Out on an Island

I suffer from anxiety and depression. I know a lot of people do and I understand that it isn’t treated with the seriousness it deserves. Not really. And I don’t know if this is the right place for this, but I’m going to put it here and see what happens.

I have dealt with this for a long time. Early on I didn’t realize what it was and thought I was going through phases of life. Moving from teen to young adult to older, more responsible adult. For most of my life I was able to push it away and not deal with it because I was single, I didn’t think I affected anyone around me. They could live their lives and I could pretend that I was alright. It wasn’t until I was married and became a father that I finally realized how much my anxiety and depression was a problem I needed to fix.

The reason I think I feel the way I do is because I find joy in a lot of things most of my friends and family don’t like or find interesting. Most times I feel like I’m on an island by myself no matter how many people are around me. Early on I knew I wasn’t much of a party guy. Finding people to talk to was tough because my interests were quite different than theirs. As I talked about comics or sci-fi movies or other things in those areas, they would initially show some interest, but as I went on, I could see the lights going out behind their eyes or so I thought. I pulled away from my friends and began doing a lot more on my own. I didn’t want to annoy people with my constant “nerd conversations”.

Most of you reading this might be thinking that people aren’t as uninterested as I think they are and I’m seeing things where there’s nothing to see, and you could be right. The problem is my brain won’t believe that. Every time I’m put in a situation where there’s a group of people, I try different conversation ideas to gage where everyone is at in their interest so I can find someone to connect with and talk to. Just recently, I started a new job where no one there had any of the interests or hobbies I could talk to them about. Several of them didn’t even want to talk on a surface level about the weather or current day topics. It can get very lonely working an eight-hour shift and not having a friend to talk to.

My family is great. Both my wife and daughter listen to me as I go on about something I’m writing or reading or what I think about the current state of the comic book industry. Yet, my brain will tell me that I’m boring them, and they would be happier being or doing something else. Again, I’m sure what I’m thinking and feeling might be wrong, I just can’t seem to convince myself of that while it’s happening. We have a few friends around us, and I have gone with my wife to their house to hang out, but after an hour or so, I feel like I need to get out. Not because they’re bad people, but because I’m a bad guest. I don’t think they’ll be interested in me, so I clam up and nod my head a lot. I hope they don’t think I’m being rude. They’re great people and deserve better than me.

I’m not part of any kind of community either. As a writer, it helps to have other friends who are writers so that you can bounce your ideas off each other. You can share how you feel about the writing process, and they’ll not only understand but might suggest ways to make it better. Ways I might not have thought about. But with working a full-time job and helping take care of a family I really don’t have a whole lot of time to go out and look for other writers in my community that I could talk to.

I know this might not seem like the most cohesive thing I’ve ever written, and you might be right. This is more of a stream of thought kind of thing. I’m hoping that by doing this I will be able to talk myself out of whatever’s going on and possibly find a solution to my problems, but I don’t think I will. I know keeping things inside is not really the best thing to do, it won’t help anyone if I just bottle it up and wait till it explodes. Unfortunately that’s what happened. I’ve had some things stress me out recently and between them and the fact that I feel like I’m on an island by myself I have gone and re aggravated the anxiety and depression and they are back in force.

So here I am. Sitting here writing this hoping against hope that the words I’m writing will unlock something in my brain that will help me or something. I really don’t know. I know this is something I can beat I’ve done it before. But then when I did it, I had not just my family, but I had friends around me that I could lean on, and they could help. Right now I don’t have that. I just have my family and they depend on me to be a fully functioning individual not somebody who’s got a brain full of mush. I don’t feel like I can burden them with my problems. They have problems of their own and they need to have all their focus so they can tackle their day. I’m just a guy with his head in the clouds hoping that one day someone will notice my writing and I’ll be able to make this a full-time career. I know that’s about as likely as hitting the lottery and getting hit by lightning on the same day. Yet I continue to write as if I had. I take time away from my family to chase this silly dream. A dream I know won’t go anywhere. I have written and self-published two books and I feel like someone putting out vanity projects and not really becoming a real writer. The struggle to get people and family, to not only read my books but to get them to leave a review is almost impossible. Taking two minutes out of your day to leave a review seems to be beyond them. It’s something so difficult they just can’t bring themselves to do it. If I can’t get family to say something nice about what I wrote, how am I supposed to get complete strangers interested in my work?

Sorry, I went off on a tangent. But this is a steam of thought and not a neatly edited piece. It’s also a lot longer than I thought it would be. Let me end this by saying I wish I could get over the thought that I’m alone. I wish I could be more outgoing and not let my brain hijack my common sense. I wish I could defeat this permanently and be the man I want to be for my family. I hope my daughter doesn’t lose respect for me as I spiral down into the depths of my depression. I hope those of you reading this are having a much better time dealing with life.