This has been good just to write out. However, anyone who might have insight and actually made it through this whole thing, please speak up.


I have a problem. I'm stuck.

I had a childhood trauma where my best friend was murdered (I was 8 years old), and I didn't realize at the time how much I was repressing about it. Some part of me decided independently that the way to 'fix' things was to try to get back to where I was before it all happened. Back to the happy, outgoing person I was before, when I had a sense of purpose and community and joy in life.

What this means is that a part of me is trying to stop me from ever changing, growing, growing up, or gaining any vision for the future, even the immediate future. I'm only allowed a vision for the past. Like it's the only real thing, the only thing that matters. I'm about at the point where if there was anything that could 'cut' this part of me out of my brain, I would do it. Just hand me the knife.

I've been depressed since High School (at least) and now I'm 23 years old, two years out of college (not a practical degree for a career, unfortunately), and I can't get anywhere. I've worked through a lot of the depression, but perhaps not enough, based on my current situation. I have been getting counseling periodically, and I've studied a fair amount of psych. I don't really know what it's like to have an adult life without depression.

It's like swimming in a lake with a big old cinderblock tied to your ankle. No matter how hard you swim, entropy and gravity eventually get to you. Every once in a while, I'm able to get the adrenaline and energy to swim with all my strength to the surface, but in the end, I exhaust my strength and watch myself sink back to the bottom again. And it's so beautiful up there... I forget when I've been down so long.

I'm currently 'working' for the family business, but hardly getting anything done. I don't waste company time (I have a keen sense of ethics), I just don't get in many hours at all.

Here's what's happened fairly recently:

I came to the realization that I'm spending money faster than I'm earning it, and this is not a workable long term way of living, especially with my meager savings shrinking fast.

I buckled down to the fact that I only had two reasonable choices: get in more hours at my parent's company (15 dollars an hour) or go out and get a minimum wage job that won't present the same rather significant self-discipline problems as working out of your bedroom on your personal computer for your own parents (a minimum wage job would be half the pay for the same amount of time spent, plus soul-grinding work, plus extreme loss of flexibility in work hours/non-ability to join family on camping trips and so on.)

I genuinely agonized over this for a while. The obvious solution was to get my butt in gear and just do my job. Even part time would have been enough for where I am right now, and the financial equivalent of having a full time minimum wage job. Rationally I could see this. Rationally this is what I wanted. But I just couldn't seem to make it happen. So, it was an 'idealized' solution that I couldn't bring about in reality. The only actually workable solution in my situation was to go out and get a minimum wage job somewhere.

I resigned myself to this. I stared full in the face of the horror. (And I'm not exaggerating. Horror is really how it felt for me.) It wasn't that there's anything shameful or awful about a minimum wage job -- as long as it's a part of your plan to get where you're going. But it wasn't. It was me settling for a minimum wage job because I couldn't cut it. It was my life going nowhere. It's horrible to look at your future and only see a wasteland. Going nowhere. GETTING nowhere. Giving up. Settling. No future. All these things were running through my mind.

Once these had had a day or two to get to their full intensity, they transfigured into a deep and almost unconscious sense of drive and urgency. When Monday came around, I got up at six or so in the morning and drove to the Labyrinth at St. Luke's near my house. (A labyrinth is a device for a walking meditation. Look it up on google. I think it would be interesting to many INFPs.) I walked the Labyrinth and (still with that transformed sense of inner urgency) repeatedly asked myself along the way to the center, "Why should I work [today] when I don't have to? [when no one is forcing me to]" Then I went back home and worked for four hours.

The next day I did the same. Got up early, walked, kept asking the question, then went home and worked for four hours. I went the entire week this way, walking then working. And, get this, I was actually kind of enjoying the work! It wasn't awful, soul sucking work. At worst it was boring at times, but it could actually be quite interesting. It wasn't a fate worse than death by a long shot.

I started to feel a breath of fresh air for the first time in ages. My self esteem begun to go up. I started thinking about the future. An actual future for myself. (There's a thought I held with the same awe and care as a Faberge Egg.) One day as I was walking the Labyrinth I realized that what I really wanted was to give away half the money I made, and I wanted to start right away, even though I wasn't making much. I realized I wanted to help make up the difference in finances by starting my own little side business venture (entrepreneurship runs in my family) and I had a great, workable idea for what I could do and I felt optimistic about. I created a list of what I would need to do to get started and I felt confident that I had broken it down into doable steps. It was amazing! It was wonderful.

Almost as if the lake I had been stuck in had frozen over and I was standing on top of it's surface, looking out into the wide world.

It as as if in my horror of the future and the sense of determination it coalesced into, I knocked unconscious that part of me which had held me in bondage to my past and forbade me to face the future and walk into with joy. It had no power over me.

And then it woke back up again. I felt like a dog that's been chained to a tree it's whole life who escapes for a brief few hours and then gets caught and chained back to the tree again. No matter how hard I yank, the tree always wins. If I could only slip the collar. But I don't know how. How do you convince your own unconscious mind that it's ruining your life, and you're an adult now, and you have it all covered now, really, and could it let you get on with things? Please?

So, I made it about a week and a half, lost my grip, and now I'm right back where I started. I walked the Labyrinth and asked my question, but I just wasn't able to care about my bright future anymore, except to wish that I could care. My spurt of strength was used up. I'm back down at the bottom of the lake again. And I'm more weary than when I started. I look up at the surface of the lake and it seems so very far away.

This week, for the first time, I'm facing the fact that I won't have enough in my bank account to cover what's on my credit card bill for August (I've never carried a balance in my life -- until now.) I figured out how to make enough this pay period to pay it all off - it would have taken me just 4 days of working 5 hours per day to do it. But I couldn't dredge up enough care about the situation to actually get off my butt and do it. Now I don't know how I'm going to pay it off, and I find that I still keep making purchases.

I don't want to be a failure, but I am!

I don't know where to go from here.


The Advantages I do have:

I am not stupid. I know that I'm an intelligent and potentially competent person. I can't blame any part of my situation on a low IQ.

There's a part of me that doesn't give up, though you wouldn't guess it based on my current circumstances. Somewhere buried beneath my paralysis is a fighter that always comes up swinging -- if I can find a way to access it. The only problem is I have so much internal resistance that I exhaust myself completely with internal battles. I don't have the psychic freedom to turn my determination on conquering the world outside instead of myself. A house divided and all that.

Luckily I do have a wonderful, very close family that understands and supports and believes in me. We're all happily weird together since we're all IN's.

Dad: INFJ
Mom: INTJ
Brother: INTP

They're pretty much the only people I spend much time with at all. (Yes, I do know that last part's NOT a good thing.)


Some possibilities for moving forward that I see:

1) Go out and get that minimum wage job. See if I can at least manage that -- I think I can, probably. Try to save up money and find some really cheap way to move out of my parent's house. Force myself to get a life that I can't really bring myself to care about.

2) Do something extreme, like marching myself to the Air Force recruiters and signing up. Do something so big and spectacular that I'm FORCED to reinvent myself just to survive. Get away from my family. As far away as I can. Cut myself off from my old life so much that my damnable subconscious mind finally recognizes that if I don't totally and completely reinvent myself from the very bottom up I'm doomed. I really think that if I could get into a situation where my old 'blueprint' for life was totally unworkable, I could break it's hold on my life. But my current life, living at my parent's house, just feels too much like I'm not really an adult at all. I'm twenty-three years old, and there are some times when I suddenly remember that I'm not a child or a teenager, and it actually startles me.

Somehow I've got to break my sense of helplessness and dependence. My subconscious thinks dependence is just dandy for it's goals to get back to where I was before my childhood trauma. I strenuously disagree on this point.

3) Keep struggling on with my parent's company and go to counseling to try and resolve the conflict in my subconscious mind. I've honestly made tons of progress already. I'm in so much better a place than I was when I was younger. I used to be in a LOT of emotional pain. Now I'm mostly just stuck from being able to move forward into the future. So, this could actually work, potentially.

4) Give in and try anti-depressants drugs. I really don't want to do this. I want to actually resolve the conflict in my mind, not just medicate it. It feels, it really feels like it's just waiting for that moment, that breakthrough, that key to turn. I've seen what life is like without it, even if only for brief glimpses. I really want to fix this at the source, however I manage it. But I still have to consider drugs as a genuine option. Maybe it's the key I'm waiting for. But maybe not. What can I say? I'm stubborn. Looking back, I should have been on drugs when I was 18. But now? When I'm so very, very close on my own?

5) I can't go back to school for a Master's degree unless I really know what I'm doing it for, and going to school would be dangerously in agreement with the old perspective that I'm trying to fight anyway. Going to school is on the list of the 'normal' things that my subconscious thinks are OK because they aren't creating a danger of me moving forward and getting a life. (How did I get into a college without a vision of the future, you ask? I pretty much just tossed a dart and went with the result. No real, significant sense of vision for my future involved.)

Anyway, if anyone has insights or advice, please do give it to me. Write a post, take the poll at the top, or both. I would be particularly interested in options for extreme mold-breaking and getting away from my parents besides the Air Force, which would seem like a particularly painful kill or cure option. (Hmm, literally kill or cure considering the state of the world today.) I'm also pretty sure that I would have trouble with the culture of the military. Still, needs must. It that's what it would take...

You are a very good writer... I get a very strong sense of the struggle you go through with depression. The image you painted where you swim with a cinderblock is tragic, and I am sure that many others with depression could relate to this image and to you.

It seems that you've pinpointed the death of your childhood friend as the reason for much of your subconscious sabotage. I note you've been to counselling, so maybe there are other avenues you can try?

Have you tried the emotional freedom technique? Here's a link: http://www.tapping.com/ (I personally tried the one at emofree.com but have read good things about tapping.com). I'm not sure if I believe all they write about how to works, but I see it as a form of worthy meditation that can calm the mind, and the positive affirmations also help to cancel out some negative thoughts.

I think the way you've put it, you need to heal from those memories before you can move on productively.

In the meantime, maybe the minimum wage job is the way to go. It will help you establish some independence, get out into the world, meet more people, make friends and thus get some perspective on your situation as well.

Learning about other people's lives and their struggles and cultivating healthy compassion for others will help you reduce your self-focus (self-focus is generally good--it keeps us honest--but it seems yours is extreme). And then, having practised compassion for others, have compassion for yourself as well. This is very different from feeling sorry for yourself--instead, it's feeling non-judgmental sadness for your own situation and pain, and this motivates the desire to move yourself out of this painful state.

Incidentally, taking a minimum wage job does not mean that you've failed or can't cut it. It just means you're starting a minimum wage job.

If you would rather stay working for your parents (no shame in that), then perhaps ask your parents for more hours and make them hold you accountable. Or ask them for a variation to your duties so that you can go outside and interact with the world or the public for a good portion of each day. It's not good to be stuck in the same room all the time.

If you know about Ne (extraverted intuition), I'd say your unhappiness is partly because your Ne is not being exercised... so instead you're running on Si (introverted sensation--the cognitive function that keeps us stuck in the past). This is unhealthy for an INFP, as you've discovered. You might end up disappearing into yourself. The antidote is to get out there and experience the world outside yourself. I think your time in the labyrinth helped you in that sense--walking around is good, gets the blood moving. Taking a trip out of your office space is good--seeing new views as you travel, stimulating your mind.

Only move ahead with a bigger plan when your plan is motivated by your deep values, rather than panic. Right now you may not be seeing all the possibilities.

Maybe you could keep a journal to express your feelings (don't judge them as they come, just express them), and notice (and celebrate) any progress you make? You can also keep a rough budget in this journal, noting what you spend on vs income. Then you can decide what items you really don't need.

Good luck.

(also, welcome)

I actually have very recently (as in last week ) tried something that's a bit unusual. It's called Brain State, and it's supposed to convert your brainwaves into sound so that you can hear yourself think and your brain can tell that it's being stupid and know how to fix it. It's still too soon to judge the success of it, but I have noticed some possible change already. I'm hoping it helps my brain not to be physically stuck in the past. If I wasn't fighting entrenched brain habits, it might help the psychological struggle a lot. Perhaps if this doesn't pan out I should try the EFT next.

I think your advice that most strongly resonated with me was getting out into the world (and by implication, other people.) Seriously, I'm so introverted it hurts. I need to find a way to escape my internal world. Maybe I should try getting a big book of rail tickets and going downtown every day before or after work. It would certainly be distracting. That and pick up the freaking phone and call some of my friends who I've drifted away from. Go on a hike with the Mazamas? Find somewhere I can volunteer? Find an Introverts Anonymous group? Go to an SCA event? Just do something, anything besides sit in my room and read fanfiction! (Yes, it's addictive behavior. I've tried to kick the habit, without success.)

I honestly can't give any well-thought out advice for you. I'm really not all that experienced with it. However, I also lost a friend to murder at the age of about eight. If you ever need someone to talk to about it, I'd be very glad to listen.

Good luck ^^! *hugs*

It must be awful to lose someone that close to you at such a young age, both you and Box have my deepest sympathies.



By being patient with yourself, taking things a step at a time, and developing plenty of self-compassion.

If you aren't doing it already, learn to notice when your thoughts start to take a turn for the worse - when that negative, panicky, belittling voice inside you tries to bring you down - and cut it off before it can get going. If you can it really helps at those points to go do something constructive, as that voice loves to tell you that you can't, so show it that you can.

Also, remember that your dark periods are just that - periods, they're transitory, they pass. And every time they do you can push yourself that little bit further towards where you want to be. And the more you do the less frequent those dark times will be, and the shorter they'll last. Until one day those dark thoughts will show up and you won't have to remind yourself that they'll pass, you'll know it, right down to your bones. And when that happens you'll be able to just ride them out, accept them for what they are and what you can learn from them, and then move on.

I'll also second sciski's advice about getting out of your own head and mingling with other people. When we're depressed our perceptions of ourselves can get horribly skewed, so sometimes hearing what other people say can be a real eye-opener.



Why does it have to be a minimum wage job, and not something that pays better?



I think something a little less drastic might be better for you at this point. I could well be wrong but from what you've written it sounds just a little bit too much you'd be trying to run away from your problems, rather than dealing with them in a positive way. That's just my opinion though.



If counselling helped you in the past I can't see any harm in trying it again.



It seems like you still have alternative options to explore yet, so I'd say keep the anti-depressants on the back-burner for the time being.



Yeah, as you say it's usually not a good idea to go to University unless you really know what it is you want to study, and why.

_________________
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I'm so sorry to hear that, Box. Murder is a very hard way to loose someone you love at any age. If you yourself ever need someone to talk to, let me know as well. At least we each are coming from a similar place.

I'm afraid that I'm not always very patient with myself, DefectiveCreative. However, I have been improving! I used to be under constant, self-induced stress. It really wasn't healthy. Finally I just got fed up and ditched it. It wasn't really accomplishing anything anyway.

I suppose it was mostly a form of self-hatred for how my inner struggle was keeping me from succeeding and stripping my sense of self worth. Now I've shifted to trying to solve the inner conflict instead of hating how it makes me ineffective in life. Of course, that tends to mean that some of that old hatred gets focused in on what's holding me back. Not so useful an attitude for dealing with the rebellious parts of my mind. It used to be 'I hate myself because I can't get anywhere.' Now I have to fight against feeling 'I hate you [that part of my subconscious mind] for preventing me from getting anywhere.' I suppose it's all still self-hatred.

The thing is, there's this part of my subconscious mind that made decisions so many years ago about what my life should look like. Back when Terra died, I had virtually no denial. The problem is, I was supporting my conscious lack of denial with loads of subconscious denial without being aware of it. There are still parts of me, parts that I've only become aware of in the last few years, that don't even know she's dead. Or don't want to know. That might be more accurate.

Denial is a big part of what's going on in my life right now.

Five or so years ago, I would have told you, "Depression? Of course my depression doesn't have anything to do with Terra. I got over that years ago. It's a non-issue. I don't know why I'm depressed. I have no idea why I'm in this constant emotional pain." And I would have meant it.

As an eight year old, I needed to be able to function in life, to still be normal even though the world wasn't right anymore. So I kind of divided my mind a bit. One part of me got shoved up front to be 'normal'. It's mission? Relate to my family, go to school, do chores when someone orders me to, keep playing with the neighbor kids (we had moved to this house a bit before she died, and I had already made friends before any of this happened), be a good Christian, keep my head down, and fill the extra time by entertaining myself with fantasy books in whatever time's left over.

The other part, hiding where I wasn't even aware it existed, would direct most of my emotional energy toward my real purpose: getting back to the life I had before. Back when I lived at the old house with Terra two doors down, and the world made sense, and the places and people I loved were there. (Yes, this is obviously not possible.) My subconscious mind, the architect of all this, figured that if I just kept going long enough and put enough emotional energy into it, I would be able to get back Home. And then everything would be alright again.

So, I started out with this game plan at eight years of age. And there was good news -- it was working beautifully. No problems.

Time passed. My friends from the new neighborhood eventually were gone. I never quite found a way to replace them. I became a fantasy bookworm. It became most of how I spent my free time.

Pick the story back up at 15. I had joined Civil Air Patrol, and before you could become a Cadet Officer, you had to go through this mini-boot camp thing. Eight days. I didn't really expect problems.

I got there, and immediately crashed emotionally. I suddenly realized that I couldn't handle a disapproving, harsh emotional environment. I had always been surrounded by nice, emotionally supportive people, and I didn't know how to support myself emotionally without any of it. I plunged into instant depression, probably the first serious depression I had ever experienced. I was bewildered. The pain was shocking and sudden and there was absolutely no help for dealing with it.

I looked at my life from the outside for the first time. I saw how numb I had become. I realized how aimless and empty my life was. I sat down and tried to write out a list of things to do in my free time in the future besides reading. I could barely come up with more than ten items. And all of them seemed empty and anemic put next to reading. I just didn't really want to do anything else. In other words, reading was now my drug, and it was the only thing that I really desired. After I got home, The list of things to do besides reading never really got used. But at least I was aware that something wasn't right with it. I started making the first of periodic attempts to go cold turkey off my 'drug' so that I could try and get a life.

Anyway, I survived those eight days and came back home, ready to start my Junior year in High School -- I was making the transition between home school and going to an actual school for the first time since second grade. But now I wasn't happy and numb. I was numb and just beginning for the first time to sink into depression. I also started to really feel lonely and isolated for the first time. I had no close friends at all, and couldn't seem to find any.

I graduated at 17 and went straight into college. My depression got really painful (now I wasn't numb anymore, but my addiction could still make me happy when I was in the middle of doing it -- and only then.) By now I told my own stories in my head as part of my addiction, and they were about me. An alternate me who had adventures and generally was capable of change and growth and connection, unlike myself.

I lived in the dorms and started to get more connected with people. I discovered that as long as I could have natural contact with people I was able to participate in friendships. I did my best the year my roommate and the people around me all became close. I could handle drifting into the crocheting group of friends across the hall and joining in. I just couldn't take the initiative to call a friend that was no longer going to college with me, for example. The more that people were involved in my day to day life, the easier it was to be friends with them.

It was like an infant with object permanence -- as long as they were in my vision, they existed. When they weren't around, it was like they didn't exist any more. But it was still better than being completely alone.

I graduated college a couple years ago. I wanted to start my own business. When I got the idea, I had dreams about a grand future for myself. But the dreams only lasted a couple weeks and then they stopped feeling real or achievable at all. I kept trying to figure out what I was doing, but the longer I plugged away at it, the harder I found it to keep going. I couldn't seem to get started. Finally, I joined my family's business. I did OK at first, getting in my full hours, but the longer I went, the harder I found the self discipline of getting in the right amount of time. In less than a year, I was in serious trouble and knew it. I kind of had a bit of a breakdown and I've been figuring out how I can solve this problem ever since. I know why I crashed and burned. It's related to the reason I can't seem to keep friends, and the reason I'm addicted to books, and so on.

Bear with me if this sounds weird. I said that at 8, I kind of split into two parts in my mind. One was to be normal, but the other was supposed to carry on with achieving my real goal, getting back 'Home' to where I was before everything changed.

Well, the Homeward Bound part of me sort of set the rules for the Normal part of me because being normal was the cover for my 'real' purpose in life. Those rules are somewhat loose, but they are rules that exert influence on my day to day life. They worked just dandy when I was eight. They don't work now that I'm twenty-three.

Remember my mission? Relate to my family, go to school, do chores when someone orders me to, keep playing with the neighbor kids who were already my friends, be a good Christian, keep my head down, and entertain myself with fantasy books with whatever time's left over.

I have this whole set of allowed/not allowed coming from my subconscious that I have to fight against to achieve my aims in life. I have to fight internal resistance (sometimes very strong internal resistance) to do the things I'm 'not allowed' and I have to fight against doing the things I'm 'allowed' if I don't want to do them.

If this sounds ridiculous, all I can say is that it fits my experience of life. It fits it all too nicely.

I did pretty well as long as I was still in school. That fit the pattern. It was when I graduated college that I started having the real problems.

Allowed:
Going to school
entertaining myself (with time wasting things, not so much with constructive things)
not worrying about money (why would an eight year old need to worry about money?)
procrastinating
doing something that I'm directly ordered to do
show up at a particular time for a class or job (falls under doing what I'm told)
decide to get a job/apply for or accept a job
use the procedure I've developed for carefully drifting into things so that I don't trigger resistance
etc.

Not Allowed:
get a career and a life
decide to work at any particular time when I don't have to
do homework early instead of the latest I can get away with
writing thank you cards (to my occasional mortification)
allowing other people to fill Terra's place in my life
a vision for my life or the future that conflicts with my 'primary purpose'
certain types of risk taking
breaking particular types of dependence on my family (or the thought processes behind them)
being responsible enough to take the chance of people start to think I'm dependable
make the choice as an adult to do things my parents might not like
make my own decisions for life with regard to achieving some future that I want
making real goals (that's too adult)
etc.

This is rather embarrassing. Half the time (or more) through sheer weariness, I'm living a life I decided on when I was eight. I'm sick of having my present and future dictated by a delusional eight year old.

The essential problem is that unless I give up the hope that lays behind all this (and it's as attractive as it is unattainable), I will never be able to move forward. You can't go forward and back at the same time. I've been trying to go back, so every time my conscious mind attempts to go forward, it ultimately fails. It's like the two parts of myself are attached to each other with a bungee cord. I can stretch out into the future for a little while, but the part of me anchored in the past eventually wins -- the bungee cord stretches to the extent of it's reach and I get snapped back. It's like they say. You really can't escape from yourself.

I don't believe this state of affairs will last forever. It's already lost a lot of ground. Just knowing what's going on is terribly powerful. I don't feel as much like a failure as I used to when I didn't know why I couldn't get anywhere. Now I just need to figure out how to convince my inner child that what it wants is impossible or that there's something even better out there in the future, neither of which it believes.

Anyway, it's always useful to write this sort of thing out and re-evaluate every once in a while. Telling it to someone else forces you to be thorough and hopefully not miss anything.



Because I have very little work experience and don't really have any skills. Oh, and I don't own a car. I just use my parents' cars when I go out. That kind of limits my range. All this kind of says 'Taco Bell' to me.

I have thought about looking for some kind of job at a seasonal resort or something that will provide housing. That would be probably minimum wage, but it would get me away from my parents, which would seem like a bonus under the circumstances. I think that living at home is probably exacerbating my problems some since it perpetuates the illusion of not really needing to get a life.

I am glad that people seem to be agreeing that my instincts are at least decent about how to move forward. I was wondering if everyone would urge me to go straight to my physician and demand anti-depressents. I'm rather glad no one has, yet.

Phoenix, I don't think any of what you wrote is weird or ridiculous, it's just what you needed to do at the time to cope with what you'd been through. Now you've reached a point where your needs are different, that's all it is.

I wasn't sure before, but now that you've gone into a bit more detail I do think though that you should go and see a counsellor, some of the stuff you mentioned is beyond a group of individuals on an internet forum - however well-meaning - to help you with.

However, I will say that - like your self criticism wasn't helping - nor is hatred at that part of you that you feel is holding you back (your inner 8 year old self). Think of it this way, if that inner 8 year old existed in the real world, I don't think you'd get angry at her for being afraid of what the future might hold. Not after what she'd been through. Much more likely you'd be gentle and patient and supportive, taking your time with her and gradually, little by little, coaxing her forward by helping her see the world and herself in a more positive way. If you'd be willing to take that approach with an 8 year old in the "real" world, I think your inner 8 year old deserves no less.



I'm a little like that. For me though it's apparently related to my being a social/sexual variant on the enneagram.



What about the kind of work you've been doing for your parents? You've been doing it for a number of years, right? That sounds like a pretty hefty chunk of work experience to me.

_________________
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I do try to be nice to myself. I just don't always succeed.

At least my getting-out-of-the-house program is having some moderate success. I went downtown and to a concert yesterday. Today I'm throwing my stuff together to go to an all weekend SCA (medieval reenactment) camping event. It's a start.

Forgive yourself for that too. You're only human.





Sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

_________________
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

A little late here, but I'd keep working for your parents while trying to balance that out with also putting together plans for a future where you have separation from your parents. Working for your parents won't feel like such a dead-end if you don't just see that but also treat that as stepping stone to something else you are in the process of working towards.

You could work for your parents while planning out a business idea of your own that is enough of an outlet for your creative energies. How your business idea is coming along would also help keep you accountable to yourself, since it's presumably something you'd be enthusiastic about.