To reflect ᯓ★

I told my sister about this project and said I was writing an essay about the time I went crazy. She asked, “Which one?”. I told her that it was when I was fifteen. She repeated her question.

On The Essay ⊹ ࣪ ˖

Honestly, the essay was the easiest part. It was very easy to put myself back in fifteen year old miserable me’s shoes, and just talk. I know it wasn’t the most standard or professional essay, but I think I like it more that way. I tried to replicate the way I talk in my journal entries, instead of my standard writing style. I truly enjoyed writing it, though. I’ve always been better at expressing myself through written or typed text. When I try and talk about my feelings I usually end up so nervous and upset that I just stammer and give up. I started journaling because I had no one to talk to. I still do it when I feel overwhelmed. In therapy I never talked about my problems, so my therapist had me start writing in and bringing my journal to the program with me. It helped a lot! Journaling, even when the topic was dark and I was saying cruel things about people I love, was always very relaxing. Slowly, my journals started turning into scrapbooks. My completed (physical) journal is almost bursting from how much nonsense I stuffed into it. It felt like word vomit when I started writing. I had to cut down a lot of it. I recommend journaling, even if it is just in your notes app at four in the morning, if you’re going through a lot. Also, therapy. Please go to therapy. Even if you don’t need it, but I promise that you do.

On the diary entries ⊹ ࣪ ˖

I had a very hard time with this. It made me very sad, going through my ipad and old phone to find stuff I knew I wrote. I got scared that I deleted it out of paranoia. I just had the files named something unrelated to avoid snooping, yay! Most of the diary work was going through and retyping everything I wrote to be at least a tiny bit coherent. The typed stuff was so incoherent and had so many typos from me shaking like a wet chihuahua the whole time that I had to go through and autocorrect everything, or manually correct them by assuming what I was trying to write based on context clues. The written stuff is honestly the worst handwriting I have ever seen. After the 12th, my handwriting turned into actual chicken scratch and I could barely tell what half of it said.

I couldn’t even recognize myself in the entries. I sounded unnatural and fictional and like someone’s idea of a crazy person. As soon as I started digging through them, I started remembering things. I didn’t remember the baseboards or the skin picking or even the bald spots until I started this project.

On the tumblr ⊹ ࣪ ˖

I didn’t feel the catharsis I was supposed to feel, until I started the blog. Actually sitting down and reading what I was going through in my own words was so horrible to experience because to be totally honest, I don’t remember any of it. My memory of 2022 is super blurry . I just know that I was really weird and then I started taking a bunch of meds. This bIog feels more like a time capsule than a school project. I’ve been very careful to only reblog things 15 year old me would’ve found funny or cool. It’s been kind of hard because you share explore pages across blogs and so I have to actively search for stuff baby me would like. I know that I’m a baby still, and I’m not even able to go into a liquor store, but when I was writing the original entries I was so young. Most of the things in my notes app were video game related. My iPad was mostly horrific anime drawings with really sharp chins that I thought was the peak of human artistic ability. I wanted to cry the whole time, I didn’t (thank you Effexor) but I wanted to and I think that’s the point of this assignment. It’s weird hearing everyone talk about 2020 and the effect it had on them because they all had such different experiences from me. I was in seventh grade when it started. I hadn’t even turned 13.

╰┈➤ thank you for reading.

with love,

ロリ Ი︵𐑼

*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

At least in the same format. I stopped talking about the “event” or my “feelings” (yuck) entirely after that last entry.

To people who would see my diary, buried in layers and layers of folders on my ipad, it would appear that I got better. It was all pink and there were song lyrics and screenshots of music videos and all the words were about my hobbies and passions.

I did not.

I got significantly worse almost immediately. The reason I had stopped was because I was convinced that I was being stalked by not only every single person I talked to EVER, but by websites I went to. I thought everyone was going through my devices, search history, messages, everything. I would have complete meltdowns over this at least twice a week. I stopped showering entirely. I had to cut my own hair every few weeks because I was refusing to brush it and it was getting so matted it formed an impenetrable ball of yuck on my head. I almost wasn’t able to cut the matts out. I am still suffering from my own neglect today. My tooth snapped in half a few days ago because I wasn’t taking care of them for over a year. Even though I am very careful with my dental hygiene now, the damage was already done. I can’t hold my bladder anymore from when I was refusing to go to the bathroom because I thought there were cameras. I was hallucinating bugs all over everything every single day. At one point I thought I was the armored titan from Attack on Titan, and that I was covered in roaches, and I was contemplating on the most effective way to end my life and repent for my sins against humanity. I was fifteen, and also not a grown European man who can turn into a buff giant.

The only reason I even kept writing is because my paranoia was so bad that I thought “they” would know that if I stopped, it was because I knew. There was nothing to even know. There was no “they”.

My first therapy appointment was in a mental hospital where I spent all day hanging out with a bunch of people who were there on probation, not there for mental health, who brought it to my attention that I was in fact not being normal. The day I was admitted, I had to take a drug test. I cried in the bathroom for close to thirty minutes because I knew I had to do it, and now “they” had my dna and they were going to clone me or something. I didn’t know why I even cared, it’s not like evil clone me would be able to fight, she’s made out of pee.

I think my point with this post in particular is to tell you to keep an eye on your friends and loved ones. I’ve been told that I’m more agreeable and fun and less of a general nuisance when I’m starting to spiral again. My most recent break was in March. I stopped taking my medications entirely for weeks, without anyone knowing or able to tell, until my mom found out because I answered the door when she came to wake me up for school at five on a Monday. I had stayed up for two days straight because I thought there was a sniper outside my window and if I slept, he would kill me and my family. I told her this and she immediately sent me back to the therapy program. Thanks mom.

I think another point I’m trying to make is to bring awareness to paranoia. People joke about being “schizo” a lot, and while kind of funny, I don’t think we should do that as much. I am not formally diagnosed with schizophrenia. A schizophrenia diagnosis can mean a lot for people. There’s a lot of stigma. It’s not even in my file that I experience hallucinations, severe paranoia, and delusions, I have to tell each of my providers individually. Schizophrenia is most likely in both sides of my family. Most mental health conditions are genetic (to a degree).

I am mentally ill by definition.

I have an anxiety disorder that I’ve had my entire life. I’ve had panic attacks as long as I can remember. I have chronic stomach issues because of it (among other things). I have a depressive disorder. I cut my hair two months ago because I have bald spots due to me ripping out my own hair that my long hair’s weight was making super visible. I started ripping my skin off when I was in third grade. I don’t wear short sleeves or tank tops out anymore because I don’t like my scars. I used to rip multiple layers of skin off my fingers to remove my fingerprints in an attempt to make me untraceable. I would go through multiple day long periods where I had to wait for them to heal because touching anything at all hurt and throbbed. I would do it again as soon as I was able to touch my own hands without wincing. I have to put stuff on my nails because if I don’t I will rip them off. When my rabbit died, after all the healing I did in therapy, I screamed that I was going to hurt myself while I banged my head against the wall over and over again. I don’t remember any of that.

I also don’t remember last week, when I was doing homework with my mom and sister, and started ripping out my hair. I don’t remember banging my head again either. I was only told that I did this the next day. It certainly explained the headache, though.

People like to glorify mental health issues a lot. I see it the most on Instagram and TikTok. I see people talking about bed rotting like it’s just watching Netflix at 2 pm instead of washing the dishes. I used to not get out of bed for days at a time. I didn’t shower for months. I stopped eating. I was severely underweight until last year, when my antipsychotics made me gain fifty pounds.

Healing isn’t linear. You can be totally fine and then one insignificant thing happens (like a two week vacation) and suddenly you have half of the baseboards you originally had. You can also get better for weeks or years or months, and then get ten times worse than you ever were. Brains are weird, man.

I don’t expect anyone to read this far. I don’t blame you for not wanting to. I stopped writing this to go watch reels because I was getting weirded out by myself. Do not worry about me I swear that I am okay as of writing this. Never been better. Here’s a picture of me at this very moment to prove it.

See, I look great. My complexion is so smooth.

TL;DR

Check on ur unwell friends if they suddenly get super nice and happy. chances r they are not. Take care of them (and yourself)

call or text 988 for immediate help, they can help you more than I can.

there wasnt really much i could use, just game cheat codes and amazon links and stuff i wanted to remember, Japanese practice etc etc.

but i did find a random note that was a single quote that i guess i really liked. this was dated towards the end of august 2023, so i was still DEEP in the trenches.

“Even if the roof is leaking, it’s still above your head.”

Honestly, it made me emotional finding it which is kind of stupid because its a quote from a song by a drag queen (I love you Trixie Mattel) but i still held it so closely to myself that I pinned it in my notes app, somewhere that i went every day (for game cheat codes, i had nothing going on lol) I know that its cliche and cringe and when you’re struggling it is the WORST possible thing to hear, but it really does get so much better. When you’re 15 you think the world is ending all the time, especially when you’re stuck in a house with people you’re not even sure you really like that much every day. It’s a depressing mantra to have, I think, but things could always be worse. I think my pessimism is what brought me out of my tomfoolery.

I used to sit for hours and hours at night, crying and boohooing and trying to convince myself that things would get better. It didn’t help much, but convincing myself that things could be worse was much easier for me to do. Like, yes, I was at the actual worst point in my entire life and I still have nightmares about it, BUT i could have leeches for eyelashes. Or i could have gangrene or I could be pregnant or I could have seven toes instead of five.

ദ്ദി •⩊• ) *this is not actual mental health advice and you should not treat it as such

ㅤㅤㅤㅤ the song for those interested! trixie is such a good singer/songwriter btw her video games cover was my number one on wrapped a yearish ago

ㅤ

9:01 PM

8:11 PM

8:29 PM

I got yelled at again. My mom is saying she’s worried about me because I haven’t gotten out of bed or eaten in three days. I think she’s full of shit. If she did worry—if she cared—she would get rid of him. She would send him away and wouldn’t have made me feel bad for asking. She wouldn’t have said that I was the problem.

I can’t even talk to anyone about it because I have no friends. I don’t even talk to my one friend from middle school because all I am to her is a stupid therapist. I hate everything and everyone. No one cares about me anymore, and they probably all want me to kick the bucket.

I haven’t showered in a month. I feel gross and like a pig, and I’m sure I stink, but no one wants to tell me. My hair is literally a ball. It's so greasy and matted. I don’t turn the lights on in the bathroom anymore, so I don’t have to look at myself. I really hate everything so much. My tooth hurts, and I haven’t brushed my teeth in I don’t know how long. Maybe if all my teeth fell out, he wouldn’t look at me anymore. I know he put cameras in the bathroom. I know that he’s looking. I started peeling the baseboards back to try to find them. I just found a bunch of mold, though.

I saw a video talking about using your phone to check for cameras in rooms. I didn’t find anything, though. When I go to do my business, I pull the light out of the wall and cover it in towels because I think that's where he put it. It’s too big to just be a light, and he was very insistent. I’ve seen cameras hidden in plugs before on the news. They aren’t hard to get. I know I’m not crazy.

I told #### about it, and she said turning off the lights might not even do anything because a lot of cameras have night vision modes anyway. And she’s right. He’s a tech guy. He literally was remotely going through my phone for years before I found out.

I feel like my brain is always on fire now. I hate the sun, and I hate my family, and I hate my friends, and I hate him. I can’t talk to anyone because they all think I’m being weird or crazy or dramatic or whatever.

I can’t stand it here. I don’t know what to do. I don't know how to do it. I think I’m scared, but I’m mostly angry. I want to shave my head and grow out my leg hair and lose my teeth and start chain-smoking, and I never want to be naked ever again. I don’t even want to imply nudity. I have been wearing this stupid outfit since it happened. I haven’t taken off my hoodie even though the air conditioning is broken and it’s one hundred degrees outside.

I feel like a whore. I think I act like one, too. Why else would he have said that to me? Why have so many people said that to me? I am nothing but a body for old, hairy men to look at and ogle. That’s how it’s always been. I was stupid to think otherwise. It’s not like they’re looking at my face. I look like Penelope from that movie.

I think I’m sorry to my mom, and I think I’m even more sorry to my dad. I should’ve never asked to be allowed to see them again. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I’m sorry.