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Chronic Stress

June 21, 2022

I got drunk for the first time in my life. It was the first time I had ever experienced a drug-like state, and it was enchanting. I had a stark realization after that experience, because for the first time in my life I was in a relaxed state. I was completely unstressed and relaxed.

Some people might start attacking me here and say that wasn't the case, and I was imagining things. But the morning after I felt my body was better rested and my throat loosened dramatically. My voice dropped two octaves in pitch and I could easily speak from my chest. I couldn't feel the strain in my forearms of which I considered normal, and my legs felt more loose and responsive.

But I started to panic again, and I felt the normal tensions in my muscles. I felt my neck constrict and a lump form in my throat. My voice raised two octaves back up and my neck was in a state of permanent tension. Back to normal.

If you are someone who is very uppity and easily startled, you should probably get your stress levels checked. Please. I probably have stunted a lot of my physical growth throughout my childhood as a result of all the stress I had been enduring.

People genetically have different stress thresholds. Is it right to fault others for being stressed in a situation that you do not panic in? Perhaps. Perhaps the only thing that matters at the end of the day are results. It feels as if all the empathy of the world had been sapped away when I turned 18 years of age. (Such is the life of a man.) It's hard for others to comprehend that things can be worse for other people, perhaps because of the raw narcissism that has taken hold of this world.

And yes, I can easily recognize and recount a bunch of people who've lived worse lives than me and somehow came out unscathed or happy or successful or whatever. Whatever to not be a loser ranting about it in some random blog on Neocities or whatever. But, I'm still me. I still have to live with myself even after all the things others have gone through, you know? The things I have to remember, not you.

Perhaps it's the most important thing to keep a sense of humor amongst all things. I've been feeling a bit down lately. I've realized that my reality isn't as green as I'd like it to be. Hopefully if I continue to write things down, all the things on my mind on paper, they'd go away. Far, far away where I won't have to think about it or stress about it. But, we'll see.

But, more importantly, I'd like to talk about how I got to this state. Why are you still reading? I have no idea, this blog is really for me anyway.

How I got to this point of chronic stress

Childhood trauma.

That's pretty much how I found myself always stressed out and jumpity. Always. Ever since I was a kid I've felt this way, so it's been normalized as my state of being.

My mother was pretty tyrannical and controlling. Her father died when she was a newborn, and her step-father was rather an abusive individual. Her mother was often at work, so she didn't have any parents to rely on really. She was her siblings keeper, basically a parent for her younger siblings, so she never got to experience being a child.

But, people who don't have parents or have abusive parents tend to learn the wrong way to be parents. They say it takes three generations to break the cycle of abuse, and she was only the second generation.

My mother didn't have a good control of her emotions, just like her abusive step-father. But, that meant that I'd have to suffer whatever she felt that day. She was the kind of person to cover up her life by being a workaholic. Taking up work all the time, and piling it all over her to make her forget about anything at all.

But the stress would pile on, over and over. She'd go to work at a full-time job, and come home to do the dishes and cook a homemade dinner, because that's what good parents do in her mind. I didn't get to spend much time with her as a result, but what can I complain? She did the best she could. I loved her for what she did best: be a mother.

But coming home after an hour commute everyday and doing even more work at home comes with a price. She got extremely stressed out, and had to take it out somewhere. She took it out on us kids. She'd beat the living shit out of us whenever life would frustrate her. And when we couldn't do the simplest things, she'd get boiling violent.

The thing was, is that she was always violent and angry. It was like walking on eggshells around her. You'd have to be careful not to set her off, or you're fucked for the rest of the day.

Some days it'd get so bad she wished she never had kids at all. I'm sure every parent feels that way at some point, but to child me that was probably the most damaging thing she could have said to me.

Speaking to her was like always speaking to an angry and vicious customer at a fast food restaurant. You'd do your best to keep your voice as submissive as possible and avoid confrontation by any means. Though, I didn't have any manager to defer her to. And, it was legal for her to beat the ever living shit out of me or threaten to kill me/starve me/do whatever to me.

But she loved me. That's why she took on all the stress. And that's such a weird thing to accept. She stressed out, took her violence out on me, screamed at me, all because she loved me. As a young man, I understand where she was coming from. But as a five year old, it was hard to understand. The only thing I saw was the adult I relied on wished I wasn't born, and wanted to throw me out. I isolated myself from everyone as a child.

My father was neglectful. He was lazy. But it wasn't without reason. Everytime he did something my mother would come in and tell him how he's a failure and how he's wasting his time and how he should be doing something else. And, everytime he did that something else my mother would come in and say the same thing.

If you were in my father's shoes, what would you do? I realize now I'd do exactly what he did, and that was to escape. I'd escape somewhere else. For him, it was movies. He'd watch TV the moment he got home until it was time to eat, and then promptly go to sleep. Sometimes he'd go on buying sprees on online shopping, which was beginning to take off in the mid 2000s. It was all a form of escapism.

My father did try to spend time with me when I was young, but it felt constricting. I played tennis with him a few times, but he'd treat me the way my mother treated him. Always nitpicking, always trying to get me to do it better. I couldn't just hit the ball, I'd have to hit it right. I'd have to stand right, swing the tennis racquet right, or he'd get frustrated and angry. He'd tell me that I wasn't listening to him, and that I should give up. He'd treat me like I was a dumbass to even try and hit the damn ball. So I gave up on trying.

I asked him when I was older, and apparently he said that his nitpicking was a result of my mother's influence to try to get me to hit better. My mother said I needed to improve faster, so he did that to me. I'm not sure, I think it all backfired. I felt like a total failure at everything in their control (which was everything).

My mother was a workaholic, and my father just wanted to escape.

My maternal grandma would take care of me over the summers, but she'd always tell me to pity my mother. She said to help clean up around the house and do chores so my poor mother wouldn't have to. My father didn't do many chores, perhaps because he was lazy, perhaps because everytime he'd do them my mother would complain, yell, and then get violently angry. Looking back, maybe my mother wanted to be the martyr of the family.

My paternal grandfather caught dementia when I was young, and my maternal grandfather died when my mother was a baby. I didn't have any male role models in my life. My uncles were all distant and, well, one even molested me.

At school, I was being taught all the dangers of being male. At home, nobody was there to show me how to be male.

I didn't make that many friends at school. I distanced myself from everyone, and I'm not sure why to this day. I think that was around the time the abuse started to worsen. Maybe as a natural reaction to being overly stressed I distanced myself from others. I stuck to books and academics, things I knew at least I was good at. Things that were beyond my parents' control.

Because on top of all that, they were big control freaks. Everything I did under their supervision had to be done perfectly or not done at all. It was the Oedipal complex of my mother combined with my father's intolerance for anything less than perfect despite not doing much at all.

Just me washing dishes would garner attention and critique. I'd be told I was doing it wrong, violently pushed away, and then my mother would wash the dishes for me. She'd tell me to go away and play video games.

And that I did. I played video games for six hours a day every single day starting from the fourth grade onwards. Video games were my only solace. The only place I had control of, the only place I could live a life. They say the number one thing that gives people happiness is a sense of control. Well, that was the only place I could find it. My mother saw that, but she saw that I was happier there. So she encouraged it. Being a good mom meant her kids were happy, and everywhere else it looked like I was depressed.

So that was my life. Waking up. Going to school. Coming home. Playing video games. Getting barked at. Eating. Sleeping.

In all honesty, looking back, there's no way a decent human being could have formed out of all that. I was a people-pleasing gamer. By the time I was in middle school, I had invested all my socializing efforts into people-pleasing to stop my mother from her violent outbursts. My times of enjoyment were the times I got to play games, and to get that I'd have to negotiate with my mother not to take a hammer to the computer screen.

My heart goes out to all those with similarly afflicted. That's why I like gamers. Most hardcore gamers have experienced traumatic childhoods. Most kids who spend their lives on computers probably had neglectful and abusive parents too. That's why I watch out for the kids.

I try to stay positive as much as possible. I always smile. But sometimes the conditioning gets to me.

Kids bullied me a lot in middle school, probably because I looked weak. I wasn't 100lbs in the 8th grade. I was constantly stressed and never grew appropriately. Plus, genetically I would have a late puberty, or something to that effect.

Girls found me gross to look at. I was physically ugly and repulsive. The only real escape I had was video games. School hated me. Parents hated me. What would you do as a middle schooler? Why play sports when you're a dumbass for even trying? Why try at anything at all when whatever you do sucks?

In high school, I joined the marching band. But the demands became too much. I was a wuss. I was weak. I couldn't handle the rigor of marching band practices and the expectations to play great. I quit in a year. But I made friends there. Friends I don't think I'll be able to forget in this lifetime.

I learned in high school, that I wasn't the only one with issues at home. So many others had issues, and I was just one of many. So I became a lot more positive-looking. I tried my best to put a smile and be happy. Because, well, everyone else was too.

But I never went anywhere outside of school. I felt an obligation to serve my parents' needs first, which was to have us at home to support them emotionally after a day of work. Whatever the hell that meant. Or maybe, I really just didn't want to see other people.

Because at that point of my life, the physical symptoms of social anxiety started manifesting itself. I would gag and puke and feel sick to my stomach around other people. I found physical difficulty to even look people in the eye and say "Hello."

I think most people underestimate the power of a support system. When people encounter troubles, they usually have someone to tell. They have a support system in place that'll listen to their troubles. A port for the weary, really. I didn't have that. So as a result, my tolerance for storms was incredibly low, maybe even embarassingly low. I couldn't handle that much trouble in my life, or rather, I couldn't handle that much more trouble in my life.

Perhaps, I should even be dead at this point. I had attempted a few times in high school. I was really done with trying to live anymore. But I kept on going, for some reason. Perhaps it was all the video games/anime/manga I was consuming, where the theme of the story was to never give up.

I escaped to anime/manga around 2014. I was just going from one thing to another, video games, to anime, to manga. Just escaping to these beautiful narratives of a lovely life. Slice-of-life was obviously my favorite genre, because it was a life I'd never get to live.

I never dated anyone, so I watched romcoms.

I never got to go outside, so I watched shounen anime.

I never talked to anyone, so I watched drama anime.

And so on...

I had a group of high school friends, but I never got close to them. Maybe I never trusted them. Like I never trusted my parents. Like I couldn't trust my parents.

I just realized that in my life, I never really got close to anyone. Nobody really knows me. And, guess what? It's like that everyone else too. Oh well. There's a sense of me that just wants to spill out the terrors of being alive, but the self-actualization to realize that it's the same for everyone else.

Everyone else goes through bullshit and stress. The only question is how you get up from it. But therein lies the difference. The support structures aren't there for someone like me. They were there for my little sister though. You know why? Do you really want to know why? Would you be willing to accept the real reason why?

Because people flocked to her. When she was in school, people flocked to her. People didn't come to me. Do you know why?

Because she was beautiful. I was ugly.

We grew up in the same environment, the same genetics, everything. But she got the support she needed from her environment. I was tossed away.

Am I bitter about it? No. I'm more bitter about the fact people refuse to accept the truth of it. But it's the life of things. Pretty people are going to get people chasing after them. Ugly people aren't. It's just the reality of things. Nothing to do with personality, environment, anything. It's just raw luck whether or not support will be given to you.

The sexual abuse I went through by my uncle. The trauma from my mother. My father's neglect. Nobody providing any support I needed in my life. No adult willing to believe my story. When I turned 18, was it any surprise I was bitter?

And that I was permanently stressed? I had nobody to talk to. I just had my mother consistently barking at me. How are you supposed to live like that? I attempted again when I was in college. I had stayed home out of some Pavlovian conditioning from my mother, thinking I wasn't ready for the real world. My mother's sweet words told me to stay home so I can be her emotional tampon.

I finally moved out this summer. I finally had the time to reflect on what's stressing me out. I feel like I'm being watched my every move. Every. Single. Thing. I. Do. I can feel my mother breathing down my spine. Just waiting to pounce on me to bark at me and tell me I'm such a fucking failure. And she'll do this out of pure love.

I miss my father. I don't miss my mother. I can feel her just breathing down my spine. It's no wonder I can't relax anywhere I go. I can feel myself just losing control of my life. There's just nothing I can do at this point but to die, it feels.

But what of it? I'm just going to turn out to be a loser. I'm turining 22 in July. I'll just be another young, male loser like so many across the internet. A bunch of fatherless losers.

What now?

Well, all we can do now is cope with such a shitty childhood. I'm trying to get rid of the stress. One of the ways I've experimented is taking cold showers and meditating. I've also started eating healthier and tried to treat myself out more (like ice cream!) I started exercising and going to the gym more often, so there's that.

I read somewhere, that writing a list of what stresses you out can help. So I'll do that now:

• past sexual abuse
• past verbal abuse
• current verbal abuse
• school
• workplace
• pleasing coworkers
• pleasing bosses
• pleasing upper management
• pleasing older brother
• pleasing little sister
• pleasing my cousins
• pleasing the stranger down the street
• pleasing whoever I meet
• pleasing you, the reader actually. but I'm working on that
• pleasing random 4chan posters by modifying what I have to say
• pleasing random reddit posters by trying to get upvotes
• pleasing my mother
• pleasing my father
• pleasing my uncles
• pleasing my aunts
• pleasing my grandmother
• being alive

And so on. That's my current list. I think I'm realizing where it's all gone fucked. I keep trying to make people happy. I keep trying to please people instead of do whatever the fuck I want.

This blog was one of those steps towards not pleasing people. In fact it's probably repulsive to read. I know. But these are my raw, unfiltered thoughts. The dirty laundry I don't show anyone. I think it's good I started this blog. I can figure out what the fuck is wrong with me here.

I can post about gender theory or whatever weird incel-esque shit I come up with. I can just be myself, whatever the fuck that means.

Well, it's getting late. I'm going to just post this and call it a day. Thanks for reading, whoever got this far. Lmfao.

Cheers,
Lanhful