I feel like I should start this journey by introducing myself. My name is Karla, but I never use my real name in any of my social media platforms. I am more used to being Charlie, and I think it is because “Karla” is the person I am in “real life”, the one I am supposed to be, the one who has a specific role. On the contrary, Charlie is my pure essence, or at least the person I’m still trying to figure out. Charlie is me without other people’s expectations, and I like that a lot. So, for all intents and purposes, please call me Charlie.
I will turn 37 years old in two months. I have a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, but I stopped working 5 years ago. I used to be a teacher and worked mostly with teenagers for around 12 years. Nowadays, the thought of being in a classroom makes me anxious beyond belief. I don’t know why, though. I used to really love my profession, but I guess that trying to hide your depression while pretending to be a joyous person takes a toll on you.
Oh, there’s that! I have been dealing with depression basically my whole life. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2018. When I stopped working, or better said, when I got fired from my last job at the end of 2017, I was having the worst year of my life. I attempted suicide at least three times only that year. I was done. I was in excruciating emotional pain. I had a therapist and a psychiatrist, but bless their souls, they did not help me much. I had been diagnosed with clinical depression and was medicated, but I saw no improvement whatsoever, and it makes sense since I had bipolar not depression. So, when I got fired, I decided to take a break because I was too emotionally unstable to look for a new job. That break became longer than expected because I haven’t had a formal job since then.
I identify myself as demisexual and biromantic. I only feel attracted towards people when I have formed some sort of emotional bond. Physical attraction doesn’t make me want to date someone. I can appreciate the aesthetic form of the human body, male or female, but I won’t want to be romantically involved with them, no matter how attractive they are, unless I bond with them on an emotional level first. And yes, when I say male or female, that’s what I mean. That’s the biromantic part of me. I don’t care whether the people I fall for are men or women. I haven’t met non-binary, gender fluid, or trans people in person yet, so I can’t talk about that for now, but I'm sure I wouldn’t mind that either. I just don’t really care about people’s genitals or what gender they identify as (if they do at all).
I was married to a man. It ended quite fast and quite badly, but he’s been a good friend for the last few years after our divorce. I was engaged twice before I got married. They were very painful experiences that left me a lot of wounds to heal. I have also been involved with women. The most significant one was good until it became long distance. I have had my fair share of catastrophic relationships and my unstable, undiagnosed mental illness didn’t help at all. I am nowadays single because I am still trying to figure out what I want or if I even want to have someone by my side. I have a lot of unresolved childhood trauma that gets in the way when I try to have a romantic relationship, so I’ve grown a little disillusioned because of that. For now, I think it’s better to have a relationship with myself –something I still struggle with.
I don’t have children, but that was a decision I made for myself a long time ago. I can barely take care of myself. My emotional well-being is a roller coaster, so how could I even think of having to care for another human being? I could lose my shit at any moment and actually end up killing myself, so what would happen to the child? Because of all that, I got sterilized a month ago. It’s funny because I don’t really have a male partner right now, but that could change in the future. What I know for sure will never change is my decision to not have children. Not now, not ever.
I live alone and have seven beautiful cats. I have been very independent since I finished college. I don’t like to live with other people because I am also an introvert, so I need a lot of time by myself. Cats, on the other hand, are the most precious company I could ask for. They remind me of myself because they are also very independent. One of them, Jerry, is 11 years old, and he has traveled out of the country with me twice. The others are: Lily (3 years old), Debby (2), and Jimmy, Charlie, Abby, and Anny (all four of them 11 months old). The last four were born in my house, when I adopted Debby, the night she was giving birth to them. Debby and Lily were stray cats that I adopted and neutered. Jerry was born where I used to work at the time, but someone was trying to find homes for the kitties, and I adopted the one nobody else wanted because he was the smallest one. He is now a huge, gorgeous, spoiled, and still very healthy senior cat.
I am sort of retired now. I don’t have plans to work in education anymore. I am lucky enough to be able to make a living without working. My mom gave me a very big house that I sold to buy a much smaller one where I now live. I invested the rest of the money, and now I make a living out of the interests. I am an occasional freelance, though. As I am bilingual, I do translations for a couple of lawyers in my country when they need my services. In 2018, I got a job as the vice-principal in a private school, but when I read the contract and noticed some things, I just refused to sign and didn’t accept the job. I haven’t been actively looking for a job since then because I realized that I didn’t want to go back to that life. I chose my peace over making more money. I was lucky that when the pandemic started, I was already retired, so I could continue to focus on my mental health.
I think this is a very good overview of who I am and where I am in life now. My experience with bipolar and how having a wrong diagnosis for years made it all so hard should be a post of its own. Also, little by little, I’ll pour my soul here because I am in the process of figuring stuff out, and I can only do that when I write. You see? I learned from a very early age not to express wants or needs, and I got so used to being low-maintenance that now when I try to identify MY wants and needs, I have a really hard time. I cannot express them; I cannot even differentiate them from the wants and needs of other people that I tend to put first. However, when I write, it’s like I open a door to my psyche that allows me to see things I didn’t know were there. That’s the main reason why I want to start doing this again. I need to know what I want in life because right now I feel very much stuck.
If you read all this, thank you very much. I’ll come back soon with more. For now, this is me. This is Charlie.
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