Asklemmy

I'm doing all right, thanks for asking. I have security in knowing no matter how bad I do at my job, nobody else is doing it for less than double what they're paying me.

I wish health insurance wasn't tied to employment. I wish rent wasn't 4x what it was 20 years ago. I wish in& out didn't go and tell their employees they weren't allowed to wear masks at all (outside of California) so I could still enjoy my "at least I'm not in prison burger" by justifying "they're only a little bit religious, and at least they aren't bigots"

My job treats me worse with new targeted policies on a monthly basis, and my industry has been going through waves of layoffs. I cancelled my trip to see family over the holidays. I am back on antidepressants, but still in the overemotional ramp up period. So I have that going for me.

I'm a trainwreck right now.

My grandfather suddenly passed away after a prolonged battle with cancer, multiple strokes, and COVID. It was brutal, he was in so much pain for months. What really hurts is that he was a wonderful person, a source of great joy and insight, and most definitely the person who got me into computers at a young age. My youngest coherent memories are of him, and the loss is exceedingly painful.

My stepfather pointed a loaded gun at my autistic little brother and basically kicked him to the street. My little brother has had his fair share of problems with holding down any kind of job, and can barely take care of himself. He was kicked out of a shelter for a messy living space, and living out of a tent next to a YMCA.

My mom was living in fear for a while, as my stepdad increasingly became more paranoid and violent, to the point that she was no longer allowed to talk to us on the phone if he came home. She managed to give him the slip and take the kids with her to go take care of the grandfather on the other side of the country....but, she's in for a messy divorce.

These three things have kind of converged, and a lot of it is starting to resolve finally, but it's been a massive strain on my mental health and my marriage. I'm barely taking care of myself most of the time, and trying to live with anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation...and all of the fun side effects of trying to treat those things with therapy and medication.

I'm so tired. I'm barely eating. I have six months left in a maintenance squadron before I get out of the military, and all I want to do is scream.

Lost my best friend to an overdose in July, then lost my 15 year old dog on Halloween- a week later, my mother went into the ICU because of missed diagnosis of chronic liver failure, then once she got better, she moved across the planet to another country to live with family for better healthcare and I may never see her again. Then my father disowned me because I said “America sucks” while he was preaching the glory of a MAGA Trump dictatorship- all while I was deeply upset about my mother being sedated and I turned in a hospital bed.

Then my girlfriend lost her job of 6 years.

So….. no. NOT OKAY.

My birthday was yesterday. I did nothing because just like every year for some inexplicable reason I feel deeply depressed on my birthday. But it was really sweet that I had some family and at least one friend who remembered and wished me a happy birthday. Honestly I just feel really alone…

I'm doing great, thanks for asking!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa....

Serious question: what do you intend to do if I’m not? What is this thread for?

Reading the replies to this post reminded me of The Beatles Eleanor Rigby. And then I thought of "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy for some reason. And then I thought of Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas. And then I thought of Tyler Durden's speech in Fight Club.

https://youtu.be/chyRpj-971o?si=T5-rS3J5YH-7qP0z

I get anxiety every time I go to my parent house. My dad is getting old and I love the dogs there, but I feel like an afterthought for family events unlike my brother from out of the country, who is feted every time he turns up for the holidays. I'm never asked to participate though I used to take some joy in doing desserts for these events. It's just unfortunate that I'll probably be guilted into moving in to taking care of her/ them in the future.

I’m alright all things considered. I hope you are ok

Fuck if I know. What's "ok" look like anyway?

The world is going to shit, civilization is going to shit, our scientific progress seems to be constantly hampered, and quite a bit of my expectation that we might get a significative push towards communism this decade has vanished. So yeah, I'm great.

No, not even remotely. I actually feel worst than ever. But I also feel so paralyzed and hopeless.

No. I'm not ok. I was doing great until several weeks ago, but things have to have poor timing.

I am lucky to have family that I will be visiting for Christmas. But it's going to be frustrating pretending to be ok the entire time I'm there.

My problems are so insignificant and stupid compared to many here, so I don't wish to elaborate on them.

Good luck to everyone out there this holiday season.

Everything outside of my health is great, good relationship with my family, stable situation, generally good attitude towards life, but I got covid in 2021 and now just staying out of bed the whole day is basically impossible. A fun event passes and half the time I just feel completely blank, like having a good friend telling you something you find extremely interesting but you haven't slept for 50 hours. Even watching a movie is just overwhelming and I need to take breaks. I sometimes feel like I'm already dead and I'm just lingering on. Half of my life feels like a dream, 40% feels like I'm just trying to get to tomorrow where I might feel conscious, and 10% feels almost normal. My whole family is excited about Christmas and I'm overwhelmed by the idea of staying out of bed long enough to say hello to my brothers..

I’m ok but stuck in an endless loop of boring bullshit and the dopamine and dopin no more

Not ok as I thought I was before anyone asked. It's been a long couple of years.

But my sister is home from college (~1000 miles away) for the holidays, and we're getting together tomorrow. And in a few weeks I'll be back to my regular schedule, at school and a job that I like. (It could be worse, and the last 6 months have been probably the brightest I've ever had, but it's kind of a low bar. I'm pretty confident now that it'll keep getting better from here, but I still feel suicidal sometimes, and isn't that weird?)

But this was a really rad post to make, so thank you. I'm sure somebody else has probably asked already, but just in case, how about you OP? Are you okay?

Its complicated. I'm back at work and I am still trying to find my fit learning their system, processes, and getting a localdev up and running (which I finally did today, week 2 there) and I always have to fight impostor syndrome when confronting a new codebase. On the plus side, I get a long weekend at 4:30pm so I can focus on my personal projects.

If I pay mind to the outside world, my mood changes.

It would be nice if I could find a job since I have been out of work for a good while. Other than that, things are fine.

I'm pretty freakin far from okay.

My girlfriend has been mad at me for almost a week now; who knows if she ever even wants to talk to me. She hates me at this point.

And this is my first day of vacation, I have more than 10 days off. I decided to work on one of my hobby projects, and sometimes take a break for gaming. Guess what! My PC broke, Memtest shows more than 3000 RAM errors, so at the moment I'm sitting here testing each module in every slot.

And then once I figure it out whether I have to send the RAM or the motherboard back, I'll have no PC for at least a month (I expect longer than that). So I cannot make any progress with anything, now that I have some free time.

I'm especially pissed off, because it was quite an expensive build, specifically for reliability.

Little things help, but it's not great.

Yes and no.

Tl:dr I should be dead but I’m not.

My health has become a monkeys paw. False anaphylaxis and seizures I can work around but the medication has made me healthy enough to gain weight and muscle. Then my boss gave me a very physical job. While I put on 35 pounds of muscle the doctors added osteoporosis to the symptoms list of my disease.

So now I’m strong enough to break my own bones if I’m not careful. And have dealt with chronic pain for long enough that twice now I’ve been to the hospital and discovered months old fractures because ‘it doesn’t hurt that much’. Soooo fuck me I guess?

Layer on top of that a bunch of gender identity issues and delayed puberty(second? I dunno I’m 36 with a proceeding hairline and my pecks are visibly bigger than last week) and I feel like im turning into a monster. My wife says a sexy monster which does help a bit. Pro-tip: don’t complain to your overweight wife about your anxiety around becoming physically attractive.

But I have a meeting in January to start a research project and pivot a bunch of my time at work to research and software development. I work at a lumber mill? My boss may be a complete fuckshow when it comes to safety but he’s a pretty nice guy and lets me work how I work. I do make him a buttload of money. I’ve learned to run a planer, filing cnc, front loaders and their kilns. One of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten was this year when after 18 months working the kilns they told me ‘there’s things you can do better but they are matters of diminishing returns for us so we’d like you to focus on something new’. They expected that timeline to be 5 years. I’ve developed spreadsheets and algorithms to track and extrapolate moisture data for my lumber. I led a skunkworks dev team in Turkey to make an OCR app and deployed it at work for the basis of an inventory system. One of my projects this summer is to expand that system to their entire yard from my purview at the kilns. I’ve made and iterated processes for their saw filing and tracking and eliminated about 30k/week of downtime. I’m fucking killing it honestly but still feel like shit about myself. I struggle a lot with whether I’m actually smart or just good at reading. There may not be a practical difference. I would like to be paid more. Im considering the startup route and founding my own company but having access and resources of the mill would be a huge help for development so subsidiary company? I don’t know. My boss is the kind of stupid where he gives a former apple employee a computer but no IPA so I’ve got some cards to play.

My wifes grandfather passed away last week. We moved in with him and gramma 7 years ago when I went on disability and they needed home care. Gramma is in a long term care facility with PSP(super-Parkinson’s) now. My wife is an absolute saint. He gave us a place to live when I was sick and I owe him a lot of who I am. I also knew him longer than any but 1 of my own grandparents. It’s really hard. Also the 6th person to die around Christmas since 2016 so we are pretty well done with the whole month. We don’t even know if her dad committed suicide on the 26th or 27th. Fuck Christmas.

But our time spent caring for the grandparents and various other circumstances means that we might be able to buy/inherit the house! We might own a house! Ahhh the millennial dream! Start work at 11 years old, work in 9 different industries, have 6 years of disability off work and save up just enough of a down payment to inherit a house! It’s pretty fraught. Just the whole melancholy and juxtaposition of moving upstairs and having windows again because an amazing person died is a bit too much.

And like…my dad tried to start a cult so I’m glad they’re getting divorced but having been the person to ‘not cause it, but you did open my eyes a bit’ is all sorts of fun to process. Sorry/Thanks mom. She is doing a lot better now so that’s nice. My dad not so much. Not sure if I have it in me to see him at Christmas. But as mentioned previously and statistics I worry about suicide at this time of year.

But hey! I’m autistic, high school diploma, post-traumatic and non-specific traumatic stress disorders, cycle food and environmental allergies on a weekly basis, 25+ fractures through my body, had fucking scurvy twice, 6 years off work in total and I make my national median wage, I’ve got a job that I can keep for as long as I want it, a boss who actually accommodates my disabilities and weirdness, an amazing wife, two dogs and too many cats, I look better than I ever have and my doctor told me to write my will at 21. I’m 36 now so fuck all y’all.

If anyone read all that thank you! If not it still feels good to just put it down in words.

I posted this in another comment in this thread. This poem always comes back to me when I hit these moments or these threads. Any suggestions on how to get ‘thissus offeroede thissus swae maeg’ as a tattoo without looking like a Viking fascist nutjob?

http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Deor

God no

I'm as good as I'm going to get for what I have at this time. It's all bullshit and I genuinely hate everything but that's ok. It's whatever.