Dusting off

Has it really been over a year since I've posted anything?
Why yes, it was... not that anyone is actually reading.
I've stopped advertising the link to this place ages ago...

Despite the long break, the blog has been on my mind. I simply haven't been up to writing about life through the year but I think I finally calmed down and found enough equilibrium to actually think about what has been going on in my little corner of life.

It has been a time of significant change.

It started at the very beginning of this year when I've been feeling stale. I focued a lot on socialising the year before but those attempts failed. I wanted to get out of the work culture I was in at the time because it was dragging me down. The focus on alcohol, parties and sex fostered a sense of isolation and rejection that chipped away at my self-worth.

I wanted to change that but when searching for connections and understanding, someone would inevitably ask me what I do for a living and that turned my demeanor sombre. I felt trapped. Eventually, I stopped going to the few events I was interested in.

As I couldn't find my place socially, I thought I'll try to find it professionally. At the end of my teaching course, we were told that the best time to seek employment with schools is at the beginning of the year because it's when they start planning for the Easter and Summer periods. I wrote a cover letter, printed it and my CV out and mailed it to every school in town. I've had a lot of rejections but I also had an interview that I passed.

I was nervous but happy to teach for a week in March and throughout June and July. It was an interesting experience and a step in the right direction for me. My retail job was very understanding. They let me have as much time off as I could so I was teaching Monday to Friday and working at my old job one day over the weekend. Some weeks were very difficult to go through and I had to stop with my regular weekly activities during that time... but I survived...

Then my friend told me they were looking for new people to work in her office. I was unsure at first but in the end I decided to risk it and apply. Suffice to say I got the job and it has done wonders for me. I feel that my skills are put to good use, my financial situation is progressively improving and I'm overall a lot more productive lately. I'm not as tired after getting home as I used to be.

 

Life, however, is not all about work. I now have a cat at home so I'm finally a responsible adult with a job that finances my care of my baby. Having her around makes all the difference. On average I'm feeling less down than before I had her.

My gaming life has also improved, somehow. I'm meeting friends for games a lot more often. There are even times when it's so often I need to stop myself. Even buying materials for them (card sleeves, bags, storage boxes, paint, etc.) is not as much of a financial strain as it used to be.

It truly feels like things have improved...

It's never pretty...

I'll just cut to the chase...

I broke down recently.

It's difficult to describe the experience after the fact.

I remember not being able to concentrate. I was mostly on auto-pilot, not thinking what I was doing. I kept asking myself what happened a few seconds ago because I constantly forgot slight details. I retreated away from people partly because I didn't have enough strength to socialise and partly because I could barely hold myself together. After a few hours I simply broke down crying and had to leave work early in disgrace.

I got home, ordered a pizza and just spent the evening sitting in a dark room.

Sadly, I brought myself to this state through my own stupidity.

The week prior to this I planned too many social events to go to.

First was an evening at a restaurant with some girls from work. I like restaurants because unlike going out to drink or clubs, they don't stress me out. I thought spending some time with people from work would be a welcome change but I was wrong. As the evening progressed and we ate and drunk, the conversation we were having took a turn onto recent relationship. The ladies told of their most recent romantic situations but when my turn came, I admitted with a heavy heart that I've never been in a relationship. I was met with disbelief and told that I was lying as a way to wiggle myself out of the subject at hand. I was too hurt from hearing this to argue and I didn't want to lash out as I was there due to an invitation so I let it slide and continued with the evening.

The following day I was still upset over what had happened. I talked to some friends about it which helped calm me down but as I got home from work, the latent feelings of being unloved kept resurfacing. I was supposed to go to a new gaming event held in town, meet new people and have some fun with my favourite hobby. I felt terrible with myself and started considering if it wouldn't be more prudent to stay in and deal with my emotions before tackling another social event. At the last moment, I decided I didn't want other people's words to define what I do with my life so I got myself ready to head out.

It was raining as I walked there so I wasn't expecting a lot of people to show up. When I got to the pub, I didn't see anyone playing any hobby games. I could only see groups of people having a drink and a chat with nothing to tell me they were here to game. Leaving the house already took a lot out of me so I had very little courage left to come up to strangers and ask about their reasons for being there. I stayed for a bit but as nothing changed, I went back home a failure.

The very next day, at work, I took another hit. I'm often approached and asked questions about English, that day was no different. One girl at work was preparing for an exam so I was going over example speaking exercises with her and giving her some pointers on manner of speech and various phrases and vocabulary. I was asked a lot of questions but the last one was the hardest.

I don't even remember what it was about specifically. I only remember her best friend exploding in my face. I was accused of not trying to understand her, that the sentence was easy and I was just being mean, nitpicky and showing off my superiority. The truth was that at that point I was already emotionally exhausted and after being awake for fourteen hours, physical fatigue made it difficult focusing on anything around me. I had trouble thinking and processing information but those words hit me hard. There I was trying to help but was outright shouted at for doing more harm than good.

The effect this had on me must have been visible because as I was leaving, they were explaining what happened to leave me in such a state to the supervisor but I just calmly walked past them on my way out and headed home.

It was a difficult weekend but these things happen. Normally, I would cancel any remaining plans and stay by myself for several days but one of my good friends had a birthday party later that week and I've already got everything ready for it. I didn't want to disappoint her especially since she is one of the few people who have helped me through some hardships over the years.

We went to a sushi place and then for drinks to a pub. Throughout the evening up to early night, I tried to hide away my emotional state and stay strong and upbeat. I was engaging with people by sharing trivia and making some inconsequential comments from time to time. I managed to keep it up until shortly before the end when fatigue and loss of sobriety started to settle in. At that point I receeded into myself, as usual, but people went their separate ways shortly after.

Unfortunately, the day after, I found myself overwhelmed to such an extent that I couldn't bear it any more. In my daily life, I carry this feeling that I'm only ever wanted when I'm not myself. I always get the impression that the more I show myself, the more the chances of rejection grow. It didn't help that the day before I was actively going against myself because I always want to be there for others...

but I never try to be there for myself...

Lonesome

This morning I woke up from a sex dream.

Although most people I know enjoy having them, unfortunately, I do not.
They remind me of the part of having a relationship that I struggle with the most.

I suppose having one now is an aftereffect of how I've been feeling lately. Work has truly thrown a monkey wrench into my precarious social life. It was already quite hard keeping one up while dealing with shift-work, working weekends and my own high emotional sensitivity. Most times when I managed to find the time for socialising, I couldn't hold myself together for long and had to leave fairly early on. In recent weeks, however, I've been spending well over forty hours a week at work which not only cut into my social life but also started to erode my personal life.

I hadn't had time to quiet down so I ended up overwhelmed by loneliness and that recent feeling of being unloved. I'm not sure what exactly brought it up. I only remember snippets like going to the shop in the morning to get some stuff for breakfast and suddenly feeling sad that I can never do this for someone else. One moment I'm at work, everything is fine and then I'm drowning in sadness, barely capable of staying afloat.

When my recently acquired friends saw me, they tried to reach out but that only made matters worse. Paradoxically, when I'm feeling particularly lonely, what I truly require is solitude. It's nigh impossible for me to explain to people how alone I feel in a crowd so when I ask to be ignored, people refuse to do so, out of compassion, and I proceed to lose hold of myself even further.

I feel trapped by my work hours preventing me from developing professionally and socially, to such an extent that it's taking its toll on my psyche.

A Moment of Respite

I swear, every time I plan to post here regularly, something inevitably stops me from engaging in blogging... but that's a subject for another topic.

I would much rather begin by stating that I've recently been on nearly a month worth of holidays and despite not going anywhere beyond the city limits, I had quite an enjoyable time. Since returning to work I found that people are shocked to hear I didn't go abroad as they believe there is nothing to do in Brighton.

That's certainly not true.

I love this city specifically because there is a myriad of activities you can engage in provided you've got the time and means, which my time away from work gave me plenty of. Here are some highlights from those weeks.

The Good

Let's start with some good points first before moving on to the worse aspects of these eventful weeks.

I've attended all my usual classes and activities without feeling that I'm overexerting myself. Attempting to have a life beyond sitting at home while working six days a week can get difficult so a period of time when I could do everything at my own pace was a nice change.

I can't believe how social I've been. Other than my regular outing to the RP Club, I've met with people from the club for lunch and had days spent playing games with them. I've been hanging out with various friends, even working out with some at the gym.

I've played an insane amount of games. I finally started Apocrypha, a game I've been looking forward to playing since 2015! (Its release was delayed a lot.) I've had people over to play with, I went to people's places to game and I even played in a gaming shop.

Despite never considering myself a social person, I ended up with day after day of spending time with other people. It was a crazy ride but I can't say I regret it. One of my friends even invited me to a sword fighting class which I attended three of. I did not think I would enjoy practicing with a longsword so much that I'd like to go there more regularly.

The most important bit of news, however, is that during this recent holiday period I've finally received my citizenship so now I'm officially British... and thus, I can legally drink copious amounts of tea.

The Bad

As busy as I was throughout those weeks, I haven't done as much as I've planned on doing.

Areas of my living space suffer from neglect and disorganisation, I intended to do some spring cleaning but failed to get round to it. I wanted to go over my finances and do some adjustments based on my spending habits as evidenced by the pile of receipts I haven't typed into my Excel sheet. While I tried some new recipes, it was nowhere to the extent I was going for and even my miniatures went untouched by my brush. I couldn't focus on reading nor did I have the creative energy to pour into blogging and roleplay session write-ups.

I thought that having three weekends off, I could go to some sewing classes that they usually hold on Saturdays but I couldn't muster enough energy to start something new. Instead, I went to a Character Design Workshop that lasted a few hours but I was fairly disappointed by it. I didn't even open my jewellery making set which I didn't want to use for the past year as I was saving money and silver does consume money when you actively use it.

Before I move onto the next aspect of my holidays, I must preface it by admitting that I'm not an emotionally strong person. When the below happened, I broke down severely and couldn't always keep myself together. Especially when I was by myself. My failings over those weeks off stemmed mainly from this.

The Ugly

As I've mentioned previously, I've received British Citizenship. Over the course of my time off work, I was required to attend a ceremony to be presented and given said certificate. Since my parents helped me out financially get to this point, I invited them to the ceremony as guests. I did not hear from them for two weeks when I found out that they wouldn't be coming.

A few months back, during the change of the year, my dad contacted me about an issue he had. His previous employer didn't cover his parking receipt while he was driving the company's lorry. He asked me if it's legal, to which I replied that I didn't know. Later he sent me some legal webpages to read through which I couldn't fully understand because they required further contextual reference which I lack and because during the Christmas period I work very long hours, to the extent I had to leave work early one day because I started having trouble walking.

I didn't fix his issue which may have costed him £30.

My parents couldn't attend because my dad feels I'm ignoring him and acting as if he's not there. He's jealous of my relationship with my mother so she's no longer allowed to talk to me. The discussions with my mum that I had after finding this out were excruciating. I've always had a difficult relationship with my father. He's only ever tried contacting me when he needed something and when I couldn't deliver, he'd guilt trip me. There were years when we wouldn't speak until something serious happened, like his heart attack or his father's death, that got me to talk to him again... but no matter what, it always boiled down to me being treated like his personal assistant rather than a family member.

I seemingly couldn't explain this issue to my mother. She kept asking me to reach out to him, to make that first step towards having a better relationship between us, completely ignoring that I had done it three times already. I told her that all the things she was telling me I should have been hearing from him rather than simply being ordered around and disregarded as a person. When I suggested he should contact me, for once, to talk about how we can work on having a better relationship, I was told he wouldn't do that.

At that point, I felt completely shattered, even more so when I heard that nothing would have gone wrong if I had just done as I was told. As a child, I felt unwanted, and as an adult, I feel used and manipulated. Whenever I tried raising these issues, I was told that wasn't how I felt. While I would love to have a good relationship with my family, I no longer believe in one-sided relationships so I also had to let go of this one.

What is Your Quest?

I have noticed there are some misconceptions circulating about my nationality. While it's true that I've been working on becoming a British citizen, I am sadly not at the end of my quest yet.

Over the past few months I've made certain steps towards that goal. First of which was passing the Life in The UK exam, followed by applying for a Permanent Residency Permit. Both of which required a lot of time. I've spent a month preparing for the exam, a week filling up a form for the permit and two months waiting for a decision to be made. It all went well enough. I expected to wait half a year for the permit but I got it in less than half the time which allowed me to visit my godson for his first communion ceremony. My main hurdle at the moment is money.

I've been saving money for it for the past year. Due to that trip I had to spend some of it so my plan to get it done by the holiday season didn't pan out. The fee going up by three times what I expected this year didn't help either. So a few weeks ago I sat down to make some calculations. Turns out that going by my usual rate I'll have enough money saved up for it in March.

As such, my main concern now is to cut down my expenses so I can get it over with as soon as possible. Currently, my plan is to cut down on my usual expenses so I can hit my target sooner than March. I've already made some decisions to achieve that.

- Reluctantly, I broke my promise to a good friend to visit her in Amsterdam this year.
- I won't be doing anything for my birthday in November nor for Christmas as in previous years.
- I'm suspending my dojo membership for the next three months.

All of the above should net me three months worth of savings and if I receive back the money I lent out to a friend, I'll have another month worth of savings to add to that.

It still won't let me reach my goal by October but my mum wanted to give me the money I'm missing. I refused to take any, obviously, but we talked about it some and reached an agreement where I would borrow money from her after the summer holidays. Hopefully, I'll manage to spend as much time at work as possible over the coming months, boosting my income in the process so I won't be forced to borrow as much from my mum as she's offering to give me.

Cutting Down

For the past few months I've been logging in on Facebook, going down my Friend List and clicking the unfriend button on someone. I would do this on a small scale every year after my birthday but this time I decided to go through all my social networks, Facebook being the last stop.

I'd like to be more open online like I used to be, especially now that I'm putting up a front in my day-to-day life. In order to do that though, I have to ensure that only a select group of people has viewing privileges.

I've never been a party person. Although it seemed to me to be a well-known fact, it kept being ignored. I was constantly subjected to endless questioning and dismissal in my attempts to explain why I take no enjoyment in the same activities as most. Despite it, my wishes went ignored and I kept being damaged by so-called friends who thought they were doing me a favour by trying to fix me.

I was tired of dealing with it.

I thought that maybe if I go out a few times, drink some, start lying about having fun but my finances dwindling too much because of it, I'll be able to get some peace at work. It worked, in a way. I no longer feel like I'm being dragged out against my will when I decline an offer.


I'm not happy that I had to resort to outright lying to people and I have to admit, being so closed up these days is having severe negative effects on me.

I broke down last week.
I spent a whole day mostly in bed and in tears.
Today I managed to keep myself together for half a day, at least.

I guess I'm still struggling to find a balance to this new way of life.

Shame

I wasn't feeling well this past weekend.

It was odd as I had an entire day to myself before going to work over the weekend but until Sunday evening, I had the impression I would simply fall over. I don't know what came over me.

Earlier that week I broke down completely, cancelled nearly all my regular outings and stayed at home for two days. That was because I had two very long and stressful weeks at work prior to those days. I thought I managed to sort myself out. I went to dancing yesterday and I was just about to go practice ninpo today when that ever present feeling of shame overcame me. I could hardly get myself to do anything. I ended up spending most of the day just watching Naruto Shippūden.

Although I'm fairly fond of anime, I don't enjoy days like this. I've been feeling emotionally weak lately and, these days, it seems harder for me to pull myself back together. Most days I manage to bottle up my feelings of shame and go out into the world despite them crawling along after me.

I'm truly ashamed of the way I am, of what I enjoy and of what I dislike. At times like these, I'd love to talk to someone but I know full well that most of my friends and family would be more than happy to see me give up on my activities and spend my time in front of the telly instead.

I know they mean well; that they think I would do better in life if I had more numbers on my bank account, that I'm overextending myself or simply not enjoying what life has to offer. Despite knowing their intent, it still hurts when I'm being laughed at for enjoying something else, for feeling stressed out by engaging in their form of entertainment and for being different.

I'm not proud of what I do and enjoy. I only started applying myself in a variety of fields because I decided I deserve to enjoy life as everyone else. Just because I enjoy different things, doesn't mean I shouldn't do them.

I can say in all honesty that I'd rather be the sort of person who likes to go out and get drunk with people but no matter how much I try, it stresses me out to such an extent that I eventually break down mentally.

I try to distance myself from people so I don't have to deal so much with feeling worse in comparison to them when I'm being asked to go out but there are still moments when their best efforts get to me and it becomes too much to deal with.