I honestly had anxiety about even posting here. I downloaded a throwaway account OVER THREE WEEKS AGO to post here, but I never did. I know many of you are familiar with no feeling like yourself, but I feel so broken. It's nearly impossible to find a good therapist in the place I am now, and if I do, it takes months and months to get in, so I want to reach out here (I also move quite often so it is hard to get in if I leave and come back, and so on).

I don't recognize myself anymore, not at all. I've been struggling with anxiety for many years but things rapidly deteriorated about halfway through 2019. I always feel bad comparing my situation to others because I know it could be worse, but that's a common theme, and from what I understand, comparison can make feelings inauthentic. There is a lot to unpack here, so bear with me please. 

In 2019 I left a PhD program without the PhD; I found out I lost funding because my GPA dipped too low. A good friend forced me to go to the school's therapist the semester before, but the panic attacks and loneliness had apparently already done their damage. This was devastating to me. My specific field of study is essentially useless without a PhD, and suddenly I find myself unemployed with no real options. The only real skill I had at this point was teaching, and I tried to teach abroad, but that was a disaster (lack of mental health resources, incredible loneliness, difficulty communicating), so I came back to my parents home.

*Aside: without devolving too much from the main text, I HATE my parents home. I feel more at ease in the northeast and northwest whenever I have been able to live there, but my parents insist in living in areas that \*cough\* do not really believe in mental health, vaccines, and so on. I have a bad aversion to heat and confrontation, and this has been devastating. I actually have met no friends since they moved here, away from where I grew up. I feel incredibly uncomfortable in rural areas and it certainly exacerbates everything.*

Between October of 2019 and March of 2020, I applied to something like 1500 jobs, and I only heard back from 5. I ultimately ended up making the wrong choice, but it didn't matter. the week I started, lockdown went into effect and panicked being stuck at home, I quit, and drove 12 hrs back home. This was also a rural area and really fucked with me. Since March of 2020, I've only had one job (temporary, ended), and maybe 3 interviews, despite applying to roughly 5 jobs a day.

All this might be bearable if I wasn't so goddamn lonely. In 2019 my ex left, and it made things exponentially worse. It's too hard to talk about I think. Since then I've maybe felt connected with 2 people, but one moved, and the other person vanished after 3 weeks of hours long conversations, with no explanation whatsoever (that made me want to give up entirely). I've experienced an incredibly amount of "memory loss" or whatever it is associated with mental health since 2019, and when I feel connected with someone, I am more lucid than I have been in years, like I can recognize my old self. 

I used to read books constantly, now I struggle to read more than 5 pages a week. I tried to go on a short vacation last week, but the location reminded me of my ex, and on the way to the airport, I broke down entirely. I mean I couldn't talk or breathe I was crying so hard, and my ride turned around and took me home, and I had to eat a good portion of the trip. Since then I've been almost consistently in bed, and I've lost something on the order of 6 or 7 pounds, doing absolutely nothing. I've got apathy about applying for jobs, after spending time writing cover letters and resumes and still getting roughly 5 job rejections a day in my inbox. I feel incredibly apathetic and depressed about dating and every day I have to imagine its still 2019 when things were at least somewhat bearable. I completely transform when I don't have to be alone, and that's all I ever am now. I'm probably not the only one that falls asleep to or has the same 3 shows on repeat during the day to not feel alone. I feel like I've lost the direction, and I'm crying, so I'll leave it like this. Thanks if you bothered reading.