Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: depression

Mental health is a health issue

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I may have to move mental health issues to the top of my list. I have been dealning with my mental health issues mostly by burrowing my head in the sand keeping my news input to a bare minimum.

Today, though, living in the Twin Cities made it impossible to avoid the most explosive and horrific news of the day. The killing of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent. I heard about it tangentially, and then I discussed it with several friends.

I’m outraged, furious, scared, and–numb. This year has been too much, and it’s been especially stressful for us Minnesotans because we’re being targeted by the federal government. There are several reasons for this, and I am frightened about the upcoming  governor’s election. While we vote Democratically on a federal level (though just barely in the last election, worryingly enough), we’re all over the map locally. We tend to split the vote, and the batch of batshit Republicans running for office, especially mayor, is making me very nervous.

These are dark days in this country. Our president just attempted a coup of a foreign country because he wanted their oil; he’s embroiled in nasty business (I mean, he always is, but this time, it’s especially nasty); and now, this.

It’s really hard to look back at the last year and not be filled with despair. I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t think it was going to go to hell in a handbasket so quickly and so starkly.

Early in 2024, I had to get my driver’s license renewed. When I went to the DMV in order to do so, I was pleasantly surprised to see that nonbinary was the third gender option (it had only been male and female before). We are one of the most progressive states in the country–at least the Twin Cities are progressive. Not so much so the rest of the state (like many states).

And yet.

My heart sank when I saw that third option. Why? Because I knew there was a very real possibility that we would have the return of a certain president as president once again, and he had made it quite clear that he would de everything in his power to discriminate against queer people of all different stripes*.

Nonbinary is not my chosen term, but if I were twenty years younger and if *gestures helplessly at the world around me*, I probably would use it instead of woman. Or maybe not. It doesn’t really fit me, but it’ll do in a pinch. I default to not calling myself anything, really. I don’t mind so much when others call me ‘she’ or a woman, but it’s not how I think of myself.


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The way my brain works

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My brain is weird. I’ve known this ever since I wsa a kid, but back then, I just thought it was that my brain was broken. My mom was a psychologist, but she also had very traditional Taiwanese ideas about, well, everything. She had definite ideas of what a girl child should be, and I failed miserably in every aspect. A girl should be demure, quiet, acquiescent, nurturing, always thinking of others, docile, and most importantly, she should never ever EVER be noticed. Ever!

It’s ironic because she was everything she told me not to be. Opinionated, athletic, sporty, and more masculine than not. She was just continuing the dysfunction that she learned in her own home, from her own mother who was also a raging hypocrite when it came to what she espoused girls/women should do and what she actually did.

If my mother had been able to break away from the idea that she had to be a wife and a mother, her life would have been so much better. Instead, she bought it hook, line, and sinker, and did her level best to make me as miserable as she was. I’m grateful that I realized at a fairly early age that I did not have to get married and/or have children. I’ve never wavered from that, and I’m profoundly glad that I, the most indecisisve and pushover of people, stood firm for once in my life.

What does this have to do with today’s post? Not much, but I just wanted to muse about it for a bit. Also, part of what I consider my broken brain is that I can’t for the life of me go from point A to point B in a straight line. I like to joke that I don’t do anything straight, but it’s true. Everything is interconnected in my brain, so I can’t just focus on one thing or the other.

I started teaching myself the Bagua Knife Form yesterday. I wasn’t going to do it until I finished teaching myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form, but, well, my brain said, “Here me out. What about now?”

I have taught myself roughhly three-fourths of the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I am pleased with how fast I’m learning it, but not entirely surprised. This is one of my favorite forms, and it was fairly easy for me to learn.

It’s the same as the Sword Form. That was the first weapon form I learned, and I stormed through it. I was so eager to learn the whole thing, and once I was done, I taught myself the left side in short order. I do need to do a bit of clean up on it, though.


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More (you know) about mental health

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I’m still trying to get my shit togetehr and my sleep back on track. I managed to go to bed by 2:30 a.m. last night–well, a quarter to three, which is miles better than what I’ve been doing in the past few weeks. I god a decent amount of sleep, but I’m still so tired. Oh, we got two to three inches of snow last night, but only an inch or so stuck around. Winter is not leaving without a fight this year. So, once again, I’m including a video of Prince singing Sometimes It Snows In April because homeboy (he was from here) knows about winter in April. It’s such a beautiful and melancholic song.

I don’t know if I–well, let me put it this way. I’m so tired. Physically and emotionally. I feel defeated and like there’s no reason to live. What’s the point? This country is fucked. Even if there is a country after this president is gone, it’s going to be unrecognizable. The first time he was president, iI had a bad feeling, but nothing like this time. Why? Because he has a chip on his shoulder and nothing to lose. He can do whatever he wants with very little consquences. Yes, the Supreme Court is doing some checking of him, but it feels very much like they’re slowing the bleeding–not stopping it.

This election showed a really ugly side of this country, and it has just broken me. I have never been a patriot, especially not since 9/11 and the aftermath. But I have never despised my fellow countrypeople as I do righrt now nor have I wished so much ill on them. I want them to feel the pain of all the shit this president is doing, even if they will never admit/know/acknowledge it’s his fault. He doesn’t care about them in the least, which is such a maddening thing. He’s like a cult leader in that they would do anything for him. He accepts this as his due and does not care if they get hurt in return.

My empathy has run out. I want his supporters to hurt the way he’s been hurting minorities in this country. I hate that I feel this way, but I can’t deny I do. I know they will be affected by many of his batshit decisions, but it’s not enough. I want them to know he is the reason for their pain.

It heartens me that there has been pushback by both Dems and Reps, but it feels like too little too late. Because here’s the thing. In order to have a reasonable discussion, both sides have to agree as to the parameters of said discussion. That’s not possible with this president because he’s in a world of his own. If the Republicans are willing to try to put a stop to some of his ideas, well, then that’s a step in the right direction.

It doesn’t help that the family dysfunction is what it is. I talked to my mother tonight, and I realized that I’m back to feeling depressed every time I talk to her. This was actually a not-bad converastion (in comparison to several other talks we’ve had recently), but I still brace myself every time I talk to her because there’s a chance that something will come up that I have to brace myself for.


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Mental health and more

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I am really working on my sleep, which has gone haywire since changing the time. THis is one of my pet rants, but can we please stop changing the time? I don’t care which we choose, but let’s just leave it the same all year round. My god. We have fake lighting. We don’t need to be beholden to the whims of the sun any longer. For fuck’s sake.

On the bright side, I’ve been getting a decent amount of sleep. On the not-so-bright side, it’s been at all hours of the day/night/morning. I am concerned. I am trying to drag my sleep schedule back to going to bed by 2 a.m. and getting up at 10. It’s not happening, though, and I’m just not happy with myself.

Let’s talk Taiji a bit. And Bagua. I’m focusing on those because they are my lifeline. Without them, I don’t know if I could .

Side note: There’s a new game out called The First Berserker: Khazan (Neople). It’s a soulslike, though the combat is likened more to Sekiro. I tried the demo for an hour, and I quit before even getting to the first boss. Hm. There’s an easy mode (someone mentioned it in the Discord), which I had not known. But I did play the demo, and I presume there was an easy mode in the demo? If so, wouldn’t I have chosen that? I don’t know.

Anyway. I am so sick and tired of soulslike relying on the parry and having bosses taht are brutal. It’s like they took the least-interesting thing from From games (to me) and made them the focus of the game. When I tried the demo, the scrubs could kill me in three hits or so. It took three hits to kill a scrub. This is actually something  people mentioned about the game–that the enemy difficulty is badly calibrated. Andy Cortez from Kinda Funny said that he dumped all his points into Strength to get the max with as little health as he could get away with, but it still took him two or three hits to kill the scrubs.

I found the combat to be grueling and not satisfying. I think I went with the greatsword because the other options are dual-daggers and dex. As we all know by now, I don’t do either. So it’s greatsword by default. I don’t know if there is any kind of magic in the game, but my hunch is no.

Every fucking review talks about how brutal the bosses are, but how they came to love the drutality. Here’s one from IGN that typifies that sentiment. Meanwhile, I’m summoning humans for Shadow of the Erdtree because I do not want to struggle for hours with a boss. I did that with the final boss of the DLC the first time around. Five hours over two days after getting the boss down four or five hits on my second try. Did I feel exhilirated after beating the boss? Yes. But it was so fleeting and then exhaustion set in. I was so numb by that point, I was mostly just glad it was over.


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The good and the bad

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Here we are at two in the morning once again, and I’m just starting this post. I have gotten into a bad rut with my sleep (and awake time), and while I know what the problem is, I can’t make myself change it. I end up frittering away so many hours during the day, and then only when I should be sleeping, do I buckle down to do what I should be doing.

Sigh.

I know this is part of my depression. I know my mental health is really shaky right now. I know I should be doing something about it (therapy), but I just can’t make myself. Much like the other issues in my life. I know what needs to be done, but I have such a hard time making myself do it.  Even when I know each step, I can’t make myself do it. I’m fighting myself, and it’s so hard.

Plus, my brain is having intrusive thoughts. Nothing too bad, but just thoughts that make it harder for me to sleep. The last thing I need is to have my sleep be more difficult than it already is. Oh, we did hav an inch or two of snow yesterday. That was nice. It was so light and fluffy. Most of it didn’t stick, and it’s all gone now, but it was a nice respite. We’re supposed to get flurries tomorrow, too.

I just feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. And that no one loves me. I know the latter is not true as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, but it’s still in my brain. Again, I know it’s lies. I know it’s the brain weasels. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel real.

I just looked at one of my issues with Comcast. And how it could actually be something I’m doing. Sigh. The solution (if it’s truly what I think it is) isn’t that big a deal, but it’s still a shift in my thinking and behavior. And it feels burdesome, even if it doesn’t end up being so. I’ll have to wait and see because it’s a billing thing, and I won’t know for sure for at least a week.I need enough time to gauge whether my efforts are working or not.

I am still working on my weapons, and it’s the one good thing in my life on the  daily. I mean apart from the people I love. It’s so damn hard, though. I just have this voice in the back of my head berating me for all sorts of things. It’s not as bad as it used to be, and I know it’s talking shit, but it’s still diffifult to ignore.


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Hanging on by a thread

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I’m tired. And depressed. And anxious. I know that I am in a bad way for several reasons. One, my sleep is terrible. I mean, it’s nearly the worst it’s ever been, and that’s saying something. I am trying to claw my way back to not completely off the rails, but it’s so hard. Here is my post from yesterday, meandering all over the place.

Another thing is that I’m wasting too much time not doing anything productive. It’s fine to spend some time playing video games, but not as much as I’ve been doing. I know that’s one way I self-medicate, so to speak, because it’s easy to numb myself out by doing another run (Balatro) or going a bit farther (Shadow of the Erdtree) and taking on one more boss (ditto).

By the way, I’m pleased that there are still people playing the DLC. I mean, I should not be surprised as there are still people playing every other From game I play. I can summon for any of the games, though not for every boss. And I get invaded with some regularity as well. Today, I was able to summon humans for most of the bosses I fought. This has been the case for the past few days as I’ve been cleaning up the DLC. Today, there’s only been one dungeon boss I’ve wanted to summon a human for and could not, but I do not blame people for not wanting to be summoned for that boss.

I am surprised that there was a summon for a boss I consider really blah, and it’s not easy to find. I’ve only had trouble with this boss on my melee character–none at all with my casters. It’s an interesting storyline, but, sadly, the two places you have to go to blow whistles in order to get to this boss are shit.

Briefly, there are these snake-like creatures that fall from the sky. One is a mage who can freeze you in place for several seconds while the others spawn and munch on you. The range is insane, and it homes so you have to ride/walk/run out of its reach. Which is impossible to do for me because I can’t gauge how far it’ll go. What did I do instead? Use the invisibility spell, Unsseen Form in order not to be seen by them. I’m wearing an armor set that muffles my footsteps so I don’t have to waste a talisman slot on the muffled footsteps talisman.

I zipped by all the munchy snakes, got to the whistle (eventually. It’s a maze and difficult to navigate), and blew it. Then I teleported back to the NPC/church so I could take on the boss. I got a human summon, and we managed to do it in one try. The human summon died right before the end of the fight, sadly, but I got the last blow as they died. So, once again, this was an easy fight as a caster.


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Life, liberty, and the pursuit of contentment

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In the last post, I was talking about some of the difficulties in my life creeping back in like depression and anxiety. I am fully aware that much of my negative feelings aren’t real, but that doesn’t make them any less painful. This was something I talked about with my last therapist. Some people think that if you know you have issues, that’s half the battle. I get it. You can’t do anything about your probelms if you don’t know/don’t think you have them. However.

On the other hand, it’s furstrating as fuck to know whtat my issues are, but not be able to do enough about them. I’m well aware that my brain is broken, for example. That doesn’t mean I know how to fix it.

I know I’m depressed. I know that my brain is fucking with me. I know that it’s lying to me. It matters not a whit. I still feel like shit and that nobody cares about me. Even though I know objectively it’s not true.

My brother was here today for a chat and dinner. It was nice to see him, and it reminded me that it’s not good to be completely isolated. I mentioned in the last post that I wanted to find a group of queer/genderqueer Asian people to chill with. It’ll probably have to be online, but it would be cool to find an in-world group. Except I can’t drive any longer–at least not to any great distance. I can drive to the grocery store, but that’s about. I have no peripheral vision any longer, which makes driving on the freeway fraught.

I also need to get my shit together in general. As I say that, though, I shake my head because what does that really mean, and is it even feasible? I have a general idea about the former, but not about the latter. I get overwhelmed when I think of everything I’d like to do to make my life better. And is it even worth it?

That’s how I know that I’m depressed. I no longer think being alive is a gift. I am back to thinking it’s a burden and that I’d rather just not be. It’s hard to explain that I do’nt want to die, exactly. I’m not suicidal, and I have no intention of taking my life.

I just…don’t have ambition to improve myself or my life. I feel a numbness in my soul that I recognize as deepening depression. I cringe at everything I saye or write because it all sounds/looks inane, boring, or bland to me. And that’s at its best.

I’m also not being able to sleep well at all. I haven’t been getting enough sleep, but admittedly, that’s partly because I’ve actually had to get up at certain times the last few days, but did not manage to go to bed any earlier. In other words, my sleep is fucked.

This was how my selep used to be before my medical crisis. I barely got 6 1/2 hours of sleep. Then, high on drugs in the hospital, I slept a solid eight hours or more a day/night. That continued after I went home for the following year.


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What else I need to do with my life

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With difficulty, I’m going to wrench myself away from talking about weapons, at least for one post. The reason is because I need to talk about something else important in my life–my mental health. It’s in the shitter, and I’m really struggling. There are many reasons for it, but I want to focus on a few. And what I want to do to combat the depression/anxiety.

My sleep has been so bad since–well  for over a year, but even more intensely since the time change. Today, I was going to get up at 11 a.m. so I could do my Taiji/Bagua routine before watching RKG (or RG in this case) stream the latest It Takes Two joint, Split Fiction, at noon. Instead, I set my alarm for noon, and was unpleasantly surprised when I looked at the clock.

I blame the time change, but it’s also that my brain is really unhappy right now. There are reasons for it, including not going out much. I mean, I never went out that much, but it’s been cut down even more since my medical crisis because I don’t feel comfortable driving. Just in general, but even more so at night and on the freeway. Obviously, this makes it hard to get out and do things, and I don’t feel comfortabel having people at my house.

That’s another thing. I need to fix things around the house. But every time I think of it, I feel discouraged and ashamed. I am so bad at cleaning. Even with someone who cleans every other week, the house is a mess. I need to make a list of things that need to be fixed, and then I have to tackle them one by one. I just don’t know if I can do it without feeling a ton of shame. In addition, I have to do several steps before I can get to the point of actually doing what I need to do.

Then, there’s the fact that  Ifeel isolated emotionally. I don’t feel like I am being a good friend, and I don’t feel that I’m maintaining my relationships well. In addition, I want to expand my community, whether online or off. I want to find other queer PoC, which isn’t easy to find. Throw in genderfluid, and it’s like looking for a unicorn. Also, when I say PoC, I mean Asian. That, of course, makes it even more difficult.

That’s the story of my life, though. I always have to be different, even when I really, really don’t want to be. And I don’t know how to find people who are similar to me in more ways than one. That might be a folly–looking for camaraderie where there is possibly none.


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A letter to my younger self

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For the first twenty-plus years of my life, I was a deeply depressed kid who didn’t want to be alive. I wasn’t suicidal, exactly, but I would not have cared if I died. I thought I was a waste of space and a blight on humanity. There are many reasons for this, but that’s not the point of this post. Suffice to say, that was not a great time in my life. I rarely like to think of it because it was so painful.

I hated myself back then. With the fiery passion of a thousand suns. No one could have been as mean to me (and believe me, they were very mean. I was a fat, neurodivergent, unhappy Asian kid in a very white suburb in the seventies and eighties) as I was to myself.

I look back at little me and have nothing but compassion for her. She was just trying her best in a world that was actively hostile to her. She had no idea how to be normal. She did find, through trial and error, mostly, a way to pass for normal. Ish. If you squint. From a very far distance. But it never matched how she felt inside.

There is talk of masking in the neurodivergent world.

Side note: I did not even have a whiff of a hint that I might be neurodivergent until I was in my thirties. Mid-to-late thirties. This is a shame. A BIG shame.

Masking is when a neuroatypical person acts like ‘normal’ in public so in order to get along with the normies. It’s exhausting when you have to be very careful of everything you say or do in order not to raise suspicion. It’s not only things such as fidgeting and being unaware of time (I don’t have either of those, by the way), but also things like having sensory issues and not liking things that are popular. I have both of these.

It toook me some time to figure out that racism existed. Same with sexism, and then homophobia/biphobia (once I realized I was queer). This is life in that we rarely have all the revelations at one time. But. I realized that I was of a different race and gender (well, the first time) when I was in my twenties. I wish I had realized more about myself at the same time. Plus, I also wish that I didn’t have it smashed into my face over and over again that I was a weirdo and what’s more, that I was a massive loser for being such a weirdo at a young age.

I first realized I was going to die when I was seven. Simultaneously, that was when I first wanted to die. Or rather, as I’ve said before, not wanted to be alive. Here is the letter I would write to that younger me.


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Luck be a Loki

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I’m taking a break from my multiple-post musings on other subjects because I wanted to ttalk about luck. My brother brought over his Tesla Cybertruck so I could get a ride in it. I brought up that I had to deal with my bank accounts being hacked (ugh), which made me think that I had used up my allotment of luck back in September of 2021 when I had my medical crisis. Back then, my brother joked that he should have bought lottery tickets on that day, but my counter-argument was that I had used up the family’s luck for that year.

At the end of last year, I started to have a string of bad luck that has continued through now. In talking about it with my brother yesterday, I mentioned that I had probably used up my portion of luck for life.

I will add that maybe I’m just in a very bad patch right now. But. It can stop any time now. Really. Here is a list of the bad things/annoying things that have happened to me in the last seven months or so.

1. I had issues with Comcast/Xfinity (no sururise) with how they reported my data usage. Which, I mean. It stayed steady at 10-15GB per month. Then shot up incrementally every month for several months until in November, they warned me that I had uped up my 1TB for the month. Um, what?!? I managed to ameliorate it by getting a new modem, but it’s still not fixed. In part because it’s impossible to get ana actual human being from the company to talk to.

2. I had one a tire puncture that led me to replacing all four of my tires. This was fairly easy to deal with, but quite the hit to the wallet.

3. My telephone line went out. And, again, I could not get an actual human being to talk to. The AI assigning me an appointment with a tech said it would be anytime between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on the upcoming Thursday (this was a Saturday). I woke up on that Thursday at 7:30 a.m., only to get a text saying the appointment would be anytime from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Grrrr…..

4. My sink handle broke. It was already jury-rigged together in a way that meant an extra step to turning it on and off. Around the same time, my garbage disposal broke. So I need a whole new sink.

5. I had to get a new laptop. This wasn’t bad luck so much as it was time, but I was trying to make my old laptop work for as long as possible. It actually lasted longer than I thought it would, but it was still a hit to the old wallet to replace it.

6. The personal tragedy happened that I still am not ready to talk about. This one is huge. It’s left a giant hole in my heart, and I still think about it every day. And it’s what sparked my depression.

7. Daylight Savings. I have never liked it, but I’ve always just rolled my eyes and moved on. For whatever reason, the latest one (in March) has really fucked with me. I wish we could just get rid of it altogether.


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