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“In a healthy relationship, your partner hears you out if you’re upset, and their goal is to avoid upsetting you in the future, not to debate whether you should have been upset in the first place.”

itsladystilts

THIS

seejadeblog

Today I learned: I've never been in a healthy relationship.

I was contacted by the rabbit rescue group I work with to help transport a rabbit to her new home. I was told that the rabbit’s owner killed herself, but made sure her rabbit had a good home first. I wish this person would’ve known about the 10 people who would come together after her death to help her and her rabbit. I wish she would’ve known that complete strangers are going to relay her rabbit across the country. I wish that I could explain to anyone who wants to kill themselves that there are people who would sacrifice their weekend to help you, even after your death. People care even when your mind convinces you that no one does.

I don’t really know where I want to go with this post. I just wanted to dump these words that have been in my mind. Someone ended up donating their frequent flier miles to the rabbit so she can reach her new home sooner. She’s going to board a plane in Atlanta and end up at her new home a few hours later. I feel badly for this poor rabbit who has gone from a loving home to being shuffled around the country. I know that her mom was in a place so dark she couldn’t find her way out. I wish that things would’ve been different for her. I hope that her rabbit lives out the rest of her days in a loving home.

One year ago today

Almost to the hour.

I was at work browsing tumblr and slacking off. I noticed that my boyfriend had updated his previously abandoned tumblr. I went to read it, excited to see that he was writing again. What I found was a poem about how badly he misses his ex girlfriend and how nothing, not even me, has filled the void that she left.

I was devastated. This man who I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with wasn’t in love with me. We were about to move in together. We were about to merge cats. I was about to move all of my tacky afghans into his place. I was ready to start the rest of my life with this man who didn’t love me.

I cried at work that day. That feels like an understatement. I locked myself in a room and ugly cried for an hour. We talked about it and he said he needed time to think. Two days later he broke up with me. I didn’t eat for a week. I lost 9lbs.

This was not the most trauma anyone has ever faced in the world, but it was a trauma to me. The entire life I had now mapped out for myself fell apart because of one blog post. People told me I was lucky to have found out before we were together longer. They told me that I’d move on, that I’d find someone new, and that everything would be a-ok.

I wasn’t ok, at least not for a while. This breakup brought up all of the deep fears of resentment, rejection, and commitment that I had locked up many years before. Suddenly they all flooded out. I went from deliriously happy and stable to suddenly miserable and dealing with emotions I thought I had dealt with.

I called out of work for several days. This is a luxury I wouldn’t still have so I’m grateful it was available at the time. I wanted to die. I laid on the floor of my bathroom sobbing and wishing that I could disappear for maybe just a few days. I looked into inpatient programs because I was worried to be alone. I tried to figure out if my insurance would cover it and started researching the check-in process. I started deciding who would watch my pets while I was in the hospital.

I didn’t check myself in anywhere, but I decided to start going to therapy twice a week. It helped and then it didn’t, and then it helped again. It wasn’t until I was finished with therapy that I realized how much stronger I had become. I can stand up for myself now. I understand my worth and value in a relationship. I learned how to read warning signs of abuse and how to handle myself.

It took me four months to move on. The first time I had sex with someone after our breakup I sobbed. I didn’t re-enter the dating pool for 6 months. It’s been a weird ride since then.

He messaged me last week. He told me that he thinks about me constantly. My reaction to that could be summed up easily by the shrug emoji. For months all I wanted was to hear from him. Hearing from him made me feel nothing.

It took me a really long time to get to the shrug emoji, but here I am. All shrug all day. I made it through. Hooray.

decidingstill

oldfilmsflicker

Dear Andrew,

I’m a depressed person. I get sad and unmotivated and basically just feel like being away from everyone, including myself. It’s weird because most of the time I don’t really have a good reason for feeling so bad, I just feel it anyway. Do you have any advice on what to do with bad feelings like this? People don’t understand me. I try to tell them, but they think it’s just me being too sensitive, or I should just snap out of it. You always seem so happy and I really look up to you for that. But do you ever get depressed? How do you stay so positive?

Thanks, Downer In The Dumps

Dear Downer In The Dumps,

For nearly all of my life, I have struggled with severe depression. Sometimes it’s been a lingering feeling in the back of my head that something isn’t right, and that something is me. Other times it has been a full-blown physically incapacitating despair. It’s hard for me to even describe it, let alone imagine going through it again, although I imagine I will, as I have dozens of times before.

The times when my depression was really bad are difficult to put into words. People who haven’t been depressed asked me if it was like being in a really bad mood, or feeling really, really sad. It’s not like that at all. It’s not a mood or an emotion. Depression is like being exposed to a truth about reality that is so full of sorrow and misery that it shuts down the very part of you that exists as a human being. It’s like being told that everything good about life was a lie and that the biggest lie of all is you. But you’re not just thinking about these awful truths, you are the awful truth — and you become that feeling.

People have also asked me, “Why can’t you just snap out of it?” Trying to “snap out” of depression is like trying to eat food when you’re nauseated. It’s like trying to stay awake when you’ve taken a dozen sleeping pills. It’s like trying to run a race where you’re underwater and everyone else is on dry land. It takes an extraordinary amount of strength just to exist in the midst of a depression. Just breathing with your lungs takes a full-blown conscious effort. You feel like you don’t want to do anything ever again. You feel like you don’t want to be. And then you feel bad for feeling that. And so on.

The fact that it’s so hard for other people to understand what it’s like to feel severely depressed can add to the feelings of frustration and alienation. Depression distorts and stains every aspect of yourself and the world around you and rips away at everything that is happy and beautiful, as though the façade of joy has been removed from everything you once held dear. It’s like having a fever in your soul. It’s like what the end of the world tastes like.

In addition to these overwhelming physical feelings of terrifyingly bleak depression, I’ve also continuously wrestled with a long list of other low emotions: frustration, jealousy, resentment, anger, rage, hatred, violent impulses, paranoia, and feelings of hopelessness, exhaustion, despair, selfishness, self-pity, and low self-esteem. Mixed in with these feelings have also been extreme shyness, anxiety, fear and dread, and a general feeling of guilt about having all these feelings in the first place. I’ve never had a justifiable reason to feel this bad, and that made me feel even worse. I have a good life and good people around me, so why can’t I just be happy all the time? I’m still trying to find that answer.

And maybe I never will get an answer, but in the meantime, I think the best answer I have is: because I’m human. I can also tell you that these bad feelings have motivated me and pushed me and challenged me in ways that I would never have been otherwise. Maybe I was meant to feel this way for a reason. And even if I wasn’t, I’m going to try to put them to good use while I’m dealing with them.

I’m not proud of these feelings, but I’m not ashamed of them, either. I don’t identify myself as someone who “has” these feelings — they’re not me. They are just something that the “me” is experiencing, and all I can do is not let them beat me. They may take me down for a few minutes, or an hour, or a day, or even a week, or maybe even longer.

But the one thing I have learned throughout this odyssey is that those bad feelings are not who I really am. They are not the truth. And they will pass. And I will get back up. The real me is somewhere in there all the time, and the test is to see if I can hold on tight enough to make it through the storm. We must hold tight, and then try to rise back up. Maybe not instantly, but at some point, as soon as you can feel it start to lift a little. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to push through it. Pulling out of a depression by sheer willpower is among the hardest physical and emotional challenges I have ever engaged in. But I have done it, and you can, too.

Sometimes I think depressions are just growing pains — like exercise for your soul. When you exercise your body, it gets sore as it rebuilds and gets stronger. And maybe sometimes life experiences make your soul get sore, and then it has to grow and expand to recover. Growing is painful. Growing is life. Life is painful. It’s learning how to master and direct that pain and use it for something beautiful.

I never would be writing to you about this now had it not been for these experiences. All these bad feelings have led to something. They have been the core motivation for me wanting to learn how to feel better — how to become a better person, and be someone who is truly worthy of being a human. I decided to devote my life to overcoming these feelings and turn that into my entire work.

That’s what first motivated me to start my party mission, and to become a musician and entertainer — to get cheered up and hopefully cheer other people up, too. I wanted to have something I could devote myself to that was all about “feeling good,” a feeling that was bigger than me and, most importantly, bigger than my bad feelings. This became something that would force me to find a way to rise up when I otherwise wouldn’t have reason to. We can pull the best out of ourselves if we have a life-or-death reason, and this became that for me. I believe that through these sorts of efforts, we really can become more than we are. Life is something that we have to figure out and do whatever we can do to keep going while we can. Turn the negatives into positives. It’s all energy — good or bad — and we can use it to fuel our highest and most worthwhile efforts on this earth.

Never feel afraid or ashamed to seek help from others, including doctors or other professionals. Never stop trying to figure out new things you can do to change the way you feel. Stay close and hold tight to the things that you know bring you real joy. And remember, at the heart of it all, there is a truth and it’s telling you that life is beautiful and that you are a good person who deserves to be part of it. Even when that truth is lost in the darkest storms of your hardest moments, please remember that it is there, and that even though it may seem far away or very small, it is more powerful and larger than our pain and struggle. That will pass, but the truth will remain. Have faith in that.

We can keep getting closer to that truth, and we can let our devotion to it become the centerpiece of our lives. It’s a truth that tells us everything is OK even when it seems like it’s not. It’s a truth that tells us that it’s OK to feel however we feel, even when it hurts. It’s a truth that tells us that life is more beautiful and awe-inspiring than we can even contemplate — and, most amazing of all, that we are a very real part of it. It tells us that it’s all going to be OK. That you will be OK. That you already are. Never forget this. I love you. Stay strong.

Your friend, Andrew W.K.

Why Isn’t My Medicine Working Anymore?

A 2016 memoir

ghostqueenofthesun

But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.

Welcome to Night Vale: Episode 75: Through the Narrow Place (via little-chum)

rubyredwisp

shorterexcerpts

I need this on a business card.

My roommate has her new boyfriend over. I’m across the apartment listening to Taylor’s acoustic versions of 1989 really loud. I heard him go “Huh, Taylor Swift”

If you come over to my apartment on a Friday evening and you don’t expect to hear Taylor Swift then I’m sorry, but that’s on you. You should’ve known better.

Regrets with Jade

4 glasses of red wine on a work night. Damn you, wine from a box. At least with a bottle I can go “Hm, better stop. I’m almost finished.” With a box I’m like “I’VE GOT ALL THE WINE IN THE WORLD.”

This has been Regrets with Jade.

On polyamory

Mom last week: I'm not telling your dad that you're dating someone who is polyamorous, you have to be the one to tell him.

Mom today, out of nowhere: So I told your dad. He asked if you're a lesbian now.

Me: I'm dating a man, how would that make me a lesbian?

Mom: Because he has another girlfriend.

Me: We don't all sleep together!

Mom: Oh. We didn't think you were a lesbian.

#at least they both know now?#see jade's parents fail to grasp orientations

There should be some sort of award or medal that says "congratulations on making it another day at work while you're depressed!!"

And I never thought this life was possible You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for The end of paralysis, I was a statuette

wordsnquotes

…& I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.

Dickinson, Emily. The Letters of Emily Dickinson

I’ve always loved this.

(via barbaric-yawping)

Would wearing pizza themed pajamas tonight be a turn on or a turn off for you?

Serious question asked by me to the guy I’m seeing tonight.

For the first time in over a month I feel like a human person today!! I feel like myself again. I’m still a little irritable, but I’ll take a small about of irritability for a little bit if it means I can function like an actual human.

I don’t think that I will ever be able to properly convey how thankful I am to have a support system. I know that I’m hard to deal with when I’m down and out. I’m negative, more complainy than usual, and self-deprecating. The fact that my friends stay with me through these periods is something I will always appreciate. I hate the person that I’ve been for the past month. It’s weird to me that in this period of depression I’ve met one of the best people I’ve ever dated. If he thought I was fun for the past month wait until he gets to know who I really am.

I know that I will never be better. I’ve been dealing with this too long to think that I’m out of the woods when it comes to battling depression. I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life. For a lot of people SSRIs are something they take temporarily. I’ve been told by every psychiatrist I’ve ever seen that I am not one of those people. My depression is treatment resistant and it’s here with me for the rest of my life. I’ll happily take the 3 (three!!) medicines I now take each day until my body tires of them and then I’ll go to a doctor and I’ll say “shit needs to change again.”

That feeling when you look at your bank account after being depressed for a month and see just how often you were buying things to attempt to make yourself happy though... At least I have a lot of pretty dresses now. And a ps4. And some fun games to play. And a lot of overpriced gourmet food. And 5 pairs of new shoes. And expensive mascara from Korea.

valerina

Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara (via avh86)

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