it's been a while

Missing the days when I updated this a little more often. Ah well, I'll try to keep it short, just to make sure I get through it.

• Been having some really bad depression days.
• Lost a friend because they told me "the only person stopping you from making progress is you". The ol' "get over it" suggestion. I told them to fuck off, and to their credit, they did.
• Anxiety and stress over stability and security in life, especially relating to work. This is what prompted the above, but it's been a combination of everything going sour.
• Zero energy. I've been going home, changing into casual clothes, and then immediately falling onto my bed and passing out for 3-4 hours.
• General feeling of hopelessness w/r/t my options and choices in life, and feeling like nothing matters. Starting too much stuff, and then losing interest or running out of time and energy.
• Struggling with what I suspect is some form of ADHD, relatively undiagnosed. I'm on something for it, and it's been on and off w/r/t its effectiveness. Seems to be strongly influenced by mood; when I feel good, I can get a lot more done, but if I feel like shit I'm arguably even worse off than usual.
• Gender feels. Hoo lordy, gender feels. Too much for a bullet point, really.

So, a quick diversion regarding that last one; if you've read this journal, you might remember this post and the (rather ironically, now) two-weeks-later update. Spoiler: Nothing's changed.

The shortest version is that I'm still risk-averse in every possible way. I don't have the energy to really seek help. I don't want to try anything because I don't know what will happen. I've had a problem with "envisioning bad outcomes" for a long time, and I've never really managed to cope with it well. (More on this later.) I don't know if I could handle it, where I am, around who I'm around for work, family, other things. It's so. much. work. and my state of mind has just been, "if it hasn't bothered me for 29 years, why should it start bothering me now".

It's obvious that it bothers me. I think about it often enough to realize that. I still don't know why. I do know that my hormone levels are, and have been, FUBAR for years. I know that has a huge impact on mind and body. I just can't convince myself that I should try; I feel like the consequences for failure are much worse than just continuing as-is.

Part of the paranoia mentioned above is that my brain is really good at figuring out how things can go wrong. It likes to take a scenario and make each part of it bad. Even the most inane shit — one of the more common ones used to be the idea of venturing to the top of the Stratosphere Tower in town, and then my mind helpfully creating a scenario where some bomb went off around the base, causing the whole thing to fall over. Real fun. Or plane crashes. Or (more recently), finding that someone near to me had died, or been murdered, or had taken their own life, usually in a particularly messy way involving a common household utensil.

My brain is a real piece of shit.

So... that's pretty much how that's been. On the other hand, since "coming out" (this feels so pointless to say, now...), many of my friends have actually come out themselves, or even flatly started transitioning, or just doing... something to progress their life. It feels a little silly; I talk about it myself, then a bunch of people tell me how much I helped them by explaining how I felt in a way they could identify with, and then... I just sort of get passed by. It's not their fault, to be sure. The best way to explain how I feel is like someone helping people onto a train, only to miss the final call and get left behind.

C-C-CRACKLE! Why did you come here? If it weren't for you, nothing would have to change! You cannot wake the Wind Fish! Remember, you... too...are in... ...the dream...

I don't know what else to say right now. Maybe things would have been easier if I had just stayed unaware.