Entry 112

I'm feeling negatively about myself at the moment. I had a birthday yesterday. I think what triggered these feels is the fact that I'm now 38 years old and don't have a "normal" life like most of my same-age peers. I don't really want kids or marriage, but I don't know, I kind of expected myself to have at least some kind of living-wage career job and a significant other by this time. Both of these are harder to get as a disabled person with a mental illness that makes dealing with people more of a challenge than it is for "normal" folk. This isn't something that I believe any amount of therapy can change, assuming I could even find a therapist that "gets" me. To be honest, I don't have the energy or executive functioning to make such therapy effective. It's not like a therapist can wave a magic wand and banish my mental illness to the Void. I have to do the majority of the work, obviously.

The things I have accomplished, I feel like the general attitude toward that among people in my life or my peers in general is that it's not taken seriously, or the value of it is easily dismissed because it's not something I'm paid to do in a capitalist society. It makes me feel like it somehow doesn't count because it's not part of a 9-5 routine salaried job with health insurance benefits. Older generations and non-tech people don't understand anything I do, it's all weird gibberish to them, so they're less inclined to see the value in it. There is not one person in my IRL social sphere who "gets" any of it. The only people who do are online friends. Online, I feel more that a significant part of who I am is validated.