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What's a battle that nobody knows you're fighting?
The "nobody" in the title doesn't have to be literal -- it can be a battle that very few people know about. The important thing is that it's mostly hidden.
What is the struggle?
Is it hidden by choice?
Do you want more people to know about it? Why or why not?
This seems like the type of question that could benefit from an "anonymous" posting mode.
This is why it might make sense to keep 1-2 invite codes for yourself: To post from a “throwaway” account.
As a side note, I love how a username actually stands for someone in this community, as in there are many recurring/recognizable people here. That’s a rare setting in today’s (public) internet, I feel like, and not wanting to post due to this is, IMO, a good problem to have.
How do you get invite codes though?
Each user has 10 invites, just go to https://tildes.net/invite
I don't.
Maybe I haven't earned mine or maybe they have been taken away.
Looks like you just joined last month, I think they get refreshed by Deimos every so often so last time probably happened before you joined.
I know it's only April and each year is a smaller and smaller part of our total life...
Still, its 2026 now :)
On the subject matter you're probably correct. <3
Oh then in that case I'm surprised! You might message Deimos and see if he can get you some invites
My finals
The start of the quarter on my end here sadly
There are days I gaze into the abyss and consider letting go.
I won't. I can't. But even as I try desperately to call others back from the darkness, I still hear the call of the void myself. And I'm tired enough it seems reasonable.
Again, I won't. But I don't think anyone knows that it's there but me.
A couple of months back I expressed something about suicide in the monthly mental.health topic and you came out in support of my life.
I won't exactly do the same. I just want to let you know that it's ok to stare into the void and in my opinion you are entitled to decide whatever you want, it is your life after all. You may even make a mistake about it.
Of course one kind of mistake can only be made once.
However! I'm glad that you are around. I've caught some glimpses of your life and I understand it is hard, but also fulfilling and full over the brim with meaning and meaningful relationships.
I do wish for you to find ways of rest and recharge and maybe if you do, your face offs with the void will come more seldom and feel even less serious
I promise I know myself well enough to know I'm not going to give in to the call. I just do hear it.
I appreciate you and am glad you're here as well
I saw the void head on when I worked as a medic back in 2011. Stared right into it cause I was too dumb to look away and thought that I was somehow stronger than all my peers. I was not, I am not, I’m just me and I need to lie to myself like everyone else to keep carrying on because thats called coping.
Its just knowledge that I carry around now. Ive seen it, I know whats there, and I know not to look at it. Thats the best I can do.
I find a bit of relief in an optimistic nihilism sort of way.
I try that too but sometimes it just feels like lying.
Sometimes its effortless though. Sometimes I just feel fine for no reason at all and everything is easy. Wish every day could be like that
I feel this very deeply and think I find a slight relief in the same way (the optimistic nihilism way you mentioned)
I also want to note to any readers that I'm also not in danger and not going to do anything.
But I'd be lying if I didn't say, for a number of reasons, that sometimes I hear it calling too
I was watching a superb interview with a journalist / professor who chronicled her trials of being caregiver to her mom with dementia + sexist patriarchal father + brother in his 50s struggling with schizophrenia for decades, into her book. She definitely understood that call of the void, and said one time she was driving her family and had an intrusive thought of maybe just crashing it into the hill. (Another, English interview about the book)
It's like being in a zombie Apocalypse, but you have one gun with one bullet left. Sometimes it's a weird kind of comfort and source of strength for "not today, today let's keep going".
I actually have a big one but there are many many reasons why I can’t discuss it here, the top of which is that it can hurt someone I love dearly.
I do want someone to talk to about it. For what it’s worth, I am doing a pretty good job of resolving my feelings on it and hopefully sometime soon I will be able to make a plan to resolve it. Tomorrow I actually will have someone to talk to about it but they will not likely be able to give me the kind of support I am really looking for.
For what it’s worth, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, so feel free to DM me if you want to talk about anything you can’t really or don’t want to discuss IRL.
(This is directed at any- and everyone reading. No pressure, though, just throwing it out there. :-))
I appreciate the gesture. In reality though, after sitting and thinking about it for a while, I decided that my reasons for not telling my sister about it were dumb. Im going to call her when she wakes up later today.
Ooooh let us know how it went? :D
I'm getting older, y'all, and the invisible battle is "ADHD vs many many things I should have been doing all along that i haven't but I'm still hard to motivate and still have zero persistence".
So far I've been able to coast by, but the real world equivalent of technical tech has stacked up, and the aging human body gives no quarters for your mental health / neurodivergences. I'll spare the long list, it's just a list of every darn thing adults with regular executive functioning have been doing all along.
Oh, and aging parent (singular. Memory Eternal to mom). But as normal, the girl child physically closest to aging parent, in this case my sister, is taking the heaviest brunt so I don't have any grounds to moan.
If it's any consolation, and I'm guessing it is not, all those things aren't true.
Just like they weren't true when you were younger.
Although I am sure you are behind in some ways compared to the norms what they don't tell you is that no one keeps up to all of them and some of them are contradictory anyway (just like the "straight hair vs. curly hair" dichotomy of not being pretty exists for girls and women).
I am however not saying that you haven't failed in spectacular (or small!) ways compared to your peers because if your ADHD, I am just saying that the gap isn't as big as you think. But of course you probably think a lot so that also makes the gap more noticeable!
:) this is a good reminder, I'm not just comparing myself to a fictitious neurotypical version of myself, but an even more fictitious "idealised" version of everyone combined.
Example, what if the other version of me have better X Y and Z yes, but are in (say) credit card debt because they don't have my ability to get bored of gambling, or have significant sleep debt because they lack my ability to to tune out the world?
Funny enough just yesterday I had a conversation with my father. Some things were more practical but my parents are also a bit frustrated with the communication side of things.
And that makes sense - I don't want to tell them they've contributed to my trauma by accidentally loving me for who I am not. They're not bad people and don't deserve the guilt from learning that. And telling them wouldn't improve the situation either. As much as I'd like to be open about my feelings it would never provide the relief or sense of it being 'settled' in the way I'd want it to.
But it is painful.
There's also been a recent wave of feelings that I'll never find a partner. But I'm not in a position where I can express that feeling to those who actually understand me the most. Which creates a certain loneliness.
I just had therapy this Monday but perhaps I should plan another session before my feelings catch up with me.
You didn’t outright say it but you left some hints so I will just outright ask; are you trying to imply you’re some flavor of queer? If so I have lots of experience in all of those feelings.
In regards to feeling like you will never have a partner I like to put things this way; the world is secretly full of freaks. Your local clergy? They are kinky as hell. So no matter how weird or unattractive you think you are, there are people who are attracted to you. They just can’t let you know for a variety of reasons. You’re sexy even if nobody’s told you that yet.
Unfortunately the more you feel like you’ll never find a partner the more likely it is to become true. But obviously you can’t just stop feeling things; you have to work your way through them. Ultimately you’re already on a good path if you are seeing a therapist about it. If you really are queer, though, I would highly suggest getting some help finding a therapist who ideally is that same flavor of queer or has a great deal of experience with that audience, as they will be able to pick up on a lot of nuance that might be missed out on. Generic advice can only go so far.
I had felt that way for the greater part of a decade before I met my partner so if you want to DM me to let things off your chest, feel free.
Thank you, you're probably pretty close in some sense, and I've noticed that I probably have a pattern of self sabotaging on that front. :\ It's something I'm working on, though rather difficult. Some people in my life have made a real art out of crushing some parts of me so sometimes I still notice I've lacked a few pieces during picking myself up.
I assume you’re young. Growing up means gaining independence. And independence means telling people to fuck off. 😎
That doesn’t necessarily mean cutting them out of course, but the path to happiness requires you to advocate for yourself. Fortunately that is a lot more nuanced and complex a topic than anyone can fully convey. The more you move forward the more you will figure it out. And, hey, at least now you know you have one more person rooting for you!
Yeah... The question made me reflect.
It's not any one thing; it's the aggregate of all the little things, coupled with a social context that punishes asking for help.
Before anyone makes a helpful comment about how I really earnestly should reach out to the folks that would normally make up a support network, I have. The responses are platitudes, unfulfilled promises, and weaponized incompetence.
I'm in a rough spot, I know it. I just need to keep digging deeper.
The people in my life know about my recent struggles with separation, infidelity, and navigating being recently single.
What I don't talk about is that I'm terrified of being alone for the rest of my life. I'm not looking forward to jumping into the dating scene again, I never had good experiences with it. I said it before, but every relationship I had before my last one ended before three months.
I'm lucky to have my son, but I still want to find companionship and a loving relationship, and as time marches on that will likely only become more and more difficult to achieve.
I'm constantly in a battle with myself over feelings of insecurity, imposter syndrome, and general dissociation with reality. I think it's something I've always dealt with, to a certain extent, but definitely the tendency to dissociate got worse in my late 20s/30s. I've always had a tendency to set myself up for failure to a certain extent, knowing that without lofty goals I will feel too comfortable to be ambitious. But that comes along with actually failing to do things over and over, and having a laundry list of things I wished I achieved that grows ever longer with each passing year. That and the weight of responsibility, finances, family, friends.......it's to the point where I've had to stop myself from buying cigarettes a few times recently, when I haven't smoked at all since I was 18(36 now).
That isn't to say I'm not happy or not generally in a good mental place, it's just that work stress has been higher since I changed departments, and I don't really jive with my new team, but there's nothing to be done about it except suffer, since I care about my finances too much.
There's also just......the only term I can come up with is loneliness, but not in a romantic sense like most people think of. I'm very happily married, with one kiddo and another on the way. It's more that at my age....conceptually, I thought that how I grew up, how my parents had their siblings with kids, all their friends with kids, and low stress, easy financial environment at the peak of prosperity before 01/08(and everything afterwards) that I thought "I'll have this". And then I just.....don't, really, and that makes me lonely. Fortunately at least one of my friends has a kid now, but my closest friends are all childless, and it just makes me really sad. I feel like over time they we'll diverge, with me not having as much opportunity to play games, hang out, etc etc.
So yeah, that's me...constantly trying to swallow all the......for lack of a better term.....microtraumas? All the job woes, all the financial instability, all the rejections, all the failures....that I've encountered through my entire life that my brain won't let me forget, to where even now when I should feel accomplished and fine I'm just......not. Maybe this comes across as more negative than I intended, I'm a pretty positive person all things considered, I guess that's what I'm fighting to keep hold of.
I have a lot of anxiety around social performance. I see how group dynamics work when in a social gathering of several people (think 7+ maybe), where not everyone can realistically get a word in. Or perhaps we're seated at dinner and it just makes sense for conversations to be between 3-4 people seated together instead of yelling across to hold conversations. I see that as it becomes clear who is great at starting, receiving, and continuing conversations, that they have more conversation seemingly directed their way. I'm not great at asking questions and I'm not great at continuing conversations, ie. I respond when asked but either phrase the answer in a way that doesn't invite more conversation, or don't follow up with a question. And of course I'm not a "social" or even people person by any means, yet it feels so, so uncomfortable as groups settle and I'm left out permanently listening. I prefer listening, but in certain groups that just means being excluded entirely.
And to make it all worse this was a touchy topic between my ex and I before the breakup. I don't think I'll ever forget when she gave me pointers and rebuked me on specific things I said on our night out with her coworkers when I thought I was doing okay. And to her credit one of the reasons for the breakup was because she realized she couldn't stop wanting me to be a certain way and that it was not good for me to keep trying to meet these expectations. But the thing is, with this very specific situation - the topic of not feeling excluded and "fighting" for a seat at the table of social gatherings - I'm actively unhappy with times when I do fail that game and end up being the quiet passive participant. This happens in online Discord calls between acquaintances / friends-of-friends activities, too.
Anyways, I've been trying to talk about this with a few people, even to the point where I apologize that I'm not good at this whole socializing thing, and no one but my ex agrees that I'm not good at it. Maybe it's because it's rude to tell someone "yeah I agree, you suck". I really don't want to apologize to try and make people go easier on me with their judgment in this regard. I just don't want people to go home after interacting with me a few times at dinner and thinking that I'm not really interested in gatherings and don't need to be invited to the next one. Or maybe people don't realize I have such a big problem with larger groups? I really appreciate when folks who are much better at socializing notice this and key in on the fact that I'd love to participate, I just find it difficult to start, and will direct conversation my way.
I am a quiet person a lot of the time too. It took me a while to feel comfortable at social gatherings, especially with people I wasn't close with. Gaming was a good way for me to socialize, as there was always something to talk about. Here I am several years later, and I still hold a weekly game night, but now the game itself is very little of what we talk about. I feel confident that I can have an enjoyable evening just chatting with people now, which would have terrified a younger me. Small consistent practice builds your conversation skills better than any specific advice I think.
I also need you to know that even if you don't say much, that doesn't mean people won't enjoy your presence. I would much rather be with people who can communicate clearly when they need to than someone who just talks endlessly about nothing. And there may be people who think the opposite, and finding friends who appreciate you as you are is key.
I still say less than most other people in conversations, but I know that is okay. Some people like to talk more to get things out. I don't, and maybe you don't either.
Don't let one bad relationship get to your head.
This is probably an overshare I should delete later.
Anxiety surrounding the fact that I left a prior job because I was extremely unhappy and also to take time and reset life and truly have improved both mentally and physically since as I have worked on myself.
However due to many reasons plans I had for moving got mega postponed and it's tough and something I have never navigated on my own, especially trying to sell a place I live in and there's so much to tackle with all of that still so I will be where I am a lot longer probably
I also unknowingly picked a time to leave (a couple of years back) that ended up being awful timing. Now the job market and the searching process are absolutely 10x worse than before. I have minimized my budget so I can try to move before getting a new job however, despite having lots of savings I have burned through a decent amount and watching the numbers continue to decrease is anxiety-inducing regardless (mega privileged position tho I know)
My neurodivergence plays into all of this too. I haven't been motivated to look for anything new, it all feels too overwhelming and now when I do look for something I will have a big gap in employment and so on.
I have enjoyed my time out of the rat race and probably wouldn't trade it for anything given that my mental health is so much better (still plenty of issues but I don't dread waking up every day now) but my brain still wants to beat me up for not gritting my teeth and staying for the income. Hindsight is a mofo I guess
The days feel like they go by so fast now and that I am just not making the progress I need to to reconfigure my life quick enough and it all just feels like a mess
Oh boy I can feeeeeeel the anxiety floating from my screen into my eyeballs reading this. I can super identify with what you're going through. If your neurodivergence strategy happens to be "avoidance" like mine it could become a death spiral.
It's not really possible for me to be both mentally healthy and a good father. Up until now I'm prioritizing the latter but at some point, and that point may be now, the former may implode myself and take my family with it.