I am going to ramble a lot during this, I have not put anything down on paper, or typed, in a long time. So I am sure I will jump around to different topics and while writing it I know each paragraph I type I find a new idea that I want to talk about. so enjoy the ride of trying to see where I can go with this and hopefully I see y’all around.
2020 was one hell of a year COVID aside. College ended in the worst way possible. Did not get to have any of those end of the year memories that most people were able to have. Was not able to celebrate with friends or hang out and be excited with how life was all ahead of us. Something that I know is still there but has just been hard to see being stuck in this cycle that COVID has made most of us fit in to. Honestly, I do not even know what I missed out on by not having a usual graduation. But I know an afternoon in my sisters backyard was not the way I envisioned graduation going. Of course that was also after working for the day because that has been my life since early April. But work has been one of the best things to have happened this year. While I am not in a field that I want to be in right now, I am in a small family business that I enjoy being around most of the people. So while I will move on at some point I am happy for now.
Its hard knowing that a whole year of my life has basically been taken from me when one of my biggest fears is making my life one that matters. Which is a very heavy topic that I might get in to. But I wanted to travel and better myself as I was leaving college. But I am always so tired after work, even on my days off I struggle to find the motivation to do things. Its simply hard when leaving the house equals danger for my family and putting peoples life at risk. But also staying my parents basement in a lot of my free time makes me worry about becoming the stereotype of a college graduate stuck living in my parents basement. But nothing can be done about that for the time.
The good news is that this is the first year since I was 9 that I can honestly say I could focus more about living life then just trying to stay alive. But like I already said I could not do much with the year when all I could do was stay in the basement. I am so grateful that I can say that suicide was not on my mind this year. My meds are finally doing their job and therapy is going well, I only go twice a month instead of weekly. I want to say that I made it by being able to say something like this. I got lucky throughout the last couple years. I really should not be here, and I still ask myself why I was lucky to survive when others who I have deemed as more worthy were not able to survive. The topic of worth I know is not a topic that we are able to have mostly because everyone has their worth. But it is still hard for me to think about how lucky I am to have the friends and family that have always been behind me to keep me alive.
All this is not to say that I have been perfect this year. I have been able to find a good group of people that I am able to play games with pretty daily that helps me not be in my head alone all the time. I have managed to remove people from my life that it was not just working with. One of my favorite songs is how I view this. 7 years by Lukas Graham has a line “most of my boys are with me, some are still out seeking glory, and some I had to leave behind my brother I’m still sorry.” I still hurt from the people I had to leave behind; some were the people that kept me alive. But I was a worse person back then, I was unstable and hurt a lot of them to a place that me being healthy led to a worse relationship. I hope some get to see this because I just disappeared, but I have always been good at that. But the people in my life have been great for me to have around during this time of COVID.
I have had a couple really down days. The worst day, one day that I was worried for myself was in mid-June or July. When I got an email from my college saying that was a credit short of graduation. Something that happened before COVID came around, but something that I was not even thinking of a possibility. I had emails saying that I was good to graduate, that I just had to wait for their to mail it. But that was a rough night. I did not eat for a day, I shut down completely for the night. I still showed up to work and did what I had to, but I do not think I was a human for a couple days. I got it worked out and was able to write an essay in a little under a month and was stressed out the whole time. It was pretty easy to take care of but it did set me back over 1k because of course I had to pay for it. But that was probably my low spot for the year. Something that no one but my family knows about because of how much shame I still feel for messing up this badly to end my college career.
I do not really know where I want to go from here. This might be everything that I need to get off my chest. I already feel better writing this all down. I do not know if this even makes sense. But what is life with out trying to find something new to do. So 2020 was a shit year. I have had so much taken from me, but that fact that I am still here to have things taken away from me means that I am so lucky I cannot even be mad at the end of the day. But hopefully this means that I can start 2021 on the right foot. That I can truly start to change my life in the way that I can proved good change to myself and the world around me. Maybe I can finally start to see the meaning of my own life and find the value that I haven’t been able to see the last couple years of my life.
Mental Health in Life 