Something I have to mention...

[IamLEAM1983]

For the past six or seven months, I've been having panic attacks irregularly. On occasion, the idea of working on my thesis left me pretty much paralyzed, and pushing myself to investigate summer-long certificate options has been an uphill slog. I've felt as though I've been carting a bunch of fears I can't get rid of, and put a great big smiling face on, at times. I've mentioned feeling like my discussion topics were turning vacuous with my folks, and how I was growing increasingly dissatisfied. I've been trying to shake myself out of my professional rut for ten years and things are sort of budging as of the last two months - but I'm still carting a lot of guilt. In some ways, games, the board, all of my leisure stuff - it kind of felt like a compensation mechanism of some kind. I've talked about it to Dad, and he says he's felt it, too. Ten years have passed since I started my path in higher learning, but I've barely had any significant personal experiences.

Like my father puts it, my body might be thirty years old, but I'm still utterly confused, in terms of where I'm sitting in the old noggin. I'm not talking about being young at heart, here, I'm talking about lacking some sort of maturity level to make choices that should be easy and that should propel me forward in life. Dad pegs me at fifteen years old in the headspace but I give myself eighteen - largely because I am mature enough to realize there's some sort of problem I'm stuck with. It's taken me a long time to verbalize it, but the words finally broke through, last night.

I'm the archetypal thirty year-old boy: I'm stuck staring at professionally successful types who have found their lot in life and me? Me with my masters? I don't know who the fuck I am, honestly. I'm not even sure a teaching position sounds fun, at some point in future, and it used to be something I'd talk about as if it were my calling, but I guess I always felt like I'd imposed it on myself. I haven't searched for myself, I've been following some sort of roadmap I started charting in late high school because everyone told me I was so damn good at writing, expressing myself, or imparting knowledge to others. None of that feels like it's me, though.

Plus, thinking about how fairly abysmal my resume looks keeps me awake at night. A guy my age with a couple shitty freelance campus gigs, one solid job that lasted one year and a half, and nothing else? I'm not exactly any employer's lucky break. If I weren't disabled I'd have shrugged it off and gone off to work in a warehouse or something, anything physical that would have put some bread on the table - but I can't. I've been pushing resumés left and right for two years and nothing's budged. I have my current gig, but I'm not exactly enamored with it. I keep reminding myself to stick with it until I can actually afford to quit, until I have an ace in the hole of some kind.

A cousin of mine is forty and he's exactly where I'm standing. He's surviving off farm work, living with my aunt (who is his mother) and secludes himself to the topmost floors of her house when guests come over. He's ashamed of himself. I still have enough guts to head out and meet the family, but the usual questions bother me. I am ashamed - I just try to keep soldiering on. It's hard, sometimes.

You're part of my crutch, guys. In some ways, I'd even say you're components of my addiction; if I do have one. Games and roleplays and chats are more easily manageable than the sense that you're some sort of perennial misfit. I don't have to feel anxious around a pack of Millennials who understand what I'm going through, and I guess I sometimes project my fears and my "I wanna get better" vibes into the games. Writing ugly sequences is easy when you've got a reservoir of pent-up self-loathing. Writing happy parts is also easy when you've got something to hope for, even if you're not sure how to get it.

I doesn't really concern you guys and honestly, I'm not even sure why I feel the need to mention it - but I do.

I'm booking myself with a therapist. I keep feeling that there's a lot of stuff that's stuck in my throat or in the muscles of my neck and shoulders. If I try to call for help or to mention it, either to you guys or to my IRL friends and family, I just seize up. I freeze. I lie, sometimes, and change the subject. Or I don't even bring it up and act like my day's been peachy. I want to talk to a blank slate of sorts, someone who doesn't know me. Someone that I couldn't disappoint or cause concern to. Also someone who isn't associated to our little fantasy land. Hope's been of tremendous help over the last few years and I wouldn't cut ties with it even if my life depended on it - but there's something I need to stick real words to. Something I need to think on and find, namely why I can't get myself going. Why, underneath all the fun and games, I'm not sure I've ever been really happy in a long while.

Seriously, the last time I remember being able to stop thinking about the future and just let things be was in college, back when my life was simple and clearly regimented. Study. Write. Produce. Get Grade. Go Home. Play. Repeat.

I feel like there's half a dozen plates I have to keep spinning, now, and I'm scared - so I smile. If I can't smile, I play games in pretty much the same way my family from the maternal side sometime turns to booze. I don't drink much, but Skyrim is a hell of an efficient way to stop being yourself for, oh, several consecutive days, if you're really torn up. Quest logs are easier to handle than bills, reports, rejection letters or shitty translation and transliteration work. Easier to handle than knowing you're still with your folks at thirty years old. Nobody's ever put pressure on me, not consciously at least - but it still feels like it.

It's not that I don't trust any of you, there's just stuff that makes my fingers freeze if I try to type them, in here or in chat. Stuff such as the fact that I keep feeling like my memoir is less something I worked on and more something I shat, pushed out with less and less passion as the months went on. My research gets sloppy near the end - but I'm tired. Too tired to start over. Too fucking sick and tired of this heap of words that won't necessarily get me a post anywhere.

I kinda wish I were in Karl's shoes. Physically able, that is. I'd pick something brainless and manual as a job for one or two years, nevermind how shitty the pay would be. I'd wipe my mind clean of it all. I don't even mind that - some of the best Ph. D's I ever spoke to were cabbies. You heard that right, motherfucking taxi drivers with doctorates...

My field's being cut down and posts are growing scarcer than ever. If I were still completely enamored of the campus I'd just try out for a job as a research assistant or a teaching aide - but I really do want out. For at least a couple years, that is.

So, yeah. I'm gonna sit on the proverbial Crying Couch, somewhere, and spill my guts to a complete stranger. The weird thing is I'm looking forward to it. There's been times where everything felt like a ball-and-chain, the game included, as much as it pains me to say it - but I'm looking forward to this the way a thirsting man is looking forward to the distant oasis he's spotted.

I'm not saying the shrink's going to point a Sonic Screwdriver at my head and make the confusion go away with some timey-wimey cruft, though. I just need someone to help me sort through my own mess and find out where I need to start. I sure as Hell fucking can't do it on my own and, like I said, I'm physically incapable of pushing myself to ask for help in chat. All you could give me would be distant reassurances, not solutions. Not when I just need to get talking to even start to have an idea of what's wrong with me. For real, that is.

Just - don't worry too much, okay? I'm not suicidal, but I've probably had bouts of piteous depression I didn't recognize for what they were. I've had big ups and cold, chest-constricting downs. I've gained weight and getting dressed is a pain whenever I know I don't have office work for the day. I've perfected the art of looking like more of a slob than The Big Lebowski's The Dude and probably skip more showers than I ought to. Don't ask about my dental hygiene if I don't have any reason to head out. You wouldn't like the picture. There a bunch of clothes-fraying tics I want to get rid of, too. I need to sleep more and sleep better.

I'll still be around, same as ever. Nothing might be reflected here, or it might show up. I might talk about it again. I might be able to open up more to you guys, once I do know what makes me tick. Or, well, what makes me not tick.

Just know that I'm thankful for this place and for you guys in general. I'm especially thankful for your putting up with my emotional discharges in posts like these. You don't have to be stuck with what I'm going through and we don't dig super-deep into one another's problems, usually. Ask me or don't, I won't mind. Just be there, from time to time, please.

I'll be thankful for you even if I should end up never mentioning this whole shrink thing ever again. Maybe it'll go so well I'll just let it slip by the wayside in chat. Who knows?

Just - thanks.

Seriously.

[TennyoCeres84]

*hugs tightly* Go do what you need to do to help yourself, Leam. As always, we'll be here.

[Weirdlet]

*hugs* I've had just a few parallels there myself. Do want you need to get to a better place and feel better- and man, don't be ashamed, because we're *all* of us stuck in a slumping economy that leaves little room for those who can't either get lucky on the first bounce or have the ability to grind at McJobs until things change. You've got us, for better and for worse.