Stream-of-consciousness post
I can’t sleep tonight. I’m feeling so much guilt for having given so much of my time in 2021, and some time also in 2022, to someone who didn’t care, time I should have been giving to my music and my dad’s documentary.
Since dad has gone, the future seems increasingly scary, and I realise that it will be hard to get things together soon enough, especially given the hard drive and laptop issues that happened in 2022.
Only my mum is there for me, as a sense of warmth, but she isn’t capable of doing much else for me. I am alone. And my dog is there for me bless him. Grateful for them.
I wish I hadn’t given so much time to the drummer, a guy I had a crush on in 2021, when that time was so crucial, when I had been making progress with depression and making music projects I was excited about for the first time since my 2014 accident.
There was yet time to make dad proud and show him the documentary I was working on for him, and time to help my mum’s health such that it wouldn’t have got to the state it’s in now.
Everything seems so hopeless now, and this time it’s MY fault, for throwing away the first real chance The Universe had given me after the 2014 accident, as I was finally not resisting all the music that was coming to me in 2020 and 2021, and I’d improved with many aspects of the depression.
I should’ve “made it” in 2021.
It’s now been so many years since 2014, that it’s hard to see how anyone could still believe in me making anything of myself in music.
I was suffering so badly with the depression for so many years, but at the end of 2020, somehow I found hope and excitement for the future again, working on my dad’s documentary and making music projects I was excited about. I had kept making projects I was excited about in early 2021, and from around mid-2021 I regret losing my thoughts to this infatuation I developed with someone who made so clear he didn’t care (it’s obvious now when I look back). But I had been without social experiences for years and years, and so even being around someone consistently, let alone someone I had a crush on, was I suppose, unsurprisingly novel and exciting to me. Someone who feigned also having a crush on me. Though I now realise just how minimal of an effort he put into that artifice. For some reason I let his minimal efforts be enough, even with all his criticisms, the way he’d talk about other women. I somehow let his lack of being impressed with me motivate me further in my attempts to seek his approval. I think Phil (a good friend that I’ve not been in touch with for some time because I started to depend too much on him, emotionally, and that was not at all fair on him, and is something I don’t want to risk doing to him again), was spot on when he said that I was seeking the drummer’s approval because of how I was raised, in that, I was always trying to win my dad’s approval, and I was used to not feeling ‘enough’ to my dad.
I think I kept excusing away the hours I’d give the drummer for many reasons. My parents weren’t seeing me so much, as my younger sister had come to the UK to live with them for the second half of that year, and so I felt more alone than ever, and so I allowed myself the company. Also, the act of giving has long helped with my depression, as I enjoy the feeling of making someone’s life better, of being useful, when I often feel so useless. So I would enjoy giving the drummer time, gifts and food. I would even plan places for us to go out too, though half the time he’d say he couldn’t make it, right at the last minute.
Also, although I had some memories of feeling chemistry around guys from the time that I’d worked in the office many years ago, I had not experienced it like this before, I suppose due to never before having spent so much time with someone I felt that chemistry with, in order for that chemistry to keep feeling stronger and stronger. I think that feeling of chemistry, that excitement, it was so new to me, that in some ways that was what I got out of hanging out with him, that was the ‘reward’, though that chemistry came and went during the time I knew him. From the beginning, I knew he and I would never be in a relationship, and that therefore, because of how I would not want to do anything sexual outside of a relationship, that I wouldn’t do anything physical with him. I knew we would never be in a relationship because he wanted a Jewish wife, and because of many other things about him, including his lack of empathy, the way he would always comment on other women’s looks and bodies, his promiscuous past, to name a few things. But I think it almost became a new project for me, and one that took over my thoughts: to really matter, romantically, to someone.
I feel so much guilt. In terms of my not having achieved much in so long, I must try to remember that 2022 was an incredibly difficult year even when taken on its own and outside of the lingering affects of 2021’s infatuation. As I believe I’ve already written about on this site, so many things that went wrong in 2022, that when I was reflecting back on this sequence of events earlier this year, I reasoned that it was time to give up on life, as clearly it seemed as though ‘The Universe’ did not want me to move forwards.
So many things went wrong in 2022. Losing dad, Abu’s eye accident, the questionable aggressive dental treatment Abu suffered that left me heavy with guilt and concern for so long after, the hard drive and laptop problems, the leak in the flat, suffering extreme anxiety over my mum’s health on two occasions to the point that I’d shut my phone off for weeks at a time, for fear of receiving bad news and not being able to cope.
In 2022 I was also trying to overcome this new feeling of loneliness that had come about from no longer spending as much time around the drummer as I increasingly tried to distance myself from him. I tried to make friends, I tried more than I ever have before, and when that didn’t work out that also got me down. I cried so much over losing the one friend I thought I’d made at the end of last year, because I’d overburdened her with my worries when I had a leak in my flat whilst at the same time was suffering severe anxiety about my mum’s health.
That loneliness, a loneliness more intense than I’d experienced before in life, haunted me so much that I even considered starting a podcast, to help me counter those feelings of loneliness, by giving me the feeling of talking to a friend, and, by letting myself imagine there might be a listener or two out there who might care about what I say and wish the best for me. I’ve written about the podcast idea a few times on this site now, each time ending with the conclusion that I must persevere with the idea. Now however, I feel differently.
After uploading one episode, I’ve found it hard to share anything further. I can’t help but think that my rambling into a microphone, for the sake of trying to feel less alone, and sharing thoughts without directly burdening any one particular person, would sound anything more than pathetic. At least when I write thing down, on this site for example, some, even minimal, level of forethought is necessitated. I feel a podcast series could not help but reveal just how simple I can be, and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with that level of exposing myself, granted I’ve left one attempt at a podcast episode online, more because I think at least there was something authentic about the nature of that particular podcast, in that it provided the feeling of talking to a friend when I really needed that feeling, and because in that podcast I at least managed some genuine lightheartedness amidst chaos, which I feel sort of proud about managing, even though I know how simple and scatterbrained that episode reveals me to be.
As I have said before though, I am grateful for this site, because sharing my thoughts here does help me feel less alone, and does allow me to share, in the ways I had hoped the podcast might help me do, and whilst my anxiety prohibits me from checking on readership statistics, writing here allows me to imagine readers who might be supportive, and that aspect of writing here has long helped me want to try more at my life.
I stopped writing much on this site when I was spending so much time with the drummer, and I suspect that also wasn’t good for me, as writing here had, up until that point, been really helping me to feel encouraged, motivated, and capable, regarding my music aspirations. And whether a supportive community ever existed around the site or not, I felt that, at the time I wrote here regularly, as though there had been one, so that when I stopped writing here as frequently, I lost that feeling of wanting to make the community that I imagined was there for me proud too.
It was as though 2022’s ill fortune was punishment for my having wasted too much of 2021. Even though I increasingly look back and find a lot of the failure in the way my dad parented me, the fact that I would still prefer him to be around now, shows me that there was more of a sense of hope when he was here, yes, in part because of there being a greater feeling of stability, but also because of knowing he was there, and because these days I’m realising that my dad must have cared about me to at least some extent, and because there was still the hope of making him proud.
Even this year has so far had its challenges, Abu being diagnosed with a heart condition and some other issues, and for two weeks I came down with a fever and weakness and was bed-stricken.
One thing that has provided me with some feeling of relief and hope this year has been learning about the history of Western classical music, and the hope of studying Music at university one day. But right now I just hope I can keep going.
It’s been scary since my dad has gone. When I attempt to bond with people, to try to build myself a sense of community, it seems most are just put off/weirded out by the depression/anxiety. There are some nice souls who seem to genuinely want the best for me but no one can really be there for me when that is what I really need. I’ve asked my neighbours out to coffee for example, but none of them have taken me up on the offer, even when I’ve conveyed how much I would value getting to know them.
The other day, one neighbour’s guest tried opening my door with her key, having mistaken my door for hers. I of course did not know this at the time, nor was I aware that this person was wearing headphones and so didn’t hear me when I called out “excuse me!” as she went away, and so of course reported this to police. When I made my neighbours aware of what had happened, two neighbours from two different flats came together to say it was one of their lodgers. I don’t understand why the neighbour whose lodger it was did not come by herself, instead of them coming together and making me feel intimidated, and also, as though they did not feel comfortable talk with me on their own. I was left feeling guilt for reporting the incident, when they should have been more apologetic for the stress they had caused me. In fact, if I had been the neighbour whose lodger had caused this problem in the first place I would have had the lodger apologise in person. The fact that both neighbours came together made me wonder if I’m not approachable to my neighbours, so I later sent them a message, saying I would like to take the neighbours in my block for coffee, either individually or collectively, to better know them, as I realise that my depression might make me not seem approachable. Yet no one replied to this offer. This despite me trying to be a helpful neighbour, by sending my neighbours messages about two important information updates I’d learnt to do with our block recently – regarding a typo in account details for rent, and an important update about communal hot water issues that I’d learned about. They didn’t knock on my door to thank me for those updates, but didn’t miss a beat to come round when they feared their guest might get in trouble for attempting to enter my flat.
My neighbours are very privileged people. It seems that people who have the least have been most compassionate, granted this is an aspect of human behaviour long confirmed in studies. But then of course, those with less, can be there for me less, as their time is already under so many demands. This talk of my neighbours and their privilege has just reminded me of another example when they showed such little care. In 2021, the neighbour upstairs, in the process of swapping out their radiators, caused my ceiling damage, and caused me a lot of fear and upset because of this. I was in tears worried my flat would flood when the drip appeared one day. (This ceiling leak was different from the leak that showed up via the hallway carpet of my flat in late 2022, which turned out to be to do with normal wear and tear of bathroom plumbing). The neighbour above is aware of the damage they caused my ceiling and yet has never made clear their accountability, has never apologised, even when plumbers have assured me that the leak could only have come from the flat directly above me. Yet those neighbours have not yet offered to pay for repair of my hallway ceiling, which would need to be patched up and have its full length repainted. The ugly stain has remained there ever since but they have showed no intention of helping me fix this. They are aware that because of my anxiety I have difficulty communicating and I think they are just glad for the free pass they appear to’ve got themselves as a result of this.
My immediate neighbour has been compassionate and kind in the past. She has tried to help with providing information when she knows that my email anxiety affects my ability to keep up with the latest news affecting our block. I can’t think too badly of her in light of this. Yes, she did accompany he neighbour whose lodger had attempted to come into my flat the other day, but perhaps this was because, as I suspect, the other neighbour does not find me approachable, so I can’t really give blame to my immediate neighbour I suppose. She has been a good neighbour who has tried her best. It did hurt though, that on that day when she came round to say that it was the other neighbour’s lodger who had attempted to come into my flat, that she did so in more of an accusatory than apologetic tone, and that when she mentioned I had included some people on an email chain that I didn’t need to, it was done in a patronising and fed-up manner. I don’t know why she felt that was the right way to be to someone who had just feared their place was being broken into. But perhaps she had had a bad day and I know she has her own issues. She has never particularly warmed to me, I think she has always found me pathetic. Last year she commented on how I have had issues for so many years now, it was disappointing that she did not see any progress that I have made in those years, progress that my doctors, locals, even a teacher have assured me they have seen in me. Maybe she is struggling a lot with her own world and so has not been able to notice. Overall, she is a better neighbour than I deserve, she is a good neighbour. But I sense her coldness and that hurts. Still I would rather her honest coldness than fake niceness, so I’ll stop complaining about her. She’s a good neighbour.
Just last week I, for the first time ever, started seeing a therapist. I hope that seeing him once a week will provide me with enough of a feeling of ‘someone being there’ to get me through this difficult period, when I’m so alone, and I hope that by some miracle, I might yet get my act together in time, that I might get financially independent before I lose everything.
I feel so much guilt for the time I lost in 2021, to hanging out with someone who didn’t care, who was just trying to use me. I so wanted to experience feeling wanted, even loved, that I gave so much time to him.
I’m just glad that – the experience of this infatuation having confirmed to me that I am old-fashioned – I wasn’t someone he could use, either for sex, or for accommodation, both things he tried guilt-tripping me into giving him. He didn’t get to use me, any more than the time and gifts I gave him that is.
I am such a giving person, and I gave so much in time and energy to someone who didn’t care, when I could’ve been giving that time to my music and to my dad’s project. My dad could’ve lived to watch his finished documentary. I could’ve been independent by now and not scared about the future.
I hope I can “make it” soon, else I have no other way of supporting myself. Music is my only gift, and it’s the only activity I can get myself to concentrate on for long (other than pouring out streams of consciousness onto this site), and I couldn’t work in another field or role with how badly my depression and anxiety can affect me. If I don’t “make it”, there is no future, as there is no one there for me, either as a supportive friend, or financially.
I’m grateful for my mum and my dog Abu for their love and warmth. I want to be strong for my dog especially, as he depends on me and loves me so much. The other day I was in tears, apologising to him for letting him down, because I have, because if I don’t get my act together it will be my fault at this point.
For the first years since my accident, I can’t blame myself for not supporting myself. I was so traumatised and incapable of managing my life, it was impossible to manage any kind of routine. In recent years, thanks in large part to my dog, I have got better at some efforts at looking after myself. For much of 2020 I suffered a debilitating cough so I can’t even blame myself for not doing more during that time. In fact, in spite of my cough, I still did accomplish a lot that year, in terms of helping my dad film a documentary about a subject of sentimental importance to him, that was important to him to leave as a legacy, following his terminal cancer diagnosis.
Towards the end of 2020 and the start of 2021 I found fresh hope, as I recovered from the chronic cough, I was editing a documentary of sentimental importance to my dad, and was working on strong music and music video ideas that were coming to me with ever increasing frequency, and all this was making me feel proud of myself again, after so many years of my not feeling proud of myself. There had been so much hope then. I feel I could have really made the leap to supporting myself (and as a result also made more progress with the depression and anxiety) in 2021.
But I let an infatuation take over so much of my time and energy for the second half of 2021. I thought I deserved to experience what were I suppose my first romantic experiences, granted that nothing ever happened with him, not even a kiss. I liked the feeling, the idea that I was wanted, and that I was useful, that I made his life better. But I gave that time to someone who only wanted to use me, and I see now that that time was given at too great a cost, that it wasn’t worth giving that time, even for those moments when I could delude myself into feeling desired.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep going now. I am so alone and there is so little hope. I write email updates to my big sister and my dad’s step-sister, because I feel that I need to show these older family members my efforts. It also helps me, to imagine they care, and it helps motivate me, to write these diaries and plans out to them, and I think it has helped me to get some things done as a result. I don’t know if my relatives will help me to keep going or not though.
It must be so hard to believe in someone who has found everything so difficult for nearly a decade now. But I was so severely ill after my accident, and for so many years, that I know I have made so much progress since then. I hope it is not too late for me to show the world something of that progress.
LYNA GALLIARA 