September 24, 4 AM thoughts

Today and yesterday have been emotional rollercoasters. Not just emotions, but my very sense of self and confidence have been fluctuating up and down. I feel shaken and afraid. Words can't seem to express how sheerly lost I am, and the guilt I feel for saying that. 

I refuse therapy because I don't like the idea of my parents paying the money for one, and then having my parents drive the long distance to send me there every time. Then coming out of that room to my mom asking me what I talked about. I was set on the idea of finding a job to pay for it, but somewhere in my subconscious I don't feel ready for one apparently. I feel like I desperately need the therapy, I am incredibly lost in a way that I don't feel I can handle alone. A couple years ago I would have been determined to try anyway, laid out a plan and everything. Today I just want help and validation and someone to contextualize what I'm going through. Have I lost motivation, or is it getting wiser? 

I'm tired. Just tired. I'm not the same one moment to the next. I'm alone partly by choice and partly because my friends are lonely/unable to see me due to corona. The face I see most consistently is my mother's. I'm more aware now of the way she ridicules me and devalues my thoughts and opinions daily. Between being alone and being with her, I'm not sure what I'd choose. 

College has felt like a sucker punch to the face due to intense academic anxiety and workload. My parents haven't even asked how I feel. What I'm doing. After pushing me for years so I could be here, they don't actually care enough to ask how it is and how I'm doing? It's weird to me. My emotions in the matter are so trivial to them, I realized. The pain and pressure that characterized my life after puberty was probably just a blip to them. Effortless. Thoughtless. 

It's disgusting. 

As much as I want to stay up and get everything done, I can't anymore. I'm 18 but my body feels like it's declining. I'm consistently tired and sore, my back and neck pains are easily set off by mundane things (another thing I refuse to see a doctor for on my parent's time/money), I haven't been able to put weight on my wrists for a couple weeks, and my joints ache at night. My executive functions have declined over the years and I literally feel like my brain is aging. I can't concentrate, I can't remember things that are important to me. I'm losing pieces of myself. I don't understand why all of these things are, but I wonder if stress could really be responsible for all of it. I'm scared. I'm scared. 

I'm trapped. Right now, I'm trapped with my parents for even longer than I had to be, in a situation no one predicted. I'm trapped in the move we're undergoing. And I feel like I'll be trapped for the next five years in this education. No time for myself, far away from my relationships hundreds of miles away. I don't have time to do fucking anything these days but COLLEGE WORK and eat and sleep. This is literally my first quarter, what the fuck is this?? Am I the only one who can't handle this?? And I know I could enjoy this subject but I just can't because I'm resenting the anxiety it consistently causes me and the time it takes from me every single day. I'm tired of feeling like I have to excel academically and in my future career to the point where I've been contemplating the stay-at-home mom lifestyle. My parents would berate me for throwing away all the money and effort of those years. I don't care because I never had a choice in where my life was going to go. That "success" was chosen for me from the start. And it's just my misfortune that I had a mind built for it, because it was all the more reason to push me into this life under the idea of "being lucky I can do this" and "not wasting my intellect". I fucking hate it. I just want to be normal now. 

Would not having excess amounts of money really make my life that miserable? Because all my parents wanted for me in life was for me to make exorbitant amounts of money. They never taught me anything about having good relationships or pursuing a goal I'm passionate about, those things that bring you the most psychological fulfillment in life. My family is the most well-off one between all of my friends, but there is a contrast between the constant misery it is for me to he home (and the misery my parents foster against each other) and the love and support I see in his poorer family. I can tell it's better than here. My parents have no hobbies other than making money, no goals other than making money, no morals and no beliefs. They're honestly really sad and horing to be around, even putting the toxic relationship/mental health shit aside. They are stagnant people who haven't changed since I've known them, and they repeat the same lines over and over as if reading from a broken script. I feel so out of place just acting like I would naturally act. Like a normal human being(?) I was shamed throughout my entire life for acting reasonably based on my emotions and circumstance. They don't give a fuck about that since they take issue with every little thing that piques their annoyance; the clothes I wear, the way I talk, the things I enjoy, me as a person. They destroyed my sense of self and my confidence. I'm still so closed off to them that I rarely exchange more than a few sentences with them a day despite living in the same house.

This turned into a hell of a talk. I don't feel like I'm being negative, just saying what's on my mind. If I were a negative person, I suppose I couldn't blame myself with how my life has been so far. The kind of thoughts and attitudes I've been consistently exposed to. The idea that people can be judged and shamed for their attitudes and actions (at least, to the extent that people on modern social media do it) irks me more and more nowadays. I believe people are a product of their situations. While free will exists, it's not powerful enough to offset or invalidate years of experiences that we cannot control. Where we live, who we grow up with, those we're attached to, what attitudes we're raised with and whether or not we get support or validation, etc. Many people dont even realize the effect of these things on them. It's cliche but I wish the narrative would turn to trying to understand why people do things rather than shaming them for doing things. I'm not preaching support, I want people to try to understand why people do the things they do, rather than slapping them in the face and closing off their minds. Understanding is not necessarily support. Understanding is acknowledging, it is knowledge. Coming from a place of knowledge informing beliefs/actions (rather than the other way around) would lead us to a better world.