Me And My Friend, Depression


Hi. It's me. I have a lot of things to say.

In light of how crappy with 2020 has been, things have been looking very dark for me. But the breaking point was when Reckful taking his life.

I saw a clip of him reacting to his chat spamming him to "KYS", I have never seen a person extremely helpless, hopeless and just slowly losing his will to live. He was also heavily criticised by people because he proposed to his gf on Twitter, literally hours before taking his own life.

I'm not trying to milk this for views or what, but the clip of him being spammed really broke me.

I have been verbally abused irl and on Twitch. Being a Chinese, people just assume I'm using a damn VPN and stream on Twitch in China, when I'm not even born there. It was okay in the beginning, I was verbally abused irl, I thought I can deal with this since I feel numb about it.

But since COVID-19 happened, during the xenophobia madness, I got spammed as a "bat eater", "wuhan flu spreader", whatever offensive you can think of about the virus. For some reason, that feeling of numbness went away for the first time, and I felt extremely helpless for the first time. It wasn't just one person, but a mob of 20+ viewers spamming my chat. I was depressed the whole stream.

People behind screens can say whatever they want, since they can get away with it without repercussions. But since it was months ago, I have since let it go. It still stings whenever I think about it.

I have never been open about my depression and suicidal thoughts ever before, I have been trying to do so, but I was "programmed" to not share my burden with someone else, leading me to bottle things up.

Why is that so? It is time for me to provide some context.

I was raised in a household with extremely conservative Asian values.

I was not allowed to hang out with friends after school, I'm not supposed to date girls until I'm in Uni, I'm not allowed to have personal space and privacy at home, I am not allowed to password lock my phone. I get interrogated after hanging out with friends about what I eat and drink. (because I upload on IG, which is why I abandoned my IG account to use my Twitter full-time since they don't use Twitter)

In the end, I lacked friends in school, I lack social skills and was bullied in school. 10 years of hell. I don't want to open up that Pandora's Box.

I was also taught to not have feelings. When I told my parents I'm suicidal, they lectured me and told me "You are a guy, man the fuck up." because I'm a guy. This is why, my parents, who are probably my only hope of being my therapist, became people I tell news last. They keep questioning me why I don't tell them anything after that. I don't like sharing news to them, good or bad.

This is also when I start bottling up my sorrows. And also the start of me consuming alcohol as an escape.

I never told my parents any of my previous relationships. I don't want them to know anything. I kept a lot of secrets from them.

Don't worry, I don't abuse alcohol, I am sober, I don't drink everyday. I only drink when I feel like it. I kind of use it as a little sleeping pill when I have insomnia.

Whenever I have a depressive episode, I just want a listening ear, I don't need advice, just someone to listen to. When I told my parents about my problems during one of said episodes, I got an hour and a half lecture about how to deal. A lecture, not advice, a LECTURE.

I have no escape, I have no outlet. I appreciate people who told me that their DMs are open. I really do. But it's not that simple. I cannot simply put my emotional burden onto someone else's shoulders like that. It's a struggle to open up.

The struggle of opening up also makes therapists kind of worthless, since I will probably struggle on speaking about my problems.

The bottling up as well, kind of made me hide certain secrets from my ex. I didn't lie to them, but I don't tell them everything about my depressive side.

At this household, I was also taught to hold it in and not retaliate when provoked. We are not allowed to defend ourselves.

I have a lot of cousins, but I am right smack in the middle. Youngest in the elder group, oldest in the younger group. The thing about being the eldest in the younger group is that, I take the rap for everything, no matter if I was physically involved or not.

Not only my relatives lecture me, my parents actually EGGED THEM ON and joined in the lecture. Their rationale? "We do not scold other people's kids." So they spoil other kids at the expense of us. (me and my sister, my sister for a period of time hated hanging out with our cousins, because she was also blamed for things she never did, but that is something for another day, and not my story to tell.)

My cousins then took advantage of this and we became the adults' punching bag. This made me hate family gatherings, or actually large gatherings in general.

I didn't held any grudges with my cousins for those. Speaking of grudges, I have a weakness of not being able to hold any grudges. My friend told me it's a strength, I disagreed. It made me vulnerable, easily exploited.

All these family problems lead me not want to fall in love again. I'm tired, I have given up all hope and I cherish personal space and freedom more than ever before.

I have never vented like this before, this is the first time I have opened up like this before. But I'm still not fully opened yet. I am trying to be more expressive, I was robbed off my rights to express myself freely, I want to be able to be honest about my feelings again. I still wanna fall in love again, but I can't.

Sorry for the bad format writing, I was just rambling with whatever was on the top of my head.

I don't think I have people reading this anyway. But if you read the whole thing, I thank you for your time. I want thank to the people again who reached out, but I need time to open up to people, a lot of time. Being distrustful sucks as well.

I'm going to take a break from blogging, I will be a little less active on Twitter, but I will still be active on Twitch. I want to fix myself, I really do, but it's hard, I might not know where to even start.

2020 needs a remake.

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