Catastrophizing Life

I’ve been asking myself for years now, “Why am I here?” It’s sort of become my catch-phrase. People now-a-days either laugh when I say it, because they’re all expecting it, they just don’t know when it’s going to come out, or they finish the sentence after I start it.

I’ve said variations of that same thing too many times to count “Oh hell, why am I here?” “Oh Keith (an old coworker) why are we here?” Etc. But at the end of the day, I don’t think a happy person would be saying those things.

Truth is, I live a happy life in some respects. I have a job with the freedom to, often times, work as much overtime as I’d like. This allows me to moderately comfortable. I’ll be it, broke-ly, but comfy. For example, if I need more coffee from the store, or I’d like a hot cup from Dunkin, I don’t typically have to look at my balance to know I’ll be alright. I finance things I can’t afford outright, and I usually try to find deals where there’s no interest.

I have a job I love. The kind of job I didn’t know existed before I got it. CNC machine operation. Who’d have ever known that such a job existed just outside of my awareness. Awareness, there’s a word I use often when I’m talking to myself. I do that a lot. Talk to myself, not necessarily use the word “awareness” often.

And why do I do that? Why do I talk to myself often? Because I have no one to talk to. I’m a 45 year old man, and I have no one to talk to. Why? Why don’t I have anyone to talk to, because I’m a work-a-holic. I have to be or else I can’t afford to live ghetto-comfortably. I work 67 hours and 15 minutes a week. Before I go in depth with that, and talk about how much work that actually is, I’d like to point out that I have a coworker who actually does his 40 hours a week at our plant, while simultaneously working a second 40-hour a week job. So I’m not the only work-o-holic I know. And the amount of work I do dulls in comparison to that guys. Hence why he just purchased a house with an inground pool, and I bought an above ground pool that I’m still paying for. And again, I’d just like to remind you that I love my job. I’d have to or I’d go insane working all that overtime at a place I didn’t enjoy working at. I work five 12-hour days (actually, 12-hours and 15-minute days) in a row, Monday through Friday, and 6 more hours on Saturdays. I do this, because I bring home over 13 hundred a week when I do. If I worked just my 40 hours, I bring home just under 700 dollars weekly. Sorry, but that, divided by 4 (or even 5 when there’s 5 paydays in a month) doesn’t even cover half of my monthly bills. “But hey, that’s on you. You don’t have to buy stuff like pools, or coffee from Dunkin all the time.” But I do. I lived broke before, for many, many years, and I’m not about to live that way again.

Here's the problem… And it’s a dime a dozen story, so parden the woe-is-me vibe of it all. I am so depressed. Deeply. I’m riddled with mental illness. I’m just getting so sick of existing. I’m just tired. I’m exhausted. People think I’m suffering from burnout because of the number of hours I put in at work, but that’s not it. At least, not exclusively. Think I’m depressed now? Think about how depressed I’d be if they started repossessing things I’ve bought to make myself comfortable. How depressed I’d be if forced to watch the incredible credit score I’ve built burn to the ground. No. Burnout from work is not it at all. It’s burnout from insufficient love and attention from other humans.

Why does no one put into me even half of what I put into them? I’m the guy at work who bought chairs for all of his coworker to sit in while on breaks, instead of buying just one for myself. Or the one who bought 4 pop-up tents to keep us warm in the winter and dry in the rainstorms, instead of just one for myself. I’m the guy that’ll take everyone’s cigarette orders when I have to drive 2 hours away for my smokes every few months, instead of just getting smokes for myself. And I’ll even buy you a couple cartons even if you tell me you’re good for the time being, because I know you’ll be out before I go again. You know what I ask for all of this? Not a thing, because I don’t desire anything back aside from your friendship.

Back when the internet used to be new and exciting, and still mostly anonymous, boy was that the perfect time to exist. You could literally get home after a long day at school/work where you were a big no one, and sign onto the internet, and share only parts of yourself that you wanted to share, and be a real GOAT there in digi-land. Leave it to catfishes and cupcake chasers to ruin that for all of us who really enjoyed not being ourselves for a little while! Now everything (mostly FaceBook) is all about using your real name and being an extension of your real life. Sorry, I deal with enough BS being me out in the real world, why do I want to carry that identity with me into my digital life? And the internet is so webbed in with real life now that there’s virtually no escaping it. You can live your life 100% offline with only a landline and cable television like it’s 1985, and yo azz still gon be found online, plain and simple.

And that’s really the point. I’ve suffered from mental illness a lot longer than the last few years, it’s pretty much been a life-long battle. The difference is, as one gets older they lose what’s called their resilience. If you have a negative voice in your head, and your 17 years old, your own positive voice can still “talk you off a ledge” because he is the resilient half of you, but as you age, and life happens to you over the years, that positive part of the depressed person’s mind becomes smaller and smaller. Like the enamel of your teeth gets worn over the years; Or like your positivity is the edge of a creek called depression that’s constantly flooding. Eventually your walls are going to give out, and your property, and whole house will be swept up into that water, dragged away while being shredded by the water. (I actually saw that happen in several TikTok videos a couple years ago during all the flooding down south.)

Anyway, when I’m done working my 67 hour-and-15-minute work weeks, I’m a zombie. I spend my day and a half off of work pretty much either sleeping or laying around all day. I’m just too tired to really do much. Why? Not because I worked so much, but because of depression. I actually prefer working than not working. At least while I’m working all day long, I’m not laying around the house all alone, which is what I do on my days off, and that’s because I’m too busy working to really have ongoing dialog with existing friends and family every day, and so when I’m finally off, and everyone is busy doing their own things and living their lives, why should I be surprised I’m laying around my house alone.

Forget making new friends, or a love interest. I don’t even have the time to keep up with the people who I already know. And so recently, it’s slowly begun to hit me, which has opened up an even deeper pit into depression than there was before. And that’s, that I work so much, in order to not be that poor poor (duplicate word intended) boy anymore, but if I simply stopped existing, I wouldn’t be poor. And more? No one would even notice. Like Rachel said of Phoebe’s place in their friend group on the show Friends many years ago, and to paraphrase: “I just pluck right out.” Do I really make an impact? Do I really matter that much to anyone? I’ve done the math, and I don’t really think that I do. I guess maybe whoever my immediate supervisor is at the time at my job might scramble for a minute to find some other machine operator willing to do 67-hours and 15 minutes a week, but that wouldn’t take long to find. I think the only person on this planet who would cry if I were gone would be my mother, and lets just face it, no parent should ever have to bury their child. I can’t think of a soul who loses anything in the event of my abrupt departure.

I know, suicide is shocking and for a day or 2 after a suicide (or death in general for that matter) it’s the topic of discussion for sure. I, for example, take suicide hard. When Chester Bennington from Linkin Park took his life back in 2017 I cried for days, though I didn’t know him or care for him personally in real life, but he was always there, he was such a great entertainer, and then he was gone. Just like that. Suicide, it sucks, I know.

But you can rest assuredly that I would never take my own life. Why? Because along with depression, another mental illness I have is anxiety. Anecdote time: When I was a little boy, my family, not religious or church-going whatsoever, didn’t stop me when I decided to start going to church. I was a church-o-holic. It started when we were given the choice to leave school an hour early on Wednesdays to go to like a youth group thing at one of the town’s local churches. Heck yeah, leave school an hour early? I’m down! Then, it morphed into going to another church entirely. I went to church on Wednesdays, Sundays, and sometimes even Saturdays, and then later in childhood, we moved towns and I went to another church on Wednesday nights. Unfortunately, God and I parted ways. I just couldn’t be on board with some of the immoral things that were going on in that good book, and so I lost my faith. However, I still have a residual fear that taking one’s own life doesn’t end well for them in the after life. Hence the mental illness Anxiety, burdensome as it is, also being what saves me. So if I ever end up dead, know 2 things: 1) I didn’t do it, and 2) It’s about time!

Until then, I’ll continue living a happy life, but feeling sad about it for absolutely no reason. I really do have all of the earthly possessions I want and need, I just don’t feel like I’m connect-worthy with other humans. I don’t have time, and no one ever seems to try to connect with me when I do have time.

Let me break into the things my negative head says to what little shred of positive headspace I still have left.. Actually, scratch that. I can’t do that to anyone, because I have a conscience. I will say this though, DEPRESSION is relentless. It isn’t you, though. It might be in you, but it isn’t actually you at all.

When I see people every day (usually at work since I’m typically there nearly all of my waking hours) and we walk by each other, and take notice of each other -like eye-contact or whatever, it is out of my control where my head goes after that. It’s a little creature that begins a negative thought pattern, that sends me on a journey into a negative rabbit hole. Listen to me, there’s no going back out of the hole, okay? I can’t turn around and undig a hole I didn’t dig to begin with. I’m the tiny positive, and the creature is the enormous negative.

In reality:

ME: Hey, what’s good?

THEM: Sup Dawg?

The battle in my head:

Positive:

He said hi.

Negative:

No, he reciprocated. He was being polite. He doesn’t even like you. You’re just a fucking loser, and you know it. Your existence doesn’t even serve a purpose. You’re being gone is of no consequence to anyone now or to anyone that has ever existed, or anyone who ever will exist. You mean nothing to absolutely no one. That’s why nobody likes you. You’re a fucking weirdo. You’re useless, and the only reason you’re still working here is because no ones figured out yet that you’re worthless.

And that above paragraph from the negative, the only way it ends? It ends during my next interaction with another human being, at which point, a new rabbit-hole is dug, and I go down that one.

Psychology has a word for this, and it’s also got a definition, but I don’t think either really do justice explaining what this actually does to a person, particularly a person like me. It’s called Catastrophizing, and it’s defined as: Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion where a person exaggerates the potential negative consequences of an event or situation. It involves imagining the worst possible outcome and believing that it is highly likely to occur.

There is absolutely no stopping it. I can’t shut it off, believe me, I’ve tried. I try every day of my life. I battle it. See, the catastrophizing is in constant combat with the positive side of me. Constant. It never ends. It’s a loop. It’s a never ending loop. The secret positive side of me hidden in the depths of the apparent positive side of me, it still holds out under all that mess. He’s waiting, he still has hope that somewhere, at some point, something or someone in his life, or who will one day be in his life will burn the infection that is negativity out of his head, permanently. Maybe someone will free up their schedule routinely on Saturday afternoons hang out and chat about life or BS for a few hours with him. Maybe a million dollars would fall onto his house and then he wouldn’t need to work as much, maybe he’ll meet the love of his life who’ll come with a good job and built in 401K security.

Being a person with mental illness, I say some pretty profound (and negative) stuff, when I’m making points to myself out loud as I do, instead of in my head where thoughts belong I say stuff that sounds more rational than I’ve ever heard. Problem is, it’s all negative. I guess that’s what depression does though, right? They call this process “catastrophizing” hence the name of this blog.

I guess I don’t post my dark and dreary posts here much anymore, because what’s the point? No one follows it, and I don’t promote such gibberish anyway. Besides, no one even uses Tumblr anymore. Tumblr is all but forgotten.

So the reason I don’t share my depressing thoughts here much is because no one cares. That’s just like in my actual life, no one actually cares about me. I fly solo. No one shares my interests enough to want to be my friend. You know, in addition to this blog that no one knows about, I do voice recordings. I don’t share them or anything like that, but if you’re in my presence you ARE being recorded by me via my phone. It started out where I’d just record while I was at doctor’s appointments, then it morphed into whenever I was in public (like a store or whatever) but now it’s whenever I think I’ll have conversations with people. I don’t record them with the intention of ever sharing them with anybody. Hell I don’t listen much to them myself, but they are there nonetheless, ya know, in the event that I ever turn dark, and psychiatrists need to determine what state of mind I was in -or how I lived my daily life.

I was already suffering from health anxiety before the dreaded years of 2020-2022, but since then, the simple worries about health are nothing. I think everyone has health anxiety to an extent, which explains most trips to urgent care and the ER, but when you factor in the pandemic, you can no longer call it health anxiety. You now have to call it medical anxiety... Because in 2020 my security disappeared. Now there was a deadly virus out and about in my world, and that terrified me 1000xmore than any (usually) illogical fear that came before it. And in 2021, in addition to already feeling unsafe in public, I became distrustful of the entire world as a whole. Here were all of these health organizations telling us we needed to get the vax to remain safe, and to keep our loved ones safe. The world took every word these clowns said, and made it their own. I'm talking media, social networks, and just regular people entirely. Everyone knew best. Everyone knew what they were talking about, and everyone was suddenly an expert. Yes, what a scary time it was to be alive. People guilted people, shamed people, threatened people, and so on. It was so enlightening to see just how ugly the world could be. Places like GoogleTube decided (and most others followed) to take away your right to oppose the vax. They'd blatantly tell you after removing your content that it was being removed because it opposed the vax, and that was simply that. How bothersome, because then the rest of the world would get the poison because they felt forced to, and it appeared no one else opposed it. The only way they would know that this was even going on was if they were like me and wanted to be vocal about it to see if anyone shared their thoughts. So yes, when them vaxes began rolling out, I completely lost my entire faith in humanity, and also, the medical world specifically. People lost jobs, lost shopping privileges, and so much more, over this. Anyway...

3:39 p.m.

Something like 15 entries ago I posted “No One Like Me Ho Hum” or something like that, and this is my followup:

My child doesn’t make her own doctor’s appointments. My sister does it for her. She’s probably never asked me to do it for her because I’d tell her lazy ass to do it herself. She can’t say why she’s never done it, and she gets very stubborn about it too. Talking about “I’ll let myself deteriorate first.” Like, um, get a fucking clue! That’s just laziness, and until I hear another reason – a valid one- that’s all I’ll be referring to that as. Can’t be a nerves, un-social type of thing or anything like that (although she does have documented mental health issues) because she’s able to work in the customer service field. So WTF!

It’s the week after Thanksgiving and there’s not much to be thankful for. I am trying oh so hard -desperately even, just to feel visible; loved; needed; wanted; etc., but for some reason I am unable to. The only reason I ever get invited to do anything is because I’ve cornered people into including me.

 Example 1: Was asked by sister if I was doing “the cousins” thing. This is where all the cousins get together in a group chat/text and talk about going to gamble at the casino and grabbing a bite to eat. I guess this was the second (or who knows, maybe more?) time they got together and called it “Cousins Outing” or something. “Well, no. I wasn’t invited to this chat, so I guess no one thought to invite me, so I’m not going.” A week or so later (yesterday) my little cousin messages me asking me “Are you working tonight?” and I didn’t even bother opening the message. Why? Because I think it’ll lead to an invite, an invite that I wouldn’t even be getting had I not told my sister what I told her.

 Example 2: “Frozen Nuts” guy from my last post. Well he tells me “next time you offer me a ride, I’m gonna take it.” Yeah, and the only reason you’ll do that is because I told you how you made me feel by riding to work in the freezing cold instead of getting a ride with me. This is solidified by the fact that the dude shows me the disinterest of a toddler continuing to play with his toys when the parent says it’s time for bed. I mean I have tried connecting to this guy on every possible level. I even went as far as to spend the whole weekend working on something artsy for him, texting him little tidbits along the way as I made progress, and he shows absolutely no interest in it. When he finally does “respond” to me, it’s something completely unrelated. Gotta love it.

 Example 3: Then there’s my mother. She’s the only one out of all the people in my life who literally ever thinks about me, and reaches out to me pretty regularly. The only problem is, the only time she calls me is when she’s on her way to work, and sometimes when she’s on her way back home after work. I mean, is there a Thought Button that goes off in her head that makes her immediately think: “Oh, I have a son. I’m going to fill my time now in calling him, because for the next 20 minutes or so I’ll have nothing to do but drive, and I must fill this time somehow.” Scarcely thinks of me outside of her vehicle, and it’s sad. Now when I see the phone ringing, and it’s her, I look at the clock, and if it’s ringing while she’s on her way too or from work, I rarely answer.

Friday, November 18th, 2022 | 8:00 p.m.

 I couldn’t be more heartbroken. (Okay, in retrospect, yes, even as I’m feeling these feelings I can still think about future me taking a look back at this retrospectively and seeing it for what it is, and how silly it is to be feeling this way, and how it’s not a literal statement, since there are thousands of REAL things that could break my heart more than what I’m about to describe).

 Yesterday, I was at work when I offered a coworker 18 years younger than me a ride to work on my day off because he had to ride a bike over 10 miles to get to work when the temperature would be 31 degrees with a windchill of 21 degrees. I may as well have been wearing my Dahmer glasses and holding a bag of candy when I offered, because he responded with “No, I can’t ask you to do that.”

 In the mind of a rational person; a person who doesn’t have mental illnesses such as OCD, Depression, Anxiety, and so on, this would generally be an okay conversation. Unfortunately, I am not rational, and I do have the aforementioned conditions, and when this sort of thing happens to a person like me, in the immediate aftermath, it destroys you. The aftermath, of course, being finding out that rather than take you up on your offer for a ride, they have done the unimaginable: rode a bicycle to work.

 “It’s no problem really,” I begin. “I have no life, and when I’m working third shift hours, and I’m not at work, I tend to keep the same schedule otherwise it messes me up when I return to work after the weekend.”

 “I can’t ask you to give me a ride when you don’t even need to be here.”

 “But you didn’t ask,” I continue. “I offered, and really, it’d give me something to do. I have no life outside of work. I work 12-hour days Monday through Friday, and right now I’m working 3rd shift hours for the boss, who asked me to do him this favor, so outside of work, I really see no one in my life. You guys are my life during the week. I go to the gym for an hour after work, and then I get something to eat and go home and go to bed. I hate the thought of you riding your bike in subfreezing temperatures when I’m fully capable of driving you to work.”

 I honestly thought I’d gotten him to see reason. I’d even joked with him last night on and off about it, with statements like “I’ll see you at 7. Where should I pick you up at?” or “I’ll do a Facebook Live from the comfort of my warm, toasty home for your ride to work if you don’t let me take you.” But tonight, when I woke up at around 7 p.m. and write “Awake. So just do not hesitate to hop on messenger and say ‘please help come pick me up I’m such an idiot for not telling you to come get me’” I was actually expecting that he hadn’t attempted to leave on a bike at that point, since he hadn’t even signed up to work until like 9 p.m. and it was only 7. When I received the message back “I’m almost to work now” my heart sank. I feel like, to him, I look like a complete desperate, and utter repulsive subhuman being.

 I unfriended him just now, in the midst of my mental agony. The agony that comes along with the mental ailments I have. The problem with this situation is that there are no good solutions to the situations I put myself in. If I put myself out there, I’m opening myself up to rejection. If I feel rejected, then this agony happens. Nobody knows that this happens to me, so I can’t blame them, but it does, alas, happen. The alternative: Don’t ever put myself out there, and in turn, miss connecting with humans on a deeper level than just associates. It gets lonely when you work so much and, in turn, have very little interaction with those outside of work. Neither of these 2 choices are at all desirable.

 So here we are. Another broken heart, another missed connection. Just one more thing to confirm that the negative voices in my head are right about me: No one likes me. No one ever has, and no one ever will. No one likes me, much less loves me. I am unlovable. I am no one. I am a waste of space.

 The ongoing dilemma is that I have no choice but to keep this all to myself and keep on truckin like a trooper. There is no one who could be the audience to something like this. This is what the therapists call “Catastrophizing.” It comes along with the mental ailments I have. Of catastrophize Dictionary.com says: verb (used with or without object), ca·tas·tro·phized, ca·tas·tro·phiz·ing.

to view or talk about (an event or situation) as worse than it actually is, or as if it were a catastrophe: Stop catastrophizing and get on with your life! She tends to catastrophize her symptoms.

 But knowing all of the effects of mental ailments; their terms and definitions, doesn’t help you when you’re in the midst of having an “episode.” So I can sit here and duly feel like shit, and know the pointlessness of feeling like shit simultaneously. My only solace is that I actually have the experience of knowing these harsh feelings are temporary, just as temporary as my “friendship” with this coworker was. Yes, unfortunately, when you’re as far gone as I am, mentally, you don’t make much headway in the way of ongoing healthy relationships with humans. I can’t be someone’s friend if I feel rejected by them, even if I also believe that their rejection of me wasn’t really rejection, but them being polite in not asking me to do what they believe was going out of my way to help them out.

 I said above that there’s no audience that’s capable of hearing this sort of mental BS, but I was wrong: I can share it here with you guys on FaceBook, and just delete it later. After all, no one even cares about me anyway (still catastrophizing I see).

Alone – Nearing the End

Being alone equals mental illness. Being alone equals mental illness. No, I didn’t studder-type, that statement simply needed repeating.

 When will people wake up and realize this component of mental health?

 Human beings are inherently social creatures. Without the social component, bad things happen in the brain of the human.

 Addiction is a mental illness

Depression is a mental illness

ASPD is a mental illness.

Bipolar disorder is a mental illness

Anxiety is a mental illness

OCD is a mental illness

PTSD is a mental illness

Tourette’s Syndrome is a mental illness

and many more:

These are all cogs in a much larger mechanism: The unraveling of the human brain.

 The brain is a human’s garden. Human beings have “friends” over. They’re not inviting them over to their living room, or bedroom. Before they can enter these physical realms, they first must enter through the host’s garden. Just their very presence in their buddy’s garden helps with the garden’s upkeep. The human’s presence can be thought of as some sort of a weed killing acid. This would be something you spray onto unwanted weeds. Although, in a post-Covid pandemic, eye-opening world, I’d like to consider this more of an aerosol. The non-owner of the garden, aka: the host’s guest, has a cloud surrounding him or her, and this cloud somehow leaks all over the weeds in the garden.

 Modern medicine (the psychiatric profession, that is) is getting it right, but they’re just not getting the bigger picture. So they’re setting out to get it right, but only accidentally getting it right. Cognitive therapy or chemical therapy. Chemicals, sure, mix enough of them together and something’s bound to happen in the garden, and to the garden. It’s the cognitive, however, that keeps the troubled garden’s flowers from being completely overtaken with weeds.

 See, they (the profession) think that they’re talking you through your troubles with their cognitive therapy, but in actuality, the very fact that there’s someone in the troubled person’s garden is what is actually helping, and anything they might discuss while they’re in there is the icing on the cake.

 Stop thinking of mental illness as something that happens to a person. Start thinking of mental illness as the weeds in a garden. They’re there, period. They always will grow in a garden. The only thing we can do to get rid of weeds is to have a bunch of human’s helping tend to our gardens. Without human beings our gardens WILL BE overcome with weeds, and we WILL DIE.

 Things like suicide, and addiction, they are the ultimate final destination for anyone whose garden hasn’t been regularly tended to.

We have to be careful as a species, because not only do garden owners end up with so many weeds that they kill their entire gardens, but other, more sinister weeds can end up growing in their gardens too. How many serial killers were lonely? How many mass-murderers were lonely?

I say what I say in my previous post (that I just posted 10 minutes or so ago) because of my frustration that, once again, I made a post having to do with my art, and not 1 person responded (until I posted that last post 10 minutes ago - now, 1 person has “liked” my post) and it’s frustrating, because I can’t grow my audience. I can’t grow my audience, because my FB page is private. One has to be my friend to even see that I’ve posted something artst, and so there’s never any room to grow.

Now, I have about 177 unresponded-to friend-requests, but it’s hard for me to accept them for various reasons: 1) I could have been suggested to someone local (which I don’t accept from) and I wouldn’t know if they were local or not unless I had a root around their page and they actually had location shown, or 2) they could be catfishing me, and actually be local and hide that fact from me, or have a completely bogus profile just to see what’s on my page, and 3) I think FB puts you on some sort of a “spam” list, and on said list, only people who seem to add strangers get suggested only people who add strangers so that they’re all just sharing stuff with people who are too self-involved to even care because they’re doing the same thing. I think this because I’ve seen a lot of “me me me” posts. Also, I get friend-requested by a bunch of foreigners.