Processing Negative Emotions

[soos_mite_ah]

I'm just creating a separate journal for myself where I can pour all of my negative emotions into and just rant/ vent in. I'm not dealing with an influx of negative emotions rather I just want to have a separate space for this apart from my main journal where I have more constructive and coherent posts. 

I have been journalling privately about things like this so I can have the space to just let things out but sometimes I feel like I want to share things that are kind of in the middle of me spewing things out (which I can do privately) and me having more contructive thoughts (which I have been doing in my main journal).

[soos_mite_ah]

Wisdom Teeth Rant:

I got my wisdom teeth removed about a week ago. This is going to be gross but this was like my first time going to the dentist..... ever. I was having some tooth aches and turns out my wisdom teeth were causing problems. Turns out in addition to that, I also have a couple of minor dental issues here and there in addition to the whole wisdom tooth thing, and while that was concerning, I'm glad that I caught this early on instead of waiting until I had to get something expensive like a root canal. 

I've been pissed off for a number of reasons. I have been pissed off at my parents for the negligence of never taking me to the dentist growing up. There is a lot that can be said about my parents' ignorance around dental care and how I was never informed about anything from basic dental medical history from my family to the importance of regular check ups and professional cleanings. And again, thank god I don't have anything super serious going on with my teeth, but nevertheless, I have been learning some life lessons around this sort of thing.

I'm pissed at the fact that I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out without general anesthesia (just local), meaning while I didn't physically feel anything, I was awake the whole time. I dead ass had nightmares of the procedure for a couple days after I got it done. I didn't want to get this done while I was a awake but it was either this or waiting until god knows when to get this taken care of and I was already in a lot of pain. I didn't care if it was going to be significantly more expensive to be put completely to sleep. I was willing to pay the cost because I know what kind of anxious person I am when it comes to things like this. But after making dozens of phone calls to figure out the pricing, doctors, what insurance will and wont cover, and then finally getting an appointment to a doctor's office that had the general anesthesia, only to find out that the person who told me this fucked up, it pissed me off. I can still hear the cracking and breaking of my teeth as they were getting removed and it still makes me feel queasy. Anyways, my reassurance is that I will never have to go through the wisdom tooth removal process again in my life because I made the right call to get all four removed at once despite my parents' wishes (again, ignorance was at play for them here too). 

I'm pissed at the fact that I have to be on a liquid/ mushy foods diet for 2 weeks. First of all, I don't like mushy foods in general because there are certain textures that I hate. Secondly, it's been hard for me to get enough calories and nutrients to where I feel like I can function. I'm tired all the time and I need a nap to get throught the day, which also messes with my sleep at night. I'm hangry. I'm more anxious than usual because I'm probably not getting in enough carbs and I have keto brain lol. And of course. I'm missing regular solid meals. I'm craving Cane's chicken really badly to the point where I'm binging on mukbangs lol. 

I also feel like I cannot take care of myself properly. First of all, my diet is messed up and as a result, so is my sleep and my mood. I also cannot work out because that could fuck up the healing process for this whole thing (search dry socket). I cannot talk to people and socialize as I normally do because the stiches bother me and my mouth feels weird. And I'm paranoid about dry socket which is this gross thing you can get if you don't take care of  yourself properly which can lead to a lot of pain and lengthen this whole saga. I have been doom scrolling, both about dental issues and in general because I have nothing better to do. The only self care thing I have been able to do regularly is take showers and vent to my journal. 

I still have a week left of the liquid/ mushy foods diet. I can technically eat solid foods but it's kind of gross on how it can get caught in the stiches and I have to really focus in order to eat anything. I'm trying to focus on how things are getting better for me actually, and it is, but I'm still annoyed that I still have like 5 days of this to get through. It's just been taking up a lot of mental space and energy and I'm just so done. 

 

Work: 

I have the Sunday scaries. I really don't want to go to work. In addition to the typical Monday feeling, I feel like I'm dealing with a lot regarding my teeth and other things I have going on in my mind. I have some calls I have to make that I have been putting off. I have a meeting with upper management since my boss who usually does these meetings is on medical leave and that is making me anxious because I don't like upper management and I feel weird about them taking such a close look at me. I also don't feel well rested to tackle my job because it's been difficult taking care of myself as of late. I really don't want to go to work.  I'm trying to put a positive spin on this because he alternative, calling in sick and rotting in bed all day, doesn't sound appealing either tbh. 

Also, not to mention, there is all types of fuck shit happening in the government and that is still giving me an existential crisis. 

 

The Government / Society: 

There is a shut down happening so people aren't getting paid. There are protests happening in Portland and Chicago which I love to see, but it's fucked up with the way that they are being painted as violent by the administration. The national guard from Texas is being sent to Chicago which feels alarming because I don't know how this shit is going to escalate. I'm slowly starting to go numb from all of the stuff regarding ICE. And I stg Trump is passing every fucking thing except away. I'm so fucking done with this man and the way that he has been in the political sphere for the last 10 years. That man has been causing chaos since I was a teenager and I'm so done with this era of politics and culture to the point where I'm romanticizing 20 fucking 14. And sure, the ICE stuff is the most alarming thing in my mind when I'm looking at this country burning by the greed of the oligarchs but that doesn't even get me started on the economy, AI, women's rights, LGBTQ issues, racism, surveillance issues, and foreign affairs. And I feel like I can't fucking escape it because I'm seeing it trickle into pop culture with the trad wife propaganda, the sprinkle sprinkle shit, the Andrew Tate effect, the clean girl trends and the fatphobia and racism that comes with it, and last but certainly not least, the old money aesthetic and any forms of wealth worship and overconsumption. 

[soos_mite_ah]

Update on work and my wisdom teeth

I'm more or less 90% back to my usual self in terms of crashing out over my wisdom teeth plus dealing with all the pain and inconveniences that came along with it. My only thing is that I still can't eat normally because it's gross and kind of painful for things to get caught in the stitches. So I'm going to be on this mush diet for a little longer. But it's honesly gonna be like 4-5 more days so I'm like more than half way there. I can get through this lol. 

Yesterday I cleaned my apartment and had some people over. I feel like that helped a lot. I also had some really good mac & cheese. I like mac &cheese so that is already a win but I think the extra carbs and calories came through and I feel much more satisfied and sane. 

As for work, I got the annoying tasks out of the way and I had that meeting with my manager. The meeting was pretty chill. I don't have much to say but that's a good thing. 

But yeah. I just needed some good food and social interaction and now I'm chilling for the most part. 

[soos_mite_ah]

My Birthday 

I have a lot of reasons why I hate my birthday and I want to vent about it. 

1. My birthday is the Hindu equivalent of having your birthday on Christmas. I was ever able to celebrate my birthday on the day of even when my birthday fell on a weekend because no could come because there is a handful of holidays always around my birthday. A few years it was so bad that my birthday got delayed to December. My birthday is in October. 
2. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to pop out a month early. All it got me was a visit to the NICU and a lifetime of sharing my birthday with my biggest opp, my mother. I have the same birthday as my mom and let's just say that I don't have a good relationship with her.
3. Because I have the same birthday as a family member, I have to spend my birthday with my family whether I like it or not. And that means being forced to hang out with people that I hate. 
4. Birthdays always felt really performative. I was depressed for a good chunk of my childhood and birthdays meant forcing a smile around the very people that made me miserable and forcing myself to celebrate. As a result, my depression would be at it's worst at around September and October. Growing up it was also a reminder of how many years I was also depressed. 
5. I also don't like presents or cake.
   • Cake is alright, but I pretty much like every kind of dessert more than it. Growing up I would always say that I wanted a pie for my birthday instead of a cake. It was my one request. And my family said I was stupid and weird for wanting that. My boyfriend makes me a pie every year for my birthday and it always makes me cry because he's the only one who ever listened to me or gave a fuck about what I wanted rather than focusing on what would make him feel or look good. 
   • I don't like presents because 90% of the time it's something dumb and it shows how much people barely know me. I've also had a lot of family members try to buy my love through gifts so now I have a negative association with it. 
6. It feels weird having so much attention on me. I guess part of it may be the fact that I share a birthday. But I just feel awkward and egotistical. 
7. I don't like announcing my birthday as it is coming up. Again, I feel awkward and attention hungry for that. 
8. Kind of related to point 6&7, but I feel weird about celebrating myself in general even if I did something big. So I feel even weirder for celebrating myself when I didn't do anything at all. As a result, birthdays kind of just feel like a participation trophy for life to me. I don't feel this way about other people's birthdays. I think it's beautiful to celebrating and appreciating someone just existing without having them had done something. I just feel weird when it comes to me. 
9. I'm also usually having an existential crisis around my birthday because I'm reflecting on my life as a whole. For a large chunk of my life, that came with depression (see point 4) but nowadays, it comes with just me journalling and thinking a lot. Not necessarily in a negative and ruminating way but it a very neutral way. 
   • As a result, I always want a more chill birthday to just be with my thoughts. But then I have people who make me feel bad about it because I don't want to go out and celebrate. 
10. I also don't like telling people about my birthday because I don't want to deal with the possibility of them forgetting. I also don't want to plan things out in the fear that everything falls through. 

 

I also have a list of negative memories that have been popping up associated with my birthday. This is in no particular order. 

1. I had two suicide attempts.
   • The first was the night before my 16th birthday. I was horribly depressed because this birthday marked me being depressed for over half my life and I didn't see the point in living. I put the gun away and the next day I went to school and found out that people made a surprise party for me. I was crying while people singing me a happy birthday and people thought it was tears of happiness but really I was thinking about the night before and how my actions would have affected other people given what they were planning. 
     • I had my friends forget about me on my 17th birthday. I was drifting from my friends due to a couple of deaths I had in my family and I was not coping with that grief well. That was not a fun realization to come to on my birthday. 
     • Then on my 18th, I straight up didn't have anyone to celebrate with.
   • The second was around my 21st. I finally got out of my bad household and had the room to heal when I was in college but then I got dragged back into that environment because of COVID. It felt like there was no end in sight, both in terms of what was going on with my family but also when it came to the pandemic and how it was affecting the world around me and my prospects. This time I ended up in the hospital. 
     • My 22nd was rough too because I felt like I missed a chunk of my 20s to the pandemic and that I'm like this emotional wreck who feels stunted and like she doesn't have her life together. I had a really bad existential crisis. And that was golden birthday. 
   • For a while, my birthday was also a reminder of those attempts and that in it of itself was triggering and yet another reason why my depression would flare up around that time. But that has since faded for the most part. Sometimes I still feel like it's partially my fault for having these attempts around my birthday because I essentially tainted my birthday myself.  
2. Being forced to be around my aunt and uncle is already upsetting for me. But almost every year, my aunt goes into some kind of disgusting Fox News esq rant during our meal. One time, I took my family out for brunch and she went on this rant on how teachers don't deserve to be paid, that public education is a waste of money because the kids are unruly and demonic, and how they all deserve to be beat.... Yeah.... we had a few tables stare at us with that one. This was my 23rd. 
3. My parents got me a chocolate cake for my birthday. A few days later I was craving cake so I went to the fridge to get a slice only to not find it. I asked my mom what happened to it and she told me that she gave the cake away to her students at her school. When I told her that made me upset because she did this without my permission, she said that I'm being too sensitive and selfish and that I need to lose weight anyways. Bruh.. this situation still makes me mad. 
4. I had a phase where I really got into cake decorating shows. Even though I don't like cake like that, I wanted to embrace it and make something nice. I had a guy make fun of me and say that I was pathetic, lonely, and embarrassing because I made a cake for myself because if people cared about me, they would get a cake for me. 
5. Despite being depressed, my family would force me to do a birthday party because they thought that if they didn't that they would look bad in front of their community and that was more important than how I felt. 
6. I also remember getting yelled at on my 10th birthday. It lasted like a couple hours. I have undiagnosed ADHD and instead of getting me help, my parents resorted to the *disciplining your kid out of ADHD approach* which mainly resulted in me getting yelled at for hours or getting hit. Earlier that day, I had something happen at school that was messed up. Back then, I was still happy about having a birthday with my mom because I didn't yet have a super bad relationship with her and when I proudly exclaimed that my mom and I share a birthday, a girl who didn't like me in school told me that she bets that my parents hate me because I was born on my mom's birthday and I ruined that day for her. Yeah, I cried myself to sleep that night. 

So yeah, I cried myself to sleep these last two nights thinking about the above. Last night I also cried about how dry my social life is right now and how I miss this friend who ghosted me. 

I also cried after work today. I found out that I was put on phone duty at work on the week of my birthday. I have been on phone duty a lot lately because my team is understaffed and it's been quite stressful because it usually means that I have to work overtime and I'm being micromanaged. I was happy that this was happening on the week after my birthday but then due to a last minute change it's now happening on the week of. 

I've also been stressing about feeling behind and stagnant in my life because of some goals that I didn't reach this year and because people are side eyeing me because I'm in a relationship for over 3 years with no ring even though I'm not ready to get married yet. 

[soos_mite_ah]

Emotional Exhaustion Rant: 

It's nearing the end of October and I feel emotionally done. Over the weekend, in both Saturday and Sunday, I had a 2-3 hour of pure bed rotting where I wasn't doing anything other than just laying there (no scrolling etc.). I also slept in both of those days until 10:30 which is not typical for me on a weekend even though it isn't unsual for me to sleep in. I usually only sleep in until 8-9. I was feeling overstimulated and the sleeping in and the bed rot session felt much needed. But also, the fact that I need this much rest is out of the ordinary and I need to process that. I'm writing out this piece before work because I just need to let this out in order to be a functioning person. 

1. October is always a busy month for me because of the number of relgious and social events going on. I was booked back to back. It was fun but I still need time to recharge and I feel like I didn't get room to breathe. 

2. Everything that came with the wisdom teeth removal: Like I'm good now but this plus everything else on this list I feel like has a residual effect where it's not manifesting as distress but a compounding sense of exhaustion. 

3. The emotional exhaustion my birthday can bring: Thankfully my actual birthday went well (and I wasn't on phone duty) but I did have to deal with the 12 days of crashing out before then. 

4. My friend is going through a lot at work and I was on the phone with her for 3.5 hours on Monday night. I don't mind doing the work but it still took something out of me. 

5. Work has been particularly annoying with some of the cases I was put on. Both Monday and Tuesday had the "monday" feeling and it feels like pulling teeth when it comes to getting through this week. I also had a couple of busy weeks back to back prior to this week and even September was kind of rough. I feel like I need to use a PTO day but I already took some time off for being sick and for the wisdom teeth removal. I don't want to seem like I'm creating a recurring pattern and unfortunatley, I think I'm going to have to hold off until Thanksgiving for a break. 

6. I came back home and I told my parents that I'm moving in with my boyfriend in this upcoming year. Yeah.... they're still in the adjustment process for that and that took something out of me emotionally as well. This was last night. 

7. I'm also on a calorie deficit of sorts and I think that's impacting the amount of energy I have in general and my overall mood. 

8. I feel like I'm processing some things regarding my body image and desireability. But that's something I'm journalling about privately. 

9. I'm also a little stressed at the thought of hosting Thanksgiving with my friends this year. I have no fucking clue on how to make a turkey and I have never done it before. 

I just want this week to be over so I can rot during the weekend. It's only Wednesday, and the day has barely begun. 

[soos_mite_ah]

I feel like just posting and acknowledging my mental load in the previous post at like 6 am in the morning helped a lot in terms of me being able to do what I need to do to get through the day. I almost instantly felt better after writing things out and I feel pretty decent now that I finished work and I got some important things that were weighing on me done. 

I still don't feel like I'm 100% myself but I do feel like I'm like 70% there. Which is a huge improvement since at the time of writing my previous post I felt like I was at 25%. 

I think this journal is doing its job. 

[soos_mite_ah]

Lonliness:

So I have been feeling some lonliness. Life got busy and I haven't really hung out with my boyfriend for a week and we barely talked on the phone. Some things have come up at work and he has been working long hours for the past month or so. It hasn't really been bothering me personally but sometimes I do worry about him and I hope he's getting the rest that he needs. And my normal rhythm in the relationship is us hanging out twice a week with a couple of longer phone calls sprinkled in here and there. He ended up cancelling on me kind of last minute on Wednesday and I woke up on Thursday (yesterday) just feeling a little sad and wanting physical affection. 

I think this is a natural feeling and nothing to be concerned about. But the part that has me fucked up is the way my brain is interpreting this lonliness. My brain kind of went to this place of how so much of my social diet comes from my significant other and it sucks that my social life isn't what it was back when I was in school and college. While I do love my boyfriend, I do feel malnourished socially and I don't like him being such a large source of my social diet because so much of my life has been around friends and platonic relationships is something that I really value in my life. I don't like the feeling of knowing a good chunk of my eggs are in one basket and this small amount of lonliness was kind of a reminder of that which then led me to thinking about my platonic sense of lonliness. 

I have been dealing with platonic lonliness in some way or another since graduating. It's been difficult seeing relationships change and drift off over time because of changing priorities, life circumstances, and life challenging people (i.e toxic work environments, unsustainable hours taking up energy, bad romantic relationships). And sometimes I get sad. It not over a specific person not pouring into a relationship nor is it some kind of anxious/ avoidant attachment, but rather it's this feeling of isolation about how I feel like I care about and prioritize friendships differently from the people around me. 

Recently, I told my parents that I'm moving out of my current apartment and that I'm going to be living with my boyfriend. They are ok with it but they are panicking of how this will be received by their friends and community. They basically gave me a lecture that if I'm going to do this, I cannot let any of my childhood friends know about this because they're afraid that my childhood friends will tell their parents and then we will become the talk of the town. And their whole thing is that they are trying to process and come to terms with this and the last thing they need is having some aunty come up to them asking personal ass questions. Now, I know my friends are capable of exercising common sense and respecting boundaries. I have that degree of trust. But my parents went on this whole lecture on how my friends don't care about me, that everyone will talk shit behind my back, and I'm too trusting and naive in the way that I want to be authentic with people. My parents are very calculated and private people with walls to the sky and inability to connect to a lot of people. I can't say that I know the exact dynamics and ins and outs of their social circle (I'm sure some of those boundaries are very valid) but I can say that they do lead a kind of isolated life that I don't want to emulate and that seems exhausting to keep up with.

However, their talks have been taking a toll and I can feel some unjustified paranoia rush over me as I begin to feel like my friends secretly hate me or that I'm overestimating my place in people's lives. I think this might be the last 5% of break up brain getting triggered from what my parents said but I do think this also triggers some other wounds I have in my childhood that they inflicted regarding being paranoid about everyone outside of the family and isolating oneself because no one can possibly love me outside of my family. It's a fucked up mindset and I can recognize that but I can't say that in times of emotional vulnerability that it doesn't affect me. 

I felt better last night after working out and going on a walk. Sure I was dealing with these feelings but I think it's good that I didn't rot in bed or doomscroll to cope. I felt myself clearing my head as I went on a walk and it was nice feeling the emotions pass through me like a cloud moving across a sky. It felt nice being able to observe the transience of difficult emotions. 

Today, I found myself feeling exhausted at work from the beginning to the end of the day. I didn't have much going on in terms of my work load but I just felt like I was dragging my feet all day. I also had to deal with some annoying ass complaints from the leasing office and the discussion didn't exactly do in the way that I wanted it to. But that's alright, I'm moving out in less than 2 months. I'm a little salty but it's whatever. 

After work, I just layed in bed for two hours. I just felt really exhausted and couldn't get myself to do much. I got myself up just now to journal about all this and later I'm going to go work out and take a nice hot shower. I think that will make me feel better and get my brain to a healthier place. 

[soos_mite_ah]

Update: I worked out, went on a walk, went out to dinner and ate at Chipotle, took a shower, and talked to a friend on the phone. I don't feel exhausted anymore and while I still feel lonely, I don't feel like I'm mentally ruminating on it in the same way. I think I just need to go to bed at this point and tomorrow will be a new day.