![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the last ten years
Tuesday, December 31st, 2019 09:00 pmTurning a decade is a pretty bizarre time. I don't remember even acknowledging anything special about going into 2010, but at least the millenium felt extravagantly hopeful.
It's hard to feel that way about the future now. Depression and anxiety ate the entirety of my twenties (and possibly also some of my teens, though I didn't know it at the time) and I always viewed turning thirty as some kind of fantasy -- that I'd go three-zero and I'd somehow be free of everything -- until six months before my birthday I became suddenly terrified of it because I could no longer maintain this desperate delusion. There was no way I could have imagined or believed that I'd still be living at thirty, despite not being able to take any steps otherwise. I easily spent 99% percent of the past decade in the company of no one but my immediate family, and some days in the company of my extended family too.
In 2029 I'm going to be forty, and I can't really wrap my head around that either. Am I actually going to have to be around for another ten years? twenty years? thirty? Are things going to get any better for me? Is that something I'm supposed to be able to believe? Mental illness has been devouring my entire identity in steadily growing bites. My attempts to get help have only hurt me more, and my desire to be noticed hurting has only left me feeling more alone and invisible.
I've been trying really hard these last weeks to be hopeful about what's coming, that maybe something is coming, but tonight, of all nights, I just can't manage it.
It's hard to feel that way about the future now. Depression and anxiety ate the entirety of my twenties (and possibly also some of my teens, though I didn't know it at the time) and I always viewed turning thirty as some kind of fantasy -- that I'd go three-zero and I'd somehow be free of everything -- until six months before my birthday I became suddenly terrified of it because I could no longer maintain this desperate delusion. There was no way I could have imagined or believed that I'd still be living at thirty, despite not being able to take any steps otherwise. I easily spent 99% percent of the past decade in the company of no one but my immediate family, and some days in the company of my extended family too.
In 2029 I'm going to be forty, and I can't really wrap my head around that either. Am I actually going to have to be around for another ten years? twenty years? thirty? Are things going to get any better for me? Is that something I'm supposed to be able to believe? Mental illness has been devouring my entire identity in steadily growing bites. My attempts to get help have only hurt me more, and my desire to be noticed hurting has only left me feeling more alone and invisible.
I've been trying really hard these last weeks to be hopeful about what's coming, that maybe something is coming, but tonight, of all nights, I just can't manage it.