My Phone is my Vent Machine

I do not know how to vent. Or at least not properly like a normal adult.

Normal adults either go to therapy and talk it out or go to their friends to spill their hearts out for a little bit. Unfortunately I do not have the stable revenue for a therapist and I do not feel comfortable talking to my friends about deep emotional problems. Not that they can't handle it but I would prefer to let them deal with their own issues rather than having the burden of them listen to my ramblings plus their own stresses.

As a child how I would deal with my anger, my sadness, fears and other negative emotions was by being alone. Growing up I had no friends to actually connect with outside of school. During school I would cling on to people and try to catch the attention of others by having a façade that I was the coolest girl in school and I would have a lone wolf act that I had gotten used to.

But on bus rides home I would sit at the back and soak in general dissatisfaction with myself and the way my days panned out. As soon as I got home and talked with my mom it was off to my room to cry. Or sulk, or angrily draw my feelings on a piece of paper.

Not exactly healthy considering I was left alone for hours and was puzzled on how I should really deal with my feelings. Unfortunately as a kid I held on to grudges too well, I would remember the bad and secretly disliked a lot of people. Including myself a little because I had a constant back and forth with my own ways of reflection and a sense of identity.

So, back to present day me. An adult who is emotionally unwell and trying to improve on my own. I used to vent through art mediums, until it no longer worked and I could no longer properly draw my feelings out without scrapping my work entirely. I think the issue was the fact that I used art in my work and using it personally just felt weird.

Instead, I had been using my phone as a means to help. Not scrolling through social media, rather making pretend calls with people. When I was alone and a particularly bad day had passed by, I sat alone in my closet and made sure I wasn't too loud because I didn't want to get noise complaints.

I just sat for an hour and quietly whispered to my phone about family, coworkers, my relationships, and other life problems. I had been doing this for 7 months without major improvement but no major regression either. I just talk about why I cannot move on, my mental disorders that get in my way, my own trust issues and other emotional problems that piled up in life.

On a particularly cold day, I had just had enough. My life wasn't improving. It wasn't going upwards like I had hoped when starting to vent to my phone. Though, looking back talking to myself wasn't the greatest idea. It looked lonely from an outsiders perspective. As much as I was used to the idea of rambling about everything I hated but I really was childish at the end of the day.

I hated to admit it, and I mean I hated to admit it. But I was so used to speaking about things in a way that was pretty negative. Nothing that came from my own emotions was nice, or happy, barely anything was positive. I had figured it out thanks to a comment I got from randomly speaking my mind out loud one day. And that revelation wouldn't have happened had I planned to vent to my phone again.

So this is the last time I'll be talking to my phone. I don't want to feel anymore hatred because it leads to me blaming a lot of things I should have let go a long time ago. My childhood was not my own fault, my teenage years were normal to get my emotions out, but these are my adult years. I cannot be seriously wasting my years as someone who hates so many things and loves so little.

But besides letting go, I don't exactly know where to start.