Solstice

I’ve been on benzos for my panic attacks for the last 20 years. They’ve been sedating and miserable but have been the only thing that have done the job. Worse, any temporary lapse in them meant I’d be a quivering pile of sobbing withdrawal.

With the help of a psychiatrist, we found something else that worked, finally. An anti-seizure med, of all things. Sure, why not. Not questioning it. It works.

And after a grueling stepdown process over the course of the last year, rife with mini-withdrawals, I’m finally fucking free of benzos.

And that feels just enormously great to say.

I walked away.

Ultimately, I don’t think there’s going to be any changing minds on that board, and I was twisting myself in knots and refreshing the damn page every few minutes for several hours. That shit ain’t healthy, especially for a place that isn’t going to reciprocate.

I’d rather focus on making content here.

This means there’s probably an anime thread in your future, for which I apologize. ( Except I ain’t sorry. )

There was some confusion about Bingo earlier in the thread.

I’ve had a few weeks to sit with my thoughts, and I must say that I’m actually really grateful that this story had a concrete, definite ending. I’ve never actually seen a story through to the extent that I have with Arx. There are inevitably some loose threads that never got tied off, but not every thread really needs to be.

Every other MU* I’ve been on has just sort of fizzled out like a friendship that’s run its course, but I’m really grateful that this ended up feeling story-shaped from beginning to end. It’s not an ‘ending’ for the characters, and I’m left to tantalizing daydreams about what happened after the curtain fell, and that’s a valuable thing to have.

I haven’t had a panic attack (or even the threat of one) in almost three weeks since I started my newest medication. The absence of that is like being able to breathe again. I hope it keeps up this way.

At work all day:

“Haha, oh man, it’s gonna be so cool to do XYZ with my character(s) when I get home.”

At home:

• Cleaning
• Making dinner
• Spending time with loved ones
• Giving pet all the scritches
• Social Media
• Check in on people on Discord
• TV
• Tired

In bed:

“Wait a minute, I didn’t do the thing I meant to at all! Well, I bet tomorrow…”

3 MONTHS LATER

“Shit.”

I whinged and complained about it in the complainy threads so much that it felt like cheating not to post the resolution:

After a year and a half, I got top bid on a house. And I’m so excited and terrified for the parts that come next, but the hunt is finally over!

After one of my colleagues departed and I got saddled with a lot of extra work, I sat my supervisor down and basically told him that I knew I was being undercompensated. He said he’d do his best, because he wanted to keep the team together, and because we kick ass together (True.)

Four months went by. I started browsing Indeed and such on the regular. Pretty much resigned myself to a 5%ish increase, and it wasn’t going to cut it to stay. Last week, I finally got news from him.

Promoted. New Title - better title than I suggested. 30% raise. 30. Percent.

Remember how I said I wasn’t having panic attacks? This is the closest I’ve come to one, sitting through that meeting, because apparently my body has forgotten how to process extreme amounts of joy. Teared up in the meeting. I had to scamper away directly after the meeting and run into the bathroom and squeal into my hands.

My life feels like it’s starting to come together, all of the sudden.

I was being a shit to Derp and Reimisu, but that’s because they fucking well deserved it for trying to invalidate trauma responses. How this translated into me being a big mean bully is fucking beyond me.

Immature? Yeah, I’ll own that, but only because they were breathing down my fucking neck with their own dogpiling.

I’m frustrated as hell. Like, I legitimately just want them to realize that they’re creating an echo chamber. With pMonique, Derp, Devrex and Reimisu loitering there, a rather insidious one, at that.

Just fucking meh.

Nothing for it.

And now my fucking anxiety is eating me alive because I suck at confrontation.

Rant about the topic, rather than ranting at anyone in this thread:

I loathe the notion that receipts are necessary for any complaint to be taken seriously. Like, especially if they’re of an embarrassing or sexual nature, like… no.

In my case, I divulged those receipts with someone I trusted, they made the call along with a literal avalanche of evidence to ban someone creepy, and no one is fucking entitled to it.

Just fuck everything about that mindset. I know the natural retort is that it’s a slippery slope which can quickly devolve into witch-huntery, but consider also that it’s a slippery slope to making victimized and abused people put their darkest moments on display just to satisfy the internet’s fucking Id.

Fuck off.