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driftboy87

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Hey ALL. It's been about four months since I've joined and I'm happy to say that things are looking better. Here's an entry I posted on an online blog post I used to frequent that sums up the progress:

I posted here around 5 times over the last few years, and I figured I would come back and read my old posts to see what’s changed. As far as circumstances go, not too much. Still living at home with drunk mom and demented grandfather, still friendless. In fact, I don’t even have that one friend I mentioned above anymore, since he got his dream job and is way too cool to talk to me now, unless he wants a shoulder to cry on or to brag about something he just bought. Last time he called me I told him to lose my number. I think he finally got the picture. Graduated college in December, collected unemployment up until 3 weeks ago, sort of looking for work.

But my attitude has improved tremendously since the last time I posted, because I’m finally living FOR ME, and NOBODY ELSE. The last six months of college and working a horrible call center job made me realize that I wasn’t really living my life, almost everything I was doing I was only doing to please my family and non-existent friends. Shortly after New Years I had a major panic attack that lasted the better part of a week and I knew I had to go to therapy.

After about 12 weeks of therapy, reading, writing, and introspection, I’ve learned that I really put too much value on regaining a “normal” social life like I had back in high school and the first year of college. And by failing to achieve this ONE GOAL, I concluded that EVERYTHING in my life was honeysuckle and that my only purpose was to please my mom, aunt and uncle, and grandfather to avoid being screamed at or “disowned” as they loved to threaten me with. The last three years of my life were spent doing things I had little to no interest in and smoking literally pounds of pot (I drank a ton of rum for a little while too) to deal with the stress.

Well, I finally put my foot down the end of January. I stopped contact with my “friend”, told my mom to shut up and deal with her own problems, and let my aunt know that if I want to hear her advice, I’ll turn on the church channel. The result? I feel a LOT BETTER. No more phone calls from the loser telling me about his fumblings with girls and that bragging/bravado. No more drunkass, pathetic old women telling me what to do, and now that I’m out of college I’ll probably only hear from the aunt around Christmas and tax time. The only stress in my life now is of my own creation, and I feel better about dealing with it.

I’m getting back into what I used to love: writing, DJing and getting outside. I freak out people who used to know me since my circumstances haven’t really gotten better (in fact, some might say worse), but I’ve got a new sense of confidence and a much better (yet still formative) sense of direction. My family hasn’t disowned me, simply because they knew they’d be in a bunch of trouble if they did (I’m the only physically capable person they know). In fact when I mentioned the possibility of moving across the state line (20 minute drive) my mom started trying to bribe me to stay here. It’ll happen anyway, once I find work.

I guess what I’m trying to get across is to not give up on the hope of having a happy life, friendships or not. I think Ben Stein said that the first rule of success is to decide what you want, and that’s absolutely true. Deciding what you DON’T WANT is equally important and will give you at least a little bit of direction. So identify the negatives in your life first (probably won’t be hard) and get those out of there. Admit to yourself that you want better, and write down some ideas and goals to keep yourself focused. In some cases, burning bridges and starting fresh is absolutely the right thing to do.

And please, if you’re really hurting like I was with self- loathing rage, suicidal/homicidal thoughts, and physical symptoms like stomach cramps, sleeplessness and erratic blood pressure: GET SOME HELP. There’s absolutely no shame in it. The better social workers will work something out if money is an issue. You’ll be surprised how much better you feel just to be able to unload a lot of baggage on a neutral party. I used to think therapy was only for the weak-minded too. But after most of my lifetime being mistreated, neglected and shat on by people, I realized that without help and a new way of looking at things I was doomed to be weak forever.
 

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