u/SirCheeseAlot

Society says. The system is basically fair. Responsible people succeed. Help is available. Effort is rewarded. People who fail must have made bad choices. They are lazy.

It starts in school. Your peers let you know where you stand in the hierarchy, and treat you accordingly. The school response.Why are you withdrawn? Why are you missing class? Why can’t you concentrate? Why don’t you try to fit in? Why wont you do homework? Its your fault for not trying harder. Stop being difficult or lazy. Try harder. Apply yourself.

You become an adult and try to function in the adult world and fail. What does society say? They dont say. We failed him. Lets do better. Lets look at where we failed him. Lets grow and change and make it so we address the causes of why we failed him. It just says what it has always said. Its his fault. He is lazy, to negative, lacks discipline, has poor social skills, fals to apply himself, Wont leave his comfort zone, spoiled, expects everythign to be handed to him, and so on.

Its bootstraps mentality. Hey I made it, you should be able to as well. If you dont its your fault.

One person grows up learning. "When I make an effort, people respond well and something improves."

The other person learns. "When I become visible, I am attacked. When I hope, I am disappointed. When I ask for help, I am ignored."

If anyone from a difficult past ever succeeds it is forever used as propaganda to "prove" Hey they did it. So can you. Its not us, its you. The system isnt the problem. Its you. No one failed you. You failed yourself.

Its another way where speaking truth separates you further from the group or tribe.

You lose your family when you accept the truth and speak out about what was done to you, and no one else will.

You lose your community when you accept the the truths of science and provable facts. You lose the comfort of meaning and an afterlife, and are left to face eternal nothing alone.

I can see why most people never do this.

Just a thought I had.

I probably have a reputation to anyone that recognizes my user name as the guy that constantly keeps repeating the same things over and over, and wont move on. Ive been called out on it many times. Some more diplomatically than others.

I knew I often would bring up similar topics, but I never really made the connection about what and why.

What I have figured out is this. I have been looking for someone. Anyone to treat the pain I went through with the level of freak out and seriousness, I logically thought it deserved. I have certainly received a tremendous amount of care and support from many people over the years. It just never felt like enough. Why? What did I need someone to do?

Well I think some child parts of me, probably got stuck needing this person to come into my life and witness what was being done to me. To lose their shit on the people doing it to me, and make them pay a price that was satisfying to me. Then scoop me up in their arms and whisk me away to a fantasy childhood where I was valued and loved and treated with respect.

Instead they were told. Shut up. Stop being a baby. Stop complaining. Dont cry. Man up. No one cares. No one wants to hear it.

SO they did shut up. They shut down. Shut off their emotions, and that toxic sludge festered and boiled inside them. To the point of breaking them. They started to not care anymore about dignity or pride and they reached out into the void saying this is what I feel and what was done to me. Looking again for that someone that would give them what they need, and always coming up lacking.

I think what I have realized is that no one will ever give that part what he needs except for myself. No one is going to give me permission to grieve and show me the way through an example I can witness in person. It has to be me, and me alone.

I have no fucking idea how to do that, but hey, Im a bit closer to it than I was a day ago.

Society: "Oh I know what will help! Lets shame them more, and make it illegal to be homeless, while driving the cost of housing and essentials up."

Warning. Post mentions abusive situations.

1 - My dad is a narcissist and made everything about him. I wasnt allowed to make mistakes or he would rage at me and shame me. Make me feel like he wanted to kill me.

2 - He would take me to violent horror movies starting when I was 5. I was shown rape, beheadings, torture, killing, drug use etc. It terrified me, and he didnt care, because he wanted to see the movies. He would also take me to construction sites where I had to do adult manual labor, or tasks even he wouldnt do like clean maggots and rotting meat from refrigerators that had been without power for days.

3- My mom separated from him when I was 6, and we lived on a single moms salary. She tried to compensate by bringing men into our home that were supposed to help, but they often ended up taking her money, leaving us worse off and homeless.

4 - They also beat me, raped me, shamed me, raged at me. They used drugs and alcohol in excess around me. They made me constantly afraid. They threatened to kill me. They threatened to kill my mom and sister if I told anyone what they did. So I kept the worst secret until I was over 40 years old. My mom excused their behavior, and blamed me, or said I wasnt being fair to them, or giving them a chance when I asked if we could leave them.

5- We moved constantly, at least twice a year. I was in 5 different schools for 7th grade. A very difficult year. It was tough to make friends, and I constantly had to leave them behind.

6- Being the new kid so much meant I had no one to back me up, so bullies targeted me and beat me up, and made fun of me, and spit in my face.

7- Teachers shamed me for not doing homework in front of the class. SO I sat in the back and tried to hide. I hid for as much of the school day as I could. I would skip lunch and hide in the library.

8- My life was constant stress and anxiety mixed with bouts of terror. It only ended when at 17 I was kicked out with only the clothes on my back. Literally.

9- Only the trauma never really stops, because when you are away from it all the real craziness begins. You have to learn to process and heal from all that, and function in society. I would fluctuate from functional freeze and holding a job to complete shutdown and homelessness. Living in extreme heat and cold, without my needs met for the majority of my adult life. Losing everything I ever had, over and over.

This is a condensed version of the things I went through. I just tried to focus on the things I find myself thinking back on most.

It just seems like the only people selling are either delusional about what they have and want insane prices, or they are flippers and or not actually private sellers but dealerships looking for free advertisement.

I really need a decent van at a reasonable price. Or a prius.

Glob this country is going down the tubes.

I want to quit wasting my life, but I am struggling with this goal.

I do not have any income, and I live in my minivan. I have no one in my life. I work on this mental health project, and the truth is that, yes, it is a distraction, a type of avoidance, so I feel like I am doing something. But I also always end up refining it so that it is in constant revision and never ready to show. So it is always this bit of hope that cannot be crushed. I see what I am doing.

That is not all, though. Some days are really bad for me. My anxiety can get the better of me, and I end up spending hours or days with a panic attack. It is very unpleasant. It is not just that. The majority of days, I am dealing with something that is just very unpleasant, physical pain or ailments. I basically dissociate and block those times out so I can keep going.

A friend of mine, as a teen, used to have to have his esophagus expanded. They put a balloon down his throat and expanded it. I guess it was so unpleasant, and he needed it done often enough, that they gave him pills to make him have short-term amnesia. I guess I am doing a bit of that to myself.

On the “good” days, I just lose myself in the game design, as if it is a little branch I hold onto to keep from being dragged under the raging river. I do not know if this game idea will pan out to be anything anyone cares about. I might be the only one. I am not sure what I do after I make it, if it is nothing to people.

I never played the game and built a career, saved and invested, and had a family. I was always just getting through the day, and not very well. I am not even sure what I want. I guess I want my life to have mattered to some extent, to help others, to make this world a little better. I would also like to not be an even older old man and struggling like I am now. It is pushing me to my limits as it is.

I want to make this mental health game project a reality, even if it is just me who ever holds the finished thing in my hands. In a lot of ways, I am closer to completing it than I have been in ten years. I have not really been making it for that long, but I have been dwelling on game design and mechanics for that long, at least.

I guess it reminds me of being a kid. I was being severely abused at home in second grade, and after school in daycare, a boy my age introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons. I can still feel a bit of what, to me at the time, felt like magic. This game that could be anything you imagine, yet was bound by real limits and rules. You could be something there. I could escape the pain of reality there.

I imagine this game, or this obsession with design, is some attempt to feel that again.

Still, it is tough to work in this van, but that is also an excuse to some extent. I do like that yesterday I basically worked through making a decent mockup prototype for the journal in the game. I think the only practical thing we can do, to try to work with me and my eccentricities, pain, and mental anguish, is to really treat this all as one step in front of the other, day after day.

I want to smile again.

I think of the movie Ikiru. I do not want to be on my deathbed before I change. I cannot just ignore the CPTSD, dissociation, anxiety, and all that, but I want it to stop ruling my life.

I think that it is not just making the game. It is stepping outside of the dream world into a real world. Right now, it is all dreams. I am safe. When it starts to become real, it means dealing with the real world. I think that is also a big reason I always end up just endlessly designing. It is the difference between dreaming of the Olympics versus training, qualifying, and competing. It is the difference between being living dead and being alive.

I have noticed that modern therapy and psychology are good at diagnosing but not curing. It is an odd job where you can never do the thing you are supposed to do, yet never be blamed, because it is not up to you if they heal or not.

I feel like I have spent all this time learning and educating myself while peeling back layers and looking at shadows inside me, but is that just more game design? More distraction? The appearance of work. A dream of work, but never producing anything, never doing the thing itself?

I wonder what it is that is so scary to face or do that I am willing to live like I do in order to not face it. Realizing what I have lost is hard to face.

There were these three old psychologists talking on a podcast once about what they called Peter Pan syndrome. They laughed and joked about those poor men who never grew up. It honestly upset and angered me. But I also knew that people rarely get upset about things that they cannot relate to. Somewhere inside, I knew they were right. They were cruel, but right.

Life is about making choices. You do not get to have everything, and if you never pick something, you end up with nothing. Except picking feels like accepting death. But, of course, death comes either way. Obviously.

It is more than that, though. Choosing means this is who I am. I am this job or this partner or whatever. But, of course, not choosing means you are this person who never chose, never made or had anything.

If you choose, you have to grieve not choosing sooner and everything that could have been. The thing is, people do not just choose to be like this. It is even deeper still. What made them like this in the first place?

I think grief, grieving, is at the heart of this. I think that is the thing I cannot face. The shadow. The real shadow. It is everything I have lost and could have had and never will.

TLDR: I need to grieve.

Its amazing to me that other humans can see people clearly struggling and their response is to ignore it, or say "well glad its not me." Then vote for people that make it harder on those of us that are already struggling.

People love to say most people are kind. No. Not most. Some.

Most people just dont care about anything that doesnt immediately affect their own personal life or maybe their families. The rest actively make things worse in the pursuit of money and greed.

Most people stand by and ignore or go along with systems that hurt others because they dont want to rock the boat or they are benefiting from how things are. Or they are pridefully ignorant.

Well Im going to keep doing what little I can, with what little I have to offer. Its easy to drown in hopeless, helpless, nihilism, but what Ive found helps is trying to make change that is important to you. Yes there are extremely powerful forces actively working to undo any good you could eek out, but its better to go out fighting.

It does feel like I am on a boat where the passengers are shooting holes in it, while they pat themselves on the back and laugh, and the captain and crew are trying to purposefully capsize it, while I dip my tea cup in and bail out the water, but hey it beats sitting there watching it all while helplessly having a panic attack waiting to drown.

There is a popular belief here and everywhere in this country that if you are homeless, its because you dont want to work, and are lazy. That they are a violent criminal to be afraid of.

As a homeless person myself. Some of the kindest most generous people I have ever met are homeless.

A person doesnt just decide they are going to live like this because its an amazing carefree life. This life is very difficult. Think how tough it is to have cyclosporiasis while in a fully functioning home with AC and toilets. Think what its like to be in this heat in a car thats even hotter, with it.

A lot of people out here just reached a point where they couldnt play the game any more. You reach a breaking point. A lot of them were severely abused as children and tried to make it, but that trauma set them up for failure.

Some people self medicate with drugs and alcohol, because its the only thing thats ever quieted the pain they carry inside. Others just isolate and dissociate. In an attempt to feel even a brief few minutes of calm, with out the constant anxiety and panic and depression.

These are humans, just like you. They are not rats or roaches. They have feelings and desires. They have needs just like you.

I hope one day we become a society that cares for the worst off of us as much as they do for the best off. I hope I live long enough to see that day.

I know it depends on paper etc, but just on average for standard printer paper. |

Also if you open the stapler so you can not have to buy a special stapler to reach longer pages, does that affect the page numbers?

Just like a desk where I can do water colors for a project Im working on. I could even bring my own desk and chair. If I just had a hallway or corner of a room to work would be fine.

?

If you are not getting your needs met because of an inability to function in society, therapy can't fix that. Because you need your needs met in order to hold a job and build a life. You cant get your needs met unless you have a source of income, and a way to get your needs met.

So when people look around at all the homeless and drug addicts and their "advice" is, go to therapy. Therapy can't help you.

Therapy needs a solid foundation to build on. If you dont have it, then you can go to therapy for many years and have nothing improve in your life. Unless you are born with money or someone supports you while you heal, you are out of luck.

What is something else people have a misunderstanding about therapy with?

In my opinion.

There is a topic in the news about a person. The details and person dont matter but it got me to thinking about how society views people that make poor choices and do things that hurt others.

We have a view that isnt rooted in science, that some people are born good and some are born bad. That good people make good choices, and bad people make bad choices.

Does a fire make a choice to burn gas soaked rags, but not water soaked ones? Does a fire choose to just happen to travel in the direction of the wind?

Things happen because of other things in a long line of events. A person doesnt come from a happy healthy home with everything going for them with a clear understanding of the effects of Meth, and decide "Hey Im going to go buy meth and try it out."

Things happen for a reason. If you were abused in childhood you may grow up to be an alcoholic. You may in a drunken state do things to other people you regret.

I am privileged to never have killed an animal, in order to eat meat. I dont have that feeling of taking a life in my body as a result of my need to sustain my life and nutrition, because we live in a modern world where that is outsourced. Mostly to immigrants. (I have killed animals by mistake or mercy, but that doesn't negate my point)

There is no good guys. Theres just privilege. I have lived long enough to grow out of and become educated enough, that my past actions are not my present ones. I am not forever a bad person though. I never was. I was a person that was abused and needed help. I self medicated in desperation. I saw the person I was and over time grew and changed, without anyone helping me.

Society needs to wake up to the reality of mental health. Stop helping the privileged and putting them on pedestals as bastions of civility. Then actually helping the ones that need it and see them for what they are. Humans that were and are hurting and need help. Real meaningful help. Not bootstraps shaming talk.

Just something I was thinking of.

Id be curious to chat with you if so. Maybe even get together at some point and help each other to make the dream a reality. Bring it into the world as a real thing.