kajsa ㅇㅅㅇ

heyyyyyyyyyy guysss it's been a long time since i've been over here, and i lowkey kinda forgot it existed, but i wanted to post because lately i've been struggling a lot with my mental health.--i say "a lot", but i don't really know if that's necessarily true; it kinda feels like i'm depressed all the time, so it's gotten quite hard to tell what's normal and what's not. i don't really know what i'm expecting to come of this; i feel like i just need to vent a little bit because there's been a lot going on, and i tend to be very non-vocal about my struggles haha (like many of us). for some background information: i don't take any medication, and i'm not diagnosed by a doctor, but i have taken the official questionaires for both anxiety and depression on my own time and am at moderate to severe risk for both of them. i have a long history with both; i've had anxiety attacks and stuff since i was a smol child, and i've kinda learned to just manage it over time because i'm not really sure what to do about it otherwise. i've struggled with depression i think in general since i was like a tween, but it became really prominent about four to five years ago (holy guacamole that's a lot longer than i thought haha). i was going through a tough time in general and had just gone through a series of relatively traumatic or otherwise significant events (loss of a family member, two pets, left our church, moved, transitioned from homeschool to public school, and went through a complete shift in friends) that were just a LOT on me and left me feeling kind of lost. i struggled a lot with su!c!dal ideation and SH (specifically cttng). luckily, i had a network of supportive people online that i talked to/spent a lot of time with that kind of helped me through that. i quit SH a couple years ago on my brother's birthday and have been clean since, which is great, but sometimes when my mental health gets bad i think about going back to it. my parents also staged an intervention or something lol back in the "dark days", and they got me a therapist that i was with for a while (i haven't seen her in several years though), but they weren't really all that involved and it didn't feel like i could be one hundred percent honest with them. it's not that i don't love them or they don't love me, we just have a really complicated relationship (especially me and my mom), and i just hate talking about this stuff with them because it feels like my dad's just gonna ask if i've been drinking enough water and getting enough sleep and eating enough nutrients and my mom's gonna suggest more sleep and herbal supplements and it just doesn't feel like they take me 100% seriously the way that i need them to (even though they do try and put in effort, which i greatly appreciate). because of this i also tend to lie on the questionaire when i go to my check-ups at the doctor because i just don't want the interrogation(s) that would ensue. i do have a few friends that i can talk to, but my best friend struggles a lot with her mental health and has been in a bad place recently, so i don't feel like i should be burdening her with my own problems. i do also have a wonderful soft kitty who comes and curles up on me when he can tell i'm not feeling great. i wuv him. lately (though i can't put a definite timeframe on it; it's been kind of perpetual since probably november, though it was there throughout the summer too and never really leaves for good), i've been struggling a lot with depression especially. my parents think it's hard for me to get out of bed in the mornings because i'm tired, but it's literally because i just cannot find a single reason to get up. like i just literally can't. i generally don't have trouble getting up on the weekends, just the days when i have school, which makes me feel guilty and lazy until i remember that i'm literally a straight A student and i've gotten one singular B in my entire life. so then i'm like oh maybe i'm not lazy, but i still get stuck in this giant guilt spiral, which makes me want to get out of bed even less. my parents had to try like five times to get me out of bed this morning (after i'd already been awake for probably an hour and a half of suffering through my sister's alarms lmao), and even then, i was 45 minutes late to school. this would be fine with me if i didn't have to have close to perfect attendance to go to prom. and i am very much the kind of gal who loves to dress up in fancy clothes with fancy hair and fancy makeup to go have fun with my friends. so what should be an incentive to have good attendance just turns into a door to another shame spiral. which is fantastic! additionally, our school days are pretty taxing because classes are ninety minutes long, we have six minutes of passing period (but my school is somewhat large so almost all of that is spent just walking), and lunch is thirty minutes but that's all we get for breaks. my school is known for being quite rigorous in the curriculum and is a pretty renowned college-prep school, so naturally there's lots going on during the day and lots of homework--which i tend to procrastinate in order to make room for my hobbies and stuff when i can get them in (if i can). i also have a large number of siblings, so i am expected to help out a lot around the house and watch them and help clean and cook--all of this is fine, and it's just part of being a family; however, it does get quite taxing when i'm already exhausted, trying to work on homework, maybe trying to squeeze in a little bit of a hobby where i have time. i don't have time (or the mental capacity) to get a job on top of all of it, so i don't really have money, and i don't have a car (even though i should have that and my license by now; just another thing to add to the list), so it's hard for me to go out and do things without asking my parents for rides or money, which makes me feel guilty because i feel like at my age, i should be self-sufficient. i don't know if i'll ever be fully self-sufficient, though, and i'm actually terrified of living alone (i don't know if i'll actually ever be able to) because when i am left to self-govern, literally nothing gets done. nothing. i would probably stay in bed all day and maybe take like a five hour long shower and then get back in bed with a bowl of ramen or something--if i remember to eat. i have no idea what i want to do in the future, and i'm supposed to be looking at colleges and applying for scholarships and i just feel paralyzed. like what am i supposed to do??? i have no idea what i want to do, what job i want to have, but i want to go to college because i feel like based on the direction we're going in society, it's going to be really beneficial to have a degree. but anyway, i just have a lot on my mind all the time, and it's pretty stressful and quite exhausting. i find myself dissociating a lot more and more. aside from having next to no energy during the days (despite getting plenty of sleep at night), i am constantly sick physically. i do all the exercise, i get all the sleep, i drink water, eat good food (i mean yes i could cut back on sugar but cookies are cookies okay and life is too short not to eat the cookie or drink the chai latte), i don't have excessive screen time (my average is like 3.5 hours a day), and i try to stay generally healthy. but it seems like there is always something going on, whether it's headaches, sore throats, coughs, dizziness, fatigue, aches and pains--i legiterally do not remember the last time i just felt... normal. like... just living without pain. it seems like such a foreign concept, but i don't really know what to do about it because all the doctors i've gone to have just kinda shrugged their shoulders and nobody can really say anything definite. which is fine, i mean, i'm used to it, it's just not the quality of living i'd like for the rest of my life haha. i do also tend to struggle a lot with body image and stuff, which i'm not going to get into a ton right now, but it really eats at my confidence, and i wind up in my baggiest sweatsuits instead of jeans and one of my cute crop tops. i also have issues with dermatillomania that have spiked lately (my dad bought me some picky pads to try out to combat this, and i like them, but it doesn't completely erase the need to pick at my face and other parts of my body), which have also been detrimental to my confidence and whatnot. i feel like lately i've just been feeling very much like i want to crawl out of my skin and go into a coma which miiiiight not be the most healthy thing ever, and this has also been weighing on my mind. i feel like because of all the things that are going on in my life and how heavy/depressed i always feel, i'm in a constant state of fight or flight and my nerves are perpetually shot. my hands are always shaking and sometimes my chest feels tight or i feel short of breath. it's hard to get up in the mornings, it's hard to get dressed and do my hair and my makeup, it's hard to eat breakfast, it's hard to go to school and to get through my day-- you get the point. it just feels like i'm slogging through everything. i guess i wanna know if anybody has tips or something for anything i can do to kind of make this all feel lighter? or like ways i can improve? also am i crazy or am i valid? sometimes i gaslight myself into thinking that i'm just being dramatic lol so please do