Big Changes, and how my mind overdoes it

 I am sitting here this morning in my corner of our bedroom, just finished breakfast, drinking some Irish breakfast tea, and trying to figure out what to write about. Every time I sit down I have ten or more ideas in my head of what subject to talk about, but as soon as my fingers touch the keyboard my brain blanks. I want to talk about my childhood, the things I’ve seen, what I’ve gone through, what it’s taught me, and how it shaped me. Thinking about that makes me realize that a lot of how I was shaped as a kid was reshaped as a teen, then reshaped again in my twenties, then again in my thirties, and now is being reshaped as I am typing this in my forties. It feels like every ten years my life goes through some giant and dramatic changes, and here I am at 40, and I’m just waiting for the next bunch of big giant changes to happen. I am waiting, and nervous, and freaking right the fuck out.

I have no idea what those changes will be, but I can feel them coming on. It’s like my own Spider Sense, but instead of for immanent danger, it warns me of big changes coming. Unlike a Spider Sense where he is able to figure out what is coming and dodge it, my sense tells me something is coming, just not what or when or why or how. It tells me to be aware that something big is about to happen, that something is going to change, that I need to be prepared. It’s just hard to be aware and prepared when I have no idea what the change will be, how it will affect me, or even when it will come about. How do you prepare for the unknown when there is so much in life that could change in an instant without warning. How do I know what change is the big change that the sense is trying to warn me about?

This is my life. This is my mind every day. It spends all it’s time fretting over the future and what’s coming up and trying to be prepared for every possible outcome. It’s impossible to be prepared for every possible outcome but that doesn’t stop my mind from trying. I don’t mean that I try to just have a plan prepared for the major possible outcomes, oh no, that would be way to simple and easy to handle. No, my brain tries to look at every single possible outcome, every single possible way that something could go, and tries to figure out how to deal with every single one of them. Not just how I should react to them, but also tries to guess how everyone else around me is going to react to them as well. I’m sure you have had full on conversations in your head where you are practicing for a real conversation coming up, or how you should have responded to a previous conversation. Now imagine doing that, for every possible outcome of a situation, all day, every day, without fail. Imagine spending your life always trying to be one step ahead of EVERYTHING all the time. 

Imagine you are on your way home, and you know that you are about to have a difficult situation with someone when you get there. So on the way you start preparing yourself for the conversation to come. You go over everything that you want to say, everything you think they might say, and how you would handle the emotions that are bound to come up. That’s normal right? Most everyone does that. Now, take that same idea, but expound upon it. Not only does my brain do that, but it figures out conversations for if the person is happy, or sad, or angry, or depressed. It figures out how I am going to talk about it to anyone else afterward, and how they might respond to the situation. It tries to figure out how to handle it if I say something wrong that could come back to bite me later. It tries to figure out how to react to the other person, not just with words, but also with tones of voice and facial expression and body language. It tries to figure out every single possible outcome, and then, when the moment arrives, it’s so overwhelmed with it’s own attempts to figure the situation out ahead of time, that if the other person doesn’t act in one of the many ways I tried to prepare for, I panic and freeze. If they say anything that goes outside of what I was ready for, I have no idea how to react. At least, not until afterward, when I’m by myself, and then all the possible responses coming pouring out into my thoughts as if by some miracle just thinking of them will fix all of it. It goes over every possible thing I could have said instead of what I did say, and then just sits there while I beat myself up for not having thought of those things in the moment.

So here I am, at the ten year mark, waiting for big changes that my sense is telling me is on the way, freaking out over every possible option and circumstance that could arise. Constantly stuck in my own head to the point that the rest of the world just fades away. So worried about what’s coming next that I am missing all of what’s happening now. So desperate to cling on to what I have now, that I miss any chance of what comes next being a good thing. So wrapped up in my own misery and depression and self loathing that I can’t see that life is always changing around me. Everything always changes, that is just the nature of how life works. Life never stops, never quits, never gives up. It is we as humans who stop and quit and give up. It is me and my neurodivergent brain that always thinks up all the worst possible outcomes to focus on rather than enjoying the ride.

I have never known how to just enjoy the ride of life. That aspect of life has always eluded me. I have always been this person who must always be mentally prepared for everything. I have always been the person that tries to plan every single possible thing as far in advance as I can so as not to be surprised by anything. I want to make it stop, I want to learn to just enjoy life. I want to be able to just wake up in the morning and not instantly start fretting over what is going on, and what may be going on, and what could possibly maybe happen with what is going on. I don’t want to be that person anymore, I just am not sure where that switch is to turn that part of me off. I don’t know what magic words will make it go away, or if there is even some way to train my Spider Sense to work with me and get me more info than just, “hey, change is coming, time to panic”. I desperately want to do better, and I am actively trying to do better, it just often feels like an incredibly hopeless endeavor. But I am not giving up.

Podcast Version

Time waits for no one, so how can I take time for myself?

 I wrote today in the Neurospicy R Us blog today, and it was about how even though we struggle with things, and don't know how to have people help us, we are NOT so alone. Wrote a nice long post about it, posted it, shared it to all the social medias, etc. Then I sat down to look at my life and how things are going and realized that I really suck at following my own advice with things. I really suck at not feeling alone and lost and so on. I really struggle to beleive that anyone understands what I am going through, because way too often, when I do try explain my feelings or thoughts or what I am going through, all I get in response from people is, "I'm sorry you are going through that". That's it, that's all I get. I get people feeling sorry for me. I get people telling me they don't know how they could survive with their brain attacking them like that, or how they could even begin to handle half of what I have been through.

Don't get me wrong, I am glad they are listening to me. I am glad that they are there for me. I am glad that I know there are people who want to help me out. I really am. I just never know what kind of help I would even need, and I am getting tired of all the responces being about just how bad off I am. I know they mean well, and that they are actually trying to show that they are proud of me for continuing on in life despite of or in spite of what's happened or is happening. I get that, I really do. I am not trying to make light of them at all. I am just tired of not being able to move past that point.

Now yes, there are counselers and therapists and specialists and medication that can help with most of the issues that I am dealing with and/or going through. That's not the point though. See all those things cost money in one way or another. All of those things are just there to assist in dealing with the things. None of them can actually take all the issues away. None of them can fix all the issues for me. None of them can even give me the exact answers on how to start fixing the issues. At least, not in my experiance. They try, they really do, but there are limitations to what they can do, and the rest falls on me. I have a proven track record however of giving up when working on myself gets too difficult to deal with. I have a track record of just pushing the issues aside and just moving on without dealing with them completely like I should.

Why do I do this? It's because my trauma filled brain took a quote from my father, and has made that it's mantra on why I can't seem to ever spend the right amount of time needed to get things fixed.

"Time waits for no one. There is no pause button, there is no undo button, time does not stop. It will not just wait for you to be ready for what comes next, so you need to keep moving forward."

Now, was my father trying to tell me to keep going on with things and not finish fixing myself, no, however that seemed to be what he did for himself and I can't seem to not follow in his footsteps with that one. The man pushed off so many things cuz there just wasn't enough time, until the day that it all caught up with him. Been almost two years now since he passed, and I still struggle with it often. I still hear his voice in my head telling me, "Time waits for no man." I still see him pushing himself harder and harder to keep up appearences and make the money needed and just keep pushing through the pain and the tired and the fatigue and the sickness and the...........

He wasn't wrong though, time doesn't stop. Time keeps marching forward wether we want it to or not. What I am trying to learn however is how to make the most of the time that I do have. How to take time every day to set aside for my own mental and physical health. How to accept that there are days that nothing is going to get done around the house, but that they are needed to recharge myself. How to accept the bits of help that people do give me and make the most of them while I can. Most importantly, how to be willing to put myself first more often so I stop burning myself out.

That will be another post soon, how it's not selfish to put yourself first more often life, but it fits here too.

If I am ever to get past this feeling of being all alone. If I am ever to be able to hear people say they are sorry I had to go through what I have, and accept it as it is meant. If I am ever to move forward in my life and my self work and become the better me that I want to be. Then I need to learn to accept the fact that even though time doesn't wait for anyone, I am allowed to take time to wait for myself.

Podcast Version

Dark Voice and the world I was raised in

I sit down here to write, and I have all these ideas of the things I want to write about, and then my brain jumps in and tells me that no one cares. It is self sabatage on a level like none other. Everytime I want to make something worth while, my brain tells me that it's pointless. It tells me that I will fail, or no one will care, or it's not worth doing, or whatever other thing it can come up with to get me to stop. So why do I keep going? What is the point in continuing to push myself to do anything when all the things I try to do I beat myself up over? 

Because that voice isn't allowed to win.

I used to call it my "Dark Unwanted Passenger", which is still true to a point. It is dark, it is unwanted, and it's always there right next to me trying to get me to drive my life how it wants. However I really think it goes a lot deeper than that. It's not that it's a passenger in this car I call my life, it is me. When I look at the passenger seat I am not looking at something else, I am just looking at myself. I am looking at a part of myself that I can not seem to control. I am looking at a part of myself that has always been, and will most likely always be, there. It's not another person, or another personality, or anything like that. It is all the dark parts of me that I have been trying to hide and pretend they don't exist, all coming back up to fight me for control.

See, I went about it all wrong growing up. The world I was raised in taught me from birth that I was never going to fit in being myself, and that fitting in was the most important part. Standing out was only for those who had their lives together and weren't mentally broken like I was. Standing out was only for the important people, not for me, not for mister clutz. Standing out was for people who were smarter than me, and more attractive than me, and more popular than me. Standing out was not for me, and I needed to sit down and learn to just fit in.

There are so many examples of this in my past. So many examples of times where the world I was raised in made it very clear that if I didn't change, I was never going to be actually accepted for who I was, or who I am.

I wanted to be a singer, then in high school on a church missions trip, while I was trying to hone in on who I was as a singer, someone I trusted and respected looked me dead in the eyes and told me, "can you please stop singing, it's just aweful when you sing like that." Then a few years later when I got up the courage to try to be a singer again, the person I was dating and planning to marry looked at me and told me, "yeah, I don't know what happened but your voice is just aweful, please stop."

I wanted to be a youth pastor for years, wanted to work with kids and help them understand that they didn't need to feel alone, that God had a place for everyone. So I tried to be mentored by my churches youth pastor, and was ignored, put down, and told that I wouldn't be able to follow in their footsteps until I learned to get what ever was wrong with my brain under control. The youth pastor, senior pastor, and multiple church leaders all on different occasions told me that my ADHD, and what I learned later in life was Autism spectrum, were too much and too problematic to ever be in a leadership role and I needed to just step back and assist, not lead.

I have wanted to be a writer, a story teller, my entire life, and out of all the writing and english teachers I've had, only 2 have ever seen any promise in me and pushed me to do better. 6th and 10th grade were the only years I really felt like I could become a great writer, story teller, and even a poet. Now a days I can't get anyone to even help proofread any of my writing to let me know if they enjoy it or if I am just rubbish, which leads that dark voice in my head to tell me that I need to just give up.

I wanted to be an artist for a very long time. I love abstract art and patterns and art that speaks to you. I would draw all the time, doodles and large peices and patterns and anything that came to mind. Even have gone so far as to make my own coloring book. I have sold a total of 10 copies, 80% of which have been bought by my mother as gifts for other people. I am grateful for her support, but it really charges up those voices to tell me that I am not as good as I think I am or want to be.

My dark voice, and the world I was raised in, taught me to doubt myself at every turn. Raised me to feel guilty for ever wanting to speak up and stand out and be unique. Built walls around the parts of me that made me feel whole, so that way I would be able to fit in just that much better with the world around me. I am trying to escape it, trying to run away from it, trying to destroy these walls as I find them.

Only thing I can't seem to do is get that dark voice to go away. Can't seem to get the dark thoughts to leave me alone. I have learned to ignore them, and not let them win, just not how to get them to go away and leave me alone. I don't want them there anymore, but there is almost 40 years of trauma and repression to be dealt with first, and I am not sure where to even start. I'm not giving up though. Never giving up.

Podcast Version

My brain is always jumbled

I hate that sometimes I can sit down here and just write for hours about everything, and then other times I sit down and my brain goes blank. I have plenty I want to write about and yet I can't seem to just settle on one subject or where to begin or what I am trying to get across. I know this blog is just about me and my journey, but everything I write feels to me like I have a voice and need to use it correctly. I want to help myself by writing all of this down, and at the same time I want to use this to show others that they aren't alone in how they feel.

How do I go about that though? How do I go about sharing but at the same time helping? How do I reach out to others without taking away from my own journey? Do I just share and hope it clicks with others or do I try to always have a subject for each post to make sure people know what they are reading and how it can help them? So many questions and I have no idea how to answer them. Yet I just keep on writing, just keep jotting it all down hoping that it sticks for me and resonates for others.

So what's on my mind today then? What is it that I have to get out today? I don't know exactly, there is a lot always going on and it's hard to just sort through it all and narrow all it down to only one subject. Literally, today I have been thinking about how much my jaw hurts, how fun it was watching the superbowl, how I am exploring my sexuality, trying to make enough money to not just survive but to thrive, what kind of paladarium I want to create next, and on and on and on. It never stops, it never ever stops. Like I said in a previous post, my brain is filled with ideas and thoughts and never enough time or energy to do them all or process them all. I want to be able to process it all, I want to be able to look at things more logically and work through them, but I have no idea how to actually do that. No clue how to go about make it all work out the way I want it to.

Yet here I am, still writing. This post really hasn't been about anything specific, and yet it is about how cluttered my brain is. There is SOOOOOOOOO much going on up there all the time, I just want it to calm down for a bit, or give me the ability to actually process all of it correctly. Is that really too much to ask? To have my brain work "right". Is it really that big of an ask to have my brain actually process things how it is "supposed to", rather than the jumbled mess that it usually is? I don't know where to go from here, but I still just keep walking forward, always forward, trying so insanely hard to never go backward. There is nothing good that happens when I go backward, regardless if it is easier to do or not. Moving forward is the only option. Why? Because as my late father always said, "Time waits for no one. It doesn't care who you are or what you're going through, time waits for no one."

I have ideas for days, sadly

Time to write again, because I really am determined to keep up on this and all my other writings. I have this blog plus I have:

Maybe It's The Bloodwine Talking - Neurospicy 'R' Us - A Little Kink Is Good For The Soul.

On top of that I am working on:

#BertsLight podcast,

and all my facebook pages:

#BertsLight - ByronMakesThings - BloodwineTalking - ALittleKinkIsGood - Neurospicy 'R' Us - BrazierChildren - Oh No, The Liberals Are Coming.

As I am writing this all out, I am realizing that I am quite spread out wide. I have ALL kinds of ambition, millions and millions of ideas for things to write, and draw, and build, and film, and create, and grow, and record, and on and on.

Now I'm sure in the title you noticed that I included the word sadly. Let me explain why that word is in there, and why having so many ideas can be incredibly depressing. When you live your life with your brain always coming up with new ideas, it becomes incredibly overwhelming to know that you wont be able to accomplish most if not all of them. There is never enough time, nor enough money, nor enough energy to accomplish all of them, yet I can't turn my brain off to stop coming up with them. I have sooo many pages in OneNote of ideas, some of which seem super simple to do, and some require millions of dollars and all of my time. Yet the thoughts never stop, so I just keep writing them down. Just feels like the more that OneDrive fills up with ideas, the more I wish I did have so many. 

Looking at all these ideas and knowing I don't have the money, or the skills, or the time, or the resources, or whatever else I need to do them, makes me really hate this world we live in. Nothing happens without money, and people don't want to invest without seeing a working product, but you can't have a working product without the money to buy the supplies in the first place. Then there are things like Patreon and Kickstarter and StartGarden and so on, places and websites that help you to build an audiance and get monetary support for the thing you want to make. They are amazing tools to use, but I have so little self confidence in my ideas anymore that I am instantly overwhelmed by all of it when I even attempt to start filing out the paperwork and such.

I grew up wanting to be an inventer. Edison and Tesla were my heros as a kid, creating both practical and fantastical inventions to make the world a better place. Course when I grew up I found out that Edison just slapped his name on a bunch of the inventions he is said to have invented, as they were invented by his employees, but still. I want to have my name synonymous with change and making the world a better place. Wether it's through art, or audio, or inventions, or charities, or whatever. I want to be able to show the world that I can make a difference, and that I am not just full of ideas with nothing behind them. I want to make the world a better place for me having been in it, and if one of my ideas happens to bring in a lot of money, then I can take care of my family, and have the funding to make even more of my ideas come true.

I just want to finally have one of my many ideas take off and go somewhere. I want to have them mean something to more than just me. I want to be able to grow old and say that not only did I make a difference, but I can actually show you the difference I made. I want to see the difference being made within my own life time. It's not for the fame or the glory, but to show that a difference can be made, and to show that the neurodivergent of this world are worth way more than just being a puzzle piece you fit into your life.

Glimpses of Bert w/ backstory

 As I continue my journey of #DiscoveringByron I have found that I keep catching glimpses of the real me coming through. Be it certain thoughts, or actions, or whatever, the real me is coming back out. I so wish that I could make him come back completely, but I really don’t want to rush it. I am really scared that if I rush it, he will get frightened and run away. Which I know sounds weird, seeing’s as how I am talking about myself, but it’s true.

The real me, the me that I am trying to get back to, hasn’t seen much light of day in a long time. The real me, lets call him Bert, which was the nickname I was given in high school and it stuck with me. The last time Bert felt free to come out was when I was maybe 20 or 21. I was a counselor at a summer camp and was so very excited to be back there. Summer camp was where I always felt the most free to be myself, and where Bert shined the brightest. I always thought it was because I was being called to be a youth pastor, it was a Christian camp, but the more I think about it, Bert shined the brightest there for the simple fact that no one had any preconceived notions of who he was, well, who I was. I could start with a blank slate with people, and if I stayed the summer there, there were new campers every week, and often new staff as well. So it wasn’t just a blank slate at the beginning of the summer, but a blank slate almost every week as well. I could be me without fear of anyone calling me out for past mistakes. No one there knew how awkward I was at school, no one knew how few friends that I had, or that I was neurodivergent at all. All they knew was that my name was Byron, or Bert depending on the person, and that I was just a friendly, outgoing, energetic, love all people kind of person. They got to see the real me and I absolutely loved it. I guess I should say they got to see as close to the real me as anyone ever had. It was God camp after all, and a lot of who I was on the inside was considered sin by the church, so I still hid a lot. Overall though, I was able to just allow my actual personality to come out to play, and Bert thrived.

However the last full summer of Bert ended with Byron being dragged home by my significant other and told that I needed to get my head out of the clouds and find a career and become an adult. That relationship was everything to me, so I followed their advice and tried to focus on just them and work. I let Bert fall behind and tried to just be Byron, an adult with adult responsibilities and no time for the parts of life I used to take joy in. About 6 months later I left that relationship and went back to Chicago to try to finish college. I then met my first wife, and yet again did the same thing. I devoted my life, my work, my everything to her, and then proceeded to just let Bert vanish into the past. He would come out from time to time, but almost always only when I was home with my family. Even then though, they noticed that who I was during those visits was never even close to who I used to be. I spent years being surrounded by people and yet still some how feeling completely alone. So when our marriage fell apart, I did the only thing I could to try to save myself from the spiral of depression and loneliness that I had spent years living in, I moved back home. 

Life since then has been filled with amazing ups, but it’s all been overwhelmed by some insanely down downs. Deaths of loved ones, soul crushing breakups, jobs that controlled my life, constant physical pains, and multiple mental breakdowns all just kept piling on top of each other. Bert just became a nickname that I was called by a few people from my past and sometimes by family. I was convinced that I would never be able to get back to being Bert. That I would never get back to  having Bert and Byron become one in the same ever again. Then, lately, I have seen flashes of Bert coming out of me, and it is invigorating. I didn’t think he really actually existed anymore, and had given up trying to bring him back. So to see that my self-work has been bringing him out more and more, gives me energy to keep going. Gives me something to hold onto as proof that all this work isn’t for nothing. Proof that I am not doomed to forever be the broken Byron that I have been for the past 20ish years. The worst of it seems to have come and gone, and now I can work on being the Bert/Byron hybrid I was meant to be.

I got this.

Need to remove my Jaded/Skeptical filter

 One of the biggest issues that I am coming across is how jaded and skeptical of everything in life I have become over time. The more that life screws me over, or at least appears to, the more and more I expect it to every time. I'm not sure if it is just a self fulfilling prophecy or if I am genuinely cursed to always have life shit on me. It's like I am doomed to always get close to what I want, and then to have the universe either take it away, or take something else which lessens the thing it did give me. I know, that all sounds rather depressing, but this is how my brain works. This is how life has appeared to me for as long as I can remember. I don't want to be so jaded and skeptical of anything good happening, but when you have spent your life actually seeing the other shoe drop on a regular basis, your view of the world gets all skewed.

I am working hard on trying to remove that filter from my world view but it is so incredibly ingrained into who I am, that I am not always sure when I am and am not using the filter. It's become such a default way of existing that I have no idea of how to even attempt to actually turn it off. Every time something good happens I start looking around to find out what's going to kick me down next, and every single time it comes hurtling at me. Sometimes it comes fast and hard to knocks me the fuck down, other times I find out it's been slowly growing unobserved in the background till it no longer can be ignored. No matter how it arrives though, the other shoe always drops and my jaded and skeptical filter always proves that it is needed. 

I used to look at the world in a much brighter light, the filter was there, but I was able to turn it off and search for the good times to come without wracking myself over the next shoe. I used to be able to find the good in things and people, and actually trust them to follow through on the goodness I saw. I used to smile often, and sing, and jump around, and have all kinds of energy and joy when I was around people I trusted. Then I got used and abused and taken advantage of in many different ways. Then the universe started shitting on me constantly, with no remorse. Then my life became a daily battle of just trying to make it through the day without another disaster. Then the filter was always needed and the ability to turn it off became a distant memory. When you live every day on high alert and anxiety, watching your life fall apart, and constantly being told that it's all your fault (even when it wasn't), you become hyper away of all the negativity around you. It becomes the only thing you see, the only thing you worry about, and the only thing you can think about. You become ever vigilant to just how often the other shoe drops in your life, and trying to find ways to make it stop.

Problem with hypervigilance, especially in this case, is that you have spent so long searching for the negative to be able to avoid it, that it is now the only thing you see. Seeing the light, the good, the fun, in the world around you is no longer in your skill set. You have now programmed your brain to use this filter at all times, no matter what, and it might take just as long if not longer to unprogram it than it did to program it. There is almost nothing more frustrating than realizing that in our attempt at survival, you did all the programming yourself, on yourself, that you are now trying to get rid of by yourself. There is no one who can do that reprogramming for you, cuz they have no idea how your individual code works in order to remove the code and the filter. Every single person has different variations of the same code, which means sometimes there are enough similarities in the code to be able to have your reprogramming method work for someone else, but it will never be able to work for everyone. Sometimes, no ones methods can work for you, and you are stuck having to come up with your own through trial and error. The errors are the part that make it so hard to keep trying, because they are so defeating in nature.

So I am trying hard to get rid of it, but it's a battle I have to take on alone, because I am the only one who even kind of understands my internal coding. I am trying though, honest.

Friendship Trauma and relearning

I can't win. I try so hard to do the right thing, and be the better person, and see the good in people, and all the world keeps showing me is how I should just quit. The richest people in the world keep turning out to be incredibly shady, the nicest people in the world keep turning out to be assholes, and the ones doing the most good are usually doing the most harm in private. So what's the point in trying to keep being the better person? What's the point in always having to live this way? Why can't I just flip the switch and be the asshole? Why can't I just choose to be selfish from now on? Why can't I choose to be the worse person for once? Why can't I be the winner for once?

I am just tired of being this way and never having it work in my favor. I've been told my whole life not to do things just to try and get something in return, but I'm tired of always giving and rarely receiving. I'm tired of giving of myself to those around me and having to fight to get people to do the same for me. Being a venting post sucks when no one will be a post for you. Being a safe place for people sucks when they only need you when their life sucks, and then vanish when things are going good. Being a good person is great until people won't be good to you in return. 

We have to stop living in the mentality that we need to give without expectation of receiving in return. Don't get me wrong, that is a wonderful and noble thing to do, but that can't be how we live our lives. Trust me, as someone who has spent their life trying to give without the expectation of getting anything in return, after a while, you get jaded and start seeing nothing but the worst in people. When you have a ton of friends while life is going good and/or you're in a position of power, and then they all disappear when life sucks and/or you no longer have the power, you realize just how selfish and shitty most people are. When you are always there for those you hold dear, and they aren't there when you need them, you wonder why you held them dear in the first place.

As I start unpacking my mind, and my trauma, and my past, and my Neuro-spicyness, I am starting to see an absolutely appalling pattern when it comes to the people I've held the closest to my heart. So many of the people that I thought of as my closest friends, were just using me or keeping me around to be the butt of the jokes. Oh and I know, you're reading this thinking it couldn't have been that bad, yet every time I tell stories about my past to my wife or therapist or kids or one of the few friends i have, i always get the same response, "are you serious? That's not okay that they treated you like that." I know it's not, but what other choice did I have? If I stayed to myself I was told I needed to stop being a loner and go socialize more, but when I socialized people took advantage of my giving nature and my desperation for people to like me, and used me. Time and time and time and time and time again. Which means I am now 40, trying to connect with people, and I have no idea what an actual friend really looks like for me. I am trying to get people to fill a void that I don't actually understand. I keep trying and trying and just keep getting it wrong.

Everything I'm my journey right now is trial and error, and sadly all I keep having at the moment is errors. No, not just at the moment, my whole life. I keep trying to be the person I was told I had to be to be liked and loved by others and yet I just keep failing. So now I need to try to just be me, but I have no clue who that person is. Which makes it hard to figure out who to have in my life. Makes it hard to figure out how to act around people. Makes it hard to just exist without hating myself and wishing I were someone, anyone, else.

But here I am, still trying.

New Year, Real Me

 I am determined to make 2023 the year that I finally am able to just be me. Few masks as possible, dealing with my anxiety and depression as best as I can, and just learning to overall like myself. That last part is the most important part of all of this, it's the part that will determine how the rest of it goes. I have to work through my ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, Depression, Fibromyalgia, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria,  and PTSD from abuse. Yet all of it can't really go anywhere untill I can learn to actually like myself, so I will be willing to put in the work on the rest.

Where do I start though? Honestly, when you have spent the better part of your life thinking that you are always the problem, and having so many people tell you that you are too much, trying to love yourself is incredibly hard. Trying to find things about myself that I like isn't hard, it's trying to ignore the dark thoughts that tell me that I'm not worthy of any love. Not even my own love. I really am trying to get there, I just have all those old voices still in my head telling me I am wrong. Telling me that there is nothing I can do to make things better, nothing I can do to make up for the past, and nothing that I can do to make people actually like me or me actually like me. 

With all of that constantly going in my head, how do I make my voice the loudest one? How do I convince myself that my voice is the most important voice, and not to rely on others voices for validation? I have spent most my life trying to make myself fit the box the world seems to want me in, yet I always fail. That should have taught me that it is impossible to please everyone and I should just focus on being the best me that I can be, instead it taught me that I am not worthy of anything good and that I should just try to make others happy rather than myself. It taught me that wanting to make myself happy instead of others was completely selfish and wrong of me. That the only joy in life was making others happy, even at the expense of myself and my health. 

I don't know how to start this journey but I am going to keep trying. I will keep trying to tell myself that I am worthy, worthy of friends, of happiness, and of loving myself.