Jan 17, 2024 - Hello again, my journal.

Today was decidedly better than yesterday though it started off on a wonky foot. It was made better by choice of my own!

I woke yesterday to a bit of a cold that completely took my throat and ability to talk away. Chose to stay in low-power mode and start my feeling bad regimen of chugging as much water as humanly possible and re-upping on the ibu and nasal spray every four hours.

 Luckily, that trick works very well as I woke today still feeling not great but considerably better nonetheless.

 I woke at my usual time and instead of my usual cigarette and coffee combo before immediately getting to work, I grabbed a glass of water and allowed myself to play a video-game as that is what I had felt I wanted to do. Allowing myself to enjoy the morning really set me up to have an easy day! The responsibilities that normally feel soul-crushing were tolerable and I found myself thinking more positively.

 It’s a short one today, dear journal, but a positive one!  My goal for tonight’s shift is to soothe myself when I walk into that door and say hi to a few of my coworkers before I go upstairs to put my stuff away. Because I DO belong in social spaces. Because I am someone who does provide good things to this world. Because my night job isn’t that deep and nobody can hurt me.

Jan 15, 2024 - Self Worth

Keeping up with this journal has proven as difficult as any other new habit that I’d like to adopt. Thank goodness. That means I’m truly taking the steps I need to take in order to recognize that the world i much bigger than I’ve accepted it to be, and to build myself up in order to be able to allow myself to enjoy the good opportunities that come my way.  Today I will be talking about feeling paralyzed due to low self-esteem and the some recent realizations I’ve had about life that have seemed huge to me even though they’re common human experiences. I feel that my low sense of self-worth has kept me blind to the world for these last 28 years, and I’d like to believe that this new foray into good self-consideration has lent me the ability to see some details much more clearly that were previously obscured.

 Woof - just procrastinated on this for about three hours. Facing the parts of yourself that you dislike the most but need to change is difficult.
 The only way that I can really begin to speak about the way having a low-self esteem has paralyzed me in life is by speaking on a major realization I had for myself recently.

 My realization was that low self-esteem seems to be a deeply emotional experience that seeps into every aspect of your life. To me, it seems similar to how I understand that my personality disorder works. I was introduced to a version of the world that was inconsistent and violent, so I assume everything in life is inconsistent and violent and respond the only way I had known to even if it was harmful to myself or another person. In terms of self-esteem, I view the world as “too good for me” and this shows up in the way that I can’t seem to stop self-sabotaging relationships and opportunities that would or do bring me joy in my life. I believe that, similar to a personality disorder, self-esteem is something that is instilled in you in your early life by your parents, caregivers, and/or community.

 I feel fortunate to have been able to come to the realization that I struggle with very low self-esteem. For many years I have been struggling to find some way to help myself after being diagnosed with too many things that contradict one another to count. There is no way I have BPD AND Autism. I think i have a low self-esteem and it shows up in the way I communicate with others. Autistic in the way that I avoid others and focus on ideas and objects. BPD in the way that when I am able to ge through the fact that I hate myself and let myself love and be loved I can’t handle that responsibility because it is too new and too exciting for me.

I have spent upwards of 8 hours trying to force myself to write this entry. It has been a day of distraction, I think because I am trying to avoid taking accountability for the way that I feel and investigate honestly why it is that I may be feeling this way. I’m going to call it quits on this one and end it with the thoughts that have plagued me all day. Why do I make myself so hard to love? What is it that I am so afraid of that I will consistently ruin good opportunities for myself? Why do my parents hate me? Why wont my mom text me back? Why does the love my partner gives me not feel right or okay? Why can’t I let anything go?

Jan 12, 2024

Okay, well.... Let's hit the ground running! I wonder if the awkward feeling you get when you start a journal is a universal thing. I'm sure it's a majority feeling in the very least.
I want to start a journal in an effort to organize my mind and learn to better retain memories. I also hope to become better at both writing and typing. If all of my goals fail, in the very least I will have a nice website to scroll through and reflect upon when I am old. I started this journal a bit late because of procrastination. I had insisted on taking my sweet time picking out my theme for fear that the vibe would be off... or something. That is why you'll notice that this was posted on January 13th, 2024 despite what the title of the entry says. If i even care about that detail upon reading back.... If I even read back..... If I even manage to keep this journal going.
JAnuary 12th was an ordinary day. I woke up a little bit late, as it was an off day and I had been up until four in the morning the previous night working on a crochet project. It being early afternoon, my partner was in the middle of a meeting and speaking proudly about the platform his company offers. Since I fell asleep in the living room, i had to quietly stumble my way into the bathroom hoping that i would not be caught like some cryptid in the background of my partners meeting. I should do that less.
We needed groceries and decided to go to the asian market as the majority of the goods we needed to restock on were there. We severely misunderestimated what 18 degress felt like and decided it was a lovely enough day to walk there. My fingers were freezing and my nose was numb but I enjoyed that freezing walk with him. (I love to have the opportunity to walk and laugh with him on the way to pick up groceries for our house. Such a wonderful privelage.) We picked up the majority of what we needed and grabbed a few extra items for hot-pot that was decided upon for dinner. When we got home, I realized that I forgot to pick up the hot-pot base so I had him do a drive by and drop me off to pick up the base really quickly, because there was no way in hell I was doing that walk again. The dinner was magnificent. I had been craving hot-pot for a long while up until this evening so I made sure to eat my fill. It was a spicy hot-pot base that we paired with king oyster mushroom, enoki mushrooms, pork belly and beef short-ribs, noodles, ttebeokki, rice, kimchi, garlic chive kimchi, chives, white onions, jalapenos, and garlic. MY goodness it was a feast to remember.
We watched the movie Pearl to accompany dinner. I liked it. I knew that I would going into it though. Hopefully that bias doesn't have much to do with the overall objective quality of the movie, because I really believe Pearl is one of the best psychological thrillers of 2023. I love the subtlety in its message, and that the message seemed to be about female captivity and rage. How the femme is viewed as unstable or dangerous for deviating from her role. I really identified with her want to escape despite her perceived responsibility in pursuit of her happiness, but every time she gets an opportunity to escape she comes face to face with a challenge that stops her plans in their tracks. My partner and I had a discussion about the movie between us and both decided we needed to watch X again to prove to ourselves that X was truly a sequel to Pearl. Spoiler: It truly is. I then began to think about how I should really start a journal because it really is a bummer that I don't have 25 odd years of journal entries or photos to look back upon. So I got onto WordPress and here we are. I am very much hoping for a long and fruitful journaling adventure, no matter what kind of twists and turns it takes. I hope to embrace my journal as an expressive medium and let myself explore it to its fullest!
ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ᵉⁿᵒᵘᵍʰ. ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ˡᵒᵛᵉᵈ. ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ˢᵐᵃʳᵗ. ʸᵒᵘ ᵃʳᵉ ᵛᵃˡᵘᵃᵇˡᵉ.