"Onism: //n//.the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, //you are here//."
You’re reaching the end of your final year in highschool. Important decisions need to be made regarding the next few years of your life. The most pressing choice at this point, is whether or not you are going into this new life at the university with or without your current boyfriend.
Do you need the company and support from this special person? - [[Inhabited]]
Or do you want to begin from scratch and find your true self in this new and unfamiliar adventure? - [[Desolate]]<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/enBSYq2r7X_NXbW7K1rUN1UG2FoTA9F2jVS2LSXhttuL2WUtV276zw5rdN-AN3kHhds9I2p85EeGwIA=w1366-h637-rw" height=400" width="400" />
You are settling in at your very own little flat near the campus. Orientation has started and you are learning a lot about university life and making a few friends.
You start to notice severe changes in your overall mood and struggle to function with your daily duties. As this continues, you realize things getting worse and worse regarding your mental health.
Your parents and boyfriend suggest that it may be time to see a doctor. - [[Diagnosis]] <img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/enBSYq2r7X_NXbW7K1rUN1UG2FoTA9F2jVS2LSXhttuL2WUtV276zw5rdN-AN3kHhds9I2p85EeGwIA=w1366-h637-rw" height=400" width="400" />
You are settling in at your very own little flat near the campus. Orientation has started and you are learning a lot about university life and making a few friends. Although, you feel quite alone since you broke up with your boyfriend right before moving here.
You start to notice severe changes in your overall mood and struggle to function with your daily duties. As this continues, you realize things getting worse and worse regarding your mental health.
Your parents suggest that it may be time to see a doctor. - [[Diagnosis.]] "Liberosis: //n//. the desire to care less about things — to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone — rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/UNukMWnr-3sWR42CtqF1DQIG84A9ari6iQOIBAghnlfQI9zWOR7y19tF9IxDpcMvijVcQZRigvwJPb0=w1366-h637-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You are adapting to living with the use of pills to manage your mental health. Sometimes small incidents send you over the edge and sometimes big problems make you feel apathetic.
You struggle to hold on to your true self, as the pills manipulate your state of mind and overall personality.
You decide it’s best to reach out to loved ones. - [[Opia]] <img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fI0Bm3FKUSdnTNhkBOEpHOGOYm8mNxIyKxkRIpU33A5MnM33zf4Qv1t3Hkbsqm2HVb_5h5yT_FIZTJ8=w1366-h637-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You had an appointment with a doctor and a psychiatrist. They talked to you about your mental health, your current situation and your past experiences. The doctor felt it best to also have a neurologist run a EEG to see if there are any indications of mental illness in your brain.
You have been diagnosed with depression, general anxiety disorder and OCD.
You have a choice:
Do you approach this problem by accepting the use of prescribed pills? - [[Liberosis]]
Or do you decide to handle this problem on your own, relying on your own preserverance and moral support form your boyfriend, friends and family? – [[Altschmerz]]<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fI0Bm3FKUSdnTNhkBOEpHOGOYm8mNxIyKxkRIpU33A5MnM33zf4Qv1t3Hkbsqm2HVb_5h5yT_FIZTJ8=w1366-h637-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You had an appointment with a doctor and a psychiatrist. They talked to you about your mental health, your current situation and your past experiences. The doctor felt it best to also have a neurologist run a EEG to see if there are any indications of mental illness in your brain.
You have been diagnosed with depression, general anxiety disorder and OCD.
You have a choice:
Do you approach this problem by accepting the use of prescribed pills? – [[Liberosis.]]
Or do you decide to handle this problem on your own, relying on your own preserverance and moral support form your friends and family? – [[Altschmerz.]]"Altschmerz: //n//. weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had — the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago."
<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/sJXszpaVKMdvgdziqmg2cH5pRWmKTmFVkFxfSlgsNWSzdyfU2IPe83lJWCDZ8j_G6A7aUgwCbBYPg8E=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You struggle to cope with all the symptoms of your illness. You start to pick up bad habits to numb your feelings. Chainsmoking and increased alcohol abuse.
Your boyfriend is especially dissatisfied with your behaviour and your relationship slowly deteriorates due to this. - [[Exulansis]] "Liberosis: //n//. the desire to care less about things — to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone — rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/UNukMWnr-3sWR42CtqF1DQIG84A9ari6iQOIBAghnlfQI9zWOR7y19tF9IxDpcMvijVcQZRigvwJPb0=w1366-h637-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You are adapting to living with the use of pills to manage your mental health. Sometimes small incidents send you over the edge and sometimes big problems make you feel apathetic.
You struggle to hold on to your true self, as the pills manipulate your state of mind and overall personality.
You want to reach out to somebody for help, but you feel ashamed and have no idea who to approach regarding this issue. – [[Monachopsis]] "Altschmerz: //n//. weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had — the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago."
<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/sJXszpaVKMdvgdziqmg2cH5pRWmKTmFVkFxfSlgsNWSzdyfU2IPe83lJWCDZ8j_G6A7aUgwCbBYPg8E=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You struggle to cope with all the symptoms of your illness without medication.
You start to pick up bad habits to numb your feelings. Chainsmoking and increased alcohol abuse.
Your parents are especially dissatisfied with your behaviour and your relationship with them slowly deteriorates due to this. - [[Kuebiko]] "Opia: //n//. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable — their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque — as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/RSM_mNdWxtvI4xeGLpIT8oHzAe_ul7HwqgM5SERs58vjCZbYM0UZ-H1PaVlyGzfeaHx8ErX0LGD-K-k=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="400" />
You find it hard to explain what you’re feeling and experiencing to the people who care about you. However, your boyfriend (even though he has no experience with mental illness himself) empathises with your condition and serves as a supportive sounding board to talk to.
You appreciate the help that you are receiving, but also don’t want to burden the people you care about with your issues.
Do you accept this support? - [[Énouement]]
Or do you want to try and solve your problems on your own? - [[Nodus Tollens]]"Exulansis: //n//. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it — whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness — which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/KWQD8Sq_qxq5JglomN1U-PERcZR3fYRsQUcjzviwiQso1YJ55fT4Iawj-ygASE7MORhBHiBF6PHRAPE=w1366-h588-rw" height=500" width="400" />
You decide to try and talk to people close to you about your problems, but due to your ongoing behaviour and unhealthy coping mechanisms, these people find it hard to sympathise and leave you to struggle with these overwhelming emotions.
Do you push these people out of your life to try and cope on your own? - [[Mauerbauertraurigkeit]]
Or do you give up your studies and move back home to receive the help that you need? - [[Rückkehrunruhe]]
"Monachopsis: //n//. the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach — lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home."
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Dmvi6_FeFq6QrqXJQfWjJfOl39SdvMh5EtcRPr5H5rG-WJWM4FSFR__FCrG59vzyJMpJwZR0ZVV9-_k=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You talk to your parents and friends about your issues. They try their best to help, but they don’t understand what you’re truly feeling.
Your academic work don’t interest you anymore. Did you make the right decision when choosing your path of studies?
When you were young you always dreamt of becoming a gameranger, because of your love for nature and wildlife. But later in life your boyfriend at that time and your parents convinced you to study a B.A degree.
Do you abonden your studies and pursue your initial dream?- [[Énouement.]]
Or do you continue with your studies to receive a degree and be more secure in finding a job? - [[Nodus Tollens.]]
"Kuebiko: //n//. a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence, which force you to revise your image of what can happen in this world — mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out all unwelcome and invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface, and propping yourself up like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/KWQD8Sq_qxq5JglomN1U-PERcZR3fYRsQUcjzviwiQso1YJ55fT4Iawj-ygASE7MORhBHiBF6PHRAPE=w1366-h588-rw" height=500" width="400" />
You are starting to lose your true self completely. You have become a person that you don’t recognise.
You are irresponsible and rebellious. Without medication and support form loved ones, you start to sink deeper into your illness. You feel emotionally and physically tired.
Do you move back home to receive the support from your parents that you desperately need? - [[Rückkehrunruhe.]]
Or do you feel that you don’t want to dissappoint your loved ones anymore than you already have and decide to try and handle your issues on your own? – [[L'appel du vide]]
"Énouement: //n//. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world — who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted — which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Ytp0jfrGBKLbg4ueTXvwS5ki_OH6C8kxoAaL1QXUQ4xj2ANeR5h6KJqdKSTa9JQpvZtkWzlm2xMcV5I=w1366-h588-rw" height=500" width="400" />
You are now more open to the idea of sharing your feelings and experiences with the people whom are close to you.
With all the support you’re receiving from your boyfriend, friends and family, you have learned to cope better with your illness and the effects of your pills.
After dedicated hard work, you receive your B.A degree at your university.
"Nodus tollens: //n//. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore — that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre — which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure."
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/iv23G9bStlt1kU6w288K1hMr-IM5rsUYjJLT6KJa2bpSo5ihu_VsPj0IjDw00d-9HJ1cSMDPJC7GH6I=w1366-h588-rw" height=600" width="400" />
You pushed so many people away that you find it hard to talk to anyone about your problems. You feel like there is no one you can truly rely on anymore.
After many failures regarding your academic work, you’re obligated to abandon your studies and find another path to follow.
"Rückkehrunruhe: //n//. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness — to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago — which makes you wish you could smoothly cross - dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call //cut//."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zpl_7TAOyj7DhTQsHGBaz8u7Kp9Vqtl7PBRi9YoUdsDl1OiQNlITNUgxAFO5UCseh-ylfkXTeWA7lsA=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You have to start from scratch and adjust to living with your parents again. At first, your disaggree on many things due to all the changes you went through during your time at the university.
With your own willpower and the support from your boyfriend and parents, you learn to cope with your illness without medication and start to search for a new path to follow regarding studies or a job.
"Mauerbauertraurigkeit: //n//. the inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like — as if all your social tastebuds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection, unable to recognize its rich and ambiguous flavors, its long and delicate maturation, or the simple fact that each tasting is double - blind."
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Dmvi6_FeFq6QrqXJQfWjJfOl39SdvMh5EtcRPr5H5rG-WJWM4FSFR__FCrG59vzyJMpJwZR0ZVV9-_k=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
Your boyfriend and parents are the remaining people in your life that truly care and they decide to reach out to you. You initially still push them away, believing that they can’t really help you.
You try your best with your studies and your loved ones notice this. You eventually let them in and they support you during your slow but deliberate endeavours to receive a degree.
"L'appel du vide: //n//. that tiny voice that tells you to jerk the steering wheel just to the right and take a flying leap off the ledge - that inclination to walk right into the ocean and never return - the call of the Siren song."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/phoy0CdzeAn3TbSNx79FhntXlwbXS2Xr0vg_40RcbkZlrwPqOEFv5yTiy5MYCox7ZS1ZnDoexi3AJeA=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="500" />
You have abandoned your studies and decide to pack a few personal belongings, empty your savings account and run away to new place to start over.
At this new place you feel more alone than ever, but you are too ashamed to go back to the people you dissappointed. You constantly ask yourself if you will be able to survive any longer…
"Rückkehrunruhe: //n//. the feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness — to the extent you have to keep reminding yourself that it happened at all, even though it felt so vivid just days ago — which makes you wish you could smoothly cross - dissolve back into everyday life, or just hold the shutter open indefinitely and let one scene become superimposed on the next, so all your days would run together and you’d never have to call //cut//."
<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zpl_7TAOyj7DhTQsHGBaz8u7Kp9Vqtl7PBRi9YoUdsDl1OiQNlITNUgxAFO5UCseh-ylfkXTeWA7lsA=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You have to start from scratch and adjust to living with your parents again. At first, your disaggree on many things due to all the changes you went through during your time at the university.
With your own willpower and the support from your parents, you learn to cope with your illness without medication and start to search for a new path to follow regarding studies or a job.
"Nodus tollens: //n//. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore — that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre — which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure."
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/iv23G9bStlt1kU6w288K1hMr-IM5rsUYjJLT6KJa2bpSo5ihu_VsPj0IjDw00d-9HJ1cSMDPJC7GH6I=w1366-h588-rw" height=600" width="400" />
You try your best to continue with your studies, but due to the medication you have lost interest in the things that you used to enjoy (in this case, your field of study).
After many failures regarding your academic work, you’re obligated to abandon your studies and find another path to follow.
"Énouement: //n//. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world — who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted — which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front."
<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/bXyPURZEMLBD1JoACdTMjpz5PEOG06l890PSxN_x9AOdDJBoCTys8J7BIq0Cudxnl3imY8lULyWIpWM=w1366-h588-rw" height=400" width="600" />
You moved close to a nature reserve where you can do a nature conservation coarse. By this time you have adapted well to your medication and receive support from your parents, as they finally understand why you wanted to persue this path in the first place.
Later on, you thrive in your job as a gameranger and feel truly at home.
“Zugzwang: //n//. Being forced by circumstances to do something which you do not wish to do. The word is from the German and means ‘compulsion to move’. The term is most frequently used to describe a strategy in chess whereby one player is forced to make a move they do not wish to make. It is also used more generally to describe any comparable situation.”
Let's begin with your life story - [[Onism]]