Year 6
March 6th marks my 6th year of streaming. Yet I may not be able to celebrate it like I have in the past.
I’m still dealing with a lot of personal issues. The long story turned short(this is a lie) is ever since I lived with a friend back in Missoula, my anxiety and noise aversion began to seep into me and has hindered my ability to relax, sleep, and co-exist with people. In Chicago, any loud noise made by anyone or anything would make my mind race and put me in defense mode, worrying, blaming, feeling grief for blaming, feeding my depression worse and worse. I came back and moved in with a friend to Missoula again, yet had similar problems with noises and was even more annoyed.
Last May I moved back home due to this stress, not to mention helping my parents with finances. I am on the lower level of a split level house, and no matter how quiet, quick, or small any noise is it puts me on immediate edge. My nieces come over almost every weekend and sometimes stay longer, and once again has only fed into all of my mental issues. This has caused less streaming and in general a worse mood. I switched medication to help with anxiety/depression, but that only helped so much. I love my nieces, in fact we always have fun and laugh when I get to hang out with them. Yet the noise, banging as kids are kids, puts me on edge when before I wouldn’t be bothered. This has led to a couple of heated confrontations with my parents, yet I immediately felt horrible afterwards. I’m not lying when I say that I wanted to use money I got from Twitch to go out, buy a gun, and end my life.
This came to a head 2 weeks ago when I collapsed and inured myself, and felt not loved when the kids were over again and I couldn’t get sleep/rest when I was injured. I know that’s not the case, I know that my parents care and love, but when I get that anxiety I feel like everyone and everything is out to get me, make me feel miserable, I feel guilty, I want to die. I told my mom that I was going to kill myself. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and now I’m in the process of moving out to an apartment or small house in a town smaller yet larger than my hometown. Going to make sure it doesn’t have noisy neighbors and such to help with anxiety.
This also led to a discussion with my therapist, and she is recommending me for a neuro psych evaluation to determine if I have extreme anxiety due to my noise anxiety. In addition to helping with my anxiety, it is also hoped that it will help with my insomnia as well. Going to go to therapy more as well.
What does this mean for Year 6? Possibly how the past few months have gone, which is better than what has happened Year 5. I imagine once I get used to the new place and I’m not on edge I will be able to stream more regularly. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to streaming every single day for 8–12 hours, but I’m ok with that. I’m going to do more variety once I get more regular streams going, but I’m also going to have a healthy dose of MC.
My stream has changed, I’ve changed, and to those who stuck around you’re amazing. To those that haven’t, that’s ok, that’s just how life works out. I love you all ❤
P.S. Decided to add a list of things that changed for the better in Year 5.
- Better at not worrying about the numbers. Still affects me a bit but not so much as to destroy me
- Better at talking/etc when no one is chatting and doing my best to be entertaining regardless
- Less soda. Still get soda kicks but less frequent and hoping to remove it entirely
- Was engaged, didn’t work out, but to be able to be that close to someone again was worth everything.
- Better at interacting with people at large events without as much anxiety as before(thanks meds!)
- Keeping a LOT of negativity off of Twitter. Yes I still post it from time to time, but compared to when I first started Twitch with depressive attention grabbing multiple times a DAY, I’m VERY pleased with how rare it is.
