Please take this as a grain of salt or a brick of it, but either way, I need to word vomit while I’m waiting for myself to come rescue myself from myself.
Over the last week, I had a rude ass trifecta of sickness, perimenopause, and big financial decisions with a combo pack of antibiotics, steroids, and a major case of the whines. It is day 7 and I only have 25% of the energy required to be who others need/expect me to be. I’m told to sit and rest. My brain doesn’t understand this concept. For whatever reason, my brain hears “you are sick, you should sit and rest” and it goes into attack mode with my mental health in it’s sites.
The thoughts are intrusive at the best and a shade of dark humor that I dare not share at their worst.
“Did you hear that sigh? That’s because you aren’t doing x,y,z and someone else is angry because they have to pick up your slack.” “You know if you would take better care of your self, this wouldn’t happen.” “You can’t still possibly feel bad, you’re just being lazy now” “it’s been 36 hours, get over it, you’ve got things to do”.
Psychiatrist and I agree it’s probably this rude ass trifecta and we’re going to touch base in two weeks to see how things are going. Therapist and I meet on Thursday to try and EMDR some of this out of me. I immediately envisioned a bat, she did not correct me.
Today, I started writing down my feelings as they came in. It neither helped nor hindered, but added more questions for the version of myself that I’m waiting on to rescue me from myself.
My thoughts range from the expenses of my daily existence to the consequences of my laziness to how to monetize hobbies to feeling stagnant to being lonely to knowing the vibe is off to missing myself to wanting to run away to feeling unmoored to untrusting. On repeat. At 500mph. Anxiety is the meanest bitch.
It also made me realize that while these thoughts are negative and awful, I’m not close to a toaster bath. I still have lots of logic (sure, we’ll go with logic…maybe pragmatism?) when it comes to that: 1. We’re down to only Matt’s toaster 2. Everyone just figured out how to use Matt’s toaster because it’s fancy. 3. Toasters are weirdly expensive to replace.
Instagram helps distract the brain just enough for me to get some actual rest. Shout out to Overheard at Disney sang by gospel choir, all things sheepish, and mic’d up toddlers for the win. Facebook simply fuels the negative. I’m sure that’s a deep dive that someone should do. I’m too old for TikTok when I feel fine, so I can’t imagine trying it when I’m feeling puny. Xanax helps the most but I trade it for feeling like I’m hiding in a pill, which is ironic given the meds I’m on to keep me from feeling like this. Walking helps, when I have the energy. I would love to be able to read but that’s a level of focus that I can’t quite get to yet. Tangled on Disney is a saving force as usual.
Anyways, I’m sharing all of this not for sympathy or a welfare check, but because sometimes I need to say the quiet part out loud. Sometimes, things are just shitty in a non-competitive way. Sometimes it’s “I see your shit over there and it looks like a lot and I’ve got shit over here too and it feels like a lot too”.
