F R Y D
oh duh, I though it was the no happiness thing lol. Yeah, I’m almost incapable of forming mental images. I can kinda build an image by adding details, but they fade quickly. So I have to essentially keep re-adding details rapidly to sustain the image. So the images are imprecise and constantly changing. It’s like looking at a kinda rough sketchy animation. It takes a lot of concentration to do too, so most of the time I have no images in my head.
No, I’d say I’m actually a pretty bubbly and cheerful person most of the time. For a while I did feel pretty empty and blank, I would describe the feeling as “sterile”. Just kinda absent of stimulus and variety of emotion. I’ve gone through a long and difficult arc of figuring myself out though. Two years ago I had a breakthrough and have been getting happier as time goes on.
I suffered a serious head injury and have amnesia. I don’t remember the vast majority of my childhood and what I do is just bits and pieces. By the time I had fully recovered from the injury, I was totally used to just not remembering things. In hindsight and therapy, there are a few things about my memory loss that bother me.
Overall though I’ve just accepted that remembering just isn’t all that important. You are who you are today. Memories may explain why you are the way you are or they might not. I just try to live the present and work towards the future. It’s freeing to live without the grudges, spite, or resentment of the past.
My first series was Inuyasha. It was on Toonami which was Cartoon Network’s anime block they do right before it switches to Adult Swim. I figured that Toonami was just cartoons for adults since it was only on late. It was pretty cool and I tried to catch Toonami whenever I could growing up, but I was young and couldn’t really keep track of the plot. I didn’t actually learn what anime was until like the 7th grade (So I was like 11 or 12?) when I met some anime fans on the swim team.
My favorite series is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It’s essentially a perfect 10/10 show to me. I rewatch it every like 2-3 years. It has: excellent action, complex characters you really get attached to, great pacing, a consistent world and power scaling, great tension and stakes, and a clean and satisfying ending with almost no loose threads.
My worst experience with anime? One night A friend and I were up late watching TV and Big O came on. We’d never seen or heard of it and the entire episode was some bizarre sequence with a guy randomly in and out of a mech surrounded by tomatoes. It was completely incomprehensible.
Going to college really shocked me when I realized just how bad my school teaching was. History and English were especially poor. I was regularly embarrassed to be one the few students completely unaware of significant events and people despite being an honors student with an advanced diploma. STEM subjects were fine, but I took advanced an college level courses in high school. I’m not sure how it would be for regular students.
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I have major depressive psychosis, so I experience hallucinations at varying rates depending on my mood. Sights and sounds are most common.
I’ll see shadows moving in my periphery and they usually register as birds to me. Occasionally I’ll see a silhouette of a person looking at me. Both things disappear when I go to look at them.
Sounds are typically laughter or screaming in the distance, very rarely it’ll be someone calling my name. When I go to bed, I’ll occasionally hear mumbling in my ears.
Touch and smell are extremely rare, but do happen. Smells are usually some random persistent scent that goes away when I look for it. I’m anosmic (no sense of smell) so I know it’s not real every time. Touch is usually in the form of feeling bugs crawling on me or feeling random wetness.
It’s sounds like a lot when it’s written out, but it’s honestly not that bad. I’m so used to it that I don’t really bother with my antipsychotics anymore.
Ah unfortunately that would require a place more substantial than a small bedroom in my dad’s apartment 40 minutes out in the boonies. So I have to essentially wait for my ADHD friends to make plans at their bigger places, which is pretty infrequent since they’re way more happy just hanging out on discord every night than I am.
Spending money in pretty much any capacity. My financial situation is a good bit better than before; so I do have money to spend on non-essentials, but it’s a struggle every time.
Last week me and my partner went to an aquarium, it was $50 a head for admission. I paid the $100 and spent the next 10 mins pretending to enjoy the aquarium while I ran the numbers in my head to make sure this expense wasn’t going to be the end of me. The anxiety never really went away and as we left I checked my bank account and my budget. I still had like $600 of unallocated funds.
Every time my friends want to do anything that would cost me over $20, I’m apprehensive and I get serious anxiety if I spend $20+ more than like 3 times a week. It’s exhausting.
Reliability isn’t black or white, there are varying degrees to it. Some people can be counted on more for some things than others. Some people can only be counted on in certain contexts or with proper preparation. You’ll never find anyone you could rely on 100%, I’d wager you couldn’t even rely on yourself that much.
How much you can rely on someone or vice versa isn’t what I would consider in my rubric for whether I’m alone or not. Sometimes you have to deal with things alone, sometimes you choose to. That’s just life. Support and help are nice when you can get it, but it’s your life in the end. You have to be the one to live it.
I’d only consider myself lonely if there’s no one I connect to and if that were the case, I’d look for new people. Eventually I’ll find someone I connect to in some aspect of our lives. Even if I can’t always talk to them about my struggles in that aspect, I’ll know they’re out there struggling too and that will give me some peace and validation.