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captainxtreme3 karma

Can't wait for the day that hack fraud is off the air. My parents love his show and it just sicks me right out.

captainxtreme3 karma

How does one seek mental help later in life, when they're at their lowest? I never really had motivation, I've just been riding the wave of life since about 2005. Not the healthiest way to go along, but it was all right, I was still depressed but I wasn't unemployed. That's what's important to me. Unfortunately that wave ended last year when I lost my job right before the pandemic was declared. My now former workplace was robbed in March of last year while I was on the clock. It was the first time I ever had a weapon pointed at me with clear intent to fire if I didn't comply, and the company threw me right under the bus afterward. From that point I was socially paralyzed, afraid to go outside for most of the year, I couldn't even motivate myself to collect unemployment - probably the most pathetic thing I've ever done to myself.

I just feel like dead weight now, with only the capacity for self hatred. Finding work again has been a monumentally disheartening struggle since I'm starting back at square one. I never knew how to network or interview for a job in the first place, I was only employed by pure chance. The 'interview' was basically just running me through how they did things because they were desperate for help. I held onto that job with a death grip for seven years because I was sure I'd never find another without a similar miracle. It took me years to notice retail and service jobs are chronically understaffed and that this is by design. When the boss finally told me I was fired I was practically ecstatic, since I never had the balls to quit. All that time I effectively worked as a doormat, and I've vowed to never do it again.

The way I feel now at 35 years old is that I missed the bus. Everybody else I know figured out how to mesh with society before they graduated, they've all had multiple jobs and some even moved onto proper careers. But nobody is coming back for me, I know that and everyone around me knows that - they won't shut up about it, like that's gonna motivate me. My parents only knew tough love and it didn't work for me, just drove me deeper into self hate. The best they could do was question why I didn't just apply myself earlier in life like they did. How can you say that to somebody in good conscience? It's not helpful, it can't possibly be! They'll never drive me in a way that is actually beneficial. Which really sucks because that's who I live with right now.

Even when I was employed, the only positive emotion I felt about it was that of not being a burden. Never felt like I was making much impact, and I always felt out of place. Simply communicating is hard work for me. Even engaging in perfectly banal, time-of-day style conversation drains me when I'm around strangers. I'm a slow thinker, on a typical day of work I'd have more than a few customers deliberately taunting me because I'd take more than a moment to think before I respond. To put this in perspective, I can solve a Rubik's Cube with far less intense thought than meeting a new person and casually talking. I did my job well otherwise, but the fear was ever present of somebody else coming along and doing what I did without breaking a sweat.

I'm just sick of acting the way people expect me to, it feels like living a lie. Everything about society at large feels fake to me. I can barely handle living just my regular life where I'm not trying to impress, say, one person who's reading a hundred other job applications. I can only see it as building oneself atop a hill of lies. Maybe the best example is writing out a resume - it just feels gross, like I'm overselling myself for no reason except to compete against other applicants who are overselling themselves. That's the chief concern in my life now though, finding a job, preferably far away from customers. Then getting serious, professional mental help. And maybe after I get that squared away I can go about finding somebody who can bear to be with me. That's another issue I've noticed in the past few years, maybe my second greatest fear is being alone, and that manifests in my dreams a lot. Nothing quite like waking up from a dream in which you've found happiness with somebody else, it really ruins the whole day afterward.

My only saving grace, I feel, is that I have a pair of friends who refuse to give up on me, regardless of how hard I push back. I wish I would be more open to their suggestions, because they have been helpful in small doses, but I've been awful to them the last few weeks. I feel too stuck in my own broken ways to commit myself to positive change. One of them even tried to low key play matchmaker for me, and thinking about it as I type this I really appreciate it in retrospect, but in the moment I casually brushed it aside because I've never remotely considered myself on the table, if you know what I mean. Plus... they've got their own mental health issues, and I don't feel it's fair to impose mine on them when the root of my poor mental health is self sabotage.

Sometimes I just want to mind-meld with somebody, because otherwise I don't think they'll truly understand how little hope I feel, or how I think in the first place. Or maybe it could go the other way around, I might understand what it's like to have hope, because I just don't right now.

captainxtreme3 karma

Ah, a kindred spirit! It's kind of funny, part of what emboldened me to pour out my heart like this was hearing other peoples' stories as well. My Youtube recommendations lately have been full of psychotherapists and others who are experiencing their own forms of social anxiety. I think Google knows (and to be honest it's a little creepy, but I digress). Last night I went on something of a therapy-by-proxy binge, and there were moments that if I didn't know better I'd have thought the man on screen was talking directly to me. Then this showed up on the front page today. Total coincidence, but incredibly timely in my case. I never knew there was a Mental Health Awareness Month, the world needs it for sure.

Thankfully in my case, I've barely even dipped my toes into social networking, never got into the whole Facebook thing. This right here is as far as I go. I've got a lot of empathy for people who get drawn into it and define their lives that way though, because we're really no different. All my life I believed some of the most deplorable things that people said about me. I didn't think I had that weakness, but I've learned a lot about myself lately.

Don't be sorry for responding to my wall of text with a wall of text! It was a pleasant read, and vindicating. If there's only one thing I still love in life, it's reading meaningful words. If I ever lose that, I'll be in real trouble!

captainxtreme2 karma

First time anyone has responded to me in an AMA, thanks for taking the time. I spent a good hour and a half pouring out that wall of text, and it hurt the whole time, but I had to do it. I'm so exhausted with keeping up this facade of well being.

The impromptu therapy session I had with my friends a couple weeks ago really shook something loose. I wouldn't have posted here otherwise, I think. They're great people and I've been squandering their companionship. I've had loads of 'real talk' with others but then moved on the next day because I was just too fed up with myself to follow up or take any advice to heart. Now I'm trying to get back out there and do it again.

Maybe this is my month. I still don't feel too positive, but there's something to just telling people how you really feel that I've never tapped into before. I still feel awful about what feels like dumping my trash on their front lawn, but even when I push back they still don't lose patience with me.

Thanks again. I'm not a religious guy by any stretch of the imagination, but if there really is a god out there somewhere, I'd like to think you're doing his work.