sigmaleph | (no subject)

My anxiety disorder used to be much worse.

Like, it's hard for me to remember being in that mindset now, but I remember when I was early in my recovery I was amazed one day that I successfully walked into a bookstore and talked to someone who worked there about redeeming a gift card. I dropped out of college because I was unable to handle registering for classes after a small setback.

Nowadays, I navigate those kinds of situations easily (though not always comfortably). I am pretty functional in my day to day life in a way that felt impossible before. And yet...

That parenthetical there about handling things easily but not comfortably? That's for things I need to do. For things that are optional, where not doing it doesn't mean complete failure at a goal but rather being a little less comfortable or losing an opportunity to do something or just missing out on a friendly conversation, I'm... well, not as bad as before. But still doing pretty badly

I have very few friends, and most of those I do were people I met in high school (certainly all my meatspace friends). I still struggle a lot just having a conversation with someone, and if somehow I do (usually because they initiated it) I fail at any sort of longer-term keeping in touch. I avoid being uncomfortable so much that I end up lonely. (thank fuck for the internet, tbh. even there I'm worse at having online relationships than lots of people but I still have some)

I think what recovery I had more or less stopped at leaving me functional and failed at giving me tools to make myself happier.