Just a message after a fucked up situation

[jordancoles]

We had to call the police this morning on a couple down the hall from us.
Screaming like she was being murdered, doors slamming and other loud thuds coming from inside the apartment 2 doors down and this isn't even the first time that it has happened.

It's times like these that I am thankful for my own relationship and for how fucking chilled out it is. In 5+ years we have never seriously argued or gotten super agro with each other.

If you are in an abusive relationship, please know that what you are experiencing is not normal and that you should not brush things off just because "all couples argue." Speak to someone about the problem and leave the relationship if it gets to the point where your neighbours can hear you in their own apartments 2 doors down.

It may seem like they're all that you have but that is not what love is supposed to look like.

When all the hard times
Outweigh the good
And all your words are misunderstood
When the day seems lost from the start

You must follow your heart
You must follow your heart

[Finigini]

Wasn't expecting to see a post like this but I'm glad I did. It's definitely important to take a step back from everything and realize how lucky we are, or if we need the blinders taken off us. It sucks you had to deal with that and at the same time it sucks that some relationships just don't work out. Happy to hear that your relationship is chill and since it has been that way for over 5 years I'm sure it will stay that way.

[hazzor]

we used to live in a semi-detached house and our bedroom shared a wall with the neighbour's bedroom, two middle aged fatties and their 4 kids, they'd scream and shout until usually one of them ran off down the road in a dressing gown, we thought it was hilarious but It'd suck to be one of their kids having to deal with that shit every week. Totally agree with you, it made me so grateful for the relationship I have.

Sometimes we'd hear them fuck too...

[Amanda44]

Nice post Jordan, I hope no-one here is suffering in an abusive relationship but if they are I hope those words may help them to think and find strength ... so often abusive people are so charming and manipulative the rest of the time the person suffering the abuse is torn, they believe the person loves them and will change, or they can make them stop but the truth is the abuse will only ever get worse and become more frequent the more the abuser feels there are no consequences for their actions.

And if there are children involved it often leads to them following down the same road by either being abusive or becoming abused as it is the only example of 'love' they have ever known.

[The_Blode]

I don't know. I'm currently smack-fucking-dab in the middle of my twice a year depression and anxiety fest. Lots and lots of shit has gone wrong this past couple weeks, nothing INCREDIBLY major but a goddamn insane amount of small to medium sized stresses and annoyances. I lash out a bit at those around me, not in a hurtful or angry way but just really fucking short tempered and curt because I have literally never once expressed my feelings to someone and got a response that didn't make me feel worse in some way, so I close up and make it very obvious what kind of mood I'm in. But I don't try to drag anyone into it with me. I might have willingly tried to ruin someone's day just for the company back when I was a teen, but as a father and husband I simply cannot ever justify doing that to someone any longer.

I have these periods (lol menstruation joke) where I get like this, and there's a certain enjoyment to it, a catharsis of sorts. I go online and read up on the happenings of the world and add to my frustration with all the little things that affect me but I can't do anything about, I laugh when my car won't start because it just further vindicates the mood I'm in. And then I see/hear/etc. it. That thing that reminds me how fucking shitty other people's lives can be and how goddamn fortunate I am. A blurb about calling the cops on an abusive relationship. A customer calling in and choking back tears because they had photos of their now-dead kid on their phone and now their phone is broken in a way I can't fix.

I think on this shit and then I get angry at myself for getting angry at life.
Then I'm angry at myself for not letting myself feel angry simply because things *COULD* be worse.
Then angry because I have this desire to be angry or something and it's not making any fucking sense.
None of the fucking problems in my life are solved, nothing that initially brought me down to this mood has been undone in any way, plenty of the issues I'm stressing about will continue to be issues, and I have to stop being mad because of an internal conflict regarding whether or not I have the right to be mad.

At this point I generally have myself a good cry and revert to emotional zombie state for a month before a return to normalcy occurs for whatever reason, be it problems getting solved or worked around or just absorbed into the fabric of my life as a negative inevitability (I have quite the collection).
Oftentimes some random vent online such as this is what finally breaks me and causes that last emotional outburst. I may have a bad night ahead of me right away here. Knowing I put all this shit online and people read it and likely don't actually care at all is sometimes that last break in the dam. It leads to way too many nasty thoughts regarding the internet as a whole and it's overall effect on humanity. We're still in the infancy of the internet and you can see the problems bubble to the surface everywhere. I'm typing it out right now, I can't, I won't, this post will end up past whatever character limit exists.

Thanks for this I guess. And most of your content. Your posts are generally the more entertaining ones to read and they have been for many years now. I lurk logged out more often than anything else so it isn't reflected in my activity but i spend a lot of idle time here just reading what people have written, and the handle "jordancoles" coupled with the image of sipping tears will probably be burned into my brain forever.

[jordancoles]

Hey man, thanks for the post.
I hope that it helped you to clear your head a bit.

It's good that you're willing/able to consider how you're feeling or how you felt when you were feeling angry/depressed. That is actually a core mechanic of cognitive behavioural therapy and it's a major step towards proper self-care.
It can be very useful to look back and see what triggered your negative emotions and what you did/didn't do to help you to overcome them.

I am interested in what you had to say about feeling mad about feeling mad since others must have it worse than you. This is a type of stiff-upper-lip or almost war-time thinking that can be humbling but also damaging. If you deny yourself emotion because others have more reason to feel those emotions then what you are really doing is withdrawing into yourself to keep a straight face and lowering your own sense of self-worth. It's okay to be a little selfish in your emotions and in your own self-care.

You also said that you sort of liked wallowing in your anger/depression or fueling it because it was just more of the same. I understand what you're saying. When you're depressed it almost begins to feel like a strength after a while. Being cynical or sceptical of the news, other people, or the world in general can make you feel like you're smarter than everyone else or that you won't be caught off guard by stupid bullshit, but it's actually just a negative lens that you use to view the world and it just feeds itself and spirals. One thing I learned in my teen years is that if you feed your negative thoughts the only person it will affect is yourself and it will make everything that you do feel like work.

I would continue to reflect on how you were/are feeling when you're depressed or angry. Consider what could have caused those emotions to appear and what was happening in your life during times when you noticed those negative emotions leaving. Focus on what works and learn what your coping mechanisms are and then decide if they are healthy or if you can shape what you do in a way that is more positively directed.

The internet is full of forum trolls but I hope that this response was meaningful enough to show you that people are willing to listen on here if given the chance to.

I have a diploma in mental health & addiction counseling so feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk some more. Good luck with everything.

[MrPunchers]

Haven and Wholesome

[The_Blode]

if anyone cares, i never had my cathartic emotional outburst i was anticipating and things have spiraled further downward as more completely unrelated bits of bad news and shit luck pile on top of me
i lost my business and have no form of income now, both myself and my wife are on the job hunt while our family pays our bills. I'm useless as a man and a provider and if I wasn't so completely and utterly terrified of the prospect of death, I'd consider suicide. Thankfully for those who care about me, my understanding of the human mind and consciousness has forever removed the 'opt out' path as a choice.
if any of you ever attempt a small business, do everything yourself, fucking everything, because as soon as two humans are part of any equation you have immense potential for lies, deceit, and other treacherous bullshit, sometimes with the best of intentions behind it. Road to hell and all that.

WORLD IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 1989
I am trash man

[jordancoles]

Sounds like a rough patch for sure. Good luck with the job hunt; living in limbo is total bullshit

Lately I've been getting dicked around for school funding and it has been a 4 month process now where I haven't known if I'm getting funded or not and when I called to sort things out they basically told me to keep waiting lol. Life doesn't give a shit sometimes but things seem to work themselves out eventually

[Granger]

Two things are sure: Life sucks at times and in the end you die.
Should you find yourself on the floor you can either wait for death there or, more productive, first revel the situation (as you survived gravity) and figure out both the reason why you fell and possible strategies on how to avoid the recent case for the future - then stand up and try again.

Good decisions can only be made out of experience, which can only be gained from failures (which are the results of bad decisions, stemming from the lack of experience).
So don't feel bad about failures, they're part of the human condition (and in part the consequence of a bad system where the tables are tilted and the game is rigged).