GirlRobot's Pod - by Droniela

Okay it's been a while since I showed up in any capacity and I think we are due a status update.

Not much has been going on lately.

Work is working, college is colleging, gym is gymning.

I am overall well, thank you very much, aside from some changes I was not expecting.

Now that I'm settled with the medication, I am feeling some stuff I didn't before, or at least am being more... honest about it?

For instance, my social phobia is 100% better. I can leave and see people whenever I want without feeling anxious.

I even had a trip to the company headquarters to finally meet my colleagues, drove my longest road trip yet to get there, talked to a lot of people.

The only reason it was not more fun is that I was working lol

But now I'm back to not going out much on account of like

Not really enjoying a bustling social life?

IDK there's so much to be done at home, being social just feels boring lol

Not only at home, I've been REALLY enjoying driving, now that my car is okay.

There's still some mods I'd like to do to it but this is a subject for another post entirely.

Another update is that I am fully gearing towards buying a house, this year. I already have a candidate, let's hope it is still available 6 months from now, when I'm done paying for college tuition.

I'm already concocting plans for what I will do after I finally move to my own house, but not in the anxiety inducing way it was before. Which speaks a lot for the new ability I recently acquired due to medication and therapy:

Patience.

It's such a relief that I finally learned patience. That I can wait for stuff, that I can do things slowly, that I am way more resistant to FOMO.

I guess that was it I had to say xD

CW: Sexual violence, abuse, starvation, trauma.

The answers to our problems lie in the past, not the future.

This much seems reasonable and logical enough but nothing clears that up more than years long introspection and examination of the past. It's pretty fucking jarring how much of one's personality is not innate but a reflex/response to one's upbringing and traumas. We really underestimate how much of what makes us "us" was molded by our experiences growing up.

I came from a emotionally disfunctional family, like I think most of us in my generation.

Mom and dad never let our plates empty and we always had a roof over our head. The house was always obsessively clean, there was no substance abuse, so even tho we were lower middle class, we never lacked anything essential in material terms.

But emotionally? Man, what a mess. And the more I explore this past in therapy and doing introspection, the more I realize all of my life was dictated by that mess.

This past years I figured some of the biggest hurdles in my life were caused directly by trauma response to that mess.

It all started with my marriage, where I was kept in private incarceration for 2 years, when I was not allowed to leave the house to work. As my useless ex-husband also didn't work, we starved frequently. He also abused me emotionally, sexually and beat me up on the regular.

When I ran away from that relationship I went deep into therapy to figure out what got me there. I think it's important to understand we are not passive victims of our destiny, and that as much as we are not to be blamed for the violence we suffer, we own ourselves the responsability of not letting it happen again.

Long story short: my ex-husband did to me what my family did to me, but 10x more intense and violent.

And the reason why I struggled so much to break up with him before we even got married to avoid all that was that I was programmed to be in constant misery, trying to help someone who was always about to die, that I only saw value in myself if I was saving someone and that taking that abuse was normal.

When I realized that, I stopped suffering over my relationship and started digging deeper on how else my life experiences in my formative years shaped my behavior.

There's "smaller" stuff, like being taught that studying is a bad thing actually by my undiagnosed ADHD dad who was a very smart guy who struggled with finishing his education and applied morals to justify his difficulties. He made it a moral choice to not study, because he would never admit "weakness". The problem was never him.

But in 2025, things ramped up in therapy. It was such an absurd thing that *all* my harmful behavior (to myself and others) was rooted in my family's emotional disfunctionality that now I don't even wonder where things came from: I look at my family and I immediately figure it out.

For instance, one of the biggest hurdles in my career, even more than ADHD, was the fact that I always took everything as an accusation, and was permanently paranoid that I would easily become someone's scapegoat. That made my work relations very hard as I'd be 100% defensive all the time. On therapy I figured out that happened because I was the scapegoat for all my family's problems so I developed a defense for that as if the entire world did that. But it didn't. Only my family did that.

It was also in 2025 that I figured out there's nothing wrong with me and that rejection doesn't mean I did anything wrong necessarily.

And as infuriating as discovering those things is, it is great because once I can rationalize the origin for something is bullshit, I can let go of that.

But now I'm facing a dilemma:

What to do about my relationships that were built in one way or another on those learned behaviors that I no longer have?

This shit is so rough. I pursued relationships where I was "useful" to the other person my entire life because that's what my family taught I should do and now I find myself in social circles where I'm there solely for my utility, with people that are not really good friends and just stay around because I'm useful to them, sometimes.

I don't blame them, I'm not accusing anyone of taking advantage of me. I offered my utility on my own volition, I don't blame those people nor do I resent them.

But these relationships gotta change or go, you know? I'm no longer willing to be in people's lives for my utility alone.

It's the first time in my life where I'm not bothered as much by my constant solitude because I'm realizing that the reason this solitude hurts me so much is that I worked very hard to deserve company and I still didn't get it.

I'm still as lonely but at least I'm not wasting energy in dumb ways to "deserve" company. I now reckon that I just gotta go out and meet people, which I am doing.

And if nerdy AuDHD me is too annoying to some people, I don't have to change. I don't have to compensate the annoyance people feel about me being me by masking and helping them with whatever.

It sucks to let some people go in my life because I am no longer willing to be treated like a nuisance that must simp to deserve company.

But I will meet other people that like me for who I am and not for what I can do for them.

And it will be fucking awesome.

So, for a 2 and 1/2 weeks now I've been on antidepressants.

The whole story goes as follows, in (hopefully) simplified terms:

I've never really developed the habit of going out due to circunstances in my family. So while teenagers start to go out and skate and date and get in trouble, I didn't. I had a permanently sick mom and a very strict father so I was only allowed to leave the house to go to school or to run errands for my mom.

That started as early as 8 and lasted until I was 17, when I went to a full time school that gave me the experience and excuse to be out and about.

Soon after I started working, and I barely ever had any money to do anything, so stay at home I did.

When I started making enough money to do stuff, I was also doing 2 and 1/2 trips to and from work, so I didn't have the time, since I spent at least 5 hours a day in buses.

My transition allowed me a little bit more of leeway in the sense of going out and enjoying life but by the time I was getting the hang of being out, I married the biggest pulsating asshole to ever live and he kept me locked at home for 2 years.

Lol. Lmao.

Then I divorced him and was free, but full of trauma. And debt. Spent 2 years rebuilding my financial life and paying debt before I could finally start enjoying life out again.

Eventually, with all my debts paid, a lot of trauma processed and a nice salary, it seemed like I could finally get back on the horse! Go to kinky parties! Go on dates! Go to concerts!

Man, the future of my social life looked BRIGHT

...in february 2020.

Then *gesticulates wildly* all that happened.

I still haven't fully recovered from the isolation of the pandemic. Whatever little social interaction and reasons to leave the house went out of the window ever since, because I work from home.

THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT. WORKING FROM HOME IS AWESOME.

But this comfort comes with the drawback of retreating from society if you aren't particularly careful with your habits.

And I certainly wasn't =V

I mean, I go to the gym, I do chores outside but I don't get to MEET people. It's like the minimum mandatory being outside, it's not really like I'm enjoying third spaces.

Then recently, after a lot of therapy, I decided to give "outside" a chance a little more effectively. I went clubbing once =D

But anxiety still gets me. And not only my personal history does not help with that, the reason why I had to do external errands for my mom was that she had panic, agoraphobia and social phobia, and wouldn't leave the house for like 20 years.

So there's also a genetic component there. And if there is something I learned from my parents is that I should not make the same mistakes they did. My mom was around my age when she stopped leaving the house altogether, and I refuse to succumb to the same fate.

Then when I had my next prescription filling apointment with the psychiatrist, I described my problem.

I can't be spontaneous

Everything has to be planned at least with a week in advance to prepare emotionally

Being in the company of others for too long drains me for weeks

I want to have a social life.

The diagnosis was social phobia and the prescription was antidepressants.

(I won't get into which or dosage because some weirdo on the internet might take my post as medical advice and I'm not here for that. Go talk to a psychiatrist.)

The adaptation period has been rough, though it is much more subdued at this moment. The only real bad thing that happened was that it fuuuuucked my sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night and I just can't just go back to sleep, my mind racing. And not even like BAD racing, I'm not thinking bad things, I'm just thinking too much and too fast for someone trying to sleep.

I'm sleeping a little better now, so I'm back at the gym and I've been very productive at work, so we are almost through that.

The cool part is that it is doing wonders to my state of mind. I don't get pissed anymore. I don't get as anxious as a did about the future, or work, or college. I'm even doing college assignments without flipping my shit. It's been a very positive change.

But not only that, my back barely hurts anymore because I am not as tense as I usually am. I no longer feel "on hurry" for anything, I am just confident that things will happen when they have to happen.

I'm still not going out and meeting people because, as I mentioned, my sleep is fucked and I exhausted most of the time I am awake. Also I am too busy with work and college stuff, but I'm feeling some social improvement already.

I'm back at the server with my rubber friends and seeing them doing the things they do no longer cause me the pain of jealousy, it actually fills me with joy. And longing for the future when I'll be able to do stuff too, but without hurrying or feeling anxious.

I am, overall, feeling much "lighter", if that makes sense. No more overthinking, no more anxiety for no reason. I still have to work to achieve the social life I want, but I am confident I'll get there.

Social media, however, is out of the question, at least for the time being.

That shit was toxic for me. It was like I was living in enough fumes of a social life to not seek actualy social life, but dealing with tons os stress.

Maybe in the not-so-distant future when I have content to share again, but that is not sounding likely at this particular moment. I want to be able to do stuff for myself, for a while.