Periphery

I just feel like I can’t talk to my parents about this because, among other things, I just got top surgery, which has been REALLY GOOD for my mental health, but I feel like they would immediately make this a transition thing when it is Really Not, and my friends don’t really know that this has been normal for me in every life situation I’ve ever been in except college, and also I never go to my friends about problems when they’re happening and I’m not about to start now

I’m not willing to go back on medication (well, I’d maybe try it, but I’ve been too all over the place mentally to even get my teeth cleaned for the past six months, so the likelihood of me making an appointment with a psychiatrist is not great, and there’s nobody around to help me do it), I am currently in therapy and it seems to be making things worse, so I don’t feel like I have a lot of treatment options left, since I’d rather die than go inpatient and have to explain that to my work

I’m moving this weekend and everything feels like a disaster, my therapist keeps telling me that I’m ticking off a bunch of boxes on the Stressful Life Events Scale or whatever lately (graduation, moving to come home after school ended, starting a new job, moving out again) and he better be right because I’ve been really struggling for the past week and the people who I trust to talk about this stuff with were all scattered to the four winds after graduation

I’ve been having a lot of suicidal thoughts lately, which is unusual for me (or has been unusual for like... a year or two, at least) and it’s really upsetting, and I don’t feel like there’s anyone I can talk to about it. therapy hasn’t been helping much and I’m thinking about quitting bc it’s not working out with this therapist. on the other hand I have like no other safety net since friends are all far away so

It’s also always weird to remember that I used to feel that way literally all the time. yesterday i was so sad I could barely get off the floor for like half an hour. but that whole time I was relentlessly thinking, I don’t usually do this. this isn’t me. I have dreams and goals and a life I need to pursue, and tomorrow I’m going to feel happy and I need to lay the groundwork for that right now by working through this and like, making myself a lunch and stuff. by the time a half hour had passed I was ok enough to start on my regular evening activities

on the other hand when I was in high school I felt that sad literally all the time. when I was in that situation i couldn’t say to myself, tomorrow I’ll be happier, because I wouldn’t, I had zero happiness brain chemicals to work with. there was no point in setting up things to be better for tomorrow me because tomorrow me would be physically not able to enjoy them. yesterday me would have screwed today me over by putting off doing homework, or by self-harming, or anyone of a number of other self-destructive behaviors, so I was already dealing with that, which  made it harder not to then screw over tomorrow me in return...

I think people who have never been depressed don’t understand that being depressed does feel just like being sad--like, most people who have never been depressed have probably, at some time or another, say when a relative died or they were in a devastating personal situation like getting laid off, felt the magnitude of sadness that a depressed person feels (especially since depression feels like numbness most of the time, punctuated by intense sadness, in my experience). 

your dad is wrong on pretty much all counts here (source: I work with publishers), not the least bc submitting doesn't guarantee feedback, esp for novels, and I hate that he's undermining both your efforts and your confidence in your abilities with this bullshit. I'm sorry he's doing that. <3 Keep doing your thing! There's so many ways to get feedback (if that's what you want) that don't involve the hassle and heightened stress of submitting.

… and by feedback, I mean productive feedback that can help you grow and improve.

Bless you for giving me the actual publishing angle on that! it’s true that the one time I did submit a novel (like four years ago) the letter I got back was like four lines long and wasn’t exactly the kind of feedback that would be useful for future improvement. (It was like, some general praise that readers enjoyed it, followed by a polite rejection.)

I’m fine now, I think I was having a rough week in other ways and that was just the final straw :P 

so yeah, last night I was like “whatever I’ve heard all this before” and brushed it off, but this evening it just got to me for some reason and I came home and cried for like a half an hour because I was so upset at the idea that all of my writing has been a waste bc I haven’t been submitting manuscripts. which is insane, because for one thing, comparing me with friend’s daughter is ridiculous because she writes short stories which are a) short and therefore fast and b) way easier to publish because costs are far lower and 200 people can get published in the same literary magazine! and for another thing, I know I’ve learned a ton about writing even though I haven’t submit much yet because I read and write enough to recognize good writing and I can judge my own and tell that it’s improved.

yeah I’d probably get more specific targeted feedback by submitting, but that also takes a lot of time. I’ve gone through the process of looking for agents and publishers before, and it takes a surprising amount of reading and digging to find ones that are accepting, and then you have to write and tailor your cover letter and summary, there’s a lot of different skills involved that are orthogonal to actual novel-writing and it’s sort of its own project. (dad also always tells me like “just shoot it off to a few publishers! who cares if you get rejected, it doesn’t have to take a long time to submit!” like ok thanks dad, I spent 6 hours writing a three-line email the other day because my perfectionism got the better of me but I’ll definitely just put that aside and go for it huh)

it’s especially frustrating because the few times i’ve shared anything about my writing with my dad, he’s been disparaging of it--I still remember that when I was an actual child and he monitored what I posted online he once said that he was sick of reading my angsty bad poetry on my blog (yes, it was angsty and bad, I was 14 and suicidal at the time...) and more recently when one of  my novels came up his first question about it was like “are all your characters gay” in a tone of voice that made it clear that he thought representing gays was juvenile and there was no like... idk.... questions about the actual plot. which was especially not helpful because one thing that worries me is that publishers will still be shy about publishing books with queers even though it’s 2018 and it literally does not matter