UnSocially Acceptable

It was October of 2018 that I reached a breaking point with what we all can and cannot discuss in polite conversation.

People ask you how you are doing and your response is a stock “I am doing well, and you?” Each utterance is a lie, on both sides.

The suicide rate in this country is astronomical. Your dear friend Jacob kills himself (because more men tend to take their lives than women do) and everyone is in shock. You say, “Oh I wish he would have told me, I would have tried to help him.” Or worse, “I didn’t think he was that depressed.”

The odds are Jacob did try to reach out in one small way or another but it was ignored. Not intentionally but who ever he reached out to probably got weirded out by something he said and tried to downplay the statement. Or they were listening to respond rather than listening to understand. Whatever the situation, it truly is not their fault Jacob killed himself, and it truly is not their fault that they missed his attempt at reaching out. We never learned how to handle this as a society, we just don’t teach this sort of empathy or compassion.

The sad fact of the matter is that we live in a society that we don’t talk about such things. We don’t discuss mental illness, it’s that simple. We actually don’t discuss a lot of important topics.

Back to October 2018. I was unhappy with a lot of things in my life. My job was not what I wanted it to be. My husband had taken a job to have a better work/life balance but was now working more than he was at his previous job and that was causing problems between us. All of this was the perfect recipe for my autoimmune diseases to grab hold and make my life so much worse.

In a desperate attempt to gain control of my downward spiral into depression and anxiety brought on by my current situation, I turned to my personal social media. Of course, there were a few people who thought I was “brave” to post something so raw and there were a lot of people who didn’t know how to react. A lot of people thought they should at least reach out but when it came to actually being able to “support” they still didn’t know what to do. Not their fault- society hasn’t prepared them for such deep and emotional shit.

I keep my social media small, I like it that way. I am more known for posting “funny” and “random” thoughts than I am for much else. I am sure that is all social media, the funny stuff and dog videos are all anyone cares about on Facebook. Personally, I don’t really like posting that I am so depressed that I can’t get out of bed and just slept and cried my weekend away. BUT I wanted to hold myself accountable and I wanted the other people on my social media who were doing the same thing in silence to know that they were not alone. Truly. I was going to support myself by showing the world I am vulnerable too.

However, this could have been in my mind at the time, but it actually felt like many people were just responding out of a duty but they really didn’t want that on their newsfeed. I started to get a lot of “buck up” and “it could be worse” responses. So I decided to start a blog. This blog, actually. I would keep my social media presence on the light side and I would have this blog for those who did want to read something real.

That’s how this blog was born. UnSocially Acceptable (USA, please tell me you caught how clever that is)! A place where I can talk about the things that I think we really SHOULD be talking about.

Yup, that was the plan. Then I got sicker and sicker and I physically and mentally couldn’t do it. Until now, CBD helped me.

A little bit about me, real quick(ish):

I like to write so until I get the hang of this blogging thing my posts are going to be long (TBH they will probably be long once I get the hang of it anyway).

So. Me. My name is Trina. I am 34 years old. I am from Sugar Land, Texas and I currently live in Richmond, TX. I have a couple of autoimmune diseases and because I am extra I also have endometriosis and PCOS (that’s right, we will have some postings about broken uteri too). BUT I am not my diseases, in fact, I am doing everything to make myself well despite modern medicine.

I met my husband when I was 19. The night I met him I told him I was going to marry him. That scared him away. I get it. I know I sounded like a crazy bitch. At any rate, he eventually decided my particular brand of crazy was just right for him and it all worked out. We have one daughter and she suffered a traumatic brain injury during birth 13 years ago and she is special needs. She is not her injury and she doesn’t let her TBI define her. She is an amazing young lady.

I like dogs and have 3 (2 Aussies and 1 German Shepherd).

I also have a cat and she’s an asshole.

I went to college and graduate school and did pretty well for myself in that regard. Although, I don’t have much use for my degrees in my day job.

It is my goal to turn this into a space where I can discuss my life, my cannabis advocacy and so much more.

Thank you for reading, Trina