Yet other things have not changed much. The world is not much more colorful than when I first sobered up. I can’t remember ever being too happy, even as a kid and a teen. The moments of vibrancy that are still uncommon now were even rarer then. Socializing, however, was hard then and has become even stranger. I’m realizing that I spent years drunk playing a character around others. I don’t think it was a fun character per se, but it was loud and people seemed to enjoy it well enough. In crowds, the only people that caught my attention were other characters, and any interaction stayed on that level. Real intimacy was sweet but rare, as it still is now to some extent, but it’s harder passing as normal. When people discuss their favorite music, for instance, I have no idea what mine is. Or what food I like. (Whatever is cheap? I can make high-effort Italian-y things if I want to, it’s not particularly hard and I’ve had good teachers, but why would I bother to perform alone?) I know what kinds of words and ideas strike me, the hues and textures of them all, and I spend way too long thinking abstractly about humor and artful play, but that makes for poor material in casual conversation. A young, flamboyant fag at a bar recently exhorted me to just “be yourself” and “do whatever you want to!” (tee hee). What if I want to want something? How should I go about that? Apparently I’m a bigger fag than him.

I’m realizing I’m not much better off than I was in high school and early undergrad. I spent almost fifteen years on degrees, writing, striving my ass off for prestige, and toiling in shitty temporary jobs, and I grew little in many ways that mattered since I began. Trapped in the late 2000’s, I just drove onwards and onwards trusting that there was a point to it all. The social part is especially bothersome because it’s so laughable in retrospect. I used to arrogantly dismiss proles and normies as dullards unworthy of serious attention. Women were especially unserious things by and large, and it was everyone’s fault but mine that very little caught my interest. I still think glowingly about kissing girls and holding hands and chatting with dear friends long into the night, but I’m more aware of the vast stretches of boredom now, lonely in seas of people. I was scoffing at them then, but now, having laid none of the groundwork to be normal, I am finally wanting to know them and take them seriously and charitably, but have trouble finding a way. The bright side, at least, is that I'm starting to sense how lost I am.

In 2018, my mind began to break. In 2020, the long despair entwined around the columns of my soul began to choke. In 2022, my body failed. In 2024, the raft has been broken for so long, I can’t remember the sight of shore. Yet there’s a calmness. I will never get tenure, but despite the uncertainty, I've never failed to get classes when I needed them, and I enjoy teaching, much more than I ever thought I would – I can still play that character just fine sober, Oxford shirts and tweedy jackets, remembrances of Shakespeare and Stevens peppered in my speech, deep-sounding questions and imagistic flights of fancy and all. That’s all I am, perhaps, but that’s something. I’ve burnt some bridges but laid the foundations for more. I’m more optimistic about my current job than ever before, even if it is far from ideal, law school be damned. I’m not as clever as I used to be, but I’m careful now, and my energies, such as they are, have never been more directed.

I’m really gay and I don’t know what’s going on, but I'm certain something is beginning. The sadness sticks in my smile, but this is the happiest I’ve ever been. Between death, sobriety, and age, it’s been a really weird fucking year.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5566534&forum_id=2#47907047)

I suggest leaning into the Jungian individuation process if you know anything about it...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5566534&forum_id=2#47907068)

In some ways I can relate to your story. Like many ITT I am a recovering alcoholic who drank because it was impossible to relate to normal people and when I dulled my senses and quieted my mind it was so easy to fit in. But I had no ability to control my drinking so I had to stop.

I can't relate to being a professor. I think I would want to kill myself. I hated school a really intense amount. I still hate school to this day. I felt like academia was the worst thing that ever happened to me so I have no idea how someone else can enjoy it but it seems like it's working for you.

My only advice is that you seem to be thinking a bit too much and seem in your own head. A shrink would probably diagnose you as dysthymic. The only cure I have ever known for that is to stay busy. Find a really difficult goal and pursue it. If you want to stay in academia, write a doorstop of a novel. Find something impossibly hard and take on an all consuming challenge. Or try and make an absurd amount of money and take on a wife and a bunch of dependants. You need to get moving in some sort of direction where you're under enough external stress that you don't have time to worry so much about how you feel about how you feel. This is my unsolicited advice.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5566534&forum_id=2#47907106)

Not resolving doubts and knowing that others do based on a perspective, and not a truth, makes it possible to consider that what you feel to be true, but they don't, might actually be true, and that what you feel to be true will be shown to be true, according to your standard of truth, if you trust it and don't let others doubts about you cause you to doubt yourself.

I am retarted and gay, however, so you shouldn't trust me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5566534&forum_id=2#47907296)

i didn't poast this fishing for pity, btw. just sharing some thoughts with my internet FRIENDS.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5566534&forum_id=2#47907354)