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contradictions

i feel like i make too many jokes in therapy. i usually make a lot of jokes when i'm talking about my mental problems, partly because if i were serious about them all the time i would just cry constantly, but mostly because i don't like for people to worry about me, and if i'm too serious people might be actually concerned. i don't like people worrying about me because i don't feel like i'm worth the time and effort and also because it's so awkward. you should see the way people look at me when i tell them i've tried to kill myself before. it's embarrassing.

it's not worse than when i tell people i used to have an eating disorder, though. then they worry that i'm not eating disordering hard enough because i'm still fat. that is also embarrassing. i've never binged in my whole life.

anyway, it's weird that i have this habit, because i also feel very frustrated when people don't take me seriously. i feel like there's a certain level of craziness you have to display before people believe that you're ill. if i smile at all ever, i can't possibly be depressed. i have friends, so my social anxiety can't be that bad. i'm just not trying hard enough.

or maybe it's just that i don't want the people i care about to spend lots of time worrying about me. maybe i want to make the best of a bad situation sometimes and one way to do that is to make fun of it a little. maybe no person is an island and sometimes the stress of talking to a new person seems to me a fair trade-off for the possibility of making a friend. not every depressed person never leaves the bed and not every anxious person has a meltdown every time they have to talk to a stranger. some people have to get stuff done anyway and some people have occasional good brave days. i wish more people understood this.

but i think i think about things differently than most people. i'm not sure that "outgoing" and "shy" are opposites. i think the opposite of "outgoing" is more like "reserved". because i'm very anxious, but also very outgoing, because even though i'm nervous around people, i'm also very fond of them. (like snakes.) plus i live in a place where it's weird and a little rude to not smile and say hello when you make eye contact with someone, so when i say hello to a stranger and they smile and respond, that makes me feel better because i'm sure i'm not doing anything weird or wrong. i think that's a coping mechanism; i constantly suspect that people dislike me or they're thinking awful things about me, but by speaking to them, i can either improve their opinion of me or figure out that they don't actually hate me.
as for being depressed, i'm pretty idealistic and i have a cheerful demeanor, and i have no idea what the deal is with that. maybe acting the way i do is my way of keeping things from getting any worse? and people's reactions to a smiling happy person usually cheer me up for real. i don't know. i guess i'm a bit of a mess.


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