Time Is Still Marching On

Well, I've done it.

It's my birthday so I'm now another year older. I'm 26.

The rest of this gets pretty personal so if that doesn't interest you and you just wanted to read about how old I am, you can stop here. Look, I even brought cake.

Did you enjoy the cake?

To start with some positives, even though things haven't been perfect some things have definitely improved for me since the year began. On top of that, I've enjoyed quite a few games and movies lately (Across the Spider-Verse is SO GOOD!) and the rest of the year is looking pretty great on that front too (there's a new Spider-Man game that'll probably be the thing that gets me to jump on the PS5 bandwagon and the fact that we're getting new Russel T Davies Doctor Who episodes starring David Tennant still hasn't fully settled in for me) so I'm trying to take my happiness where I can get it. 

I don't like to talk about my personal life much, partially because that's how I was raised and partially because what little I should be able to share just makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed by the fact I haven't been doing more. Sorry for being a bit of a Debbie Downer here but if you've stuck with me this long then that shouldn't seem out of character.

I'm lucky enough to have a family that's been patient and supportive of me but the fact that I still feel like I'm living the same life I was living five years ago feels, uh, real real bad. I've been seeing a therapist for a few months now and I was recently put on new antidepressants that seem like they're helping, so I am taking steps towards bettering myself but it's hard. Really all I've been able to do these last few years is keep myself above rock bottom but, for obvious reasons, that hasn't felt great and sure doesn't seem like much of a plan in the long-term.

I still have pretty much no social life and that can often be crushing. I have two people I chat with on Discord semi-regularly, one person I DM with about once a week or so, and I talk with my immediate family daily, but that's about it. I've always been a pretty shy and private person so with the way my anxiety's compounded on itself over the last few years and with how little incentive I've had to go out and broaden my horizons my already small social circle has only gotten smaller. For the handful of you I have interacted with, I want to apologize for seeming pushy or annoying. Interacting with people has never come naturally to me so I think I may overcompensate a bit whenever I do actually start to feel comfortable talking with someone.

I think I've alluded to this next thing a bit on Twitter, but I've also been dealing with some gender... stuff... for quite some time. For a long while I thought I might be trans but I never felt trans "enough", more that it was a label that resonated with me to an extent, but never quite seemed right. After a lot of soul-searching I came to the conclusion that I'm, as best as I can put it, "some sort of non-binary", but I'm not entirely sure what I should do with this information. I think they/them pronouns might feel better for me but, also, I'm not entirely sure I care how other people refer to me? This probably makes me sound noncommittal or like I don't think this is important, but it is. I've just never liked being the center of attention and I've never felt comfortable dictating how other people should interact with me. It's one thing to come to a conclusion about my own self-identification and another entirely (for me, at least) to actually feel confident enough to put myself out there and stand up for myself. The world is a mean, unforgiving place at times and I'm a coward who doesn't like confrontation so it's generally been simpler to keep these things to myself.

I realize nobody wants to hear someone else throw themself a pity party but keeping this stuff bottled up clearly hasn't been helping me and it's not like more than a handful of people will see this anyway. It feels nice to vent a bit, at the very least.