9_29_2020 - like water off the back of a duck

Man, I honestly can't believe it. It's been almost a month since the last major update to monar.neocities, and the last blog post I made was on the 29th of August. It is now the 29th of September, and I have no idea how I got here.

There's been a lot on my mind lately. I'll start with the real-life developments first. Cheifly, I stopped going to therapy, which might be a good or a bad thing, but so far it seems like I'm doing pretty well. It happened on accident- I had a bad episode after missing an important email, tried to call the office to schedule an appointment, but was never followed up with. I don't know if my mom was involved with putting a stop to it, but the fact that the hospital called my house and never followed up again, I think they decided there wasn't much cause for concern. At first I thought I wouldn't be doing very well after not going for so long, but so far, I've been pretty good. There's been a few bad days, but the skills I learned to help are actually working. Therapy is weird. I needed it way earlier than I got it- I remember my mom telling me "you don't want to be like one of those kids that goes to therapy, do you?" as if getting professional help would be a punishment.
Everything changed one day, before I started my freshman year of high school, when my family attended a cousin's First Communion (they're catholic) and I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't articulate why I was so sad. It was a combination of depression and anxiety in just the right amounts that it eluded people looking at me and crippled my functioning. That day must've made an impression on my mother, though, because I did go to therapy. And it helped.

You may not have wanted to be privy to that extremely detailed chunk of my life, but I feel like it's important context to my brain's interpretation of everything that's happening right now. School is entirely virtual in my district- I'm on a computer from at least 8 to 3:15 every day, the Google Meets webpage spinning my laptop's fan into a frenzy and melting a hole into my desk. It's not only exhausting, but mentally painful. After finishing school and homework, I collapse on a chair for an hour if I don't have to go to work, and thereafter my energy has entirely lapsed. Sometimes I can muster watching an episode of something on Netflix (side tangent, I've never really been into watching much TV, I only see a few series a year at most because it's so time consuming, but I've had extra time lately so I decided to see Breaking Bad because it's one of my best friend's favorite shows. It really is insanely good.) or an hour and a half of vidya. (Fallout 3) Then, I can't sleep. And the cycle goes on. A lot of my hobbies are pretty much work, and the lack of percivable work eats at my soul. I feel lazy, even though logically I know I'm far from it.

Climate change political polarization the world is burining police brutality media bias trade war actual war war bad internet memes domestic terrorism mental illness COVID-19

This isn't a complaint. I'm just stating the facts. I will not be going to prom. I will not be going to homecoming. All of my extracirriculars are video calls with strained participaton that I don't want to attend. There will be no robotics competitons. Seeing my friends is rare. I got a ticket to MIKU EXPO (yeah) for Christmas, and it's been permanently cancelled. It finally came to our city, we were so excited. All of the projects I've been working on that have lasted this long have stagnated. Everyone is in pain. I'm about half a year too young to vote in this election. My city burned this summer, and my friends suffered. I don't even know what change happened. The school district is inequitable. I don't understand what's happening in the government. I've never felt smaller, and yet it feels problems keep getting bigger.

"You'll want to remember how this felt," my dad told me. "Someday if you have a partner and kids, you'll want to tell them how this felt." Why? Is there a lesson? "Yes."

The problem is, I don't feel much of anything at all. Only an uneasy twist in my chest that my adolescence has been whisked away and the world doesn't bat an eye for my interests.

I guess that's just how things are.