chapotraphouse

At 41, I’m starting to feel that mid-life anxiety about death. I’ve been trying to map out the books I want to read and some of the things I want to get done, and I’m already like five years out. Maybe learn Spanish or Mandarin. I started thinking “jfc I’ll be closer to 50 than 40 by the time I get to this”. It has me a bit down but at least it’s motivating me to eat healthier and exercise more so I can still read and do stuff as late in life as possible.

I'm doing better. I've been giving myself this month to rest and it's working mostly. I'm not pressuring myself to job hunt or build a resume or whatever.

I'm finding out what I want out of life and it's pretty doable as I think about it. I want to just live with a partner or by myself without expectations of being social/attending parties in my off time. That's pretty cool because I've had a lot of stigma around being a 'hermit' when I just like my space.

Hey, love

I'm just waiting for some Vietnamese food to arrive. Otherwise? I'm doing a "Final Project" for a CPUSA education course on Marxism-Leninism; it's about imperialism and "sub-imperialism" as well, which may be a controversial topic. I'm trying to find info on the Dominican Republic and Haiti as well since I'm from those parts and am studying up on Hispaniola while also brainstorming through my memories if I can recall anything important.

I may end up changing the topic of the longform essay, but we'll see.

I left the one group chat I was in and gave up on the concept of having friends. It's not just that screaming leftist malappropisms at people doesn't work, that's more a subset of the problem. When I do not put in 100% of the effort and make myself 100% available all the time and message people first, people stop talking to me. It's not a two way street, they just don't even bother. I am putting in all the effort, because I guess I need them way more than they need me.

But there's also just no friendship or conversation if I do not give all possible ground to people. I understand that my special interests are improbably weird, even the really mundane ones, but it is like if I talk about them at all it's an instant kill to any conversation. I have facilitated actually having "friends" by pretty much exclusively talking about whatever it is they wanna talk about, all the time every time. These people barely know anything about me as a result. It's kind of infuriating.

So I had a fuckin meltdown and gave up, wrote a little rambling screed and left that group chat. I am now trying to devote more time to feeding my special interests, like making Sonic Adventure look/sound/play properly, recording cassette tape copies of stuff, multichannel audio and weirdo trans-sapphic books. Fuck trying to gut yourself and hiding your whole being for the sake of having "friends".

That's the worst part, though; I fell back into masking again. Like obviously if you wanna make friends, it helps to A) have similar interests, and B) give a little when it comes to interacting with theirs. But I just fell into the trap of totally eschewing stuff I like for the sake of other people. Honestly fuck talking lmao

I'm honestly doing really good. This year's been rough. Year 2 of family no contact, break up on my birthday earlier this year. But i still have a lot to be thankful for. My new partner is a leftist instead of a lib so we are more compatible. My ex didn't like to cuddle so i was very touch deprived in my last relationship, that was hard.

It was tough losing all the shared friend group because she literally just changed overnight after some family trauma and moved back home to a conservative state. Being trans and already having been hate crimed, i didn't feel safe to move there with her, but i got "punished" for it socially :|

My ex family, i miss them a little, but if they're so shit they're cutting me off just for being vegan like, good riddance. I always felt like i was the black sheep anyway, the fact that they cut me off so easily was just proof my feelings of alienation were right all along. It's hard to struggle with missing people who were/are bad for you. My family was critical, judgemental, disrespectful, libs yet they could be kind to me and funny sometimes. I'm still somewhat in contact with my mom and it's so fucking bananas how much she will do for her other children compared to me. When i got married, she and my sister left right after the ceremony to go shopping in my city rather than stay and hang out with me and my new wife, and my brother in law said he didn't respect vegans. On my wedding day.. because he came up with some gotcha about how vegans are okay with ethical cannibalism or some shit. And this was like 5 years ago, when i was more of a lib and wasn't even forcing them to eat vegan at the wedding. Like i literally paid for their dead body food without complaint but then got criticized for eating plants in the same room, on my wedding day where i was marrying another vegan. Trash people lol. But still, it's hard when your culture is like "here are the people who will always love you and have your back :) " and they're behaving opposite of that. Complete mindfuck that i'm only just starting to heal from.

when the abuse or neglect is subtle, it's harder to spot and heal from. It just feels like something is slightly wrong with you because everyone is treating you different. Meanwhile it's easy to say the other more extreme trauma that happened to me was traumatizing and point out why.

Despite that, i'm doing good lol. Just a bit rough with all the holiday memories. Trying to just accept i did the best i could and let it all go and focus on how happy i am now not having to be around those people lol.

Awful, my dog died on Christmas and I'm broke

At least my family is alive and well though, that's more than a lot of people

Doing well, all things considered. I feel hopeful for my future despite certain hardships ahead. In a way, I feel like I have become much better at dealing with pain and stress. I try to enjoy the silent moments as much as I can. I have been a reclusive hermit for a couple of years, but I'm really starting to meet people and hang out with friends, which is a lot of fun, and I want to do more of that in the future.

Been driving myself to madness by contemplating the unreality of existence. Seriously. I feel so detached from myself and others. And in a way I kind of like it. I'm not sure if it's solely depression, navel-gazing, ego death, or what. Like I know I'm missing things in my life but I don't even really care. Been reading some good books and playing some fun games and hanging out with people more. But I dunno. I feel like I'm going through the motions whenever I do these things. I'm a body moving through space and nothing more.

Earlier this year after some stuff happened, I thought to myself that I had crossed an event horizon. And that feeling has not dissipated.

My kid just crawled today

Both still living grandparents died this year

Overwhelming compulsion to reconcile my stated values with my actions and get involved with shit in my city – hopeful I can make time for it in the new year

Might experiment more intentionally with gender expression soon

Failed a class, aka wasted $1k. No gf.

Just lost my job. Though I think it's a blessing in disguise. Last few months at work feels like I'm slowly killing myself. Going to take a month of rest or two, work on those personal game projects I never had time to complete, do some art, go out and meet some old friends. Saved up enough cash so I'm not too worried about the immediate future, but finding another job will suuuuuck.

Had a job interview that I think went ok today. Of the current roster of potential interview/jobs it's second in my choices but I think my number one is either ghosting me or drank too much eggnog and is still recovering.

ND: so I've spent the last day and a half looking up videos and shit on how to answer interviews for IT positions and did you know that when they ask you to tell you about yourself they are actually wanting you to talk about your last IT job? And when they ask about a difficult customer, they just want you to say you will try to help and then when shit hits the fan, ask your supervisor? They ask a bunch of questions but you aren't supposed to literally answer them? Like when they ask what you think an IT position is, you are supposed to regurgitate the job description?

Fucking NTs are so complicated.

With family who I am not out to. I'm just so tired of being misgendered, called handsome, told how much I look like my brother, idk. It's not their fault, but at the moment it's easier to just not come out to them because they would be very weird about it. But goddammit it sucks

Got dumped recently (last week), coped about it by doing a lot of drugs, realized that was a very bad idea, am better now <3

Stuck in a weird place trying to figure out my future. Shit's hard.

This is such a kind idea for a thread, thank you for making it ❤

I'm doing pretty fucking shit as usual now. There's a genocide ongoing, work is actually now fucking miserable, I'm pretty much more isolated than I was over 10 years ago and for a first, I have a sense of being in genuine danger.

Three more years of this shit.

My father had a heart attack a week ago, so my Christmas was spent in an intensive care unit with him hooked up to beeping machines not being allowed to sit up or even lift his head from the pillow. It was... not great. That said, they did manage to clear up the blood clot without any scarring and he is home now without any permanent damage, so right now I'm about to head out to celebrate Christmas with the family. Right now I'm doing great. It's just been a stressful week.

I'm doing better than I have in the past, but still not great. This time of year reminds me of the people I've lost, though I could say that about most of the rest of the year too. It was one of my best friend's birthday a couple weeks ago so I drove out to his grave for the first time since his funeral last March. I saw other people had been there recently, they left flowers. I brought some of his favorite snacks and shared them with him. The whole visit was more cathartic than I expected which surprised me, I never felt like I got anything out of visiting my brother's grave. I don't know what's different this time.

Struggling post-holidays. Not sure why. Cumulative stress I guess. I had a decent holidays but not exactly relaxing, was out of town all but 1 day of it. My place is a mess, my work is overloaded, I've never had more gender dysphoria. And I'm supposed to go someplace out of town again for new years, which won't leave me any free time to catch up on any of this.

I had one real day off and I used it to 1) sleep in late (no regrets) and then 2) go to the coffee shop and finish reading To Kill A Nation which was kind of a downer, but it was nice except

After that I went to the library and hung out with a trans friend for a while who I think knows I'm struggling but we didn't really talk about it a lot, just commiserated a little and had fun hanging out otherwise. And this week since then I've been either working or too stressed/depressed to really do anything besides veg out. I did cook some curry last night tho.

Not great. Capitalism and climate change are so incredibly depressing. I'm just struggling. I don't want to live in hell.

On a positive note, I thought my ball python was getting a respiratory infection (which can be a big deal for snakes), but she's recovered on her own.

Still waiting for that letter from the NHS to arrive. So much anticipation. They haven't attempted to phone again either. Still excited about the approaching closeness of my HRT. But also worried that the letter won't arrive in time and I'll miss my appointment and the NHS will decide I'm not being serious about transitioning and it'll be waiting lists on waiting lists before I get another chance.

Still not found a job. It's not like I was expecting all the hospitals to be falling over themselves to hire me when I got my degree, but I'm still a bit disheartened by how many labs I've applied to work in only to get the same canned rejection, like, a day later.

Very topsy-turvy but proud of my emotional honesty. Had a really good conversation with my boyfriend about how we can't really be life partners and found a lot of closure and comfort with the relationship we do have. Then the next day he told me that I shown him what genuine respect, kindness, and care actually look like and that its not really there in the rest of his life. His validation and honesty were important to me, but it was also challenging to here these things and reconcile it with the path we are on. It's also impossible to know if the positive parts of our dynamic would grow or collapse in a more intense/enmeshed relationship.