Lately I have been in such a depressed rut that I feel extremely stagnant. Once again, I find myself overextending myself for the sake of other people, and agreeing to do things that I just don’t have the energy for out of fear of disappointing others.

Sometimes, I wonder if maybe socialization isn’t for me. I know that goes counter to what we know about human beings as a species, but I just continue to feel burnt out by socialization. Every time I get close to someone, or open myself just a smidge and let someone in, there comes a wave of responsibility, like I Have To Do So Much just to maintain the friendship, and I feel so exhausted I could just cry…

I love my friends, I really do. I just don’t understand why nobody thinks of my needs or wants or whatever. I’m always thinking of other people, and I get that that’s a trait other people like about me, but I don’t ever seem to get that in reciprocity. Endlessly, I support other people, sometimes even to my own detriment.

Admittedly, I’m not very good at communicating my needs. I understand that much. So I can’t fault the other party for that. I guess due to how I was raised, I’m just so overcome with fear every time I need to communicate my needs or desires, and I just kind of shut down. This makes me extremely easy to take advantage of, and I’m filled with regret.

Oftentimes, I feel held prisoner to the idea others have in their head of me. The Mana In Their Mind, if you will. The fear of destroying that image becomes so paralyzing that it sucks out my very will to exist and be myself, and I find myself slipping into old habits of doing whatever others ask of me, out of fear of disappointing them.

How is it possible to feel so intensely alone when surrounded by friends? It’s the fear of opening up, the fear of being perceived, the fear of being judged and found wanting…among other things.

Why is it so easy to be myself online, where there is some level of anonymity? Perhaps it’s the fact that a persona can be deleted, scrubbed from existence, and rewritten somewhere else as a completely different person, hopefully without mistakes this time.

But that’s not really realistic, is it? Human beings are complicated, and messy, and oftentimes wrong. I value my privacy a lot, which I’m sure is kind of funny to you, the reader, seeing this on what is ostensibly a personal journal, on a website sharing all of my most intimate favorite things.

I guess the difference is, I made this for me. Not for anyone else to consume, necessarily. I like doing this sort of thing, designing webbed sites, and sure, it feels nice when people reach out and tell me they like what they see here, it’s always nice to be validated, but also there’s an ever-present fear like, “oh, you found that? you…you read that?”

I guess like…I’m not making any of this to achieve any sort of goal, the thing in & of itself is the goal. If you compare a website to a room, sure, anyone can enter, but the room is decorated to suit the owner’s tastes. I find that concept at odds with what a lot of people are doing online, maybe?

Not so much in the personal website-sphere, but in social media, I guess is more what I’m talking about. Millions of people every single day log onto our ever-more-connected internet, no longer a place in a room with a computer where you visit, and then leave, and return to meatspace and no longer think about it. Now, the internet is everywhere, and all around us at all times.

In a lot of ways, that’s amazing, and wonderful. There’s so many opportunities for connection. If you’re LGBTQ in a small town where you feel alone, you can find others like you online and learn that you’re not some kind of twisted freak, but have a tribe, even if you’re not near it right now, living where you are. You can obtain the validation you so desire just by using your phone.

I guess at the stage of my life where I am currently, I don’t really crave that validation anymore. This year, I’ll be turning 39. I love and accept myself as I am, and I don’t really care if other people like me or think I’m a good person, or interesting, or whatever. That can bring with it a confidence that other people find admirable, because they want to be in a place like that themselves. I can relate, because that’s all I wanted when I was in my twenties.

When it comes to personal projects, I just work on whatever I feel like, and if I stop having fun, then I just drop it. It’s that easy. But with friends, it’s much harder…there’s a delicate balance between “working in my own interests and protecting myself” and “being a selfish piece of shit.”

I don’t want to alienate the friends I’ve made, but this is becoming a recurring problem for me…when the friendship is new and fresh, you want to learn as much as you can about the other person, and the enthusiasm is much higher. As you settle into the comfort of an established friendship, you become less worried about impressing the other person, and can kind of drop some of the initial public-facing “persona” and allow yourself to come through.

As time goes on, more and more this public face dwindles (it’s still a part of who you are, but only part of it), and the real “you” comes more to the forefront. This is normal, we all have parts of ourself that we reserve for those close with us.

However, over and over again, I find myself in situations where others relax and feel more at ease with me, and I still feel afraid of dropping the “public” version of myself and relaxing into the “true self.” If nothing else, this could be explained by saying I’m a very cautious person, and have been hurt a ton, and that this is out of care for myself, that I am extremely vigilant about who I relax around.

I suppose what happens, is that other people relax around me, assume I am doing the same, and since I’m still the same me, they determine “ah, she must just be this carefree,” when the truth is more like, “I am not comfortable discussing my worries and negative thoughts with you.”

Having trauma sometimes is not being able to relate to other people at all, it seems. I do not want to become a person who is cruel, but if people are going to find it cruel when I stick up for myself, is that really cruelty? Just because I don’t reciprocate their feelings of being able to relax? I don’t know the answer right now. I’m going to have to think on this more.

Anyway, I’m not dead, the site isn’t dead, I just haven’t been able to create much of anything or think clearly for the past month or so. I’ve been so busy worrying about other people that I forgot to take care of myself (AGAIN), and as a result I’m suffering burnout, mostly emotional, from caring too much about other people and not protecting myself.

It’s a place I don’t enjoy being, but I don’t really know how to express how I feel to others in my life in a way that will honor my values. I’m trying, always, but sometimes, people won’t let you do something without explicitly explaining things to them, even if that information would hurt them to know. At the end of the day, there’s only so much a person can do.

I’ve been working on compiling a list of my plushies, and the next area that should be going up is my plush collection, including a section for those plushes lost to time. It’s proving to be a little more emotionally involved than I had originally thought. But if you’re the type to look forward to things, that’s a thing you could look forward to.

Thanks for being interested in me and in this website.