#parent fail

you know that feeling when there’s simply too much in your head and not even writing it all out can help because you don’t even know where to start? yeah, welcome to my brain and it’s fucked up chemicals.

a couple things have happened this week. let’s start with what happened 3 hours ago. 

i stopped by my friend’s apartment after dinner and i’m getting the impression that we’re drifting apart and i hate everything about that. context: my freshman year, a suite of guys a year above me lived down the hall and i spent a ton of time at their place. i really bonded with two of them. with one, we connected over our shared love of writing, with the other, unrequited love and mental health (i turned his ache into poetry). sophomore year, they moved to the usual off campus apartments. i stopped by every once in a while, but i had to rely on the buses- obviously, not as easy as walking down the hall. that year got cut short by covid-19. and now, junior year. i’ve been to their place a couple times. it’s always weird. i don’t entirely know what to attribute it to. i felt so close to them after freshman year and now the magic isn’t there. was our friendship just based on the convience of living in the same building for a year? when i stopped by tonight, i was talking to the latter of the two boys i mentioned before. after a lull in conversation, i joked that “i’m a terrible conversationalist”. he said “well, we don’t have much to talk about, etc.” i think i’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. and maybe this is me just jumping to conclusions, but even our online interactions aren’t the same. when a meme used to lead to a long conversation about things other than said meme, now it’s just liked and that’s it. i send 80% of the memes. i always feel like i’m bothering them. but like i said, overreacting? the boys are seniors now. they’re probably busy. but what happens after they graduate? do we just fade apart? i care so much about them and i have no idea if that’s reciprocated. and it’s not like i can just say “hey do y’all hate me now should i just stop sending memes”. i hate this feeling. if you’re gonna fade out of my life, tell me. moving on.

i told my parents i have social anxiety the earlier this week and it went as well as you think it did. i first told my dad, who has in the past stated “anxiety isn’t real”. his first response? “everyone has social anxiety” so i dropped the full name: social anxiety disorder. my dad likes to think that he understands why i’m so bad at people just because we’re both introverts. but only one of us has social anxiety. do all of my symptoms match? nope. have i been professionally diagnosed? nope. but it’s just something that i know. something i found out existed by reading about it in fanfiction (which is just disappointing, really). back to my dad- as soon as the conversation went to mental health, he immediately backed out and pulled a “i don’t know how to talk about this”. yeah dad, i didn’t either until i did. you learn. 

now, my mom. my mom, who has both a BA and MA in psychology (she doesn’t really use them for psych purposes, but she’s got the background). it was such a fragile conversation. she kept on pushing me to ask if i wanted to see someone about it. but not before saying that looked it up and “could see how i sorta fit the profile”. she did it better than my dad. and she asked if i thought i was depressed. i don’t know how to reply to that. cause like i’ve said, my bad days come in moments. i’ll feel like shit for a day but then i’ll be fine the next. i don’t know if i’m depressed. anyone who bases their opinion of my mental health of my writing would definitely say i’m depressed. i don’t know what i want to do. i really don’t.

the worst part about this is that my parents never figured out how fucked up my brain was for all these years. you saw the signs, the isolation, the avoiding of people, everything. you saw it. and told yourself i was okay.

If you’re toilet training your child, don’t ignore them when they say they have to go and then punish them for having an accident because you didn’t want to interrupt whatever you were doing. 

"Come on man you're really cramping my style!"

I asked Aidan if she'd consider keeping her name and she flat out said no. That's her right but I'm going to miss Aidan so much. Both the have and the boy. I don't know how to stop mourning my boy.