I Talked to a Priest Today (and Cried My Eyes Out)

 cw: Religion, Catholicism

I talked to a priest today. I went to church with my family after taking the meds on an empty stomach. About halfway through the sermon i could feel the panic rising and church has never been a comfortable place to be for me, so I hid outside of the main room. 

I sat there on my phone, it was something to focus on, something without noise. The area wasn’t perfectly quiet but everything was dampened. 

The priest sat across from me. Asked if I was uninterested in the sermon. Asked if I was with family. I said I was there because of my anxiety. He asked if it was because of all the people and the noise. I opened up about how the church experience has always been triggering for me. 

It’s weird how you can just open up to priests. I ended up spilling everything about not being religious and being queer but being there for my family. About being afraid to come out in both regards. Joked about how I’m sure what I’ll be disowned for first, being gay or not being religious. How all my friends are queer and trans. That I have a girlfriend. 

It was nice to just tell someone about it.   

He said I’d always have a community in the church. Asked if I was baptized. Said I was. He told me that I’d always be a child of God. That God doesn’t abandon. 

I’m thinking that the priest approached me thinking I was just a disinterested teenager and hoping to revitalize my interest in the church. Or maybe a runaway teen seeking refuge. I’m not sure he knew what to do with me. I think he was trying to assure me in the way he knew how, saying that there was a community and a good ending. It’s weird that a good ending hinged on me being baptized. That both responses to comfort me were to hopefully reaffirm the place of the church in my life. 

I’m almost tempted to try to talk to him again. Dig into the churches belief on queerness and transness. Ask for advice this time on how to move forward with my family. Just to see what he’d say. A 30 something priest. I’m curious. 

He asked for clarification when I mentioned offhand about knowing about the churches deal with pro life. I talked about knowing enough theology to know the stance on abortion. He also clarified if all my queer friends were within the church. I said they weren’t. Joked about queer people not usually being involved with the church. 

My mom called me asking where I was and that she’d sit in the car with me. He gave me his name and a handshake. He had kind of a resting smile but a tightness to his eyes. I’m quite sure he has no clue what to do with me. I don’t know if this is a man who has had to confront queerness up close. The real effects of the rhetoric of the church. Of a child terrified that they’ll never be known by their family. 

I really wonder what that priest took away from that interaction. Most optimistically I hope I’ve planted a seed of radicalization in him. Most likely he’s come away with a story to reinforce a belief that queerness separates. I don’t even know if my church is homophobic. I know they’ve never flown the flag in support. I know a lot of the congregation is. 

My greatest fear is that I become a sermon, a story for the congregation. I don’t know what I’d be used to sell. Maybe another story about a sheep lost from the flock. Maybe the prodigal son. A story to fear monger the dangers of queerness, the evil of transness. A story of love and acceptance above all. 

I don’t know this priest. His name is Johnathan I think. He’ll be leaving this parish in a month, getting moved to another. He kind of looked like the priest from Wake Up Dead Man, had a similar haircut and beard. 

If I become a sermon, I just hope it’s when he leaves this parish. My dad volunteers at this parish. I don’t want this to be the way I’m outed. 

Unraveling My Mind and 2 Goddamn Projects Because I'm Bad at Judging Yarn Lengths

I think the anxiety is mostly the meds. That doesn't make it much better because everything feels like its taken kind of a nosedive since my last post, but we're holding on and I think there's only up from here. At the very least I don't think I'm going through any more meds increases for awhile. 

    The worst part of my consistently medically induced anxiety is that varying things have now become points of anxiousness. Spending money. Eating food. Getting out of my room. Interacting with my family. I'm now having nightmares and I barely dreamt before. Albeit my nightmares are very similar to the few dreams I do remember, which are incredibly mundane in nature. The consistent thread going through all of them is there being some kind of extreme stress in simple situations. Not knowing there was a project to be turned in, having to find a 7th roommate, having to choose what clothes to wear. Which were all the actual premises of dreams I've had. 

In the meantime I have my bass, and I have a pound of yarn that I'm trying to crochet into a scarf. 
    I've signed up for weekly bass lessons. Originally I was planning on going for guitar but I honestly think it'll be more beneficial for me to go in for bass lessons. I think I'll get more theory learning out of taking bass lessons. It also gives me a reasonable weekly pressure to work and practice. So here's to hoping that goes well.
    In the midst of my anxiety fuelled week and everything kind of being evil to attempt, crochet has been my peaceful escape. It started with me crocheting a single ball of yarn into a skinny scarf--which I had to redo because I thought I could make a thicker scarf, I couldn't. Now I'm planning on getting through a pound of yarn that I had bought years ago for a different project that I never actually followed through on. I have no clue what row I'm currently on but I'd say I'm making pretty okay progress. The pattern looks complex but its actually not too bad once you get used to the patterns. The techniques themselves are pretty simplistic and its incredibly repetitive, it just takes some time to wrap your head around it. This is also my second pass at making this pattern, I frogged the entirety of my first attempt. 

Scarf pattern from This Video

 

I should probably eat. I'm not letting myself play stardew with the gf without eating first.  

A Beaver Can't Stop Niagra Falls and Other Phrases I Made Up

Unfortunately this is not a list of other phrases I made up, though there have been many over time. We'll loop back around to my favourite metaphor that I've used later.

In the meantime, general updates. Life is alright. Right now the brain is weird. I'm typing this out because I feel like I haven't been able to properly focus on anything for the last couple of hours. Which is unfortunate because I have many a thing to clean up and the energy to do that feels like its running away from me. 

I had a trial bass lesson on monday, and I'm thinking I'm gonna continue with lessons but I kind of have to justify continuing with lessons first because of moneyyyy. Had a scare of my roommate being missing mid-week-- its fine, her phone was just making her unable to contact anyone in any way for an entire day which combined with an unfortunate coincidence of events made for an incredibly stressful situation. My best friend went through the ringer this week ending a relationship and I was there for the whole journey. 

My girlfriend visited today and it was really nice. We made matching bracelets for our one month anniversary and watched Mean Girls together. It was technically my first time watching Mean Girls in its entirety and it was so fun. I love an insane 2000s teen movie. 

I'm currently avoiding putting together an application for a thing I was excited to apply for because it involves putting together an application. And my portfolio. And looking at my past work. All things my brain is really not inclined towards and would rather avoid at all costs. Which isn't fun when I want to do those things. 

I kind of had a moment recently realizing that I'm not as good of a designer as I thought I was. Now before you immediately rebuke, let me explain. I'm pretty okay all things considered, and I'd say my work is solid. However, I think internally for the last while I've been holding my work up way higher than it deserves to be. Like delusionally higher. And having to look at my work again kind of snapped me out of it because coming back to my design work I just feel bored. Like really bored. I've been pushing towards minimalism and for what? Its fine, its alright, its effective for what it needs to be, but I'm just unsatisfied looking at it. I'm not the best of the best in my year and that's okay, but Stars I need to find the motivation in me to try to push towards anything. 

I don't design in my free time, and I need to change that, both for the sake of my future career but also just because I need to get into the habit. As much as I'm unsure if I want to really keep pursuing design despite enjoying the process for the most part, I don't want to be failing in what I'm currently doing. 

I think I'm just anxious. And I'm not sure if its me or the meds. Stars I hope its the meds. 

Documenting Befores Is Something I Always Forget Until After

Tomorrow I start my new prescriptions: an upped dose of my antidepressants to ween me onto double of my current dose, but more importantly ADHD meds (sparkle sparkle). 

So I'd like to take a moment to note how I've been doing to have a more direct before and after. 

As of the last couple of days I've been extremely tired and listless--whether that's despite eating well or because I've been eating well, I'm not sure. Focus has been as hard as ever because of that since the effort involved in doing things usually involves moving and wanting to get up. Anxiety has been weird to say the least. Only had one day in the past 2 week where getting out of bed felt Evil and scary. My appetite is good at least, which I'm savouring before it gets fucking destroyed in the next couple of weeks. 

What I'm not looking forward to is doing all of this with the audience of a lot more people than usual. I'm back in my hometown, I've got extended family staying over until Saturday, and I've already made plans to see all my hometown friends next week. So this will be Fun time trying to exist on what I'm thinking will be hard mode for the next hot minute. Less so hard mode, but like when you eat a mushroom in a videogame and the screen goes all wonky. Honestly that's what dealing with the shitty side effects of getting used to new dosages feels like to me. 

The only thing that I'm a little anxious about right now is that I've been hearing that the specific meds I'm going on has a tendency to kind of take the spark out of people. I mean generally that's what I've heard about people going onto ADHD meds. Which is interesting unto itself. I already feel like my personality has shifted a bit since going onto antidepressants, so while I'm definitely interested in seeing what happens to me on the new drug cocktail. 

I'm So Normal I Swear (Survived the Psychiatrist)

 I survived my appointment with the psychiatrist! 

He was an. Interesting man. Not in the way where he was weird. I just don't think I would be able to have a proper conversation with him outside of this context. Which doesn't bode well for someone I have to spill my issues to in order to get meds but What Ever! 

Bros working theory is that I've got ADHD, anxiety, and depression-- which yeah, that checks out. I'm getting my current antidepressants upped, which will suuuuck for the next month so here's hoping its worth it, and put onto stimulants. 

Also having that appointment made me realize a couple of things: 

1. I still have no idea what people mean when they say racing thoughts. 
    The way my head works, I have an ongoing internal monologue that is literally just my speaking voice but in my head--speaking as if I was having a conversation, but obviously inside-- and I get like images of things, like visualized concepts. So I think my closest equivalent is I'll have times where I'm taking in a lot of information from the external world, like sounds, sights, smells, but I really don't ever have much going on in my head. It feels like it's always one thing, two things happening at best. Its pretty quiet up there. I think that's part of why I have to process things externally, like speak through a whole plan or idea in order to figure out what I'm doing.

2. I don't really have aspirations. 
    I had a similar realization like 2 days earlier but the appointment cemented it for me. The realization I had 2 days ago was that I have very little anxiety about my future because I just don't think about it happening. If someone were to ask me where I see myself in 5 years, I have a guess on things I could be doing based on people tell me I'm good at, but really nothing comes to mind. Like literally nothing comes to mind, it's all blank. I don't know if I've ever thought of myself in the far future living a complex life. It was always the assumption of life. If I’m alive then, I must be doing something to have gotten me there.
    The world exists in the now for me, yesterday is gone in the tide and the future is out of mind until it happens. I think that's why recently, making plans has been really good for me. It gives me something to constantly be looking forward to, a reason to keep checking my calendar, a reminder that time is passing. 

 3. I'm either really disconnected from my emotions, or I don't entirely feel them 
    The psychiatrist was asking a lot of emotion questions and those ones are always really hard for me because I'm not super in tune with myself there. When the doc asked if I was an emotional person, I said I was dramatic but not emotional. I react largely to things, but I don't think I really feel that much when things happen. I think I only started fully fully processing my emotions in my first year of uni. So like late 2024.  
    It's weird because I'm slowly realizing that I've always had a disconnect in feeling emotions. Since I was a kid I've been conceptualizing myself as a divided body. Mind and Body. The mind was logical thought, the body was physical need and emotional reactions. So since I was a kid I'd have bouts where I'd start crying but I wouldn't be sad. And I wouldn't be rendered helpless or helpless feeling the way you do when you sad cry. I would just be crying but my brain would still be fully functional for conversation and process, and the crying felt like a weird interruption to that. And that would happen when I was getting feedback from teachers in school since I was like 8. And my poor teacher would be looking at a crying 8 year old who's going "no please continue, this just happens". 

The big down of all of this is at the end of the appointment I asked about what I'd have to do to do an pysch evaluation for autism, and then proceeded to find out that my doctor doesn't believe in non stereotypical autism. Like the first thing out of his mouth when I said I was considering an autism diagnosis was "oh I would know if you had autism because you'd have to have your mom in here with you and she'd be stopping you from touching the computer and pulling at my ear." And the banger "There's aspergers, the smart ones, and then there's autism, the ones with lower intellect." It upset me. So much to hear a fucking doctor spew all that shit. He fucking pulled The Good Doctor as an example. I was losing my fucking mind. 

So anyways. I get to look forward to adjusting to meds again, and adjusting to all of that while meeting up with a buncha friends next week. Girlfriend visit on Sunday save meeeee. 

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Its not that life has been bad per say, but I'm not sure if its reached the same level of good. 

Again, nothing has been bad- my appetite is back in full force, I got to go out with my best friend for the first time in a long time, made sinigang with my roommate, finally got around to customizing the vans I bought back in December which means I can actually wear them now, I'm almost 3 weeks strong with my girlfriend. Yippie!

But on the flipside of that has been relationship anxiety that I've been working through--which is really the least bad of all of it because at least its somewhat expected--, the fact that I've been sleeping A Lot and generally don't have a lot of energy, a couple of mildly worrying urges are back, I haven't been able to focus for shit. 

I think it might be the case of setting my expectations so high that its inevitable that where reality lands is below it. I do want to do things, and I've got things planned so its not just a slog of days ahead of me. However on the day to day I feel like I'm just not doing enough. Maybe putting more things into my calendar will fix that, who knows. 

The Spring is For Winning

 I'M FEELING OPTIMISTIC ABOUT LIFE

Quick recap of the last couple days: 
- saw Project Hail Mary with most of my roomies. ITS SO GOOD HOLY SHIT.
- spent a Lot of quality time with my girlfrienddd. got at least 3 dates planned out to happen for the summer
- I did not get that essay done on time because my gf is a minx. Got it in on saturday though! Shout out the gf for doing citations for me because I was actively having a panic attack 
- Made sure the gf was alive for her first truly drunk experience. It was very fun night even if we didn't actually end up spending time at the bar we were planning to. she now understands the joy of drunk food
- made pasta together too! it was really nice to make food with someone else 
- yesterday went out for thai food with a few roomies because the cool roomie wanted to celebrate thai new year in a small way. It was so good holy shit. 
- also yesterday found out one of my roommates had a crush on me and her and another very much found me attractive and were bonding over it? their words not mine. I'm flattered, I think? I thought finding out these things would be a bigger feeling but honestly after spending 3 straight days with my gf I feel like I just can't be flustered by other people anymore. Or I just havent processed it yet. I think thats the case

Generally I'm feeling pretty good. Its weird to feel bored again with my classes being over, but I'm trying to harness it because it feels pretty different from the end of last year. The summer was a very big question mark of what to do, and now I feel like I've got so many things to do, and so many things I want to do over the summer.  

I think a big part of that is just being on antidepressants this time around. It is actually crazy how much better I just feel about life now. Is my anxiety kind of worse? Yes, yes it is. But it genuinely is like the world has color again. I actually want and crave doing things. I feel neutral to good about my body. I'm craving food like I used to again. It feels insane. 

I also think I'm currently between hyperfixations. My fall out boy has faded from a front of mind hyperfixation to a Solid Interest of mine. Which means I'm just waiting for the next big thing to happen. Not much I can do about it in the meantime, so I guess I just have to continue my hobbies or something. 

I don't know what the future holds but I'm feeling pretty good about it going forwards.