EVERYTHING IS FINE

By Varuca Salty

Content Warning: self-loathing, depression

Welp, it’s another bad mental health day for me. What even is mental health? Have I ever truly experienced it? Or is what I’m experiencing exclusively mental illness? Hard to know since anxiety and depression have been around since I can remember. I’m burnt out. A common place for me to be coming into the holiday season. Grocery stores are too busy, packed with people impulse buying things they think will fill their voids. Traffic is atrocious. It gets dark too early to make sense of. I’m tired and ready for bed by 4pm but that’s usually when I’m starting my next shift of “work” with making dinner and making sure my kids have finished their homework, etc. Maybe it sounds like I resent my life? That feels correct. I think I do. Because I’m so goddamned exhausted all the time from all the obligations. Plus the anxiety and depression I mentioned earlier. That for sure doesn’t help. I am realizing I have this line that gets crossed and when it does I want to either burn the whole goddamn house down and cut people out of my life forever, or I want to bend over backward to make sure everyone else is comfortable and never leaves me. And nothing in between. I’m killing that mental health stuff. I have abandonment issues, so just accept that this is how it is for me right now. I’m working on it. I just learned about a new term that piqued my interest. It’s called obliger rebellion. This is when someone (much like myself) shoves down their own feelings and needs over and over and over for so much of their life that they eventually blow up. They go from super flexible and “happy to help” to super rigid boundaries and super explosive reactions when anyone impedes on their personal freedom. They over-give until they have nothing left and then they snap. Well hell. “Called out” as the kids are saying these days (I don’t think any kids say that...).

I’m on this healing journey, working through my baggage and I’m really trying to stop being such a reactive asshole. Everything would be so easy if I could just know what I was feeling in the moment and react appropriately or ask for time and space to process in real time instead of assuming that everyone is trying to personally attack me and ruin my day by expressing themselves and their own needs. I recognize how easy it COULD be. But damn if this isn’t the hardest part of my healing journey so far. You mean to tell me that not everyone else’s problems are MY fault and most of them have NOTHING TO DO WITH ME?! How can I be so insecure and feel so unworthy while simultaneously thinking the entire world and everyone in it is mad at me. I am a true paradox.

Let’s take a look into my clearly unwell brain and see how we got here…

1. I was raised by two emotionally immature parents with very few healthy coping skills of their own.

2. I thought if I could do MORE or be BETTER or try HARDER that I could earn the love that I so desperately craved (and, to be fair, needed in order to be a healthy and sane human).

3. I started people-pleasing and saw some payoffs. Heck yeah, I’ve cracked the code. Just be whoever they want you to be and do whatever they want you to do. THEN you’ll be lovable!

4. I eventually had an existential crisis that made me question my whole reality and realized I don’t even know who I am because I’ve just been trying to win over anyone and everyone who will give me the time of day because I’m so depleted of love and appreciation and self-esteem.

5. Now when anyone shows me genuine interest and love and acceptance I question THEIR sanity. Surely I can’t be worth actually liking, I’m a piece of garbage. I’ll try harder! I’ll do better!

6. My insecurity and unwillingness to welcome love in inevitably pushes people away. I am so good at convincing people that I am not worth loving. (Super fun defense mechanism and trauma response.)

7. I am alone. And sad. (And hate myself.)

Cut to present day. Why am I like this?! I mean, I know why I’m like this. I’m all fucked up from not getting my basic needs met. But why can’t I fix it? How long and how much therapy does it take to realize that I deserve to feel loved? That I’m not actually a horrible monster of a person, but just a sad little kid with unmet needs? So far it’s taken almost 4 decades. I’ll keep you posted if I figure out how to solve it though.

A nice little upper of an article this month. Goes great with my seasonal (and lately not so seasonal but really continuous) depression and my sweatpants that I’m on day three of wearing without changing or showering.

Hope you’re all doing better than me! Love you byeee! C

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2022 AT 8 PM – 10 PM

Live Music w/ Erin McNamee

Bushel & Bee Taproom

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2022 AT 6 PM – 8 PM

Abbigale Solo @ Julep

Julep Ellensburg

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2022 AT 5:30 PM – 9 PM Night Market on The Ave

Norwood Wine Bar

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2022 AT 9:30 PM

Datura, Well Adjusted and Not All There!! Live at Wally’s!!!!

Wally’s House of Booze

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2022 AT 4 PM

Warren Miller: WINTER STARTS NOW

Icicle Creek Center for the Arts

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2022 AT 12 PM

GIVE NCW Do Good Drink Beer

Pybus Public Market

DECEMBER 8-17

All Is Calm - The Christmas Truce of 1914 at the Riverside Playhouse

Tickets: numericapac.org or call (509) 663-2787

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2022 AT 7 PM – 9:30 PM

The Nutcracker

CWU McConnell Auditorium, Ellensburg

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022 AT 4 PM

Student Performance Fundraiser

Epic Motion Dance & Fitness Studio

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2022 AT 3 PM – 6 PM

Seth Garrido at Alta Cellars

Alta Cellars

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2022 AT 7:30 PM

Jake Shimaburkuro - Christmas in Hawaii

Numerica Performing Arts Center

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2022 AT 6 PM – 9 PM

O&W LIVE!!! Older & Wiser @ The Riverhouse Cigar Bar

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2022 AT 2 PM – 5 PM

Live Music with Gavin McLaughlin

Succession Wines, Chelan

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2022 AT 5:30 PM

Old Time Radio Show: World War II Radio Christmas

Numerica Performing Arts Center