08 Aug 2017 - A Story About Me

I began composing this over three months ago, and never finished. And I never will. Enjoy.


Morning.

I know that I said I'd shoot for thrice weekly in my last post, but it's just going to be whenever I muster the will to compose something worth sharing. 

As of this writing, I've been taking bupropion for 43 days. I tolerate it fairly well (though I have had headaches in the last two weeks that were , and overall, it's more helpful than escitalopram was.

However, I think I'm reaching the point where my brain chemistry has fully adjusted to the presence of the drug - the point where I stop seeing improvement, the point where it's all downhill. An episode rolled in hard and fast a few days ago, with the first inklings coming on July 31st and full-blown depressive hell the day after. It left me unable to do much more than scroll idly through Facebook; I missed an entire day of work. I'm still not fully recovered from that period, not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm functional, sure, but I still feel like garbage, and the feeling that I'm completely worthless and unwanted is present, just as intensely as always.

I don't think that I've spoken at length about the factors contributing to the psychological issues I face now, from the depression to the social anxieties to the inferiority complex. Today is the day that I divulge that information in its entirety.

Depression and social anxieties

Growing up, I was always a very lonely child. Being more mature than my peers, I had no interest in forming relationships with my agemates; the company of adults, especially older adults, was always preferred. However, being a young kid, adults more often than not would encourage me to interact with those my age rather than with them. As a result, I quickly grew accustomed to spending much of my time alone. This didn't bother me much in my earliest days, but as I began primary school, and saw the groups of friends that were forming, I strongly and desperately wanted to be social, and to be accepted. Disappointment after disappointment after disappointment eventually led young Kristian to conclude that the problem lay not with the pool of people that I was limited to, but with me - the reason that I wasn't successfully integrating into any group was that, on a fundamental level, something was wrong with me. This conclusion eventually morphed into a belief that I didn't deserve friendship because no one wanted to be around me anyway. 

This is a belief that formed early enough that I still behave in accordance to it, even though I know consciously that it is not true. 

When I eventually did connect with someone in 5th or 6th grade, I was too overjoyed at having finally found a person to spend time with to notice the signs that things weren't all great. For the about three years that I was friends with this person, I was blissfully unaware (or willfully ignorant) of the fact that she was far more important to me than I was to her, something that set the stage for disaster.

In late January 2010, in a group of other friends, she revealed that she no longer wished to be associated with me. It was a bombshell that broke my heart and shattered my spirit, and though I've had depressive symptoms my entire life, this was the event that pushed me over into full-blown major depression. Though they're faint now, I still have scars on my forearms from the extensive, poorly executed cuts I made during that time; I planned to end my life by ingesting poisonous plant matter.

I still have the suicide note that never fulfilled its intended purpose.

That initial dark period only lasted for a few months, improving greatly once I'd started high school and was no longer forced to see this person every day, but its impact ran deeper than I could have anticipated. Initially, there was an intense bitterness towards all people that soured my outlook, though I don't think that it was altogether unexpected. A very strong fear of abandonment had taken root, along with a resolute sureness that any person I befriended would eventually grow tired of and discard me. 

That fear is just as pervasive today as it was seven years ago.

In the time that's passed since then, I've met and befriended many amazing people, but with the sole exception of Soul Sister, I still feel that any one of them will cut ties with me someday. It makes it difficult to get close to people when the tighter a relationship is, the greater the risk for harm to me is should the worst happen. This fear manifests primarily in two ways. One is as an intense jealousy and possessiveness, because part of me feels that if someone I've accepted into my inner circle is spending a ton of time with other friends, the probability of said person realizing that I'm actually a comparatively garbage human not worth their time increases dramatically. The other is a tendency to avoid people that I've grown close to, to avoid the anxiety. I know that these are paradoxical responses, but it is what it is.

It's not hard to imagine the impact this has on my friendships, or at least my perception of them.