Whats your life like? (Time Capsule Thread)

[Eunice]

I've had a bit of a setback. I've struggled a lot this year with clinical depression, which I've had since I was a teenager. As I'm 63 now, that's a lot of depressed years. sigh. Anyhoomst, I bought a packet of St John's Wort tablets, thinking they might help a little. But when I got them home and read the leaflet in the packet, I can't take them. I'm diabetic and I take gliclazide for that. Gliclazide and St John's Wort do not like each other at all. They can cause the blood glucose to plummet. And while my GP would be glad of that, I don't fancy risking my life with constant bouts of hypoglycaemia. So onwards, and isn't life fun?

[JINSBEK]

I live in a medium sized city, by the ocean, in a temperate rainforest. most days I bike through the forest, stopping, eating foraged berries as I go. I bring books and I swing on the swings at the park, where a lake used to be, almost entirely drained a few decades ago, before I moved here. I ride my bike under the shadow of the oil pipelines, I watched logging trucks drive down the road to my grandmother's house, I see the logs carried down the river from the train window.

every morning, I wake up, make a breakfast of toast with jam, and tea or coffee, and I sit out under the bigleaf maple tree, english ivy devouring it's form into horrific green towers, like it did to the dogwood tree, that still blooms, white flowers heavy on the brown arms escaping the hulking abomination. I talk to the rosebushes, I tell them my troubles. I hear the plants talk back to me sometimes, when It is really quiet out. I watch the birds forage for berries. robins, tits, dark-eyed juncos, varied thrushes, etc. I sit on a blanket in the grass.

dark-eyed juncos are very special to me. like me, they do not migrate, they are loyal to place, and they always come home. this makes them some of the few birds there for me in the winter. in a long January,the kind that makes you spend hours in bed, staring down the bar in your closet, the morning after my suicide attempt, that dizzying white night, I walked in circles, for hours on my college campus, watching the juncos hop between the trees, feeling more nauseous than I ever had in my life. 

I put that away and I walk to the big soccer field near my house. I draw a unicursal labyrinth in the gravel with my shoe. I walk it, I walk it again, until I kind of feel ok with the world. I sit on the rock in the creek, hearing it's singing all around me. I try to write poetry. I have little to do. I am looking for a job, I am failing school. I am submitting poems to literary magazines and contests. I don't want to work in a job, I don't want to write poems, even, I want to lie in the grass with the rocky mountains in my eyes. I could live forever if that was what life was. I could live forever if I could spend the whole thing getting lost in the rain with a friend.

i am trying to remove the english ivy from my yard. my friends are the most important thing in my life. I struggle to do things alone. I am doing something with them often every day. I love to hear about them. I love to exist around them. they feel like a family to me. I love to talk to strangers on the bus. I think I belong to the people on the bus. I have so much in common with them, I feel hopeful that the world can be better when I talk to the old lady about quilting, or the 70 year old man who didn't know what film cameras are because all he needs to take a photo is his phone. the college student around my age who got along great with me until he asked what I was listening to. I said ABBA and he made a very exagerated sad face and said that he wasn't friends with people that like ABBA. we exchanged contact info but I have no spoken to him since. the 40 year old who talked to me about the very wet vinyl records I was varying with me, the man who told me about his time working in a fish processing factory, the 9 year old who I let use my fancy art supplies and who told me about tv. the 22 year old who had travelled so much more than I probably ever will, who was held at gunpoint one time, "but," he told me, "it's ok, they were very polite about it." this is how we save the world, i think. talk to people.

I am learning guitar, I am bad at it. I have an obsession with darning socks. I don't know how to stay still. I feel like I am too much for myself. i spend a few weeks barely needing to sleep, feeling great, constantly doing things, doing everything, writing and writing and writing, non-stop and still able to do 20 other things each day, unable to talk quietly. I spend a few months basically hibernating, hiding from the light, not wanting to talk to anyone, to tired to write anything. trapped in an endless cycle, bored, and slow. I feel like I have a little light in my chest. creativity and motivation and energy and drive. and mine is too bright. and it's like a little motor and it powers me to movement when I'm too sad, and when i'm too happy it glows even brighter, and I fear it will eat me alive one day. the way the light of the sun is why there is life on earth, is why people get skin cancer. I crashed my bike under it's sweltering glow, in the middle of the summer. the handlebars twisted out of place, falling forwards onto the hot pavement. I've walked into traffic powered by that little motor, spent days unable to sleep, tracing shapes onto the ceiling. it kind of scares me. my tides seem to have no relation to the world. the worst things could happen in the high, the best things in the low, it doesn't change a thing.

I found an old blue car wreck in the woods, the metal twisted out of shape. I wonder who it was that crashed it there, and when. the model looks quite old. it is by the crab apple tree, and bluebells and herb roberts grow from its body. i am in a lot of pain in ways doctors won't give me answers to. I have a lot of joys that I can't describe. I wear all pink, i wear feather boas and cloche hats and glitter. I like when people stare at me. I love to perform in front of an audience. i'm told im good at reading poetry out loud. I am scared of the dark so I sleep with a little golden moon-shaped night light. someday I kinda want to get a little blue bird shaped one to match the tmbg song. I preen my feathers every night. I like to feel the wind in them.

I am so very glad to have read all that. That was beautiful. I think we& are also one of the people who belong to the bus. Some of my favourite conversations are those with strangers, often met at bus stops, or on the bus.

My life is very odd, and very fortunate, compared to those of many here. I live in a luxury apartment just across the Mississippi River from Downtown. Right now we& live alone, we are currently waiting for our fiancee's VISA application to be approved so we can marry her and grant her citizenship (and thus the right to live here for longer than three months at a time). Almost everyone here seems to be either a graduate of some form of higher education, or currently a student. We are not. Ten years ago we dropped out of college after two months, and we've just been working ever since. Now our fiancee @VioletHeaven and I are both well equipped for an early retirement, and my little luxury apartment is full of things like bedding that surpasses that in most hotels, crystalware in both the kitchen and bathroom, a heritage Italian kiddush cup set, and a balcony full of lights and pots for plants (it is winter so there are no plants at the moment) and seating for the two of us. We have fancy mood lighting set up in the apartment, we never shower, only bathe, we bike everywhere except when it's icy, like right now, in mid-December. We utilise many shelves for books, and we do not have a TV. We have a cupboard full of alcohol and more bottles out on display on the kitchen island, along with a spinning glass decanter. I have three different kinds of traditional hand-dyed besoms (brooms), but our desk/study/altar besom is actually at work, on our office desk. When she is here we observe Shabbat (the Sabbath, according to Jewish tradition) and light candles on Friday night, and enjoy dusk on the balcony, with wine poured in the kiddush cups. We are able to live this life of comfort and luxury all because we threw away what everyone else told us to do, and simply pursued the work, hobbies, and connections that resonated and engaged with us the most. My life is a living embodiment of The Alchemist. There, the protagonist finds love and builds character by working hard for the things he truly believes in, regardless of how unconventional it is.

My daily life this winter of 2024 is slow, in large part due to the fact that it's winter. There are also the disabilities that COVID this year has left us; we get very tired easily as our body is doing its best to recover from successive brain injuries. We have a white cane that we never use. Our supervisor balks that we can bike nearly blind, but the little Bluetooth speaker we have on our backpack (very useful for bouncing sound off and helping judge the distance and speed of objects around us), our hearing, and what little vision was spared are enough to help us not die in traffic. We are eating and sleeping a lot more in order to recover as quickly as possible. With the way the public health response is, we have no choice but to simply recover faster than we can get reinfected by COVID. It is either that or die, and we have very nearly died multiple times to the disease. Our supervisor is actually terrified we may actually die, fears assuaged only by an inhumanly stubborn will to live.

Daily life. Being a Midwesterner, a Crock-Pot is a necessity, and we do have one and love it. The best foods to eat during this winter season are day-old chili made in the Crock-Pot. Because of recent injuries caused by our COVID-induced stroke, our fiancee has done a kind thing and ordered a subscription meal service for us so that we do not have to worry about the time, energy, and labours spent on meal prep and grocery shopping, which is very helpful. We haven't gone to the gym in a while because of the injuries, but we're able to use an elevated treadmill under our desk when we work on the computer at home. Currently, we are reading further materials on Child Development, in part out of our own interest, and in part to aid our fiancee with remedial work and growth (there are many affective experiences she was deprived of at critical stages as a child, thanks to her stereotypically Asian upbringing). We work on our websites, drink fine wine, eat ice cream, stretch, music is constantly playing. As soon as we've recovered our injuries, we're going to resume practice devil stick dancing. We've introduced her to our favourite video games, in a curriculum specifically thought out to help expose her to key exercises and build upon skills in a foundational manner, and we like watching her play. Other time is spent on our own neurological rehab. We must fix our central, peripheral, and enteric nervous systems, or die.

Our current job is "unremarkable". We work in an office Downtown for a small law firm. I love the commute, biking through nature and parks along the Mississippi River is the best, and in rain and winter we love taking the bus and making friends. We carry a gorgeous, older, ruby-coloured Japanese flip phone and a digital camera. We look at everything and feel the wind and listen to the birds. We also rehab orphaned baby squirrels when we come across them. Outside of winter, we practice devil sticks out in the park or on the pool deck courtyard in front of our neighbours. People appreciate the show and come up to us and thank us for it. We attend every DJ bike rave we can, and we always go drinking with others afterwards.

After our fiancee successfully immigrates here, we're going to get new sabre wasters (realistically weighted practice swords) for the both of us and I'll teach her fencing. Presumably, we'll have recovered enough from COVID by then to mentor her.

[NoxidKin]

I live in Scotland, I work as a carer for people with disabilities.  I dropeed out of Uni, then came back around and got my science degree in my 30s.  I live with a pet cat and a pet lizard.  The weather is awful.  Today I'm gonna hang out with my dad and play video games and get drunk.

[Rosaria Delacroix]

Now feels like an interesting point in my life to capture here: I've recently gotten into graduate school, and I start in the fall. I'm fearful, and excited- anxious about not living up to expectations, yet determined to see them through. My thesis work will be in the area of climate change mitigation. I want to make it a more memorable experience than my undergraduate experience- I want to try to make friends amongst my cohort. People tell me that the time flies by- and I'd like to try to capture at least a little of it in my diary entries, to have something to reflect on and turn back to. I want to be brave enough to eat at a restaurant alone, to visit the fountain pen shop I've eyed for years. To dress beautifully: to take pride in my appearance. To be braver about being openly out.

Regardless of what happens: I know that I have my older brother's support, and that in of itself is immensely comforting. He told me he wouldn't miss my thesis defence for the world. I know he'll keep his word.

The sleepy, snow covered suburbs are where I curl up when not in the heart of the big city in a cramped apartment I spend most of my time outside of- and I'm looking happily forward to the city wildlife, a dizzying array of stores, and the glamour of citylights at night. I'll miss the deep dark, away from all of its light pollution: but the big city will always have a part of my heart. I'll always love it, in all of its hustle and bustle and grime- even when I feel lonely, despite being the antithesis of alone.

Dealing with my physical health is always a struggle: at this very moment, I'm experiencing a flareup and particularly symptomatic episode of my genetic disorder, but on the whole, things are looking up significantly for my older brother and I. The last while's been rough. My hair's gone wavy, and I've gotten more white hair than I ever expected to- (greys and whites don't typically show up until their 50's/60's in the family tree.) The stress of the last year or so, in the aftermath of his accident, has significantly left its mark: emotionally, and physically, the latter much to my surprise.

I've always had pin straight hair, my entire life- and it couldn't hold a curl, even when hit with heat and hairspray. Now it's full of waves, and I've had to fumble around with learning how to care for it to avoid frizzing and wild bedhead. Apparently it's due to the stress. I have a new facial scar- sliced through the corner of my mouth, forcing it into a permanent lopsided frown. The scar tissue resists my smile- it tugs, pulls: a reminder of its presence. I smile differently now, too. I'm getting new glasses, soon- and it'll be the first time since I started wearing glasses that I'm making a drastic shift in the appearance of the frames. I want something silver, something metal- lighter, sparkling. Something new, for a new era of my life.

It feels like I'm on the precipice of radical change. It's thrilling, and nervewracking: but I'm anticipating it, all the same. For now- I'm just trying to rest and heal before diving head first into academia again.

[kasperkat]

I'd like to also encapsulate my life right now...it's a big moment of change in my life and I want to be able to come back and feel proud that my life has gotten better. I am certain it will get better, but it doesn't make the struggle now any less difficult.

!!READERS BEWARE!! The content below deals with relationship abuse/narcissistic abuse, as well as a very brief mention of self-harm. Largely, I am trying to chronicle the facts. I try to keep it impartial, though, as I value logic above all else. And this will probably be long as hell.

Roughly a month ago, I exited a relationship that was extremely abusive in every way you can imagine for about seventeen or eighteen months. Which doesn't sound that long in the long run, and people have endured worse, but each day felt like a slow-passing hell. I was injured, screamed at, put down, isolated, and degraded each day, but it had happened so slowly that by the time it ramped up to the truly horrible, I was already inoculated. And brainwashed. There was a lot of brainwashing. I don't like to talk about my weaknesses, and I hate people who over-exaggerate their problems, so trust me when I tell you there was a lot of brainwashing and a lot of abuse.

I believed whole-heartedly each thing she told me. She had gained my trust in the first six months or so of our relationship, and like a fool I trusted each thing she told me afterwards. I believed that my parents hated me and that my friends were conspiring against me. I believed that she was the only person who could ever love me because I was "impossible to love" and "a constant burden". I believed that I deserved the things she did to me because "I only do it because I love you". I truly became an empty shell where she just poured in whatever she wanted, and I shifted to fit the form, and then shifted again when she became angry at the form that she had made. I tried everything to pacify her each day. I tried anger, I tried tears, I tried reason, I tried emotion. I tried being myself, I tried being the person she wanted. I tried standing up for myself, I tried allowing myself to be steam-rolled. None of it mattered, and none of it made her happy. And if she wasn't happy, I wasn't allowed to be happy.

She said she had BPD, though she was undiagnosed. I believe now that she may have actually been a psychopath or have had ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder), and those aren't the words of a vindictive, spiteful ex-lover. I truly believe she exhibits many classic signs. There was in essence, no true empathy. She needed all the attention (negative or positive) on her. She needed to control all the people close to her. She was impulsive to an extreme and often made very poor choices that were illegal or contrary to social norms. Complete disregard for others' feelings, avoidance of responsibility, constant irritability. Some of this may sound like "ah I'm butthurt from a bad relationship so I'm being a dick just about her flaws" but this is not just what happened to me but what I observed her doing to the people and animals around her. She was...very rough with her cats, to say the least. I often worried for them. And all of the above traits I listed also applied to her main caregiver.

She wanted to get married when we got out of high school. Or engaged. And she told me if I wanted to be with her at all, then I needed to stop talking to my friends and family, so I largely did. We were in high school, so I had to see them every day, but I became that same walking shell for everyone. And, predictably, my mental health deteriorated. I was hospitalized for self-injurious behavior and released. They recommended a PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program), but I fought very hard because my partner didn't want me to leave her for more than an hour at a time, and I have been on a waitlist for six months anyway (thanks, American healthcare system).

I had tried to leave once, and failed. And she never let go of that - used it like a whip to remind me that I was nothing but a horrible partner, which, of course, I believed. But I did it. I left. And I'm never, ever allowing myself to go back.

I don't even know what caused me to break. It was just a build-up of so many things, so much misery and anger and fear. I was scared to leave - she'd threatened to kill me or hurt my family if I left before, and I was scared she had the willpower to do it. I was also frightened that she'd follow me around forever - she stalked her previous exes. Fortunately, I don't have much of a digital footprint...I have no social media, only a few sites that I'm active on, and I blocked her on all of those.

It's been really weird. It still feels like a wonderful, beautiful dream that I'm going to wake up from and be back in that hell. But now I have to come to terms with everything that's happened to me, which is hard to do. It's hard letting all of it sink in and not just blocking it out forever and ever so I never have to hurt. It's hard finding myself again. I lost who I was in that relationship. I don't know who I am anymore, and I can't remember what my own interests are. Everything from before seems so distant from me. I feel so separated from the person I used to be, and it's been really hard trying to figure out who I am now. It's hard to tell what is her influence on me, and what my own feelings are. And now as everything sinks in, I have to deal with the nightmares and the panic attacks. I get to discover new triggers every day - I broke into spontaneous tears and began to hyperventilate when I heard a character on the television say "Are you fucking stupid?" That was something she used to say to me when she was about to absolutely blow up - the point of no return. And new sources of anxiety appear every day. Phrases, items, feelings. How do people live with this? How am I supposed to just deal with this? How do I keep going?

But I'm going to keep going, because I'm finally free and I am NOT fucking letting ANYONE take that away from me again. I am going to go to the college I want to go to, instead of letting someone else dictate where I'm going. I'm going to hang out with my friends if *I* want to. I am going to travel the country if I so choose. I'm going to talk to people if I want to, online and in person. I'm going to make new friends. I'm going to have a career and a proper life.

I have to undo all the brainwashing. It's hard, to say the least. It's hard to not believe that I am really a burden to everyone. That everyone I know doesn't secretly hate me. That I'm no better than a worm. But I am not going to let her stay in my head any longer. I am going to purge every last trace of her.

I AM GOING TO SURVIVE. And not just survive, LIVE.