6/16/18
#20: Down
Today I am feeling really down. I’m pretty disappointed in myself today. I was supposed to get up this morning to drive about two hours away to a small library con where I would lose money. Usually I just tell myself, “Hey, you need to go have a local presence, sell a few comics, get some emails, and maybe a few likes on your Facebook author page.” I woke up this morning, and I said, “fuck it” and went back to sleep. I suffer from anxiety and depression and take medication to help me function. Being unemployed makes me feel like such a fucking loser. I often think of myself as better than people, yet I struggled to find an entry level job with over 5 years experience in multiple areas. Sometimes I think, “Hey, man, you should have gone to college and made something of yourself,” and I think back and know it’s not for me. Shit, I don’t know. Maybe I should have forced myself to go. If I really am as great as I think I am, it shouldn’t have taken me a month to find a job. I should be further along in my writing career, and I shouldn’t have been turned down by the places I interviewed at. I apologize if this is all over the place, more so than normal, but I’m not exactly in my normal state of mind. I can tell when I’m not feeling right. I don’t always divulge this information to those around me. I don’t know how people can deal with me. I constantly am a dick to people. I have tried to kill myself in the past. I often say, if I wasn’t such a pussy, I would be dead already. In high school, I kept planning to drive off the overpass, but never could bring myself to do it. Regardless of how down I get anymore, I couldn’t ever kill myself. I couldn’t do it to others. My best friend once said to me, “How could you do this to me?” When most would watch what they said to me, he said this, and it really helped me stop thinking about being dead. I think that tells you exactly how I think of myself. I can’t get my shit together for myself, but I can for other people (people I care about at least). I haven’t gotten shit done today, and I don’t know if I will for the rest of the day. When I get this way, I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to be by myself, and I feel really tired and groggy. I don’t know, it’s like maybe if I sleep, I will wake up and not feel like this. Twice in my life have I been in mental wards, both at different hospitals before I was 18. It was honestly some really scary shit. They put all of the people seeking treatment for mental illness together. I had people who wanted to die, people who had to stay until they had their trials, someone who screamed for no reason and wouldn’t talk to anyone, and then you had some people with the mind of a child who just couldn’t take care of themselves. I think mental illness has less of a stigma now than it did when I was younger, but it’s something which is hard to understand. Even for me I can’t say I know what it's like to suffer from other illnesses. The same illness doesn’t even affect different people the same way. I can’t seem to focus right now. Some days are worse than others, but when I’m down, it’s even worse.
Everyday I will be posting an entry in my writing challenge 100 Days which has been collected into a print collection. If you are interested in purchasing a print collection: http://www.lulu.com/shop/austin-hamblin/100-days/paperback/product-23916414.html
Kayla and I have also started a weekly podcast. You can check it out here: https://anchor.fm/austin-allen-hamblin It's called In the Bed with Austin and Kayla because we literally record it as we lay in bed!