Compounding isolation
Cw for parent loss, mentions of abuse, mentions of ed
I haven’t posted here before. Honestly, I mostly just lurk in this subreddit and even then I’ve only lurked since my diagnosis about a year ago.
I’m 19 and I don’t know what I’m doing. My dad died when I was 15, and it’s really conflicting to wish he was here and also be relieved he’ll never hurt me or my siblings again. I was pretty firmly on the side of “happy he’s gone” until recently, when my mom started to have some health complications. She’s had an ed for a couple years now, and when she got diagnosed I pretty much got a diagnosis by proxy because we had the exact same eating habits (ARFID, if that gives context). Well, she was headed to a pretty grim place, and it was right around the time of my dad’s death day anniversary. I felt like I was gonna have another anniversary that month.
I feel lost, in part to a dozen different things. I was meant to go to treatment for my ed, for one, but my mom’s condition was so bad that she was basically emergency admitted to the place I was going to go. I don’t blame her for this, but I had to go to a place we didn’t know much about and I left before I was fully treated because they failed to take in my ptsd symptoms as well as my ed ones.
I have no job because I left it to get help and I don’t know if I even want to start the process of college when I don’t know if I’ll be in or out of treatment by the time the term comes around.
I think honestly I could handle all this. I’ve been through worse and managed to survive and I can get through this. The biggest problem I’m having is the isolation.
My friends are going through their own problems, and they almost all have their own diagnosis, but at the same time I feel alone. The amount of things I’ve got piled on my plate right now feels, for lack of a less childish word, unfair. They have reasonable worries (grades, neglectful parents, a brother deploying for the military, etc) but at the same time it feels like they still somehow have moments where they can walk away from it?
I feel like I don’t get that. Does anyone else struggle with seeing others have problems but enjoy themselves despite? Does anyone else feel isolated and alone when they can’t???
I know logically these are probably very common problems. I know logically the likelihood of me getting to a point in my life where I’m happy is pretty high. At the same time, I feel like the amount of effort I’ll have to put into forcing that reality to come true is double the amount of effort others my age are needing to put in. I feel stuck, like I’m not going anywhere, and it’s even more disheartening to know that right now I sort of need to not focus on the next goal I want to work towards.
Any advice or reassuring words would be appreciated, even if it’s just to tell me if I’m being dramatic. I know others are struggling the same amount as me within their range of experience, it’s just straining to know that my range of experience is much wider than it should be, and against my will.