Orange's Online Diary

@modestOrange545533

Hello all,

I guess I'm just going to post my thoughts here. Why not? Lol.

Anyway, today I'm an anxious Orange. My family situation is a HUGE MESS and it's not fun. I start my next semester of nursing school in about two weeks! I'm really nervous, but i'm also looking forward to having something else to focus on. I'm also excited because I am taking maternity/peds which means I get to learn about babies and babies are super cute! I'm also really excited to keep moving forward towards my goal of becoming a nurse!

Overall I'm just really anxious. I'm under a lot of pressure and a lot of stress. I am praying that it doesn't impact my upcoming semester.

Here's an anxious Orange to wrap up this post! Take care all. Stay strong :).

Hey guys. Today has been a tiring day. My family situation is a mess and it seems like all this pressure is on me. I also am having all these terrible thoughts. I have OCD and as part of my OCD I get intrusive thoughts, but sometimes it's hard to tell if the intrusive thoughts are true, or if they are just intrusive thoughts.

For example. Today I am having many distressing thoughts which include:

"You were a horrible child growing up and you caused a lot of your family's problems."

"You are responsible for your twin's severe autism just by existing. His autism has caused the family extreme pain. Your issues as a child and later did not help, in fact, they just added to the already very difficult situation. You are responsible for a lot of your family's pain and suffering."

"All of your professors think you are mentally ill and look down on you for it. They all think that you are too mentally ill to be a nurse, and that you will be a danger to patients. The professor saw you doing some compulsions, and you are always visibly anxious. Sometimes you mumble things under your breath when you are anxious and now they think you talk to yourself and that you are crazy."

The issue with these thoughts is that I feel like parts of them are true. I feel like there is evidence to support them. I know that I couldn't have caused my twin's autism, but I was difficult as a child and teenager due to my mental health challenges (OCD and Depression). I feel really guilty for it, especially when my parents were already going through so much with my twin, and my younger brother too (my younger brother has high functioning autism although my family was in denial about it for a while). I was supposed to be the "okay" one, but I failed, and I'm scared that they secretly resent me for it. I contributed to my parent's marital discourse. I need to stop blaming myself for all of my family's challenges, it's very childish, and I need to stop. My OCD makes me feel excessive guilt for things that I don't need to feel guilty about.

Sorry for rambling. It feels good to get this all out and to have this space where I can express these things. I'm really glad that this site is anonymous.

-Orange

Hey guys! I made this silly Nurse Orange! It's supposed to be me as a nurse! This is my first time really using a photo editing application so go easy on me lol.

-Orange

Today has been a hard day.

I had work from 8:30am-3:30pm, and that wasn't so bad, but after that things got a little worse.

My family situation is a mess, and it has been for basically my entire life, although I didn't realize it until recently. My twin's autism diagnosis absolutely destroyed my mom. My dad said she is a shell of the person that she was before his diagnosis. She fully blames herself for it, and it has crushed her. In order to sleep she takes a high dose of a benzo, and also trazodone. I got little affection from her as a young kid. She was so focused on my twin, and then my younger brother who is 2 years younger than me. I found a note hidden in a photo album that she wrote years ago addressed to my younger brother. It said in it that she had never felt a connection with a baby before him. So she never felt a connection with me. I feel by the wayside. My dad practically raised me. It still felt like my problems weren't that important.

Now my dad, who is the person I'm the closest to in the world, told my mom on her anniversary that he didn't want to be with her anymore. He is having an affair. He just left. I still live at home for the time being (I'm 22 and still in school), so this is affecting me more than it should I guess. Everyone is making my dad out to be this evil villain, but they don't know the whole story. They don't know how difficult my mom can be. She is loving and caring, but there is also this toxicity that is hard to explain. I know there was emotional abuse and neglect in my household growing up. I am just beginning to process this all recently, and it's difficult, but also freeing.

Tonight I'm having a hard time though. My brain is telling me that if I didn't exist, my twin wouldn't be the way that he is, and this all could have been prevented. I made the birth more risky by existing. He had some medical issues when we were born, but I didn't. Why? Why him and not me? If we didn't share the womb, maybe he wouldn't be the way that he is. I feel like I am responsible for my family's pain and suffering, and even though I know that that's not logically true, I am having trouble letting go of the guilt. How do I let go of this guilt?

Hello Orange. I'm SweetPea 🤝 I mostly post on the Depression: Journal Support Check In board, but decided to venture over here tonight. This board seems active.

I've seen your cute lil orange in chat before 😄 I lurk because when I try to send a message, it takes forever to post. That makes it hard to hold a conversation. I like to read chat before I go to sleep. Have you seen the change in the chatrooms since the latest update? 😱 The profile pics are no longer by the messages. I think that sucks. Why did they change it?

Anyway...good luck with nursing school. I just have my TMA.

@Gregariouszebra20

Lol look what I made! I got bored 😂

Just wanted to give a shoutout to the people in Support Room 24/7. You guys are all wonderful people and have helped me get through so much. Much love to you all.

The song I'm feeling right now.

Hey guys I haven't posted on here for a while. I know no one really reads this, and that's okay because this is really mainly for me to just document my life and my current state.

Since I last posted here, a whole lots has happened!

I'm in my last semester of nursing school! I can't believe it! I'm so excited to work as a nurse!

I can't decide what I want to specialize in though. I'm between three different kinds of nursing.

1. Emergency Room. I'm leaning the most towards this one. I love the chaos. I am super anxious and so I am already at that level of stress constantly. It also really helps to be constantly distracted. I had my clinical in the ER for one day and it just felt right. I seek out high stress situations if that makes sense, so I really enjoy the ER.

2. NICU. I fell in love with the NICU in my previous semester. I had the most amazing professor who I grew really close to. I loved the NICU because I felt like I was helping my twin brother. He has severe autism and we were in the NICU as babies. He was worse off than I was. I just loved it so much and the babies were so cute! I know it can get really sad though and you have to deal with family members a lot which seems scary.

3. Psych. My main two are ER and NICU, but I can't let psych go. I originally went to nursing school wanting to be a psych nurse. It was a nurse in the psych hospital who made me want to be a nurse. She saved my life. I want to help people like she helped me. I am also possibly interested in becoming a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I'm not sure.

I wish that I could to all three! I'd probably go crazy if I did that. It's also not an option. Ughhhhhhh. Maybe I can start somewhere and then go somewhere else.