Giving up on yourself · 4:39am Nov 25th, 2020
Back in the day, when I was more active on this site, I didn’t only read a ton of stories, I also had a lot of people on my watch list. Whenever I browsed the feed, a startling amount of the blog posts (or maybe it just seems to me that way now because those are the ones I remember) were people talking about serious personal problems, ranging from anxiety to severe depression. These journals were meant as an explanation for a lack of story updates, and often ended with a shout-out to anyone going through something similar.
If you’re anything like I was back then, you read the title of these posts, maybe the first sentence, rolled your eyes and continued scrolling.
Seems like it’s my turn now to write such a journal. I think it’s necessary and important, and I’ll explain why.
I started working on The Problem because I was feeling like shit, and I’d been feeling like shit for a long time. I wanted to get some things off my chest and just vent for a bit, find some way to acknowledge what I felt every day and make it tangible, more real. I thought it would be easier to cope if I put my thoughts on paper, so I sat my ass down for a couple days and out came what used to be called The Chapter. I was surprised my first story got as much positive attention as it did. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if a lot of that was folks from Doccular’s old crew being nice and dropping a like, heh. Few people had something to say, but then again, I don’t think this story is particularly thought-provoking. I assume reading it should be more like watching a car crash in slow motion. You know what’s gonna happen, yet you don’t look away as the vehicle impacts, deforms and destroys itself.
Yeah, there really isn’t much story to the story. Its weakest point must be the fact that I never really explain what the hell Twilight’s problem is, or rather how exactly she turned from a happy girl into a depressed and suicidal wreck. The reason for that is simple: While I wanted to process some of my personal experiences, I did not feel comfortable going too deep into detail. Anybody who saw something of themselves in Twilight’s struggle knows that some things are impossibly hard to even acknowledge to yourself, let alone present to an audience, even if it is under the shroud of anonymity the internet provides. As a result, the story is somewhat lacking in substance, subtlety and proper pacing.
Originally, that was supposed to be the end of it. One story, one chapter, open ending. But I quickly became dissatisfied with the idea of leaving it as it was. I guess I had a particularly good day when I changed the story status to unfinished, and renamed The Chapter to Chapter 1. Then, I didn’t look at it for over four years.
An awful four years, because even if a part of me wanted to believe it, writing a depressing story neither helped alleviate the horrible mental pressure I’ve been putting on myself, nor did it give me the push I needed to attempt to fix things. Instead, I denied, I hid from my problems and the world, and I continued to let myself rot in my own misery.
I’m much better nowadays, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m over everything that happened. That’s probably gonna take a couple more months of things going smoothly in my life - that, or I grow a pair and go see a therapist. As opposed to what the second chapter might suggest, I’ve never talked to a professional about my problems, and never got any kind of diagnosis in that regard. I’ve also yet to fully confide in someone close to me. Naturally, my struggle didn’t go unnoticed by family and friends, but none of them were particularly insistent. An empty smile, a half-assed assurance that everything was fine, and they would back off for a while. A part of me wants to blame them for that, but I don’t think that would be fair. They simply put too much faith in me and my ability to articulate my thoughts, and couldn’t see how much I’d picked myself apart already. How do you tell your mother that deep inside, you know you're a worthless failure? I couldn’t do that to her. It was easier to hide it all away, and pretend I’d be able to deal with it by myself - even though I knew it wasn’t true.
A lot of people have a lot of things to say about life. Things meant to associate, motivate, educate, warn. What I found is that life lessons - as impressive, pompous, or deep they may sound - are wholly useless, unless you manage to arrive at these conclusions by yourself. Does change come from within? It’s respectable if it does, but for me that wasn’t the case. I didn’t manage to pull myself out of my hole on my own, I only barely made it out alive after it had started to rain and the water had begun to rise. I wish I’d been able to pull myself together earlier and done something, anything, but in the end it took getting cornered in the worst of ways for me to confront the behemoth I had built myself. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve taken away from this, and it’s proven time and time again to be true: Confrontation is always preferable to inaction. It might be the worst experience of your life, but after all is said and done you’ll feel better for standing up for yourself and getting it out of the way. No matter how broken you think you are, it’s worth it to take a chance and try to put yourself back together. And if you find yourself failing again and again, it’s ok to ask for help. Can a mind fix itself? Some can, but all of us who are not so lucky aren’t out of options; I don’t need to name them for you.
I never attempted suicide, but little more than a year ago I came pretty close. I have a very specific set of problems, and took a very specific approach to attempting to solve them, and I’m not sure if what I wrote here applies to many people. It’s just a small piece of my own story I wanted to share, because if you’ve read this far, you can probably associate with at least some of it. And if you can take something positive away from it, if this helps even a single person take a step in the right direction, that’s enough for me. That’s why I wrote this journal and gave the story a second chapter, and that’s why I believe these matters are important to talk about.
m1ntf4n out.
Hey m1nt, I don't check the site often anymore but I was looking over my fics and I remembered listing you as an editor in a few of them. You were a really kind and helpful person and I wanted to see how you were doing, so I clicked here to check.
I'm really sorry things aren't going your way. I'm not a therapist but if you need to talk to me, feel free to shoot me a personal message or something, trying to be more active here.