Journal #12: What I've been doing to survive

02/27/25

Bluuuughghgh

I haven't been actively blogging for a minute. It isn't that I've lost interest in my blog, I just haven't really had the time.¹ It's been a rough few weeks.

The weather keeps ricocheting between gross, gray cold and springtime false starts.² My brain is struggling to cope. I'm falling into new depressive episodes as soon as I step out of old ones. It's hard navigating all these psychological pitfalls. Some days I'm successful; other days I'm not. Just yesterday I nearly had a panic attack looking at the dirty dishes, though I managed to clean of most of them in the end.

American idiot

It's just that sort of time. Everything feels like a struggle or a battle. Not even taking into account the world at large, which is a shit show that the entire internet has tuned into watch. It's hard being an American these days, especially when things like patriotism, optimism, positivity, and liberalism are all mutually exclusive from one another. If you're a patriot, you're fascist; if you're an optimist, you're a dumbass. Sometimes it feels like the only valid options are to either give in or give up. I still love America³ and want to remain hopeful, even though it isn't in fashion unless you're a fascist.

I consider myself to be a pretty compassionate and non-judgemental individual. But my pessimism has shown the cracks in this egalitarian facade. Lately I've been playing this game of speculation whenever I'm out in public where I try to guess who voted for Trump, or otherwise valued the price of eggs over the health of our democracy. The game follows metrics like whether someone has any facial piercings, missing teeth, or certain types of clothing. This is all really nasty, judgemental stuff, and I'm constantly projecting it on every person I see.

It's hard to not feel that way as a trans man in rural America. I'm currently living stealth.⁴ The knowledge that most people view me as any other cis man, but would then turn around and hate me were I to openly identify myself as trans, is a lot to deal with. I feel like I have to live defensively. Maybe projecting my own assumptions and distrust of people is an attempt to cope with that. I feel like I'm trying to pick out potential threats from a crowd.

Work, money, debt

Work has been crazy busy too. I work in fast food. Coupons just got sent out this week. We've gone from dead as hell to having $1,500 hours in sales. It's also been really tense among my coworkers. I got into a verbal spat with someone the other day after they instigated an argument. I ended up saying some things I regret, and trying to come back from that and work out how to apologize while respecting my own feelings has been a headache and a half.

Money has been stressing me out, too. I decided this would be an unofficial "no buy" month. I'm only buying necessities and paying bills. It got a lot easier the more time went on. But despite all that effort I don't have much to show for it. Bills and debt just seem to keep piling up around me. I signed up for a new credit card with 0% APR for 21 months to pay off my debt, but I'm waiting until next paycheck when I can afford the balance transfer fees.

Survival mode as a mode of living

I had a thought maybe a week or two ago that I've been mulling over ever since. Eventually I want to write a proper blog post about it. Whenever I find the "time" again.

I was stuck in another depressive episode, just breaking down my days to the smallest parts. I'd ask myself things like: is anything that I'm worried about a true concern that I need to immediately deal with in the next five minutes/hour/day? or can it wait while I try to answer another question, like what can I do in the next five minutes to help myself?

It registered that I'm reverting back to the survival mode tactics I used to deploy in high school during the grips of my mental illness. At first this made me really sad. I've come such a long way from those days, and changed so much. To enter survival mode again felt like I had failed at something, or like everything I've accomplished didn't amount to anything.

But the more I thought about it, I realized that maybe the whole point is that this is really the only way to live, at least for me. Not even day by day, but five minutes by five minutes. This, then, made me remember my decision to become a fuck up.

I felt a sort of peace come over me after that. Whenever I get overwhelmed, I try to remember that the next five minutes is all that really matters.

What I've been doing to survive

In light of all that, here's what I've been doing the past couple weeks to help myself survive, minute by minute:

• Cuddling with my cats⁵
• Playing my 3DS a LOT
  • My latest game is Harvest Moon DS. I'll make a blog post soon
• Drinking lots of tea
• Eating a copious amount of ice cream
• Making myself fresh chocolate chip cookies
• Scraping together last minute pasta. Here is my latest recipe:
  • rigatoni pasta⁶
  • vegan mozzarella
  • truffle oil
  • garlic powder, pepper, salt, oregano
  • Beyond Meat breakfast sausage patty, diced, for protein
• Watching Smosh
• Talking to my wife on the phone for hours
• Wearing basketball shorts even when it's still cold, just to appreciate the temps warming up
• Saying the nembutsu with the mala beads I got recently
• Visiting the discussion threads on r/VoteDEM to escape the US doomerism
• Making lists
• Listening to music
• Practicing kindness to myself

I hope you're doing well. If you aren't, then at least we're both in good company.

Take care. <3

✘ Posted on — 02/27/25
✘ Last modified — 5 months, 3 weeks ago
✘ Link — https://blog.xavierhm.com/journal-12-what-ive-been-doing-to-survive

Footnotes

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