I'm fucked up at 15.

[Nixiam]

I'm awash in incredible wisdom and confusion at 15 (fucked up)

I was a little worried that my problems are miniscule in comparison to other users here, but I think it would be good to get this off my chest in TDS rather than in P&S.

I'm Nix, age 15. Male. Human.

I have it pretty okay, to be honest. Middle class family, free public education, all that and a bag of chips. Early on I was blessed with experiencing some verbal and physical abuse from my biological father. I hardly blame him, he did love me. It really wasn't so bad, but my father was terminally ill with colon cancer. When I was born the doctor told him he had 6 months, but he went another 8 years instead.

When I was 8 years old, my father passed away. It happens to a lot of people, but not nearly enough that I can make a strong connection with others my age. He was 29 years old.

And while I feel this is not so much a problem and can be handled with therapy, I also suffer a couple of his traits. I have chronic depression. I've taken anti depressants but none seem to work besides opioids. My mother takes zoloft and it works fine for her, but I eventually stopped taking mine after 6 months.

I am heavily undermedicated for my anxiety and for depression as I have trouble with doctors. Some just aren't willing to prescribe appropriate doses of certain medications for risk of suicidal side effects.

I can understand.

I am a very sensitive person, it isn't at all hard to hurt me. I have low self confidence and am very self concious about myself. I tend to compensate by using an ambiverted esque facade.

I was borderline obese as a child. Not anymore, still slightly pudgy being 5'10 and a buck ninety.

Of course I got called names. I was in a very trashy part of town.

I live with my mother and stepfather whom my mother remarried after the divorce of my father in 2005 and his death in 2009.

My step dad is belligerent to say the least. He doesn't say sorry, he doesn't admit when he is wrong, he starts screaming matches (not with me, I am incredibly docile and reluctant to argue unless he is dead wrong or unethical).

If I do something wrong I am grounded for extended periods of time. Over a homework misunderstanding I was grounded for 9 months. I just recently got off of a 7 month punishment for another misunderstanding when I was texting some friends at an unreasonable hour.

When I got my stuff back I found everything was broken. Tablet, computer, mp3.

Only one worked which is what I use to post.

It wasn't what I got taken away that hurt, it was the animosity and the thought that I was in trouble because I didn't explain my side of the very, very minor crime which was texting all night.

My step grandmother hates me. Two years ago my sister accused me of pervertedly touching my other (four year old at the time) sister. Needless to say it was quite impactful since I was entirely innocent and she just wanted some "harmless" drama.

My stepfather really thought I had done it and he refused to talk to me for a couple months.

My mother (who I am vey close to) knew something fishy was going on. She took my side and we got it all resolved.

My step father still holds a grudge to my sister for telling such a sick and absurdly twisted lie.

I didn't mean to make this sound like a "oh pity me give me attention because I need help" thing. I really am not one to seek that from people and the only reason I want help now is due to the encouragement of other bluelight users.

I have had several drug dependencies but no addictions yet due to some semi reliable method of spaced usage between opiates.

My DOC is hydrocodone which I have a prescription for since I have never taken meds from people who need them.

My mother is in pain every day of her life. She has a kidney condition which makes her organ act like a sponge and holds thousands of stones. I constantly feel I am utterly helpless.

She remains semi happy because she takes fentanyl patches which cut the pain by over half.

On the bright side I enjoy crafts, carpentry and welding. I want a career in pharmacology. I live for mind blowing philosophical discussions that come about from time to time. Not the redundencies.

All in all what I would like to ask is how would I go about not taking things to heart? What are my options? How do I become more content? I have a psychologist, but we only ever do talk therapy.

I completely understand if this is a waste of a perfectly good spot for a better thread, but I am very frazzled.

I use drugs as an escape. Needlessto say I have pent up frustration and resentment. I do not pop pills to spit in anyones face, but rather pills and pot are the best therapy I have ever had.

I am not good son, but I promise I am not a bad one.

Your friendly neighborhood Nix.

 

[Jabberwocky]

What's going on with your life right now my friend? It must be so hard having to juggle your life, even just your internal life, at your age. Doctors, especially psychiatrists, seem to give very poor treatment to teenagers, as it is so often assumed they can't handle themselves. Shit, you've had enough life experience by this point to know a thing or two.

Don't sell yourself or your struggles short! I have experienced some pretty fucked up things, but I had nowhere near your experience with REAL LIFE at your age. Not that I was sheltered by any means, but I hadn't had such first hands experience with physical abuse, the loss of a, even if very abusive, family member. In my culture we are taught to be tough and strong, especially as young males. Yet it was not until I learned to be kind and gentle with myself that I was really able to work through my resentments.

At your age I deal with trauma and my mental health issues by immersing myself in school, work and what I saw as coming to define my young individual identity. Stuff like welding, crafts and carpentry can be much more than just hobbies eventually, and in that you find joy and some sense of purpose in them such activities will provide you with a good grounding.

I changed a lot into my mid twenties from where I was at as a 15 or 16 year old - I think most of us do. With age things got better with me. You clearly have the right intentions and your head, despite your struggles, is in the right place. If you just keep that will alive I think you will improve with age too. I grew out of a lot my issues in youth. There was a lot of work I did to, but there is something that clicked in my head around 25 that, hard work alone, wouldn't have allowed me to accomplish in life without.

I think it had to do with something like feeling better about being who I was, even if I hadn't figured that quite out yet.

What kind of philosophy are you into? That's something of a love of mine as well.

 

[Nixiam]

^Thank you for replying.

I'm just overly emotional. When I get hit, I get hit hard. More than anything I need people who understand. Not any professional shrink who has never done drugs or dealt with loss that insurance pays 300 bucks a session for.

I'm interested in the majority of philosophical debate. Ethics and it's branches, Ontology, the Epistemology of everything. I admire Plato, as well as his mentor Socrates. Y'know, the life unexamined and all that. I like eastern schools and western schools. Daoism and personal philosophy. As well as the more unheard of ground breaking ones, which are few and far between.

Thank you for relating to me, that is all I can really ask for.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I'm happy to do it! It's the least that you or anyone else deserves. You are soooooo not alone in this. We all have our struggles, and they are no less legitimate for any one of us. It's all just details. Our struggles make us who we are, or at least we can use them to.

My favorite Taoist quote is "He who speaks does not know; He who knows does not speak." Way too much meaning packing their there, as you can imagine

I think my favorite school or philosophy is the Frankfurt School, particularly people like Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin. I also love environmental philosophy, particularly deep ecology and Næss' work. Given my interests in harm reduction and drug use, my interests these days lay more in post-humanism thinkers.

You may enjoy reading these: Post-humanism, addiction and the loss of self-control: Reflections on the missing core in addiction science and Harm reduction as a complex adaptive system: A dynamic framework for analyzing Tanzanian policies concerning heroin use

 

[Nixiam]

Thank you for the reads! Certainly interesting. I have yet to learn myself in post humanism ideas but I get the underlying concept behind it. Almost spiritual.

 

[Jabberwocky]

There's nothing like the multiverse! What do you mean by spiritual in this context?

 

[Nixiam]

Something beyond human. Not necessarily mystical, but explainably phenomenal.

Multiverse indeed!

 

[herbavore]

Hey, Nix! I'm glad to see you here in TDS where what we think of as 'dark' gets turned inside out and becomes the source of greatest illumination.

Being very emotional usually comes with being very sensitive and I have two sources of perspective on that: myself and my late son. From my own perspective I can say that this nature causes both great suffering and ultimately the greatest ecstasy. From my son's perspective I know that it can kill you before you learn to live with it and feel the ecstasy more than the agony. Where I live on the Pacific coast there is a deep connection with the ocean. People here understand the power of that great blue beast and everywhere you go you will see signs urging tourists to "respect the ocean". They aren't talking about littering in this case, they are talking about understanding the power of this unpredictable giant. I see a lot of parallels living with an emotional and sensitive nature. By understanding how to be a small being in relation to a large powerful force you agree to be aware of the dangers while benefiting from the riches it offers.

Befriending your whole self--all of your faults and weaknesses and vulnerabilities is a seemingly overwhelming task when you are hit with them in your own mind wave after wave. It can seem like all you can do is catch your breath and the next one knocks you under again. One thing that I learned early on in the ocean is that the calmer you remain, the more breath you have in reserve. The same goes for life's difficulties--like parental controls that are heavy-handed, self-defeating thoughts in your own head, physical or psychological pain--there is nothing life can throw at you that is not improved by controlling panicked thinking. As a worrier and seemingly born-anxious person, this was knowledge that was hard won for me. I'm pretty sure I panicked my entire way through adolescence and much of my twenties. Again, I go back to the ocean: when you get caught in an undertow that is pulling you out to sea the worst thing you can do is to waste your strength swimming against it though the panic in you will instruct you to do just that. Swimming at an oblique angle may feel like slow progress but it is progress and that's all you need to focus on when you are trying to develop new ways of thinking.

I would re-name your thread this way: I'm awash in incredible wisdom and confusion at 15. You have a great mind--you are curious and you delight in thought. You are already far more book-educated than I am at 62 and you have a wisdom that is probably the greatest in my opinion, which is that you ask good questions. There is no more meaningful way to go through this life than asking questions.

Using drugs as an escape has its place, but its a small one. The secret to feeling more content is not feeling that you have to escape from anything at all. When you can welcome any experience (and the emotions that come with it) for what it has to teach you, you jettison so much of the fear that can rule a sensitive and emotionally wired mind. Talk therapy that does not lead you anywhere beyond an expensive hour of telling the same stories that are in your head to another person is wasted therapy. Find someone that challenges you to re-write your own script. You are not fucked up. You are living. You are human. It makes sense to feel grief in a depressing culture, on a devastated planet, but you do not have to let grief define you any more than any other response to the outside world. The world is bigger than our perceptions of it which is a great freedom. There is always another envelope to push inside our own minds.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle to you feeling content? If your answer is anything on the outside (circumstantial) then let's problem solve. If it is within your own thoughts/perceptions, let's problem solve. I think everyone has the ability to heal much of what causes them pain--not everything, but most things.

 

[Nixiam]

Ma'am, some of your comparisons are the most powerful and perfectly drawn I have seen. Thank you for understanding my situation more than myself.

My biggest obstacle? I'm not really sure... The thing that gets in the way the most of me being content is the vast amount of discomfort I feel. Animosity at home, feeling trapped inside myself everywhere else.

I have a step father who does not listen. He can't communicate.

I find myself giving my mother advice, steering her away from emotionally tainted rash decisions. The irrationality.

She needs a leverage to deal with my step father, he needs to understand and apologize when he has done wrong. Yesterday he got so mad he threw a vacuum cleaner at my sister's general direction (though I seriously doubt he intended to hurt her) and put a hole in the wall.

I have changed my personality to suit my surroundings the best I can, but the only reason I can change is because I feel so uncomfortable.

I am not exactly sociable. I can't be myself around people unless they are adults. Even my step father. I get the feeling he does not want me to be myself. I think he wants to b able to complain about me but doesn't want me to be a nuissance.

I am my mothers confidant. It is burdensome, but I cannot let it show that it hurts me. She told me she was thinking about divorce. I explained to her why she thought that. I told her why he does the things he does, and I told her it seems easy for me to say. Obviously I am not married to him, obviously just because I or she understands him does not make anything he does anymore right.

But understanding your partner is how you communicate better, right?

It hurts to think about. How uncomfortable I am. How clunky it all is.

I told my mother this analogy.

If a train is going down hill really fast and there is an end in the tracks, the brake is missing, no coal left, what do you do?

She said jump. This was the situation with my biological father.

Now what if all the train needs is a screw to fix the brake? I would gamble on fixing the brake because if you jump you'll regret not saving yourself from a lot of pain when you could have.

This is the situation with my step father.

I am sorry for posting more on my home life, but this has me very on edge. Everything I say is an influence. It is necessary that I am completely rational.

This can be fixed. My siblings are at stake.

Everywhere outside the house I have zero self confidence if I am with other teens. They hardly find me interesting. I don't play sports. I am not popular. The friends that I do make I lose quickly, or at least in my history I have. Moving, changing, conflicts.

I don't want to sit here and feel sorry for myself. That doesn't help. I don't have the slightest clue how to feel more comfortable.
Adaptation?

I think it is both inside and out. Thank you for listening.

You give me too much credit Miss Herby... I appreciate all of it.

 

[Cdkman]

Its okay to not care or not care so much it does not mean that u are a bad person at all

its okay to not give a flying f about your step father or your mothers problems

you are in control of how you feel but u can't control all the chaos and assholes that we are stuck with on this rock

ive kinda been where u are without the family problems..it does get better when u get older if u remember that no one can hurt you but you

 

[Nixiam]

I would hate myself even more if I did not care. Not showing compassion... I know I am not entitled to care per se, but obligatory generosity weighs heavy and the imlact can be good for me and them.

My parents had a bit of a talk. They are semi okay right now, but there is still stuff to talk about.

Thank you all for responding. It kind of all seems silly looking at how emotional I get.

Hydrocodone script coming soo to a pharm near me!

 

[whatamI]

my drug use didn't make anything better(worse haha). I'm close to your age, i personally recommend finding a sport you like lacrosse, soccer, football is kinda iffy but anything you see guys like yourself playing. stop by gnc buy something with creatine and caffeine or whatever the clerk recommends then do simple workouts in your room nothing too hard look up exercises you can do and you will be confident enough to go to the gym after a while but don't think about that until you say "I'm ready". stay with me now but if you think you are capable or willing playing sports is one of the most fun hobbies you can have. now from what i read you must have some pain deep down thats your best tool listen to music that makes you feel strong as well. this is a way to have one of the best experiences high school can offer, i had to drop out right before my senior year(last year) because of what drug use did to me. if you're up to it just anything(any hobby is great) is better than feeling stuck with problems you shouldn't worry about.

 

[Cdkman]

Sorry was comin down and my last post was not explained very well..I didnt mean not care about anything i meant not care about your moms marraige problems when your her son..she needs other confidants..or let your step dad get u down..you should care deeply about certain things but i think alot of the stuff you worry about and get worked up about doesnt matter or shouldnt matter to u enough to effect your emotions in a negative way

why do u hate yourself?..is it resentment? Guilt? Its not always right to be the nice guy be the authentic guy..step up and tell your mon she got herself into this and u dont have the answers at 15

 

[Jabberwocky]

This is a very good point. It's so very difficult to attempt to have a childhood when you're looking after a parent or taking care of siblings.

 

[Anxious.Individual]

Being overly emotional, little things hitting you hard, self-hatred and constant unexplainable depression are all symptoms of Endorphin deficiency syndrome. Also, do you have a low auto-immune response? (constant runny nose and prone to constant colds). There is a simple blood test that can also confirm EDS diagnosis. The only real treatment for this are indeed opiates, I would personally recommend a long acting one like Methadone, as it is far more stable than say hydrocodone.

 

[Nixiam]

Sorry was comin down and my last post was not explained very well..I didnt mean not care about anything i meant not care about your moms marraige problems when your her son..she needs other confidants..or let your step dad get u down..you should care deeply about certain things but i think alot of the stuff you worry about and get worked up about doesnt matter or shouldnt matter to u enough to effect your emotions in a negative way

why do u hate yourself?..is it resentment? Guilt? Its not always right to be the nice guy be the authentic guy..step up and tell your mon she got herself into this and u dont have the answers at 15

Oh, no need to apologize! I think I understood what you meant to begin with. It's good advice, but if I let her just free reigns make a decision it will most definitely be irrational. Not that I am controlling by any means, I just suggest rational approaches.

 

[Nixiam]

Being overly emotional, little things hitting you hard, self-hatred and constant unexplainable depression are all symptoms of Endorphin deficiency syndrome. Also, do you have a low auto-immune response? (constant runny nose and prone to constant colds). There is a simple blood test that can also confirm EDS diagnosis. The only real treatment for this are indeed opiates, I would personally recommend a long acting one like Methadone, as it is far more stable than say hydrocodone.

I don't have runny nose constantly, but I do have constant phlegm.

And I do mean constant. You'd think I was a smoker. I'll consider asking my psychologist or psychiatrist. My psychiatrist is the only one that can prescribe.

Also sorry for double post. BL mobile doesn't work the best on my device.

Also also, Mr. What; I do workout frequently, but I definitely don't have an interest in sports. I played basketball for a bit but I did not really enjoy.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Noone can say for sure what will get you out of your pit, but you sound intelligent so I'm sure you will eventually discover what best helps you.

I was almost exactly like you a for my teen years. My symptoms: very sensitive, intense anxiety (w/ panic attacks), crushing depression, etc. I'm not sure how I managed to pull myself up but I am much better now (age 21), although still in the hole.

Good luck on your journey

Also, that was a beautiful post herbavore

 

[Jabberwocky]

Nix is very intelligent, I can tell he has a super high emotional IQ. It can be difficult in our society in learning how to harness such a quality, but once you do it is amazing.

How you doing Nix?

 

[Rampelflik]

I'm really sorry to say I'm no good to you in the way of advice. I can only give you my sympathies and congratulate you on your valiant efforts in getting through your struggles. I wish you the very best!