AAAAAAAAAAAA

I'm writing this to post later because distracting myself isn't working. I will not be editing this. My social anxiety is much higher than usual right now because yesterday I might have been overheard talking about things that I probably should have waited to talk about privately. gaah I hate myself.

What would happen if I were in therapy right now? What would a therapist say? I don't know. I'm not one. Breathe. Breathe through the uncomfortability. Maybe turn off your phone, because it's not helping. Maybe practice? - I don't have my opera part yet; there are other things that I should practice, but I have no motivation. There's so much I could do right now. Homework, practicing, folding my fucking laundry, washing dishes, making a shopping list for Monday, writing the next chapter of my current fanfiction, making a video about practicing while mentally ill like I keep saying I'm going to,

and I'm doing none of it. Paralyzed by guilt, shame, why do I never think before I act? Why does that question always feel accusatory even when it's just inquisitive? I'm so stupid!!

Breathe in, count to 4, breathe out.

Even if I do things that are thoughtless or stupid, that doesn't mean that I am those things. yesitdoes

It's getting really hard to do this on my own.

I am my own worst critic and I know this probably isn't a good thing but, see, I don't know how to stop.

Stop.

My brain will not stop moving, stop replaying, stop reminding me of all the times I have fucked up, all the things I have done that were stupid or thoughtless or just plain silly, and until now my day was going great, normal, everything good, so I don't understand how I got here and I don't particularly want to go over it again in case it makes everything worse, and I

don't

like

myself.

This is a problem. I have to live with myself for the rest of my life. I need to like myself. How??

After June 15, none of these people will ever see me again. That doesn't help. I fuck up everywhere I go.

What are my options? Own it. Fuck up proudly. I'm too apologetic, too afraid of what everyone will think of me, and in my fear I misplace my filter and say or do things that aren't what they should be. The world is not a nice place. I'm too messy, too loud, too chaotic.

I don't believe that I'm good at most things I pretend to be good at. I project confidence, often overconfidence. I'm good at that. I'm good at identifying and dealing with schedule conflicts. I'm not good at people. I'm not good at reading them, at noticing details, at letting go when they hurt me. I'm not good at knowing when to shut up. I'm not good at grey areas.

If I weren't queer I might throw myself into religion, because at least it's a support network, and anything therapy adjacent would be great right now. But Western culture, and by extension Western religion, is extremely cis-centric; I don't believe in the God of the Christians; I don't believe in other Western gods that I'm aware of; and I don't know enough about non-Western religions to know whether I believe in their deities.

My father has said to me that I should talk to him and to my mother instead of talking to a therapist. I've been trying. It's not working. There are some things I can't share, some resentments that are too old to bring up again but that I need help getting over, some problems that I don't want the people who pay for my existence to know about. But this doesn't matter, because I don't have access to affordable therapy.

The question "why do I never think before I act?" feels accusatory because the tone I always ask it in is the tone my father parents used when I was in trouble. I should remember what I did wrong, but all I remember is the punishment. Maybe my anxiety is because I feel like I've done something wrong and I haven't been punished. I am both fucked up and fucking up.

The number of times I have had suicidal thoughts has decreased over the past year, but tonight I think it would be easier if I'd never existed. Mirror, mirror on the wall; to live in pain, or not at all?

Caring about things is exhausting, but I don't want to stop caring about things because that's also exhausting, and I can't win, can I?

You can't pour from an empty cup.

My life feels worthless and unethical if I'm not an activist, but activism exhausts me, and I don't know what to do, and probably if this were a different day I'd be crying my eyes out over this, but today I don't have the energy. And maybe, also, I think about larger issues to stop myself from wishing my parents were different people, because that wish is illogical and will never change anything about who any of us are. I can't not have my parents in my life right now, because they're paying for basically my entire existence. I wonder how much I could sell my cello for.

What's scary to me is not that I'm having that thought but that this is by far not the first time I've had that thought. What terrifies me is the self-generated thought that my choices are as follows: be a cellist and continue to rely on my parents for financial support, therefore not really being able to confront them about anything and having to continue putting up with their bullshit; or stop being a cellist, have them probably disown me, and potentially not even have the ability to be financially independent anyway. It looks very selfish when I type it out, because isn't compromise a necessity in any relationship? Maybe I have to resign myself to never getting everything I want. Is that adulthood? Is it too late to switch careers, to do something that doesn't cost as much money as music does? It's not what I want, but does what I want matter when either way I'd appear to be compromising part of myself?

This is why I used to self harm, the endless litany running through my brain, reasons why it's impossible for me to be happy. In a way, I think, this is emotional self harm, less obvious and more insidious and more difficult to stop. Maybe all of this is in my head, and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill because if I'm going to disappoint everyone, I have to have a plausible excuse.

Right now, everyone else is coming out of the depths of their seasonal depression, and I'm supposedly entering mine. What if all of this is a lie and I don't realize it? What if I'm so good at manipulating myself that even I can't tell it's manipulation?

I'm cold.