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Today was a difficult day for me, emotionally.
It started in my English class (as so many things in my life do, apparently). My teacher was telling us things about how he wanted us to leave his class as "people of conscience" (his term; I quite like it, actually), people who learned to think critically and accept other perspectives and make good choices. It was really a lovely speech he gave us - he said a lot of nice things I agreed with - but it made me sad because it made me realize, "Oh crud, I'm leaving this class. I'm really leaving it. I loved this class and I have to say goodbye to it. I have to say goodbye to the teacher, and I have to say goodbye to my classmates, and I have to say goodbye to the great discussions we had and the wonderful environment and jlk;dfjgoiaejdgosfg I can't do this oh no oh no". At that point, my brain started having a freakout and I wanted to cry in class, but I wasn't going to do that. I really really wanted an object to squeeze, like a small stuffed animal or something, but I didn't have anything. I took out the dice in my pocket (because I keep three dice in my pocket at all times - it's an anxiety thing) and I rolled them around in my hand, but it only helped a little bit.
I'm not very good at losing people and things. I lose people and things all the time, usually for school reasons, but it's very difficult for me because I want to get attached to things and have them in my life for a long time, but this can't happen for me. (This is what kept my eighteenth birthday and graduation from high school two years ago - my birthday is really close to the end of the school year - from being enjoyable events. I was afraid of losing the people I'd become so close to and the place I had come to love. My relationship with my old school; there's a story, maybe I'll tell it sometime.)
Anyway, after class, I went on to take my obscenely long break. (By "obscenely long break", I mean "my class schedule gives me a full hour between my first and second classes".) One of my acquaintances found me in the place I normally hang out during that break. It was nice, because she was one of the first people I met this semester, and we have genuinely interesting conversations, but it's unlikely we'll take any of the same classes next semester, and we had a conversation I really liked. But as the conversation ended, we talked about my difficulty in making friends - I have trouble getting close to people, and it usually takes me a long time to really become friends with someone. But I can tell if I'm about to become friends with someone, and it's annoying and upsetting when I have to leave them before we can really become friends. We talked about that and the fact that I don't really have friends (not ones I see in real life, anyway).
It made me unhappy going into my history class, and the subject we learned about didn't make me any happier. It's a class about women in U.S. History, and today we learned about domestic violence, something that has affected women historically and still affects them today, and while that's important, it's also really depressing. We watched a documentary about several women sharing their stories of domestic violence, and it was...I'll say it was "heavy", because I can't think of a better word to describe that experience. Yeah.
I was expecting my math class to be over really quickly, but it wasn't. I was expecting us to turn in our homework, get our take-home tests, and leave. Because our test was a take-home test, because the teacher was absent so many times (she's having family trouble, as I understand it), and there wasn't enough time for her to prepare us for the test, so she gave us the advantage of having a take-home test. I'm going to review it with a cousin of mine who's very good at math, and I hope I get a good grade, because I'm practically failing math. I have a 73%, and I'm used to getting really good grades on things. Academics, you see, is pretty much the only thing I'm good for that matters. And I'm failing in one of my classes. Granted, I'm terrible at math anyway, and that's not really my academic strong point, but it's making me unhappy enough that my self-esteem has taken a tremendous drop because of my math class.
Anyhow. We didn't just get our test and go on our merry way. Apparently, there was material we still had to learn, and while I understood it pretty well, it made me unhappy and a bit anxious that my math class went on much longer than I thought it would.
When I got home, I cried a bit and got myself some food. The thing about me and food: I don't actually have an eating disorder, but I have a very poor opinion of my body and pretty much whenever I eat, I feel guilty because I don't think I should eat very much. I thus view eating when it's not mealtime as a somewhat self-destructive behavior, like I'm bingeing or something. I had a tacquito, some peanuts, and some crackers, which wasn't objectively bingeing, but I still felt bad about it. Or, let me rephrase that: ordinarily I would have felt bad about that, but I cared so little about my life in general that I didn't feel bad about self-destructive behaviors.
I am proud that I kept from self-harming, though. I'm not in the habit of self-harm, but the last time I was this low emotionally, I hurt myself with some button pins. I have a collection of button pins and I wear one almost every day, and I recently realized they're fairly good for self-harm. (Well, in as much as anything is "good" for self-harm.) I kept myself from doing so, though, and I'm kind of proud.
Things got somewhat better after that, though. I guess there's a certain point in the day where, if I've been having a hard enough day, I'm just so emotionally spent that I can't be sad anymore, so I immediately get ridiculously happy. This is what happened today. After eating, I did some drawing while listening to Christmas music. I have decided that one of my favorite things about the holiday season is the fact that I can listen to Christmas music without feeling dorky. Because I rather like Christmas music, at least classic Christmas music. It makes me feel nice much of the time. I also drew some 60-Second Zacharies. The term "60-Second Zacharie" refers to the fact that I recently discovered that I have the special talent of being able to draw Zacharie from OFF in about a minute and have it look kind of good. It kind of turned into an exploration of different facial expressions on Zacharie, though, and I was kind of pleased with the result. It looked like this:
I drew a few more unhappy-looking Zacharies than happy-looking ones, which is interesting, because I was actually really happy when I was drawing these. Also, notice how I don't even try to draw hands so that they look good anymore. Also, notice how I drew cat mask Zacharie once and then did toad mask Zacharies all after that. I've decided I prefer drawing toad mask Zacharie. Also, yes, that is a little drawing of Zacharie with Sugar and the Batter. I thought it would be nice to see them together where they're happy (or at least two out of three of them are happy. Happy!Batter is a bit of an odd thing to imagine.)
Tomorrow, I'm taking a self-care day. I'm going to stay at home (declining an offer my aunt made for me to help her work at her school - she's a kindergarten teacher, and sometimes I help her). I'm going to knit, I'm going to watch a movie or two, I'm going to do a little homework, I'm going to do some writing, I'm going to send some poems and stories to publishers, and I'm probably going to do some drawing.
I suppose it can only get better from here. I've had a rough week/week and a half (my really bad feelings started like maybe two weeks ago and didn't really get bad until maybe ten days ago or something?) and I need things to get better. I think they're going to get better. I really really hope my saying that won't make it go wrong, because I find that, as soon as I say something or make a prediction, it turns out to be totally false. I hope that's not the case. Well, I can't think of why things wouldn't start getting better. That's something, at least, eh?
It started in my English class (as so many things in my life do, apparently). My teacher was telling us things about how he wanted us to leave his class as "people of conscience" (his term; I quite like it, actually), people who learned to think critically and accept other perspectives and make good choices. It was really a lovely speech he gave us - he said a lot of nice things I agreed with - but it made me sad because it made me realize, "Oh crud, I'm leaving this class. I'm really leaving it. I loved this class and I have to say goodbye to it. I have to say goodbye to the teacher, and I have to say goodbye to my classmates, and I have to say goodbye to the great discussions we had and the wonderful environment and jlk;dfjgoiaejdgosfg I can't do this oh no oh no". At that point, my brain started having a freakout and I wanted to cry in class, but I wasn't going to do that. I really really wanted an object to squeeze, like a small stuffed animal or something, but I didn't have anything. I took out the dice in my pocket (because I keep three dice in my pocket at all times - it's an anxiety thing) and I rolled them around in my hand, but it only helped a little bit.
I'm not very good at losing people and things. I lose people and things all the time, usually for school reasons, but it's very difficult for me because I want to get attached to things and have them in my life for a long time, but this can't happen for me. (This is what kept my eighteenth birthday and graduation from high school two years ago - my birthday is really close to the end of the school year - from being enjoyable events. I was afraid of losing the people I'd become so close to and the place I had come to love. My relationship with my old school; there's a story, maybe I'll tell it sometime.)
Anyway, after class, I went on to take my obscenely long break. (By "obscenely long break", I mean "my class schedule gives me a full hour between my first and second classes".) One of my acquaintances found me in the place I normally hang out during that break. It was nice, because she was one of the first people I met this semester, and we have genuinely interesting conversations, but it's unlikely we'll take any of the same classes next semester, and we had a conversation I really liked. But as the conversation ended, we talked about my difficulty in making friends - I have trouble getting close to people, and it usually takes me a long time to really become friends with someone. But I can tell if I'm about to become friends with someone, and it's annoying and upsetting when I have to leave them before we can really become friends. We talked about that and the fact that I don't really have friends (not ones I see in real life, anyway).
It made me unhappy going into my history class, and the subject we learned about didn't make me any happier. It's a class about women in U.S. History, and today we learned about domestic violence, something that has affected women historically and still affects them today, and while that's important, it's also really depressing. We watched a documentary about several women sharing their stories of domestic violence, and it was...I'll say it was "heavy", because I can't think of a better word to describe that experience. Yeah.
I was expecting my math class to be over really quickly, but it wasn't. I was expecting us to turn in our homework, get our take-home tests, and leave. Because our test was a take-home test, because the teacher was absent so many times (she's having family trouble, as I understand it), and there wasn't enough time for her to prepare us for the test, so she gave us the advantage of having a take-home test. I'm going to review it with a cousin of mine who's very good at math, and I hope I get a good grade, because I'm practically failing math. I have a 73%, and I'm used to getting really good grades on things. Academics, you see, is pretty much the only thing I'm good for that matters. And I'm failing in one of my classes. Granted, I'm terrible at math anyway, and that's not really my academic strong point, but it's making me unhappy enough that my self-esteem has taken a tremendous drop because of my math class.
Anyhow. We didn't just get our test and go on our merry way. Apparently, there was material we still had to learn, and while I understood it pretty well, it made me unhappy and a bit anxious that my math class went on much longer than I thought it would.
When I got home, I cried a bit and got myself some food. The thing about me and food: I don't actually have an eating disorder, but I have a very poor opinion of my body and pretty much whenever I eat, I feel guilty because I don't think I should eat very much. I thus view eating when it's not mealtime as a somewhat self-destructive behavior, like I'm bingeing or something. I had a tacquito, some peanuts, and some crackers, which wasn't objectively bingeing, but I still felt bad about it. Or, let me rephrase that: ordinarily I would have felt bad about that, but I cared so little about my life in general that I didn't feel bad about self-destructive behaviors.
I am proud that I kept from self-harming, though. I'm not in the habit of self-harm, but the last time I was this low emotionally, I hurt myself with some button pins. I have a collection of button pins and I wear one almost every day, and I recently realized they're fairly good for self-harm. (Well, in as much as anything is "good" for self-harm.) I kept myself from doing so, though, and I'm kind of proud.
Things got somewhat better after that, though. I guess there's a certain point in the day where, if I've been having a hard enough day, I'm just so emotionally spent that I can't be sad anymore, so I immediately get ridiculously happy. This is what happened today. After eating, I did some drawing while listening to Christmas music. I have decided that one of my favorite things about the holiday season is the fact that I can listen to Christmas music without feeling dorky. Because I rather like Christmas music, at least classic Christmas music. It makes me feel nice much of the time. I also drew some 60-Second Zacharies. The term "60-Second Zacharie" refers to the fact that I recently discovered that I have the special talent of being able to draw Zacharie from OFF in about a minute and have it look kind of good. It kind of turned into an exploration of different facial expressions on Zacharie, though, and I was kind of pleased with the result. It looked like this:
I drew a few more unhappy-looking Zacharies than happy-looking ones, which is interesting, because I was actually really happy when I was drawing these. Also, notice how I don't even try to draw hands so that they look good anymore. Also, notice how I drew cat mask Zacharie once and then did toad mask Zacharies all after that. I've decided I prefer drawing toad mask Zacharie. Also, yes, that is a little drawing of Zacharie with Sugar and the Batter. I thought it would be nice to see them together where they're happy (or at least two out of three of them are happy. Happy!Batter is a bit of an odd thing to imagine.)
Tomorrow, I'm taking a self-care day. I'm going to stay at home (declining an offer my aunt made for me to help her work at her school - she's a kindergarten teacher, and sometimes I help her). I'm going to knit, I'm going to watch a movie or two, I'm going to do a little homework, I'm going to do some writing, I'm going to send some poems and stories to publishers, and I'm probably going to do some drawing.
I suppose it can only get better from here. I've had a rough week/week and a half (my really bad feelings started like maybe two weeks ago and didn't really get bad until maybe ten days ago or something?) and I need things to get better. I think they're going to get better. I really really hope my saying that won't make it go wrong, because I find that, as soon as I say something or make a prediction, it turns out to be totally false. I hope that's not the case. Well, I can't think of why things wouldn't start getting better. That's something, at least, eh?
