I'm very, very tired.

I apologize if this becomes very non-linear, my mind is rarely clear on a good day and I struggle greatly to understand and articulate what I'm feeling.

I used to feel like I had a relatively objective handle on myself. As much as I might struggle with certain habits, tendencies, et al, I felt very much that I knew what was going on, that all that was required of me to manage myself and continually improve was to work hard and try. Teenage hubris, I suppose.

In good, or at least stable times, I can manage. I can get myself to adopt healthy habits and stick to them, eventually getting to the point where I no longer have to fight myself to keep them going. The balance can be fragile, however, easily disrupted by changes in circumstance or events.

If I've been on a roll for awhile, I can weather bad times/stress reasonably well. I can fall back on my good habits and the people in my life and work my way through whatever the difficulty is.

Where I really begin to struggle is when uncertainty enters the picture. Most of my major anxieties can be boiled down to an aversion to uncertainty. Uncertain if I will come off well to people, if I will perform adequately, if I'm making the right decisions for myself, etc. When my external circumstances are reliable, predictable or otherwise in service of a goal, I can quiet my worry enough to function.

Things have not been reliable, predictable for a long time now.

School, work, home. All in major upheaval.

My good habits have been whiled away bit by bit and replaced with more immediately relieving but not very sustainable/ productive coping mechanisms. My accessibility to the few good strategies that I'd managed to sustain long-term has been heavily disrupted by both my current work and home circumstances.

I'm tired, I'm so tired. I'm tired from constantly having to fight myself to now do the most basic of what I need to do to function. I'm tired from the nature of the work I have to do for my job and in my home. I'm tired from the unstable nature of the people in my home.

The emotional fatigue now is now permeating into the physical side of things and i find myself exhausted and easily frustrated by things I wouldn't blink at before. I feel completely depleted from the time I get up to the time I go to bed. I have an increasingly difficult time gauging my mood and I feel like I'm being pushed around by my own emotions. I'm never sure any more if my reaction to something is proportionate or justified, or if my perception of the situation is even right.

The people around me are hurting as much as I am, if not more. I'm finding it more and more difficult to be supportive and also accept support. We react to each other more, clash.

I'm constantly kicking myself. I feel like I'm doing my best, and yet I can always find scenarios where I should be doing more. The worse my mental health becomes, the less I'm able to do, the more I feel bad about not doing things, repeat.

There are a couple of semi-solid things on the horizon for me, a new job opportunity has presented itself and it represents some chance of stabilization in the next few months. I'm trying to focus on it as much as possible but I'm still finding it very hard to cope with the current turmoil.

This time of my life has been my trial by fire, and I feel like I've failed it all along the way. I feel guilty for all that I didn't do, or did badly. I feel inadequate and unintelligent and like I don't deserve the support that I do still have. I feel angry, slighted, guilty, unworthy, anxious, overconfident, all at once.

I made the decision today to seek some help. I finally worked up the confidence to make an appointment with my GP to see if I can get a referral for some sort of counseling or psychiatric help. It's taken a long time. I've usually been the person in people's lives that is there to support, and sometimes doesn't receive the same back. I've often felt like I'm not allowed to be not okay, that admitting to it would be to show weakness.

I came here to say all this mostly because I needed an anonymous way to vent, but also because I know this place is full of people who might also be experiencing dark times. If you can relate all to what I've said, if you were always the person who had to be the rock for others, it's okay to need help. You're allowed to be not okay.

I was amazed to find that this community is still active, years later. If you need to, use it. Take care of each other, and take care of yourselves.

Did I ghostwrote this?

Jokes aside, you put what's been going through my head this past months into words really well. I don't know how to feel about it.

This year, my life turned upside down, I'm currently in a place I never would've imagined being in, forcing myself to adjust to it feels like forcing myself to change to what I'm not, and it's slowly but surely happening.

I try to cope by trying not to think about it or how I'll end up being tomorrow, and then I'll be alright, for the moment, other than that is another story.

Lately I've been accepting my current situation more and more, and even finding positive sides from it such as bonding with people that would've been impossible if I wasn't in this situation, appreciating what I have right now instead of what I've lose, and so on.

The past seems like it's so far away, the present is strange and cold, the future is even more uncertain than ever.

I don't know when this situation will get better, but I surely won't be able to go back the way I used to be.

Sometimes it feels like I'm completely alone and other people are living in another planet where everything is nicer, but this post made me feel less lonely, thank you.

I hope things will get better for the both of us and people going through the same thing, and if it doesn't, or takes too long, I hope that we will at least be given the strength to get through this.

I hope a tomorrow where I will be alright exists somewhere in the future.