it makes me wonder if the stereotype of Nigerians being proud is so true. The life they portray seems better than my own in social aspects. But then on the other hand they share so much to the point I sometimes question if they are trying to prove something, if they are trying to make others feel jealous. Maybe they just care a lot about image and are not afraid to express that.

I suspect, off what my mum has said, that my aunt who I have never spoken too and then her daughter who I chat to quite a bit, may feel hurt that they weren’t able to easily move to the UK like my mum was because my aunt wasn’t born in the uk but my mum was.

My mum mostly speaks badly of them. I resent her for never ever giving me the chance to meet my cousins or even just chat to them growing up. She says that her mum didn’t bring her up and gave her to some other people she didn’t like and was maybe abused by. Just yesterday I realised that she has done the exact same thing to me and my sister, though less abuse.

[Amara 94]

Maybe I can be like the family members I see showing off but do it in a different way thinking about it.

[Rocket Spud]

^ Guys on another level! Btw did Boris the **** reach no.1?

[Rocket Spud]

Ooh

We've always got next year .. (and the year after.. and the... etc.)

[waine]

cycling athletics wwe how these three are like religion lol

[waine]

And how I'm a very messed up person.

[waine]

And all previous mistakes failures things said to people

[Deer]

Mamaw: Everyone in this world is of three kinds: a good terminator, a bad terminator, and neutral.

JD: You're a good terminator.

Mamaw: Well I wasn't always. I had to learn. Now, you could be too, if you don't feck it up. You're like me.

JD: (on his Papaw) He was a good terminator!

Mamaw: At times, he could be a bad one.........

JD: How was he bad?

Mamaw: he let things get to him, make him feel small.

-Hillbilly Elegy.

Got terrible review by film critics but I thought Amy Adams performance was one of the most realistic depictions of a mental breakdown I've ever seen. That desperation and sheer anguish screams out of her performance. The fight between what the world demands of her and her heart which she has neglected for so long. Very moving and heartbreaking film.

[Amara 94]

How I have no friends. I have one that I speak to on WhatsApp but we never meet despite living 10 minutes apart.

How my interests don’t appeal to most people.

[Amara 94]

Journaling has calmed me down for now. I actually feel now that my relationship between me and my cousins, especially my first female cousin, needs to be more distanced.

They are cousins yes, I feel my first female cousin is similar to me in certain ways, not all though. Even small things like the type of posts or questions she has used on social media. But they have had a different life to me. I wonder if some envy the fact that I grew up in the uk, with supposedly more opportunities. Lots of other factors and that call, it felt like my cousin just did it as a duty not cause they wanted to.

The other day my cousin, whose close friend I found out is from the US labelled his friend as spoilt, casually, not in a serious way. My granny, when she used to visit us used to call us spoilt or imply that we should be more grateful and stuff. I especially remember an Easter meal, she went really basic and didn’t put much effort into making it reminding us that we should be grateful, my mum was in the mental hospital. It’s not far fetched for my cousins to view me the same way. Especially noticing the joke one of my cousins made on his US friend.

I have to accept the fact that we aren’t close, at least of now. I still love them but we definitely aren’t close. Maybe the reasoning I’m using here a bit is similar to the reasoning people use when they say a rich person shouldn’t marry a poor person most times. There is just too much of a divide and conflict.

[Rocket Spud]

Well, it certainly looks like i'm taking the optional working day off today. That was something i wasn't siding with last night, but after another poor nights sleep and drifting in and out after the alarm (damn you, snooze button!)... this is what has resulted

[Mo34]

Not long finished watching a webcast of K's funeral. He was the husband of someone I used to volunteer with and remained friends with. Feel so sorry for M (his wife) and T (there daughter). Masks, no singing, limited numbers. He was a vey well known conductor and had also been a musical director in the West End. He should have had a big memorial instead 30? ppl all sat at a distance with masks. They played some of the recordings of works he had conducted Tchaikovsky, Greig etc and both M and T did readings. Made me wish I had known M when she was younger and still an actress - even now she has amazing poise and articulation and just holds your attention. Poor K, he was a very good age but still it's very sad. Despite the circumstances they did him proud.

[choirgirl]

There are people who would have been happy to be in my position, being able to live at home for years in the southeast where there are more job opportunities, while saving up, or launching themselves into a proper career path. If I'd been less anxious and more focused on the basics of what I wanted, I could have made something of the situation. The irony is that if I had been less anxious, I would have moved out again as you're supposed to into a house share and not bothered with the savings. I probably would have grown up again a bit more but my finances wouldn't have been good.

I've found it odd how we are going backwards in time and forwards in time at the same time in so many ways. For example, it is now common again for many younger adults to live at home for years until they eventually couple up or become successful enough on their own to move out. That's like the old days, but it's going on for longer. So I needed to take an old fashioned approach and accept this. Have a five year plan, that sort of thing. It's easy to forget how bloody debilitating the anxiety was, though and how terrible I was at getting help for it.

The trouble with the southeast, though, is that housing costs make you want to kill yourself, they make everything seem impossible unless you are a Successful Person. Even now, I look at properties and think, that should at the maximum be about 60% of the actual price. That's how insane they are. Even with this compromise and that compromise. And my dad complaining about me moving out of the area didn't help.

[Amara 94]

I feel mentally dysfunctional

[Mellie]

thinking I may as well not be here if all I do is exist.

[choirgirl]

^ Pretty much all I do is exist and complain.

[Chess&Junkfood]

^^
^

[Northern Natterer]

Thinking about whether to have any optimism for next year or just set my standards low.

[Amara 94]

Sometimes I share too much information with my friend.