It Just Is

A couple of weeks ago a white supremacist, amatonormative Incident™ happened and it stressed me the heck out. I don’t want to go into the specifics of the Incident™, though I will share that it made me feel dejected, weary of my relational boundaries, and somewhat hopeless. Ugh, I can’t believe I worked so hard to get a tenure-track job, got the tenure-track job, got a part-time job on top of the tenure-track job, and then life still smacked in the face with this bs, I thought to myself. Who knew you can’t girlboss/nonbinaryboss your way out of systems of oppression??

To eschew self-destructive and unhealthful coping, I practiced these three strategies:

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44 Days

I signed a lease for an apartment in Cambridge last week! While I felt relieved after receiving the final confirmation email, the stress about moving itself soon sunk in: I have so much random sh*t strung about every nook and cranny of my apartment, I lack any sense of where to obtain boxes to pack this random sh*t once I get it together, and I still need to figure out how to attain furniture for my new place. I have told my friends over the past week or so that I feel stress adjacent – not stressed, because of my intensive use of emotion regulation strategies, though approaching stress, because moving blows.

On one level, I think I may feel stress adjacent because of just how much logistical effort moving entails. However, today, I made a to-do list of sorts to orient myself. Figure out where to get boxes. Ask about the parking situation at your apartment complex. Get rid of old clothes. Make a plan to procure furniture. Find a new hair stylist in the Boston area. Sacrifice your values and seduce a rich man of color to finance your life so you can afford a 1bed/1bath right on the Charles River, an apartment filled with books and far from the man himself.

When I paused to self-reflect on my stress adjacency today, I thought about the urgency I felt throughout my childhood.

Stress Me In

I love my college. The people act with consideration and compassion, the academics keep my mind alive, and the opportunities available continue to amaze me. But all of this – the social life, the challenging schoolwork, the myriad of commitments – comes with a cost: stress.

Does This GPA Make My Ivy League Application Look Fat? (College Post #2)

AP Bio: the bane of my existence.

An A- isn’t an A, just like failure isn’t success. If you can’t push yourself to manage family, extracurricular activities, and academics, you need to reevaluate your sense of self-worth. If you can’t resist the temptation of that romance novel five feet away from you, you do not deserve dinner today. These are some of my thoughts from the past few years, and if you’re a high school student, I can guess one of yours: if I don’t get into a good college, then I’m not smart. I’m not successful. I’ve failed.

Teenagers in High School – What I’m Really Tired Of

Guys, I’m tired.

I’ve been getting five to six hours of sleep for the past two weeks, constantly studying and completing homework assignments for school, and dealing with family drama on top of all of that. I’m not saying that I have the worst life ever. I’m not saying that there aren’t people who have it a hundred times worse than me. And I’m not saying that, overall, my life is bad – because it’s not. It’s pretty great.

All I’m saying is that I’m tired.

But the thing is, in high school, almost everyone is tired.

A Purely Personal Post in Which I Write About Books, the SATs, Life… etc.

Hi guys! I’ve decided to write this post to prove that I actually have a life, ha to share with everyone what’s going on in my life and why my updates have been so infrequent as of 2012. I really do want to write and blog and what not, but unfortunately I’ve been suffering from a severe lack of time. Trust me – whenever I have an idea to blog about, I write it on an electronic sticky note which I proceed to post on my desktop… right now, the sticky notes are starting to overlap each other. I literally cannot see my desktop background.

Child Abuse and Depression

Image via psyblogger.com

One of the least shocking yet most troubling consequences of child abuse is depression. Victims of child abuse are prone to suffer from this disease at some time in their life, either in recurring episodes or long stretches.

The reason I do not find this surprising is because it makes sense, to put it blatantly. As a child your brain is continuing to develop, so abuse introduces an influx of stress hormones that can potentially alter and rewire your brain in an abnormal way. I’m not a psychologist or a scientist, but even as a mere high-school student, I can clearly see the long-term negative effects of child abuse.

Removing the scientific aspect of abuse and focusing on the social angle, it remains obvious how child abuse causes depression. A myriad, even a majority of child abuse perpetrators are related to their respective victims. Loneliness and social isolation are key concepts of depression – and isn’t it true that your family is supposed to always be there for you? To listen to you and accept you as who you are? Unfortunately, some children do not have that luxury. As a result they suffer physically and mentally.

Though I had a blast on the cruise I went on recently, I immediately felt sad again once I returned home to certain members of my family. To ameliorate this I began reading The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs  by Stephen S. Ilardi. Here’s a quote I stumbled upon right at the beginning (page 32):

“Likewise, the protective presence of loved ones – which our forebears experienced for the better part of each day – gives the brain a strong, primal signal that we’re probably no longer in any immediate danger, so it ratchets down the stress response accordingly.”

This quote supplies evidence as to why victims of abuse possess irregular stress patterns. I’m sure others can relate to me when I say that I do feel like I’m in immediate danger in the “protective presence of loved ones”, and that my “stress response” actually shoots skyward during that time.

I digress. It’s important to remember that despite what I’ve written here, victims of child abuse are not helpless in the face of despair. I read, I run, I write, and I do many other things in order to fight depression. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.

Child abuse hotline: 1-800-4-A-CHILD

Misinterpretations

So I’ve been somewhat absent and probably will continue to be for this upcoming week due to exams. Don’t misinterpret me though, it’s not like I’ve quit blogging or anything – I’m just busy.

Speaking of misinterpretations, have you ever had that moment where you realize that something you’ve said or something you’ve done may have come off the wrong way, but it’s too late to change it? Like one time I wrote a note to my friend asking if he wanted to hang out, and somehow the meaning of the note became misconstrued to the point where he assumed I was asking him on a date. And my friendship with him ceased to exist from that point on…

Gotta love Cyanide and Happiness.

The true reason I decided to make misinterpretations the topic of this post is that recently I’ve been a bit stressed out. I’m a very, very, very nice guy – just ask any of my friends, they’ll tell you (wait… I have friends?) However, when stress starts to build up I can get a little snippy and sarcastic. But only a little bit! Like instead of saying “please pass the ketchup”, I’ll say, “does it look like I have time to dip this french fry in non-existent tomato sauce!? Hand over the ketchup, freak.” Kidding! That’s something Scarlett O’Hara would say, not me. (yes… I’m reading Gone with the Wind. Longest. Book. Ever. But not bad, actually.)

Anyway, have you ever had someone misinterpret you? I think people are assuming I’m slightly sardonic, but it’s only because of the four killer exams I have this week. Then again, after re-reading my posts about why high school relationships fail, it might not be just the exams.