I'm not really sure how to start this. I know what I've been feeling, and I know there are things I need to say, but I can't seem to find the right words to put them into. Maybe that's part of the problem. There are so many different things happening at once that trying to explain any one of them makes it feel like I'm leaving out everything else. It is difficult to explain how you got somewhere when there wasn't one specific moment that brought you there.
It started last night, technically after midnight on September 5. I decided I was going to drink a little because I wanted to feel numb. I spent most of the night on TikTok and YouTube, drinking and trying not to think too much. I only had two drinks, technically, but they were very heavy pours. By my estimate, I drank around eight ounces of rum over the course of about four hours. That's not something I'm proud of, and I'm not writing it because I think it's funny or something worth bragging about. I just wanted to stop thinking for a while.
By around five in the morning, I was lying in bed singing along to songs. Eventually I went to sleep and woke up around eleven. My stomach felt awful, but I ate something and felt better. My mother came home for a little while before going back to the venue because there was a wedding that day. I went back to bed and slept until around six in the evening. When I woke up, I ate some reheated leftovers and spent the rest of the night on my phone and watching television until around five in the morning again. At some point, I wanted to write. Instead, I kept avoiding it.
I think I was avoiding it because I knew what would happen if I actually sat down and thought about everything. I would have to acknowledge all of it instead of continuing to distract myself from it. Even now, as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I didn't actually remember what had led me to that point until I started putting the words on the page. I had disconnected the drinking from everything that happened beforehand, almost as if it had just happened for no reason. I think I'm very good at doing that with things in my life. I disconnect one thing from another until I can convince myself that I'm not really dealing with anything at all.
But if I go back to the morning of September 4, I can see where some of it started.
I had some errands to run around town. I went to CVS and Walmart, and after spending $105 on medication, I checked my debit account and my credit card account. I already knew I was in a bad financial position, but seeing the actual numbers was worse than I originally thought. I knew I was broke. I knew I had debt. I just hadn't fully realized how bad it had gotten until I looked at it all at once. It was one of those moments where something you already know suddenly feels much more real because you can actually see it in front of you.
Later, I went to the venue and talked to my mother, but she wasn’t there. Only after the fourth time trying to call her over a two hour period she finally answered. I wasn't asking her to fix my money problem. I wasn't expecting her to somehow make my financial situation disappear. I think I was looking for comfort. Instead, she told me that I need to get a job, even if it's a horrible one.
I know she isn't entirely wrong. I do need a job. I need money. I have bills. I have debt. I can't pretend those things don't exist. But the way it was said felt less like advice and more like disappointment. It felt like I was being told that I'm making things harder than they need to be because I'm being too picky about what kind of job I want.
Maybe I am expecting too much from a job. I don't know. But I also don't think it's unreasonable to want to find something that doesn't make my mental health significantly worse.
That's the part I don't think my family understands. When I talk about wanting a job that is at least somewhat enjoyable, or something related to what I actually want to do with my life, it isn't because I think every job needs to be some perfect dream job. I know that's not realistic. I'm not expecting to wake up every morning thrilled to go to work. I'm trying to find something that I can actually tolerate being around for forty hours a week without feeling like I'm slowly falling apart.
When I worked at the distillery, I would go to work, do my job, and then go home alone. If something happened at work that affected my mental state, there wasn't anyone there afterward to help pull me out of it. I just had my own thoughts. I would go home and overthink everything, criticize myself, and spiral further into that pit until eventually I got used to being in the dark. The numbness became familiar.
That's why the idea of just taking any job isn't as simple to me as it seems to be to other people. A bad job isn't just something I dislike for eight hours a day. For me, it can follow me home. It can affect everything else. And when I already don't have much of a support system, there isn't much separating a bad day at work from a bad week or a bad month.
But there is more to it than that.
I don't just want a job that doesn't destroy my mental health. I want a job that means something to me. I don't want to feel like I'm just another person who was hired because a company needed someone to fill a position. I want to feel like I was actually wanted there. I want to feel like I have something to contribute beyond simply being another person on the schedule.
And I want to enjoy it.
Not necessarily every minute of it. I don't expect that. I just want something that makes me smile sometimes. Something I can look forward to. Something where I can come home and think that I actually did something I cared about.
The more I think about it, though, the more I realize the problem isn't really just the job.
The first problem is that I don't have anyone to come home to after a difficult day. The second is that I want to feel wanted and appreciated, and I don't feel like anyone in my life really sees me. The third is that I desperately need something in my life that brings me some kind of joy.
I've somehow attached all three of those things to the idea of getting a job. My brain seems to have decided that if I find the right job, maybe everything else will start falling into place. Maybe I'll meet people. Maybe I'll feel useful. Maybe I'll have something to look forward to. Maybe I'll stop sitting alone with my thoughts so much. But at the same time, I think my brain has also decided that getting the wrong job will make everything twenty times worse.
That leaves me feeling trapped.
I live in a small town where there aren't exactly endless options. A lot of the jobs I see online seem to require licenses I don’t have or involve work that I don't want to do. I don't want to commute an hour each way again. My mother sees that as an excuse, as if I'm simply refusing to look for work. But I do look. I look at jobs every day. I've applied to things. I just haven't told anyone because I don't really want to have that conversation yet. If I tell my sister, she'll probably tell my mother even if I specifically ask her not to, and then I'll have to hear about it again.
At the same time, I'm trying to build something of my own with my business. I'm taking orders now, even though a part of me still doesn't believe anyone is actually going to order. I've made some Facebook posts. My mother said she would share them, but she hasn't. She doesn't really ask about it either.
I notice that because I see how differently she responds to my sister's things. My sister makes embroidered crafts, and my mother encourages her to open an Etsy shop. She sends her supplies and talks about ways she could turn it into something more. I don't think my mother necessarily realizes how different that feels from the way she responds to what I'm trying to build.
The “business” isn't supposed to replace a career. It's a side business. It's something I enjoy and something I want to share with people. But even that has become tangled up with the feeling that maybe nobody actually cares about the things I do.
Right before starting to write this I kept seeing TikToks about being nobody's first choice, nobody's favorite person, or nobody's person at all. None of those videos have really been a wake-up call for me. I've known that feeling for a long time. If anything, they just reminded me that’s my reality at the moment.
Whenever something good happens, my first instinct is to tell someone. Then I stop and think about who I could actually tell who would care. Sometimes I don't tell anyone at all.
No one really calls or texts me first. If I stopped making the effort, I'm not sure how many people would actually reach out. I talk to my family partly because I need some kind of social interaction, even when I know the conversation might leave me feeling worse.
My mother is especially difficult to talk to because so much of the conversation becomes about her, the venue, or whatever she needs to do. I'll try to bring up something important to me, and somehow the conversation gets redirected. Sometimes she'll tell me I'm not talking enough and that she might as well hang up because she has more important things to do. Other times she'll say she needs to do something that requires both hands and can't talk. If someone calls while she's talking to me, I have to hang up. If I call while she's already on the phone, I get voicemail. She'll say she'll call me back, but she never does.
My sister isn't much different. I called her Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday recently. I only actually talked to her on Friday. She didn't answer the other two days or call me back, even though I knew she wasn't at work or school. Lately, when she does answer, the first thing she says is usually "Yes?" in a tone that makes me feel like I've inconvenienced her. I'll say hello and ask how she's doing or what she's doing, and she'll answer, but she never asks me the same thing. Sometimes she'll tell me her boyfriend is calling and that she has to go, and I don't know whether that's actually what's happening or whether she just wants to get off the phone.
I've joked that if I ever got into a wreck, no one would know because no one answers when I call.
I don't think I'm the problem. But I also don't know what else to think.
How did my life get this lonely?
If I actually count how many people I regularly talk to, the number is painfully small. I talk to my mother for maybe ten or fifteen minutes a day, usually about whatever is happening with her or the venue. I talk to my father for maybe five minutes a week. I might talk to my sister for an hour in a week if she actually answers. I have one friend who I mostly text, although sometimes my messages don't get answered. My last message to her is still unanswered.
I honestly talk to my dog more than I talk to most people.
And for a while, I thought being alone was something I wanted. I'm an introvert. I don't need to be surrounded by people all the time. I like having time to myself. But there is a difference between enjoying solitude and being isolated.
I'm starting to think I have crossed that line.
I have too much time alone now, and my brain doesn't know what to do with it. It just keeps working. Thinking, analyzing, replaying, criticizing, imagining every possible outcome. I wish I had more friends. I wish I knew how to make them. I wish I had a romantic relationship. I wish I knew how to find one. But those things sound so simple when you say them out loud and so complicated when you're actually the person who has to figure out how to do them.
So instead, I escape.
I'm very good at disconnecting from reality. Sometimes I can get so absorbed in something that I genuinely forget about everything else. I'll spend hours on TikTok or YouTube. I'll watch television, romance shows, video game playthroughs, concert videos, anything that gives me something else to focus on. Music can do the same thing. For a little while, I can feel shocked, excited, happy, or completely absorbed in someone else's story.
It feels like a drug because, in a way, it is. I'm getting a temporary change in how I feel without actually changing anything about my life.
The problem is that eventually I have to come back.
And when I do, I'm still broke. I'm still unsure about my career. I'm still alone. I still don't know where I'm going. I still have the same thoughts waiting for me.
So I either pick up my phone again or I go to sleep.
My upcoming birthday is making all of this feel worse.
I'm turning 24 in less than two weeks, and I think the closer it gets, the more I think about everything I haven't done. I had planned to get my first tattoo around my birthday, and now I can't afford it. I wanted to go shopping, and now I can't afford that either. I am still going to go to a restaurant I picked, but it will probably just be my mother.
And that's where I get stuck, because I don't actually mind doing things alone. I can go shopping alone. I can go to restaurants alone. I can travel alone. I've done plenty of things by myself and enjoyed them. But there is something about doing something alone on your birthday that feels different.
Part of me wants to go alone anyway because at least then I won't have to worry about my mother somehow tainting the only remotely special part of the day. But another part of me knows that sitting alone in a restaurant on my birthday would probably make me feel incredibly lonely.
I don't even know what I'm doing on my actual birthday anymore. My friend said we could do something, but I don't know what. My mother has already mentioned changing the dinner to lunch because it would be more convenient for her.
Maybe that's why birthdays are difficult for me. They make loneliness harder to ignore. It's one thing to feel like nobody is thinking about you on a random Tuesday. It's another thing to know that the day is supposed to be about you and wonder how many people will actually remember.
Last year, I spent my birthday in Florida. I went to Magic Kingdom and had dinner there. I remember the feeling as a kind of joyful sadness. I was genuinely happy to be at Disney. I love Disney. But I was also alone while everyone around me seemed to be there with their families or the people they loved. My sister lived in Florida at the time and didn't come celebrate with me. I don't even remember why anymore.
I sat alone in the restaurant, and because it had rained earlier, there weren't very many people there. The restaurant knew it was my birthday, I probably put it in on the reservation. An older gentleman sitting at another table with his family kept looking over at me. It wasn't creepy. I just noticed him looking over several times.
The staff brought me a birthday dessert. They didn't have the little printed chocolate birthday card, so they wrote "Congratulations" instead. I didn't really care. I was grateful that they did anything at all.
Then, when I was ready to pay the bill, the staff told me that someone had already paid it.
I didn't know what to say.
I still think about that moment sometimes because it made me believe in people in a way that I don't think I had expected. I didn't know the man. He didn't know me. He didn't know anything about my life. He didn't know that I was lonely. He just saw someone sitting alone, noticed it was their birthday, and decided to do something kind.
By the time I realized what had happened, he was already gone. But I remember him looking over at me while he was paying. I remember leaving the restaurant and feeling a completely different kind of happiness than I had felt when I walked in.
Someone had done something kind for me without expecting anything in return.
I think that's part of why I remember it so clearly now.
Because my life feels so different.
I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with all of this. I've spent so much of this entry explaining the different pieces of my life, and I still don't feel like I've actually summed up what is wrong. Maybe that's because there isn't one thing wrong.
I wish I could explain all of this in one sentence. It would be easier if there were one problem with one solution. I'm broke, so I need a job. I'm lonely, so I need friends. I don't enjoy my life, so I need to find things that make me happy. I don't know what I'm doing with my career, so I need to figure it out.
All of those things are technically true, but none of them actually explain everything.
It's like saying that Harry Potter is a series about wizards. Technically, that's true. But if someone asked you what Harry Potter is about and that's all you told them, you would have left out almost everything that actually matters.
That's how this feels.
I can say I'm struggling financially, but that doesn't explain the loneliness. I can say I'm lonely, but that doesn't explain why I'm so desperate to find a job that I actually care about. I can say I'm unhappy, but that doesn't explain why escaping into television or TikTok can feel easier than facing my own life. I can say I'm worried about turning 24, but that doesn't explain everything I've been carrying into this birthday.
They're all connected, even if I can't always explain exactly how.
I looked at the calendar recently and realized that my birthday is getting close enough that I can actually count down to it. Instead of feeling like something to look forward to, it feels a little like a countdown to a final exam I haven't studied for.
And I don't know what I'm supposed to conclude from any of this.
Maybe that's part of why I've struggled so much to write this entry. I'm used to thinking that a piece of writing should eventually arrive somewhere. There should be a point. A lesson. Some kind of realization that makes everything before it feel worthwhile.
I don't have that this time.
I have a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of problems. I have a lot of things I want to change. I have a birthday coming up, a career I haven't figured out, debt I don't know how I'm going to pay off, relationships that feel increasingly distant, and a life that doesn't look much like the one I imagined for myself.
I don't know how to make all of that into a neat ending.
So maybe I won't.