Real talk

I’m kinda scared. Scared cause everything that my life has been for the last 3-5 years is potentially changing soon and I’m scared I’m not gonna make it out there in the ‘real world’ on my own.

I mean, I’ve lived in society…but I’ve never really thrived. It’s honestly just felt like setback after setback, and if it’s not me sabotaging myself, it’s just random stuff that impedes my progress. To be fair, you never know if random good stuff will happen too. It’s just…it’s a scary world out there. And I want to go out and forge my own path, but every time I think about it, I get scared and doubt myself cause of how consistently I screw things up, and I thought that learning about one of the sources of that screwing-things-up-ness (ADHD) might give me courage to face the world, but it hasn’t. It’s only making me fearful now that I might never be able to last it out there. Because last time I tried to make it out there and take chances, I screwed up so badly that it’s taken me 10 years to deal with it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always kept trying to maintain some kind of hope this entire time that I can become independent again and live life on my own terms, but sometimes it just feels like a pipe dream and that I’ll always end up back living with my parents again after I make more poor choices.

I mean, sure, I’ve learned from the mistakes that I’ve made, and going forward, I should expect that I won’t make those same mistakes again. But, there’s no guarantee that I won’t. It’s possible that I will make the same mistakes again even knowing now that they’re mistakes. Impulsive behaviour is a pain in the ass. Realistically, I could end up screwing things up more. Good things don’t happen just cause they’re ‘supposed’ to or just because you intend them to.

I’m just tired of messing things up and dealing with the consequences of it. It’s like I’m seeing the light at the end of a dark tunnel that I’ve been in for so long, and that light is kinda scary because of the uncertainty it represents. The tunnel is also kinda comforting because I’ve been here for so long. When I’m in the tunnel, I don’t feel the anxiety that I feel out there in real life. And it’s hard to get over that anxiety. It’s hard to believe that I can do better when I honestly don’t feel that I’ve shown that I can. Which I know is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I dunno, I guess I’ve always just pictured success and stuff like that as something that happens to other people and that I’ll never be able to obtain. Sometimes I dread going to family parties, especially big ones with lots of extended family. I just feel so inferior. All my siblings are living normal lives with good jobs and kids and all that, and I feel like such a screw up in comparison. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this out of jealousy or anything. They’ve worked hard to get what they have. They deserve it. It just feels like something that is out of my reach, and family events feel like a reminder of my inadequacies. One part of me knows that it’s possible that I could live a ‘normal’ life, but another part knows it’s also not possible. And the uncertainty is just frightening sometimes.

I can try to be optimistic, and I do try to maintain hope, but the realistic part of me knows that life isn’t a fairy tale and magic doesn’t actually exist, and the good guys don’t always win, and just because you hope that something is gonna happen doesn’t mean it will. Though granted, I suppose that having a hopeful mindset will give you a better chance of it happening. But it’s no guarantee. Some people just end up in crappy circumstances for their entire life even though they don’t deserve it. Life doesn’t care what you ‘deserve’. Life doesn’t care whether you’re good or bad, the only rule of nature is that actions have consequences, and your life is affected by those actions and the subsequent consequences that you have no control over, however…conversely, your actions and the consequences of them don’t just affect you but other people, and in ways you often have no idea about. Just because we don’t see what actions have created the circumstances that we’re in doesn’t mean that those things didn’t have an effect on where we are now. And just because we don’t see the consequences of our actions doesn’t mean those consequences don’t exist either.

Now…that being said. This doesn’t mean I’m just gonna say ‘screw it’ and not care about other people. It just means that the only thing I can control is how I feel and what I do myself. It gives my actions meaning because everything I do could potentially affect other people in ways that I might not realize. But even the actions that I have taken have often felt out of my control and I’ve found myself wondering why my actions don’t match what I thought I should have done. But, of course, part of me also wonders if I’m just saying that to absolve myself of the guilt over my actions too.

For now, though, I’ll just say that I’m not fully sure if I trust myself to be able to take the proper actions I need to take, or make the right choices that I need to make, in order to give myself a better chance to succeed. I know that I’ll never find out if I can do it if I don’t try, though. It’s just that failure sucks, and I’m not sure how much more failure I can take from myself.