Hello I'm a new phan and just watched WAD and wanted to share some thoughts that came up during lol...While writing this it kind of just became a long winded explanation of my life and how dnp have affected my life…. this is kinda a really long rant and a bit sad, talks about my mental health struggles and some traumatic shit so read if you want. This is also just kinda writing how i feel in life in general so if it gets off topic sorry I just have a lot on my mind.
First off, I fucking loved we’re all doomed; A perfect mix of comedy and important messages, it felt intense and i really wanted to cry a lot of the time. It's a message I didn't really think i needed to hear until I heard it. I'm in college hoping to become an environmental conservationist. It's always felt slightly performative that "i want to save the world" or some shit like that, but it makes me happy to be in nature and the entire world is falling into a deeper and deeper hellhole every second that I breathe and I want to feel like I'm not personally contributing to that. Lately my classes have been very depressing (microplastics, gas emissions, oil spills, wildfires, drilling projects, the economy, stuff like that) and hearing that quite frankly me as an individual cannot do a lot to fight against climate change in my day to day life is devastating. Not to mention simply living in america and hearing nearly every day more and more bad news and atrocities has been enough to throw me into dread every day. "embrace the void and have the courage to exist" is hella cheesy, but its simple, direct to the point and genuinely made me cry. Obviously it didn't immediately cure a lifetime of dread I've built up or anything, but it made my feelings feel valid and not like I was going crazy or the only one feeling shitty because of the state of the world.
SAD BORING SHIT YOU CAN SKIP
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I've always battled with depression and anxiety which has made it really hard to focus on positive things. I always look at the negatives before considering the positives to prepare for the worst. During the pandemic, this feeling of doom hit me really hard. I was stuck dealing with my dysfunctional family, dealing with online school, taking care of my siblings, dealing with abuse, all while having a crisis over possibly being queer in an environment where I was taught the only thing worse than being gay was being trans (very sad message when you're kinda both lol). Somehow (thankfully) I made it through all that shit without successfully killing myself. Life did get a little better when I wasn't stuck at home and I was planning to move far away for college, unfortunately I was too broke for that so I made the terrible decision of staying in my shitty childhood home and going to community college (almost done and i've saved up some money and ready to move out in the fall). Now that I'm an adult i feel like i should be over all of that, but I still feel dragged down and unable to move on. Especially recently with all the terrible shit like ICE, epstein files, wars, nuclear treaties, AI, and honestly so much more that kinda goes onto the backburner, life just feels very heavy. I always needed some sort of distraction from my own thoughts whether that was music, weed, tiktok, work, or schoolwork, i couldn't be alone with my thoughts without wanting to die.
After the hard launch, I found a new thing to obsess over rather than my own life. Seeing two people deeply in love, being unapologetically queer, being happy?...it made me jealous, it made me sad, I was angry and I didn't really know why. This unexplainable feeling was affecting my day to day life. I woke up sad, felt like a slow blurry blob most of the day, then fell asleep angry if i could sleep at all. I could barely get out of bed, I couldn’t focus, my life felt truly out of control. It's the first time in my life that I felt i actually needed therapy. Or maybe its the first time in my life that I wanted to actually better myself? That I deserved better than daily misery? Obviously the hard launch wasn’t all that long ago so I am neither over this or have I fully processed any of these thoughts, its just something that I never really cared about before. It made me think of my own queerness, it made me think of the closet I've lived in for a majority of my life. It made me think if I am actually happy with my career choice, it made me think if I even like school, if I felt comfortable in my clothes, the way I looked, how little pictures I take of myself, how I've abandoned all my hobbies, how I make no effort to make friends or keep them, when’s the last time I felt comfortable enough to share that I actually felt like shit? Whens the last time i drew something just cause I wanted to? Whens the last time I wrote a poem? Whens the last time i sat down with myself and actually said I AM NOT OK. Well thanks to journals I can track all of that lol. Its been 7 years since I really thought about my queerness. Its been 6 years since I last reached out for help of any kind. Its been 4 years since I last attempted suicide. Its been 3 years since ive been honest when asked how im doing. It’s been 2 years since I last wrote in a journal. Its been 2 years that I've lived on autopilot just trying to get by. Its been almost a whole year since I've talked to any of my friends in person. Writing this makes me feel like a lazy slob. What the fuck have I been doing with my life up until this point? What are my plans for the future? Why am I wasting oxygen? Why am I taking opportunities from people who are a lot more eager to live than me? Why am I alive right now?
But I've got so much going on, is now really the time to be focusing on all of that? I have work to do, I have bills to pay and money to save, I have to finish school. I need perfect grades because there’s no way I can afford any kind of future without scholarships. I need to stay fit to be able to continue to do fieldwork. I need to take care of my little brother because I don’t want him to feel as alone as I did. I need to worry about my mother’s declining health and possibly taking care of her in the future. I need to worry about my father being deported. I need to worry that I'm not networking enough and that I'll never get a job. I need to worry about my rights as someone born with ovaries. I need to worry about moving out and starting my own life. I need to worry about medical expenses. I need to worry about inheriting my mother’s health conditions. I have so much shit I need to take care of, now is NOT the time to be thinking about myself. Who cares if I'm trans there’s bigger issues to deal with. Who cares if I'm sad, isn’t everyone? Who cares if I'm struggling there’s people who have it significantly worse. I feel selfish admitting that I need help. I feel selfish for wanting to be happy in this fucked up world. I feel like a failure for not doing more with the opportunities that I'm offered. At the same time, I'm tired, I feel like my life is an endless cycle leading towards nothing. Everything I do seems like it has no meaning. Everyone seems tired of my moping, everyone has better things to think of than my wellbeing. Even i have better things to worry about than myself, so why am I so stuck? Why won’t this just go away? Why why WHY WHY WHY AM I LIKE THIS. why can’t i just be normal? Why can’t I pretend to be fine as good as everyone else? Whats wrong with me?
MOSTLY DONE WITH EMOTIONAL SAD STUFF BACK TO WAD
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Damn that got a bit darker than I meant it to but I'm trying to be honest with myself and own up to all the things I'm feeling, anyways back to my reaction to WAD…. Obviously it covered some really heavy topics very relevant to my own life like the climate crisis and depression, but doesn't most of Dan’s content kind of talk about heavy shit? What made this different from any of his other projects? For me honestly I think it was the message of trying to have just one good day. He’s talked about trying to stay positive and think of all the good things happening and not only the shitty things, but it’s been a while since I focused on something and though I’m here trying to have a good time and nothing else. We should be trying to better the world, but how are we going to better it if we’re all being miserable shits. So yeah you should recycle and use your car less often and advocate for what you deem important, but also, don't forget about your own happiness because if you die there’s no one who is going to do that for you. Watching dan and phil has brought me so much happiness in my day to day life and made me genuinely smile after not feeling positive in a very long time. Even if it’s just for a short while, I enjoy the distraction that they provide from all the heaviness of the world. I still struggle with reaching out to others but I feel like ive found a community that I belong in and is so accepting of everyone. I think WAD reminded me that
Anyways yea ive been having a really hard time lately and watching that kinda got me out of a bit of a rut I’ve been in. Maybe now that ive written down all my feelings too I can actually focus on my schoolwork cause I have like 2 essays to write and instead I wrote this long ass rant on who knows what. IDK if im actually going to keep this on my blog and let people read it. It got very personal and im not good with dealing with that. Then again, its anonymous so its just random people? Idk