Sorry for my delayed response. Things have been a bit rough for the past month.

I lost a good friend from high school in a horrible car accident and things have been pretty unbearable since then.
After the initial shock of this, it threw me into a loop and now I’m dealing with a consistent fear of death. Not just for myself, but with my mom and the rest of my family. I’m still wide awake at nearly 4am in the midst of another breakdown, and it doesn’t feel good at all.

This is horrible. I’ve lost an abundance of family members over the years, but I never really responded to them in an atypical way, but since the death of my friend, it’s slapped me in the face at how temporary everything is. It’s thrown me into an existential crisis mindset and questioning everything. It’s so hard for me to focus on one simple task. I was feeling fine yesterday, since I spent the day cleaning and going through some of my things, triggered quite a bit of feel good nostalgia, but now the dreaded feeling looms over me tonight.

On a side note, I have been able to spend more time with my family, I’ve even started initiating more contact with my grandparents, and my sister who lives in another state. I’m still trying to muster up the courage to speak to my dad though, that’s one barrier that’s going to take a while to break, but I’m up for the challenge. I’ve even started playing the game I was once addicted to as a form of escape again, but in smaller increments. I’m even talking to some friends that I’ve played with since the beginning, it’s been great being able to catch up with them. I’ve also decided on a course that I want to try for online classes. I was thinking about getting my associates for web development and design. Culinary school is just too expensive. And since I live in NY, state school tuition will be free starting this fall, maybe this was the reason why I put off college after high school, better late than never I guess?

I have been learning about meditating and breathing exercises to try to keep the anxiety at bay, or at least help remedy it a bit. I’ve been keeping track and even writing down things that I’m grateful for. But the one I wake up with every day is the gratefulness that I’m awake, my family is awake, and breathing. Every single day I’m grateful for that. I’ve even started writing them at night, but with experiencing such a loss at this moment, I’ve fallen off track. But I do plan on starting up again. I just need to let this out of my system before I’m able to pick myself up again and continue where I left off.