i couldn’t find a community geared towards venting or posting about depression, so i’m coming here to empty my head. sorry in advance if this doesn’t fit the comm well. if you’re sensitive to depression i’d avoid my post tbh.
it took me two months to find a job since my last one ended in October. my bills became unmanageable during that time and my phone was shut off. yesterday, on my first day of work, my car was repossessed after i got home. i live with my partner and his mother and they fought about me the other day. i came home early today from work and got into a yelling match with my partner over something stupid. we have been together for 13 years. we know there will be bad and good times, but lately it’s been nothing but bad, and i am the cause of a good percentage of it.
i have several mental illnesses that make it difficult for me to maintain support for myself. i am medicated and have been in and out of therapy. i’ve even been hospitalized for suicidal ideation. i am trying, i really am. i don’t know how to balance the love i feel for my partner and “being responsible” financially. we are supposed to focus on expenses and bills first, but i cannot simply exist to work. that isn’t life, that isn’t living, i’d rather be dead. i will only get one life to live and i am spending it concerned about money and successfully navigating a capitalist hellhole. yes, sometimes i buy my boyfriend and i shit we don’t need, but it’s because we get to experience each other genuinely when we come together and do or use whatever i bought for us. i am creating memories, i am creating happiness… but yes, it is at the expense of money and “good” decision making. poor people are allowed to enjoy life too.
but… i don’t know if my boyfriend sees it that way. he’s told me that he cares more about being financially stable and secure, but the smile on his face when i get him something he wanted or i pick up some weed for us to relax together and smoke tells me that he needs a release too. he feels pressured to conform to the world around him, but he is also extremely disgusted by our world in much the same way i am.
idk. i have felt like a leech and a failure my whole life, and now i have lost my phone and my car, and have no money until my first check. i spent what i had on gas for a car that was taken from me lol. now i’m sitting here broke and without much of anything, and my boyfriend and his mother seem to think poor of me as of late.
i’m tried. i really am exhausted. if i don’t wake up tomorrow the world would be doing me a favor. i have begged to die in my sleep before only to unfortunately wake up and be forced to exist yet again. maybe tonight will be different.
You are not a leech nor a failure. The point of life is to live. That’s it. We all take and we all give.
You’re tired. You really are exhausted. It’s time to rest. Respect your rest. Turn everything off and close your eyes. Take every opportunity to rest that you can.
Your contributions are a result of your rest. It’s not the other way around, which is the way we are taught. We are taught that rest comes after our contributions but it’s simply not true. Our contributions come after our rest. Rest first. Contribute second.
In this way, you can obtain the tiniest smallest sliver of living for yourself first and others second. And this is the sliver from which you build the rest of your life.
Rest includes pleasure. It includes happiness. It includes smiling. It includes a comfortable blanket. It includes a little extra heat in the winter time. It includes healthy nourishing foods. It includes laughter.
Your boyfriend is in the same situation and needs rest. And until he can rest, it will be difficult for him to put away his fears and anxieties and make room for discussion. So, first, rest. Then, help him rest. Then, talk to him about the deep deep need for both of you to rest, and that from rest comes your contributions. First you rest, then you work for wage. First you rest, then you make food. First you rest, then you clean the apartment. Both of you can support each other better with rest than with wage.
Start with rest. You deserve it. He deserves it. And you don’t need to do anything else to justify the rest. You’ve both already earned it. Rest is its own justification.
You are not alone. Trauma is not comparable. But you are not alone. It is possible to find your breath. Have faith that it’s possible. Believe that it’s possible and that it’s possible for you. And then prove to yourself it’s possible by stopping everything and just resting, just for a little bit, every day, and eventually every moment.
You’re here. That’s proof enough to me that it’s possible. Believe me until you can believe you. You can arrive at that place where you live to live.
i appreciate your encouragement to rest but i simply cannot. i am the one with money, i have a job now and need to play the game once again. nobody is allowing me to “rest,” it’s all about doing what is necessary to live and not be homeless or without medication. i can’t even handle that. my phone and my car are gone. who knows when i’ll be able to afford payments for either.
A side note, resting can be as simple as taking 5 minutes of your day to turn off all electronics, close your door, and sit comfortably somewhere quiet. I definitely understand the need to grind, I often find myself being a duck (calm on the surface, paddling like the devil underneath). Do take the time to do something that, even if free, does reduce stress. Sit quietly, snuggle your partner, make love, touch a bit of nature, whatever it is that makes your dopamine machine go brrrrrr. Even if you can’t afford luxuries, can barely afford food and housing, it is VITAL that you do something to make your brain produce the happy chemicals at least once a day. If you don’t, you’ll slowly fall into the type of depression that will only compound on itself.
Also, remind yourself every day, that you can only do your best. This system is designed to grind you down to the same lump of flesh as everyone else, unless you are extremely lucky, you will always be chasing the basest needs. It’s not your fault, don’t ever let society tell you that your struggles are entirely your own. Your struggles are caused by the system being designed to take everything you produce and funnel it to those who lease NEED it but those who are sick enough to hoard it.
We’re all here for you, comrade, in whatever ways we can be. Don’t forget to be here for yourself.
Your body will force you to rest eventually, and you won’t be able to set the terms.
You sleep daily, because you need rest.
Make the tiniest room for deliberate rest. One breath at a time is enough. You’ll make it to two breaths by making it to one breath.
The logic of capitalism means that those who need rest most get it the least. But that logic is grand. There is a smaller logic that allows you to rest in small ways.
Find those ways.
I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this, comrade. My wife has spent most of the last year unable to get stable full time work due to a long term health issue finally getting so bad that they’d give her the surgery to correct it (a surgery we’ve been trying to find someone who would agree to do for nearly 8 years at that point). Because every doctor before missed it, it got so bad that the recovery took MUCH longer than it otherwise would have. She has lost multiple jobs in the last 8 years and we’ve always been one step forward and then it was a coin flip on if we’d take one or multiple steps backwards. Just this week she finally started being able to get work daily and I can attest that financial stability can be a huge stressor. The only reason we survived is that my adult son was able to set aside his own wants and desires for the last year and see that it was cheaper to contribute the majority of his income to household bills than it was to find a place of his own in an area so expensive as ours. It will probably take years to pay him back but I couldn’t be more grateful.
Now that I trauma dumped my back story, I do so to say I understand both you and your partner’s point of view on this issue. In a just society, this type of issues would not be occurring, because your basic needs would be taken care of, all of our collective basic needs would be addressed. Sadly, we don’t live in that type of society.
The best advice I can give, is to make a budget based on your current income. You won’t budget your way out of poverty but you are not wrong that even if you’re broke, you need at least SOME small thing to keep you sane, budget for that. Set a limit on how much you can spend on those little smile things and spend the rest focusing on getting things straightened out financially. Look and see if there are any better paying jobs available or old things you aren’t using that you could sell for a few extra bucks. (I recently went through my accumulated things I bought when money wasn’t tight and sold off some electronics I wasn’t using, it was how I made it through December without missing any bills.
Life can get better, but it will take a LOT of luck and you will have to push through a lot of hard days to get there. Hang in there, comrade is you’ve got this. (also, if you’re in dire straights, you can always request help in the mutual aid community on lemmygrad or hexbear (I don’t remember the exact spot currently))
thank you for commiserating. i am sorry you can relate. it seems a lot of us can. yes, budgeting is our next step actually. we are doing it together with my first paycheck.
edit: i already posted on mutualaid a few days ago lol i would feel scummy and abusive if i posted again so soon, but i appreciate the tip
Yeah, I don’t know what the rules are on mutualaid, I’ve never quite hit the point where I absolutely needed it, though I’ve been close. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it if you didn’t yet know about it. Good luck, comrade.
