Wall of positive text!

The past two years have been extremely eventful, to say the least. I can safely say that I've accomplished far more in these past 2 years than I did in years prior. One accomplishment has been actively working on bettering my living situation, from moving out of my old apartment and in with a friend, to getting an apartment with my girlfriend. She and I are also actively working on finding our own home after the lease on this apartment ends. Considering I lived for nearly 6 years in my old apartment, it's quite nice to finally be out of that apartment and looking for a better place to settle down.

I am quite proud to say that I've started attending college. Which has been a rather stressful change in life and for a short period of my educational career. I started to become very disillusioned with my purpose of going to college. I was stressed out by having to juggle my classwork, my job, and my personal life, I was actually considering dropping out of college and even took several breaks from my classes to deal with my stress and depression. Through all of the stress, however, I've managed to become a straight-A student in all of my classes. I didn't allow myself to quit, despite becoming disillusioned by my stress, I kept going and I am proud of myself. I am proud of the fact that I was able to keep my grades high and have been able to accomplish so much thus far. This leads me to my current studies and goals. I am currently studying to get my BA in social psychology and psychology, I am not sure what I am going to do with this degree just yet but I do some ideas. I had a goal of studying religious anthropology, which I am still interested in but that's kind of shifted away as my main goal. I am currently interested in trying to help abuse victims or those prone to being abused, like LGBT+ youth. I want to help prevent abuse by teaching people how to spot potential abuse or how to get out of abusive relationships. This has been kind of an idea that I've been keeping on my mind and studying to see what direction I need to go in to accomplish this currently vague goal. Which might I stress, I am happy to have a vague goal in my future because that gives me something to work towards and flesh out as I continue my education.

My health is something I am happy to say is finally getting the proper treatment I've so desperately needed. So to start with, I did start going to a therapist (although I am not able to see her recently due to issues with my insurance, which I will get to later,) which has helped me learn some better coping skills and learn how to communicate a little better. She also helped me deal with some of the issues in my past and helped me realize how a lot of the issues and trauma from my past ended up priming me to end up in abusive and self-destructive relationships and tendencies. I often neglected a lot of the trauma in my past and either avoided or ignored how they might have played into my low self-esteem and tendencies for self-abuse to the point of seeking validation from abusive people. This is something I would have struggled to understand on my own if I didn't go to therapy and learned how to let go of that kind ego and start accepting help from others. From there, I've started HRT last year, which turned out to be a little more interesting. It seems I appear to be intersex and as a result, a good part of my depression was being caused by how my hormones were way out of wack. The good news, I've been on hormones since April 18th, 2019 and they've had an amazing change for my overall wellbeing. I am far less depressed compared to life pre-hormones, I haven't had any suicidal tendencies, my mind has finally started to feel a lot more at ease since starting my hormones. Not to mention the physical changes that I am so happy to see my body going through and overall relief of seeing my body finally taking its proper form. I can safely say that I have no regrets since starting these hormones and they have saved my life. The last note on my health, it also turns out I am rather autistic and that's actually quite the relief as well. I know some people might view this with a negative stigma and blah blah, but for me, this one revelation has really pieced together a lot of struggles I went through growing up. When I was a child I was diagnosed with ADHD but that didn't quite go anywhere and nor did it account for a lot the issues I was going through. In hindsight, I was clearly showing a lot more signs of being autistic over ADHD. It was also rather common for doctors to misdiagnose autisic people due to the very limited knowledge autism spectrum back when I was a kid. That all being said, sure this recent realization doesn't fix my past but it does help me work on bettering my future as I now understand myself a deeper level in ways I didn't understand growing up.

So let's now talk more about my present life and how things are going in the here and now. One big change is that I am no longer working for Walmart after 6 years of being employed for the company. I spent 6 years working at my old store and transferred to another store that was closer to my apartment and that store was HORRIBLE. They treated me like dirt and that's just being positive for the sake of keeping this blog positive. I was belittled by their managers, I was put into tasks that even their experienced were never given and punished for not finishing them, I was basically treated like crap by their managers and I was constantly stressed out. I ended up getting a pretty horrible flu at the start of December and I literally couldn't function, let alone work. I barely remember that week because I was barely awake and the times when I was awake, I was so feverish that I was often delirious with a few moments of clarity. I was able to get a doctor's note and went through all of the proper channels to make sure my medical leave was submitted and approved. During this time, I was able to manage to watch all of Dragon Prince, Made in Abyss, and finished Ancient Magus' Bride during any moments of clarity, so that was a plus! When I got back, the managers attempted to fire me for the week I missed and I found out that the 3rd party company Walmart goes through for their medical leave decided to flip my "approved" status to "pending" and were requesting some vague paperwork. I spent all month trying to call them, email them, and even messaging them through their service to get in contact with someone to explain what paperwork I needed. (Bonus fact, I ended up with the paperwork I needed, two weeks after it would have been due.) I got nowhere and I was bound to get fired but it got worse from there. I used to be off every Friday and Saturday night, this was my availability and had been for nearly 3 years, until they decided to change it without telling me. I ended up missing the Saturday before Christmas as a "no call, no show" even though they changed my schedule and didn't tell me. They didn't fire me on the spot, but I knew my time was limited and the only thing keeping me with the company was my health insurance through them. Christmas night, I was already considering not showing up because, let's be real here, I really didn't want to work Christmas night. What made me quit was when I checked my schedule and saw they started giving me Tuesday and Wednesday off and removed my previous availability. I was done after that, I decided that I had enough of their shit and simply never went back. I have only walked into that store twice, once to return something with my girlfriend and grab something with my friend and the second time to ask about my tax papers. Even though I lost the health insurance that I had through Walmart, I can safely say that my life is far better now than it ever was when I was that horrible place. My overall health has improved, my depression is more manageable, and I am enjoying life a lot more. Right now I am working part-time at an Amazon sort-center and quite enjoy it. It's pretty chill part of Amazon and not the shitty part that fires people over literally everything, plus it's a part-time job that's been helping fill the time between jobs.
My job situation is starting to look a little better and I am rather hopeful. I've been in contact with OSL, they are the Wireless sales company that works through stores like Walmart and some other select stores. This has been a rather interesting situation as the higher managers are rather incompetent but interested in me. I've had multiple interviews with multiple people and all of them are interested but don't seem to be good at communicating with each other as no one seems to know which spot is open and which one isn't. Luckily they have kept in contact with me and I should be hearing back from them within the next few days as to what the plans are moving forward. I do have a lot of experience in wireless sales and that's been working heavily in my favor for this position, that's something they have been very vocal about. They've already said if hired I will most likely be sent to some of the stores around me to train new hires due to my years of experience with the software they are still using. So I am hopeful about this one and I am going to keep doing everything I can to get this job.

Finally, to wrap up this blog, I am currently fighting a really bad stomach flu as of the writing of this blog. I've been fighting this illness for the past couple of days now and it's not been fun. I am, however, happy to report that I am finally able to hold down food again! I've been enjoying some miso soup that my girlfriend has been making for me. A small accomplishment to proud of, all things considered. I bring this up because it did bring to light something that really helps change my perception of myself and my personal values of myself. Tonight (March 1, 2019,) my girlfriend went out with friends of ours to help cheer up one of our friends who was having a rough time. I decided to stay home because I am still pretty sick and didn't feel comfortable going out. During that time, I came to find out that our group of friends actually missed me and were worried about me. They were really concerned and really voiced their concerns about me not being out last night. I am actually moved to find out that my friends care about me and actually enjoy me being around. My ex and his boyfriend had me convinced no one cared about me and were constantly pushing people out of my life whenever I got close to anyone. To find out that people do care about me and do worry about me is rather overwhelming and one of the best changes in my life. I am so grateful that I finally got out of the abuse I was going through, so overjoyed that I didn't die early on during my struggles, and beyond excited to say that my life is better and getting better by the day. Even with small struggles, I am happy that I am actually free and able to keep moving forward.