23, 24

12/7/15, 8:37 p.m.: I almost forgot how to write long boring self indulgent posts. Like cutting Tumblr out of my life and then not using social media for gratification other than being funny kinda made me forget about tapping into that side of being on the internet. I really don't know where to start, or talk about, but that's pretty much how all of those posts used to start. It'd just be one sentence, then two, then thirty, so I guess we're on the right track. I just don't exactly know how I feel lately, because I don't feel too much lately. I got so good at bottling things up and moving on that I can do it on a snap. Nothing really bothers me, but then again, nothing really makes me happy. i just feel like i'm wading through the days, trying to reconcile the new Perry with the old one. Being social feels like the biggest strain in the world, but i guess because I had the crutch of seeing people everyday. I just want to figure out my actual place, but that keeps getting harder and harder. 

It was about three years ago that I initiated my withdrawal process at Florida State, the first of several steps that would eventually lead me to be academically dismissed from the school for the second time in as many years.

If you're confused at that information, don't worry. You probably didn't know about that, because not a lot of people even know about that first dismissal in 2014, just like how not a lot of people know I spent the 2015-16 school year attending Tallahassee Community College to get my AA to could get readmitted to Florida State, and just like a lot of people don't know that for at least the last six years, I've struggled with severe anxiety, constant depression, and limitless self-doubt, a weird side venture to embark on while also managing to live out practically every dream I had ever had before I was old enough to legally drink.

See, really, I first felt that dark, dark pull of depression my junior year of high school, after the combination of an knee fracture causing me to miss an entire football season and my first heartbreak finally broke the dam holding back the building insecurity and sadness in my brain. It’s more truthful perhaps to say that, as a weird, shy, awkward, intimidated person, I always felt that sadness and insecurity (on my first day of kindergarten, I hid in a toy box for the entire day because I was scared nobody would like me) but as far as me physically reacting, the first time I can remember was when I was 16 years old, staring at a belt hanging from a pull-up bar in my closet on a random November night.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t hurt myself that night, instead choosing to hyperventilate in fear of what I had been contemplating, and outside of a few futile attempts at self-harm (I get antsy around sharp objects), I haven’t hurt myself physically. Instead, my chosen form of self-afflicted torture has been mental, something that as the years have gone on, has forced me to retreat farther into my little dark corner, forgetting how to consistently interact with people and the public because if one day in public was too much for me, I'd take three days out of it to recover.

1/13/16, 8:06 p.m.: I don't feel like I belong anywhere, or with anybody. I just feel very alone. I know I have friends, I know that there are people I can talk to, but none of them seem available, or interested, or even like they care. Some of that can be in my head, but i'm also completely aware that people are busy, and are caught up in 5000 other problems other than their friend that appears and disappears from their lives at random. I'm not connected to a single thing, and it's a pretty weird feeling. I have the paper, but everybody there cared about things other than it, which was the case in the past except the people in the past were invested in each other's lives. I barely have school. I don't use social media to be social at all anymore. It just feels like i'm coasting and waiting for things to snap back into place when they very obviously aren't going to. I need to be better, but i need to figure out what i want to be first. 

When I’ve opened up about what I've been feeling to some people, the reaction I’ve come across most of the time is incredulity. They don't mean it dismissively, or with any ill-intention, just how could I, this person who has lived vicariously through social media and constantly sought out laughter and attention and have been doing so many awesome things, be struggling with anxiety? How could I be seeking the public eye while also being deathly afraid of it?

To be completely honest, those are questions I also constantly asked myself, mainly because I didn’t seek mental health treatment until about three years ago. (And even then, the first time I went to Florida State's services, the person assigned to me was a grad student who asked if we could video record my session for a study and then turned out to be my next door neighbor, so I didn't exactly have any breakthroughs.) Until the first time I finally had a productive therapy session, I never really knew if I was just hyping myself up, and the little Dwight Schrute voice would come into my head, doubting the validity of my depression. But as I started to seek out a better mentality for myself, I realized everything that I had pushed down since 2011 and how successful I had been in maintaining this illusion that yes, everything was fine and no, I wasn't spiraling. I had blocked out, amongst other things, the trauma of my parent's divorce, my mother's breast cancer diagnosis, and my grandfather's death, all of which happened within the same 12 months my first years at FSU. 

A favorite line of people who have known me for awhile and haven't seen me in a little bit has been, “Perry, you’re so quiet now!” when they’ve come across me, and the best response I can ever muster is just always a sheepish smile, because I can’t even remember what I was like pre-2013. Reading old tweets and Facebook statuses has been like reading somebody do a poor impression of me. People bring up memories of me from years ago that revolve around me being hyped up and loud and I can’t comprehend it.

I didn’t stop tweeting or using social media because it’s ~cool~ and edgy to only tweet once every few months. I felt like whatever I said was just a lame joke, not important or irrelevant, and so I got nervous about presenting the persona that I had so carefully curated over the last few years in an effort to make myself likeable. And I'm not saying that it wasn’t authentic. I wasn’t fronting for likes and retweets, I was genuinely posting things I felt, it was just more... how do I put this? It was like Perry the Person was writing dialogue for Perry the Twitter, and then Perry the Twitter became my only outlet, and then somehow, I always felt like I had to be on and in-character. Somehow, I had convinced people that I was always funny or insightful or well-spoken when really, I just knew how to write words good. I skipped classes, I flaked on social events, I dropped all pretense of a social existence because not only did I feel like I had to because of the FSView, but I assumed that my Twitter community would give me all the social connection I needed.

1/24/17, 11:17 p.m.: I'm so fucking sad

For a while, it worked. I felt a kinship with people I had never met or even saw the faces of, because they rooted for me and appreciated me and elevated me higher than I had ever felt when I was amongst my peers. I felt like I belonged.

And then it stopped, not coincidentally around the 8th of Nov. 2016, when I realized I wasn’t getting anything out of it, that the good majority of these people, however nice, were not my actual true friends, and that I had spent 5 years of college fixated on a screen and dreaming that my latest idiotic photoshop would finally be my claim to fame and vault me to the sports media heights I had so desperately dreamt of while all my other friends experienced growth and actual, tangible community. Past my freshman year of college in 2012, I don’t think I made a friend outside of the paper until April 2016, my second of three senior years.

7/4/2017, 10:30 p.m.:  I felt like I should write. I haven't in a long, long time. Actually looking at it, I haven't written since January. I don't want to look at it, see what I wrote, and realize that I was feeling the same way, I don't want to know what I'm feeling now. I guess maybe it's easier to keep it all in and ignore it if I'm not complaining about it somewhere. Complaining fees like it does nothing, though. Talking about how miserable I am to anybody feels like a waste of time. Really, what are they going to tell me that'll make me feel any better or give me insight? Like, I'm just sad. I think that's the basis of it, there's no fix except for getting happier, and it's pretty impossible for me to get happier with how things currently are. I'm stuck in-between untapped potential and no way up. I'm trapped in school for another year, with no guarantee that this is the year I finally pull it together. I just feel so stuck and stagnated and that's what I've been complaining about for four years now. Is it a curse that I got so lucky so early and got what I wanted to do immediately? Am I just ridiculously full of myself and overestimating my ability to do what I want? I just want to have friends again. I want to be working towards something without a feeling of dread in myself. I want to explore. I want to experience new things. 

There has to be a reason why I can't write anymore. There has to be a reason why I feel like this every single day other than the fact that my brain is dumb. There has to be a way to fix this. 

It's July 2017, and I have the same sadness that I had in July 2016, and July 2015, and July 2014, and July 2013, and July 2012, and July 2011, and July 2010. I don't even remember if I was sad after freshman year at this point. But seeing all of these posts from 2010, not feeling any connection to the personal sadness but just seeing that's how I felt then and how it's just pushed through to now is just really upsetting. Feeling disconnected from everybody who I want to be connected to is really upsetting. Not knowing how to socialize like a normal person is even more so. What am I going to do in Tallahassee for a year when my only friend is going to be my little sister? What am I supposed to do for growth in an environment that's meant to cap at 22 years old? 

How do I get better? 

I feel like, for the past six years, I’ve been maybe 40% of the person I should have been and so for anybody who has shown me kindness or friendship or affection or anything even close, my appreciation is tenfold. I've reacted to those displays of care with what could have been mistaken with humbleness and aloofness, but really, it was more disbelief that anybody could be interested in what I had to say or do. 

All this time I felt like I was trying to stay hidden, I had actually felt the desire to be seen. I had always wanted people to know me, to connect to me, to care, but as I struggled to deal with my mental health, I struggled to accept that I was somebody worth connecting to and caring for.

It’s been an uphill battle getting better, and it still is, but I’d like to think that progress is being made. I’ve tried putting myself out there again, I’ve tried opening up, I’ve tried dropping the guard I put up around myself. I decided that I’d rather speak and reveal myself an idiot than not talk and be labeled an uninteresting fuck.

7/4/2017, 11 p.m.: I have to get everything out if I'm going to even bother typing. I'm sad that I don't have friends and that the ones I do have are too cool and involved with their other friends to hang out with me. I'm sad because I bet if I just asked to hang out with people they'd probably invite me but I make it pretty obvious I don't hang out with people so why don't they invite me. I'm sad that my family is all in Daytona and I've only seen them probably a total of 100 days over the last five years. I'm sad that I feel like I'm wasting my talents away by not using them and when time ifnally comes I won't have anything left in me. I'm sad because I haven't left the house in four days. I'm sad because my family doesn't have money. I'm sad because my dad broke me. I'm sad that he won;t ever acknowledge it and if I bring it up then he'll just dismiss it and argue it away. I'm sad that I'm 23 years old with less of a grip on the world than I had when I was 18. I'm sad that I feel nothing and then I feel everything. I'm sad that I'm sad. I'm sad that nothing means anything to me anymore, that a whole day can pass by and it's just another miserable day of existence where I feel no purpose. I'm sad that I read the other entries and I've been complaining about the same stuff this whole year. I'm sad that I've felt like this for all of college. I'm sad that I peaked professionally as a 19 year old. I'm sad that I want to live up to expectations but I'm holding myself to people's expectations that don't think about me. I'm sad that I feel out of place. I'm sad I feel like the odd one out always. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad I want everybody to read this and nobody to see it and people to care but nobody to get concerned. I'm sad I'm attention seeking without even ever doing anything. I'm sad that I feel so broken. I'm sad that I want things to be like Tumblr in 2011 and be able to complain and get people to pool in their sadness and the whole world just felt like Ormond Beach insteda of the entire world beating down on me with pressure and fear and confusion. I'm sad that these fucking fireworks are so loud and won't stop and I'm not watching them with anybody and said less than 160 words out loud combined today. I'm sad that I'm not with my family. I'm sad that therapy doesn't even seem to help me. I'm sad that I know what I have to do and can't bring myself to do it. I'm sad. I'm sad. I'm sad. I am sad. I'm sad that people are going to start dying soon. I'm sad that I feel like I have no voice or control. I'm sad that I have so many dreams and feel like I won't live any of them. I'm sad that there are so many people I won't ever talk to. I'm sad that I can't just end it. I'm sad I typed that sentence. I'm sad that my brain fucking works like this. I'm sad I'm Sad i'm sad. 

I’m still figuring out how to be myself again. It was a weird line to walk these last few years, experiencing all of these different professional successes I thought were personal, but also really feeling that nobody actually liked me and not knowing for sure if I liked myself. There have been so many people that I've been lucky enough to come into contact because of things I've done with the paper, but I'd get scared of overimposing friendship on them. I would feel like I wasn't good enough, or cool enough, or normal enough, to hang out with them, while also feeling like I would set this high standard for myself from my writing or being funny online and then subsequently present a real-life product that was nowhere near impressive.

That, of course, was a delusion, and it made me lose out on a lot and made a lot of things that were going on in my personal life harder to deal with. When you don't hang out with anybody, or feel like you don't have friends, who do you talk to about anything?

Things are getting better. Like, a lot better. It's funny how when you actually make an effort, things turn around. I've always been blessed to be surrounded by wonderful people, but in this last year, I feel like I've encountered so many more great humans and reconnected with ones from the past. Every time somebody has shown kindness, it's made the biggest difference in the world, and each time, it made me feel like somebody again.

The moral of this story, believe it or not, isn’t intended to be “oh hot damn Perry’s depressed, let’s feel bad” it’s more, “oh hot damn, we’re all depressed, but we shouldn't feel ashamed about it, we all need to seek better for ourselves and those we care about.” I blame Tumblr for bringing this realization of sadness out all out of us but dammit, it’s here, so let’s deal with it, let’s lift each other up, let’s look out for each other.

We’re in some pretty shitty times, and alongside quashing out sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia and then, basically, anybody who still rides for that shitty, deceitful, bloated corpse residing in D.C. and the rest of his squad, the only way we’re going to get through this is bringing back love and care as a part of our daily routine. That doesn’t mean you have to gallop through the streets, singing Carly Rae Jepsen bangers and passing out roses, but instead, make sure the people in your life constantly know they’re cared for. Reach out to people you haven’t spoken to in awhile, and especially those who you see posting weird sad shit online and double for those who you notice stop posting.

To everybody who, after all of these years, haven't gotten sick of me, thanks for sticking around. My DMs are always open if you want to talk or ask a question or talk shit to me, or anything honestly. To everybody that did unfollow me though, I hate you and hope that every time you go to a drive-thru, your drink is watery.

Today's my birthday, and for it, I wanted to feel seen again. A few years ago on this day I tweeted out all of my drafts, and it's still one of my favorite and most freeing things I've done. It felt like I was really truly being honest with everybody for the first time in a long time. Every tweet that I felt was too personal, too stupid, not funny enough, purged from my brain and from storage, out there with no intention of being favorited or retweeted. I was just being me, putting myself out there on full display.  I hope I get the same feeling from doing all of this. 

18 was okay, 19 was pretty cool, 20 was eh, 21 was shit, 22 was alright, 23 was fine, and now, it’s 24’s turn.

What awaits me this year, I don’t particularly know, but I’m looking forward to spending it by getting back to the person who I’m meant to be.

If I'm lucky, there’ll be plenty of people spending the journey alongside me.