Just need to know I don’t feel alone

1 month ago 23

25F born and raised in a first world country, incredible support network, grown up never having to worry about a roof over my head or where my next meal is coming from. On the surface, very privileged and lucky. However I’ve also suffered with sexual abuse, emotionally abusive relationships, and other traumatic incidences as a result of these traumas, since the age of 12. I had therapy for over ten years, I’ve matured and developed emotional intelligence, I look back at my experiences with both a sadness for the childhood (and future) I lost/missed out on, but also with an understanding of life from a perspective most humans don’t get to learn and grow from. My biggest anxiety however is that I don’t seem to be able to cope with “normal” life. Every route and avenue I’ve taken has been different from the norm, I’ve only just started university - doing a degree in fine art because I feel it was the least pressure and most therapeutic. I was always an A* student before I was eventually unable to go to school anymore because of my mental health and missed out on a huge chunk of my education (and with that the same level of social and academic maturity/experience every other adolescent gained). I wanted to go into medicine but that dream came crashing down. Now I dream of painting and expressing myself through creativity, and hopefully earning enough to live off via that route (which is almost impossible). I just simply do not have the same emotional resilience to life stresses. I cannot cope with the rate race of a 9-5, I can’t cope with most small stresses and anxieties. It sounds lazy but sometimes I wish I could just live off a large imaginary amount of money where I never had to worry again about fighting to get through life. To sit in a sunny garden somewhere listening to the birds with a paint brush in my hand, watching my dog happily play. To just disconnect. My sympathetic nervous system is just constantly in overdrive and I although I have the “tools” and advice on how to cope- it still seems incredibly scary to imagine another 50 years of constantly working to cope. My body developed chronic illness from stress, which made me bed bound for two years, and still now physically disables me on any random day. How am I supposed to get a job when I don’t know if I’ll be able to commit to each day as they come? I know this is a mess of a post, I just wanted to rant and wonder whether other people feel the same about this capitalist way of life where individualism seems to be ignored and everyone is forced to just work work work, or you drown under a mass of unpaid bills. You need money to survive, but you also need to survive to make money- and sometimes surviving is really tough. Please be kind in your responses. Just need some gentle support. Thanks :)

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