A Product of Ten Minutes of Thinking: I want to live in a world where... I can pet my dog without checking for tiny black hairs on my fingertips afterwards I can walk around my house without forcing myself to wear shoes so I can shield my feet from the dirty carpet that other people have walked on I can go to a restaurant without worrying that a rouge hair has drifted into my water glass that may not have been washed well enough I can enjoy eating food without thinking about how greasy, messy, crumbly, it is as I lick my lips to make sure no remnants remain I can cry on the hard days without crying about the fact that I’m crying, since tears are a bodily fluid and bodily fluids are gross, no matter how natural I can be in a too-small room with a person who has just sneezed without holding my breath to avoid the possibly bad germs until my face turns purple I can go to an amusement park or a mall or a public bathroom without cringing when I have to touch a door that so many other people have touched I can look out my bedroom window at the night sky without being irrationally scared that the darkness will swallow me whole if I look for too long I can live, feel, walk, risk, enjoy, cry, heal, explore, imagine, without hurting ever again You could say that I’m lucky, because I used to be too afraid to ever pet my dog, walk into dirty rooms in my house, go to a restaurant, eat messy foods, cry, take a deep breath, explore crowded places, or look out of my window at night. But don’t you see? I’ve only learned to exist. Not to live.

Earlier I posted about trying to get back to sitting on my sofa without a blanket covering it. And I did it, but now my day has been ruined. I left for two seconds and my cat decided to sit there, so now it's not clean anymore. This is because sometimes she's had number two stuck to her and no longer trust that she's clean. It took so much for me to just do that and sit without a blanket and now I'm just so done. I'm also scared to walk anywhere in my house. We sometimes get slugs in our conservatory and I don't walk in there anymore because there can be slug slime trails (it's carpet). The thing is, my mum regularly goes in there, my dad too. And then they proceed to walk around the rest of the house without changing shoes or anything. I'm just panicking because I was having a good day and now I feel like I'm isolated to my bedroom.

I used to get caught in a loop with existential thoughts very frequently. Every question made my stomach drop: (TW: existential questions) … … ... "Why does anything exist at all? What will death be like? Is anything even real? Is there any meaning to this? Is the universe infinitely big, and if not, what's beyond it? Are there multiverses? Has the universe been around forever? Will the universe end for good, or will it keep going forever? What is forever like? What even IS reality?" It would get so overwhelming that I remember lying on the floor in a fetal position for hours because I felt like there was no escape. I spent most of my days reading articles and watching videos about theoretical astrophysics and philosophy in a desperate attempt to "figure it all out." Of course that only made me more anxious, raised more questions, and kept me trapped in the cycle. Things started to improve once I learned to turn TOWARD reality, rather than away from it, and ERP really helped me do that. I learned that these questions weren't the problem. I learned that I can actually handle the anxiety that arises when exposed to these ideas and concepts. I don't have to figure anything out to make the anxiety go away; it arises and passes away on its own. Ironically, bringing myself into the present moment and becoming more aware of reality helped me escape the cycle of existential dread. Because of that, this topic no longer takes over my life. If I'm triggered by something I see, hear, or think, I may still feel a little twang of anxiety, but then it just goes away. "Maybe, maybe not" has been the single most useful phrase of my life. Do you ever get trapped in a cycle of existential questions? Are you worried that the ERP approach would be too scary to handle? If so, I'm happy to give my advice.

This is just a vent. Feels nice to just be honest about who I am and my deficiencies. Mental health advocates are always like "you deserve to live no matter what" and I'm like "bet lol" I am not a good person whose presence has any positive impact on the world. I'm not evil, just useless without having the excuse of depression or whatever (it's anxiety based but again who gives a shit). If I were to go away, I wouldn't be missed because I contribute nothing of note. If we did not live in the US where you can get by without being socially accepted as long as you have loving parents, I would either be dead or would have stepped up and might actually be a valuable member of society (like between being dead and pushing through my anxiety I would probably choose the latter lol). Interpersonally, I have no redeeming qualities. No I'm not one of those people who says that shit and then lists all the ways they're actually decent but just have low self-esteem, I'm genuinely useless. I'm unreliable when it comes to group projects and my job, usually doing the bare minimum or less than that. When it comes to my work in general, I tend to drop the ball, often waiting till the last minute to get started on it, turning it in late, or simply not turning it in at all. I make promises about the things I will do and then don't do them. I also lack initiative and just follow orders. Socially, I don't have any friends and don't make an effort to try to gain any - I tend to act distant in social interactions and don't join in when people are having group conversations. I'm a talented artist, but the only work I've ever shown others in the last few years has been shoddy, amateurish, and completely unreflective of my abilities, and I've never been complimented for it lol. How do I feel about all this? Pretty freaking bad, yet I make no effort to change. I'm afraid of most things so I avoid them, screwing up my own life and negatively affecting other people's as well. Despite all this, I have this desire to be accepted by someone else as I am. The fact that I accept myself shows that it's possible, I guess (you could argue that I don't have a choice but I definitely chose to be okay with myself after years of self-loathing). I have a shit-ton of flaws and nothing to really offset them - I mean I'm self-aware but I think self-awareness is completely useless if you don't do anything about what you've observed in yourself, and less self-aware people are able to take more risks - and I just have this fantasy of someone showing up and looking at all that I am and being like "you have contributed literally nothing to society and you have no redeeming qualities but I accept you as you are and love you, for no reason other than I just do." But based on the comics I've read this can only happen if you're childhood friends who've known each other for a long time lol. No reason someone's gonna want to be friends with some random person who leaves a poor first impression and doesn't do anything to further the relationship. The plus side of this is that I have a /lot/ of room for growth, lots of things to change that could make me a better person. The negative side is that it is still just as hard to not be avoidant af as it was yesterday