I’ve not been doing well recently. I don’t think I’ve been “well” since October? Maybe for a week or two there in November. Things have just been stacking up for me in a way where it feels very, very exhausting. I’ve been trying to write about these feelings since Christmas and I’ve just been struggling to find the right words and put them in the right order. I think after writing and deleting about 5,000 words of unorganized thoughts I’m ready to accept that I simply won’t have the right words, and they won’t be in the right order. I made this site to host blog posts that would effectively replace me posting to Instagram stories, so all the messy and unorganized vague feelings I would’ve put to that are now going here, where I’ll let them be messy and unorganized and won’t try fitting them into some kind of thesis.

I think I was under the impression that because I wanted to talk about some really heavy, sad stuff that it had to be perfectly written. Well, that’s just not happening. Maybe if I was a better writer, or had a better handling on my own mental health, I could. Maybe the Dal of 2030 will know how to funnel his feelings in more expressive, interesting, and thought provoking prose. But, not 2025 Dal. If I stare at this document like a perfectionist, writing, deleting, rewriting, editing, deleting, and rewriting again, I’ll never get my thoughts out. Which, to me, is a worse fate than expressing them badly. So, be prepared for a messy, messy post. Also be prepared for discussions of severe mental health struggles, suicidal thoughts and ideation, and a hefty helping of vague sad things.

Discussions of suicide begins

More than anything else I’ve noticed over the times I’ve tried writing this update, the most common pitfall I trap myself into is trying to preface literally everything I say with some kind of asterisk. “Yes I’ve done therapy, yes I have friends, yes I have fulfilling hobbies I love, yes I touch grass when I can” are all things I say over and over and I spend so long going over each and every one of these things I don’t even talk about the things I actually want to talk about. At some point, it was stuck in my head that you can’t talk about your bad-brain-stuff if its not in the “right” way. If you experience suicidal thoughts, the only way you can talk about it is with a medical professional and its objectively immoral to saddle your friends and family with your bad-brain-stuff. If you experience depression, or anxiety, you can only talk about those things if they manifest in the “normal” ways, but not if they push you to be an angry asshole, or to not keep up with your personal hygiene, or if they limit your ability to go to work. Obviously these things aren’t true, and in my head I know this, but in practice I just can’t get myself to throw away the bad logic that got me to these conclusions.

I get really, really scared of telling people that I want to die sometimes. Which probably makes things way worse. If one of my friends was feeling suicidal I would call it an emergency and stop everything I was doing to help them. But it just doesn’t feel as serious when its myself. When I’m the one having problems, its not a big deal. And I don’t even truly think my logic is unsound here, I experience severe bouts of depression about every 4-6 months. Like clockwork. And with those severe bouts, obviously comes the suicidal thoughts. Very rarely do they come with action, I’m generally lucid enough most of the time to recognize that suicide is a bad thing that I don’t want to do. Which is true for me at the time of writing this. I don’t know what specific parallel to draw to try and illustrate this point for people who’ve never experienced this, but it feels like addiction almost. Everything in my body wants a Bad Thing, the more impulsive side of my brain (logic) and my heart (feelings) want the same thing as well. But if I stop, breathe, and think for a moment, the calmer side of my brain and heart take over and I know in my soul I don’t really want the Bad Thing. I just don’t want to feel the way I do now, and my primal monkey brain is grasping at straws to feel different. It’s only in extreme moments of weakness anything bad happens, but I don’t put in as much work as I should to prevent these moments of weakness.

Now, to be fair to myself, I can’t predict the future and if something bad happens that triggers my bad-brain-stuff, there’s only so much I can do to prevent that. But I don’t do everything in my power. Its sort of like I’ve locked my front door to prevent a break in, but I haven’t locked my back door or most of my windows. If someone does break in, its ultimately not my fault, but I could be doing more to mitigate it and prevent it from happening in the first place. It’s really hard for me to justify why I don’t just get better at dealing with my brain. I think it loops back around to me feeling like I’m a burden on whoever I tell. I think my brain may have been rotten by internet therapy speak where I don’t want to “trauma dump” or “cross boundaries” and I have this unending fear that my bad-brain-stuff is overwhelming and that ultimately, my comfort in the midst of a deep struggle is not worth “ruining the vibe”. “It’s not that serious” and I should just “call the suicide hotline”. But this frankly makes no sense. I don’t know if anyone knows what trauma dumping means anymore, is it even real? I’ve never heard a certifiably real person say it, just people in the comments sections of Reddit or TikTok claiming that whoever the original poster is complaining about is manipulating them. God, what even is manipulation? I feel more like a slimy manipulative rat when I go behind my loved one’s backs to fantasize about how they’d react at my funeral than whenever I’m just upfront about how I’m not in a good place mentally. And why am I even afraid of crossing boundaries? I know so many people who have told me that whenever I’m doing poorly I should let them know, and I literally never do. I just don’t do it. I feel like they’re lying to me, or they at least don’t know what they’re signing up for. I’ve had enough bad experiences where I’ve opened up to friends and they’ve reacted negatively or in a way that honestly made me feel worse.

I’ve had people give me the ol’ “just get sunlight, just exercise, just get 8 hours of sleep, just journal, just-just-just-just-just”. Not helpful, but I think most people are aware of that. I’ve also gotten “Well, a lot of people feel that way, so you’re not alone”. Which I think is meant to be comforting. To me it just comes off as “Other people are getting through it, so just suck it up like they are”, or as “Some people have it worse, so stop complaining”. I’m sure it’s not meant to be taken that way, but I don’t think anyone in the year of our lord 2025 thinks they’re the first person to feel depressed or anxious. It also feels so dismissive in a way I can’t quite explain or quantify. Like, if your friend broke their arm, told you “my arm really hurts” you probably wouldn’t say “don’t worry, you’re not alone, a lot of people break their arms”. Like, I’m not crazy for thinking that sounds super dismissive of their feelings, right? And is really just not helpful at all. It doesn’t change anything about the reality of their situation and there’s no comfort either physically or emotionally.

Another response I’ve gotten stems from a very good place, but has been so damaging to me its the response I fear the most whenever I consider opening up to people. I’ve opened up about my suicidal thoughts and have been presented with instantaneous sobbing and pleading for me to not go. I’ve been treated like a child where if I don’t respond to a text within 15 minutes the other person immediately assumes the worst and I’ve done something bad and spam calls or texts me, threatening to call the police or my family. Its such a horrible position to be in where you’re simultaneously seeking comfort while being forced to give comfort. Where the other person’s anxieties take precedent, despite going to them to ease your own anxieties. Obviously this doesn’t help. I keep these people at arms length now, I simply don’t trust them with my emotions. I’m going to copy and paste something I wrote in previous drafts, I honestly don’t have the wherewithal at the moment to think of a smooth transition.

Here’s the thing, and I’m going to put this very bluntly. If an adult 100% wanted to kill themselves, they would. They would find a way. If someone has the thought to communicate to you that they are feeling depressed and suicidal, it means they really truly don’t want to die.

I don’t know if there is a right way to talk about suicidal thoughts. I don’t know how to communicate my bad brain thoughts while simultaneously offering comfort to the person/people I came to seek comfort from that despite that way I think, I don’t want to be gone gone. I think maybe its a thing so many (much healthier) people can’t begin to wrap their head around. I don’t know how to perfectly string together the words to say “I’m experiencing a prolonged bout of very poor mental health, but it won’t be the end of the world, but also I need a lot of love and support right now, but also not in a way that’s overwhelming for any one person, but also not in a way that means you can ignore it and it’ll go away, but also it definitely will go away after a few weeks, but then in a few months to a year it’ll be back and I’ll have to explain this whole thing again.”

Discussion of suicide ends.

And then all I do is write for 2,000 about how scared I am of opening up about my emotions and I don’t even get a step closer to talking about those emotions. I preface my thoughts with so many other things I completely lose sight of them. Ultimately, I don’t know how to talk about my feelings in a vacuum. I’m struggling a lot right now. I’m finding it very difficult to get out of bed. When I’m at work I think about all the ways I could quit my job and never have to set foot in a Walmart again. When I get home I’m so tired and exhausted after disconnecting my brain from my body all day I don’t know where to begin. I’m an extrovert at heart, but I’m too scared of not being fun enough to hang out with my friends. I know in my head that you can text someone out of the blue for any reason at all, but all my friends talk a lot about how texts are stressful and they don’t like receiving them and how they just want to be alone in their warm cozy house after work. And I know its true given how many times I get left on read, when I do finally muster the courage to reach out. And I get it, I’m sure I see a lot of people as a closer friend than they probably see me. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people found me… Intense? Overly affectionate? Clingy? I’m frankly not even sure who reads my blog posts honestly. In theory, most of my friends do. In practice I feel like I’m constantly reminding people it exists or bothering them with “have you read my new post yet? what did you think?” and then getting one word responses - which is honestly really hurtful after how many of them have told me they were really excited to read what I write.

It all leads me to wonder sometimes, do my friends suck or am I not communicating enough how much I desperately need them? I’m sure the correct response is something like “your friends could do more to be present, and you could do more to be vulnerable, but also you may just need to seek out extroverted friends who can match your energy”. Which is true. But god, I feel so fucking stupid trying to make friends. I feel so completely dumb and like I’m a caveman scientists just found frozen in an iceberg and magically gave the ability to speak modern day English after he thawed. I feel like a big dumb clumsy monster who fucks up without knowing. I feel like whatever the social analogue to a bull in a china shop is. I don’t know what I’m doing literally ever, I can’t tell which/if any acquaintances I have want to be closer friends, I can’t tell which/if any old friends want to keep in touch, I can’t tell which/if any of my current friends want space from me. I wish I could just know what people thought so I knew how to act accordingly. I don’t even care at this point what acquaintances I want to be friends with, what old friends I want to reconnect with, or what current friends I don’t want to see anymore. I just want someone to give me a script so I can know how to act and so I can magically fix my IDIOT BRAIN so I can have proper distractions from how shit I feel most of the time and how desperately I just want someone to say “Wanna hang out and watch a movie? Can I tell you about this new thing I’m really interested in? Check out this band, I think you’ll really like them!”

I can’t think of a clean way to end this post. If you’ve read this far, thank you. Reach out to me, please. It would mean a lot. Regardless of if we’ve been friends since high school, or if we’ve literally never spoken, it would mean the world to know that my feelings aren’t getting lost in a void. If you are someone who reaches out to me often, thank you. It honestly makes may day more than I say directly.

Originally I had ended the post there, but its now been a full day and I feel I have more to say. My ending sentiment is.. well, frankly, really pathetic and annoying. I had a discussion with Cass about it, how poorly the post ended up. I told her I felt on one hand that I’m being very immature and petty by effectively sub-tweeting all my friends in this post to complain about how they don’t talk to me enough, but on the other not even Cass read the post. I have to tell her whenever I’m ready to make a new post so she can make sure the website and server its hosted on talk to each other, otherwise it doesn’t get updated. Basically, I complained about how I clearly have these horrible terrible no good friends, as evidenced by the fact they don’t read my blog, but then not even my life partner of almost 4 years read it so… What do I make of that?

I.. really don’t know.

Well, ok, I do know a little. I can start by not projecting my insecurities onto other people, and then knee jerk reacting to the judgements I think people have of me based off of my own self hatred. I assume that because I think deep down I’m so mentally disabled, but so far up my own ass to see it, that everyone else also thinks this way. I don’t know why I choose to think so poorly of my friends. I don’t know why its an easier reality for me to accept that everyone secretly hates me over the much more likely scenario that everyone probably forgot my blog existed because I only talk about it on Discord and most of my friends don’t like using it. Or, I do have friends who read this blog, but because of me crashing out pissing, shitting, crying, farting, throwing up they found the whole thing too intense to reach out about.

Being in a poor state of mental clarity fucked with my judgement. My heart told me “I miss my friends, we should schedule a hangout” and my mental health replied with “Why would they want to hang out with me? I’m worthless and they probably don’t like me anyway” before the original thought could make it to my brain. I was in a bad state yesterday. I do think the bulk of the post is still good, I do want to talk about my mental health in a place where the reader can come and go at any time without any pressure to respond so that they can get to know me better and can understand the way my brain processes. I have two very strange fears that scare me more than anything, fears that to me are so innate and primal but simultaneously make no sense in proportion to how sick the thought of them makes me. My two biggest fears are losing memories and being misunderstood. I want to explain myself in excruciating detail so everyone can understand me, but also so I’ll never forget how my brain used to work. Ending the post with a sobbing mess begging for connection just didn’t make sense. While I do still want to present myself as flawed and imperfect, I do think there is some amount of responsibility in writing accurately to real life. I don’t want to lie, or write things I’m not willing to stand behind and believe in more than 24 hours after originally writing them. I think it was impulsive to put the post up in its original form, without this addendum, but I don’t think it was a wrong enough thing to delete and never speak on it again. This is something I touched on while talking to Cass about it: It was my goal with starting a blog to be able to write authentically, but if I’m authentically immature, do I hide that?

The answer isn’t quite a yes or no, I think. The ending paragraphs were something that was meant for a private diary entry and never should’ve been something I posted. But, now it’s up and I can’t go back in time. I have no way of knowing who’s read it. This to me feels like the best option. I can further clarify with my original goal of opening up about my bad-brain-stuff without hiding somewhere where I fucked up. I’d be interested in hearing other potential thoughts on this - although, maybe not, given this is incredibly embarrassing lol.

I think this is a prime example of how depression isn’t pretty. It isn’t just crying and sleeping a lot. If you’re close to me, you probably know I really adore werewolves. Not necessarily in a monster fucker OwO way, but in what the trope means for story telling and the ways characters in fiction navigate the “curse”. When my mental health is doing poor, like really poor, worse than the original post, I frankly feel like a monster. I feel like my body and voice was stolen from me by something deeply primal and out of my control. Something I can never truly understand. And I don’t mean this to justify anything, but it really does feel like I get pushed to the edge in my own head and its just hard to deal with. It’s just hard, but it’s something I’m going to live with for the rest of my life. Being born with my brain being wired a certain way, plus a very trauma-filled teenage experience, plus the normal bad shit everyone has to deal with makes me into an angry and petty person when I’m weak.

And that’s not okay. But I set out to write a raw, authentic look into my very unwell brain. I believe I’ve accomplished that, even if I’ve made it a miserable experience to read or understand. From here on out I want to write about things that bring sparkle to my life and not things that make me crash out on main. Thanks for reading.