Divided between two worlds

[CodyXarex]

I've been living on my own lately and it's revealed a lot of personal bad habits and addictions that I otherwise would not have easily noticed or handled while living with my family. Weirdly enough, my home state feels like a completely different place since I've spent the last 5-8 years of my 20s travelling the world essentially.

But now that I've moved out and know I can survive on my own in a more traditional sense (job, apartment, vehicle, etc.), I don't see much reason to stay in my home town anymore, except to stay close to my little sister, and to hold down the best and best paying job I've had yet.

It's hard because I care deeply for my little sister, and it almost feels like I want to be physically close to her almost all the time, or at least not too far from her, but I'm not sure if there's much I can do to help her or guide her until she's 18, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I've tried enough. And I have this fear that if I move to Texas, or Colorado, or Arizona, that somehow, her life is going to get worse and I'm not going to be there to help her. Even though she won't be 18 for three years.

She's the only reason I'm still staying around. If it wasn't for her I'd be in Colorado or Cali or some place like that. I believe that even though I have a good job where I am now, where the small town I'm living in is limiting my social prospects, my dating prospects, and is making it harder to establish the lifestyle I want to live. Either as a city-dweller, or a nomad. A lifestyle that, thankfully, my skillsets kind of lend themselves to.

I believe I can have a good life in my home town in the South if I can just let go of my preferences, the life and people I had back out West and stop trying to base my identity and character and future around a location, but it's really hard for me to let go of that idea because SoCal and Colorado and Texas felt so much more like home, and I love seeing new places and nature, and I spent my entire childhood, teens, and early 20s trying to leave the South because I believed I never belonged there. Partially due to a sheltered and traumatic childhood and teenhood.

Every month I spend away from Cali or my friends abroad, I feel like I'm growing more and more distant from them and those places, and the more they feel like some kind of dream, even though they were the best places I had ever lived. They were amazing, like a different world. Thinking about them actually makes me kind of sentimental.

I have a six-month plan to save up money to build up a financial base, gather up some equipment for practising and gig work, and to pay off a debt or two using the job I have now and to spend as much time with my family as I can before taking off again in the summer, but every day my mind bugs and torments me about how seemingly much worse my life and dating options are here, and how I'm wasting time by staying here and am just allowing more time for more things to go wrong and hinder my plans. Even though I could see how I could turn my home state into a base of operations, and I don't really need to move states to do the things that make me, me. Like making music, or writing, or working out.

I try going out and socializing on the weekends by going to the major cities or nicest cities within a 1-4 hour drive away from the one I'm in now (which is basically just a depressing parking lot of a city), but it's hard because it seems like every weekend there's something happening or going wrong:

• Bad weather keeps me pinned down
• A family member has passed
• Family drama/crisis
• Family obligation

This weekend I want to go to Nashville or Knoxville and practice game, but I probably can't because I'm trying to get closer with an astranged biological father and half-brother that I didn't get to grow up with. This is important to me, and I'd feel guilty if I didn't, but I get this gut feeling like this is going to become a regular thing here: Sacrificing the only two days off I have for family matters. Matters that don't even include my little sister.

But I don't know. Maybe January has just been a bad month.

It seems like there's always something going on, and I notice that every day I have a million worries going through my head that I can't do jack about during the week, and would rather not worry about during the weekend:

• I gotta get my tooth pulled
• I've got to see a dermatologist about my receding hairline
• I should probably work this Saturday to make up for that missed day or those missed hours.
• I've got to text my bio-father and half-brother back so they don't think I don't care about them
• I still haven't wrote that book
• I need to come up with an exercise routine
• Gotta get seat covers
• I still don't know if I should stay or go
• I need to spend more time with my little sister
• I should drop my phone off to get it repaired
• I need to research tents
• I should do this
• I should do that

And yet despite all of these exhausting thoughts, I still feel like I'm on autopilot most of the time, and like I mostly spend whatever free time I have on the weekends doing laundry, eating, sleeping, and jerking off to smut, which I think is soul-destroying and makes me into a bitter jealous bigot, robs me of my mojo and self-respect, and that i just need to go someplace where I can practice daygame every day where I'm surrounded by women that I find most attractive.

It's impossible to practice daygame a great deal where I am now because I don't find most of the women that attractive, and like I said, the city I'm in now is largely a parking lot. It's not very possible to walk down the street and meet a different woman every two minutes.

Every day I'm mentally exhausted and running through the same damn script, and I think it's distracting me from just, doing what I want to do. Which is to write, draw, and make music.

 

On the plus side, ever since I moved out, started cooking my own food and eating a little better, and have started just talking to people more directly, telling them exactly what I think and feel and removing any ambiguity, I've gotten drug-free from my CBD, Benadryl, and Caffeine dependencies, and a lot of my more crippling self-esteem and anxiety has gone away for the most part, and my sleep is fixed. Mostly.

Can someone poke holes in my thinking or direct me to a good online counselor or someone who can troubleshoot and debug my mind? I apologize for the brain dump here but I couldn't sleep unless I got this out somewhere.

Edited January 25, 2022 by CodyXarex