This post I feel is going to take me a while until I actually end up publishing/posting this just because I don’t feel like I have all that much to talk about. I was going through a process, of well to avoid repeating myself again, let’s just say I’m more content now. It’s weird wanting to talk about the aftermath of a situation while also simultaneously wanting to absolutely avoid talking about said situation. It’s not anything that I’m afraid or am hurt talking about, I’m just tired of talking about it for as long as I have already is all. It’s one thing when you’re doing it to try and make sense of these back and forth thoughts that are taking its precedence over matters that were more pressing but now that writing it out has done what I hoped it would, which is give me at least some sense of clarity and more confidence with the choices that I’m making there isn’t much value left to come out of continued dragging out of the subject. If you followed with really any posts in the past few months I think you’d get the gist of it anyway. The title of this post is (or at least was at the time of writing this part, “Life After Death” lets hope I end up changing that) definitely hyperbolic, and I’ve become reluctant to call any phase of my life an ending– or any moment a new chapter because in the past I’ve fallen into the trappings of believing just because I’ve felt I’ve come to terms with something, doesn’t mean that thing is no longer an issue. Like this was my character arc and when things feel like they have hit that resolution like every great story needs I will no longer need to relearn that moral, that life lesson, re-fix my “character flaw.”

If that were really the case, this site would have only 10% of the posts it does now. God I write a lot but most of this is me going through a repeated process of learning my own unique and individual way of fitting into society, the type of love I’m willing to accept and the type that I want to venture out and find. I’m trying to more generalize the stories on here. It helps for me to go off into a tangent and talk about what specifically caused me to feel a certain way but I see now it is mostly as a means to feel like I’m validly justifying my emotions. That’s something I have to got to work on because, again, I should just let my self feel what it is I’m feeling without having to apologize or make sure someone understands it before it can feel “real” to me. Partly I spent most of senior year trying to figure out whether or not I was actually depressed or not or whether I was faking/exaggerating this breakdown for the sake of attention. There has always been this part of me that has doubted since the beginning every symptom I have noticed arise. It’s like I’ve kept telling myself, “You’re just like everyone. Stop bitching and whining it isn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be.” And as year after year passed it became more clear to me hey maybe I’m not faking this after all. I may or may not be an attention whore, the jury’s still out on that one, but no kind of attention would have been worth all this trouble. Anyway, generalizing the stories in the future will hopefully help with that feeling a little bit and, while I finally think (or more so hope) I won’t have anybody close in my life be a returning reader other than Lilli whom I’m just now revealing the curtains to the full extent of how fucked I’ve been these past few months, it’s better to avoid upsetting someone if I can help it. I haven’t ever really written these to illicit a reaction, I just have a problem with being a little TOO upfront, forward, and honest when writing these posts so they have caused someone to react before and if it isn’t detrimental towards my processing and healing from the situation then I’m going to do my best to avoid that. The only issue is that my need to justify/validate is going to get in the way of that but that’s to be expected.

So what now? I wanted to talk about the “aftermath” but if I’m being completely honest there hasn’t been that much of a change in my situation. Mostly just my outlook. And honestly that’s probably for the best because if I had my “ah-ha” moment and then everything suddenly got better I really wouldn’t have been able to take what I learned and use it. This past week I really have been using what I’ve learned too, like being more emotionally honest and trying to be more comfortable being vulnerable around the people I care about, but most importantly just giving up on a lot of things I spent too much time worrying about. Like for example, my immediate family can not and possibly will not ever understand what is I am suffering with on a daily basis. This has caused inside me an immense turmoil trying to find a way to explain or have them validate that hey mental illness is a thing that is one, real, and two, something more debilitating than just being somebody who’s a little shy, the only times the fact that I’m dealing with crippling and OFTEN life-threatening clinical depression (though they just see it as your run of the mill daily blues) is when someone else is feeling depressed and my mother volunteers me to help because according to them I’m people’s for-hire therapist because by their words “Tristan’s had that depression thing before..” The more I’m separating from depending on their help and their support, and while I do honestly appreciate all that they have helped and supported me despite not understanding and while being judgmental most of the time they still have tried to help, the further away from that environment I am the happier I tend to be. I shouldn’t need anyone’s validation, it’d be nice to have my FAMILY’s but that’s asking too much I suppose. I’m trying to focus on validating my own hardships and conversely my own accomplishments as well. Also I am trying to spend more time with people who better understand me so if I am hoping to find some extra little validation (because lets be honest we all need a little validation from those around us) I will be spending time with people more willing and who’s validating is more impactful and meaningful to me. This is all an overly-complicated way of me saying “I know I don’t need other like I might have foolishly thought before, but it’s nice to have them. And because of that I want to make sure those I choose to be around me are equally as nice and pleasant to have around. “

We finally got around to seeing Black Friday, Starkid’s newest musical, which I don’t know how to begin to describe how incredibly fun and exciting going to one of their shows is. I know I said I’d probably do a greater length post about a starkid musical but I think I’ll save that for another time still. I will say though if I hadn’t seen it live and with someone I loved, I maybe wouldn’t have enjoyed this show as much as it’s spiritual predecessor, “The Guy Who Doesn’t Like Musicals.” These characters return in what I can describe only as alternate spoopy universes/black mirror like stories all with the same focus point being the town of Hatchetfield. We see cameos of our favorite characters, which is thank to these AU’s because spoiler alert most of our favorite characters reached their demise in TGWDLM. The show was hilarious, the songs all had an infectious rhythm and beats that really wanted us to sing the songs all the way home. However as far as I’m aware the songs aren’t available online yet so most of the singing had to be done from memory. I have just recently gotten the hang of being more on pitch, singing along (just from practicing over and over and actually singing with an audience now) but holy shit singing from memory for me is an absolute train wreck. She has the voice of an angel of course, I mean naturally. It’s a weird change to go from being so excited about something and repeatedly saying, “Hey you want to watch this thing online together with me?” and go on, well it was rabb.it at the time but was replaced with Kast (which has been a real pain in the ass trying to get working initially) to go from that to now “Hey I love all of this other group’s musicals and I would really like to see their new one live. Would you love to come with?” There’s still some distance between us so this isn’t going to be happening once a week but we’re not too far where an out of the whim and sort of last-minute invite (because of how infuriatingly difficult it was getting these tickets) isn’t out of the question if that impulse ever hit us again.

I’m excited for the future now a lot in part thanks to the plans I have with my friends and now plans I’m making for myself that are much more than ideal dreams now. No more “someday’s” or “It’ll be so great when we meet up” that’s just something we’re able to do now and semi-frequently. This site is evidence that in life I tend to do a lot more thinking and reflection than taking action. A lot more making plans than actually acting on them and I want to work on that. I mean this IS what I’m doing now, reflecting and writing, but in my defense this post is actually taking me a while to write out. I started it a few days after the year in retrospect. That was originally supposed to be the follow up to that post but I had that spur of the moment motivation from spotify because music really is like this direct source to old memories and feelings and reminiscing wasn’t a horrible experience that time so I wanted to talk about it. Granted the songs I ended up talking about ending up unintentionally having a majority of negative associations which is why I felt “inclined” to make the update with a focus on more positive associations so I don’t feel like  I always keep going back to thinking and being stuck on a specific negative time in my life. However there are actually plenty of good associations, I wouldn’t say these events or people mattered as much as I do if there weren’t any and I wanted to express that more.

I’m not so sure how the future is going to go, with me or with this site. I’m making plans while at the same time making sure I’m crossing items off that list at the very same rate of which I’m adding them. This way I don’t feel like either my life or my character is stagnant I will hopefully keep making progress but knowing there’s always more to be made and that that’s okay. My motivation to write is dwindling, I’m sure it’ll spark back up again if some other event sparks another highly intense and emotional phase or whatever it was I went through the past month or two. Wonder what the next one’s going to be about… Anyway I might keep writing here about opinion stuff or I might go back to the “random thoughts” format I did earlier just journaling my life– but I do know I want to try and participate more. Doing things that I’ve always said I’ve wanted to. And hopefully in the process this will continue pushing myself further down my correct path. I’m excited to have an actual date and plans to now go visit my close friend up north to finally make use of this passport I got a long time, something I’d intended to use to visit an ex. We’re meeting up in March only because I weigh like 20 pounds so I have no fat to hold any body warmth and I will die if I visit Canada in the winter. Actually the plans were to meet this friend AND my ex last time we talked about this. We were all going to meet up but that’s alright I am totally cool with my ex sitting this one out now that we’re finally doing it. And before that Lilli’s going to be spending the week here with me next month which I am also again super fucking excited for! Perhaps maybe she can help me go apartment hunting because that’s next on the list. It’s a little weird writing these knowing she might and will most likely read these now, if you are reading this I wanna say I am sorry for some of these old opinions/old posts or any future ones that might be upsetting for one reason or another. I know we talked a lot about most if not all of this shit but I know it might be a different experience seeing my old unfiltered (not expecting, well more not really wanting anyone, to read these) posts so even though I still stand by the fact that I felt everything I wrote at the time I wrote it, a lot of my feelings have changed since then as you know and I apologize for any of that upsetting you.

Things certainly were pretty shit as I was suffering through the last big dip but I am a little more glad to say that things are starting to shoot back towards the more positive side of things. I’m trying to make sure it isn’t a phase of mania but I am just grateful to be not depressed anymore. Or at least I’m back to the level of depression I’m comfortable with which is nice. I feel like I wrote an ending to this post about like 3 times already and I just kept writing so I’m just going to end it here until I have another page’s worth of nothingness to babble on about. ‘Till then, take care.

-T.