When Will It Get Better?

I've been trying so hard to get out of this pit-like place I am in. I've tried all kinds of vitamins, I'm talking with my doctor, I'm trying to make plans and I'm trying to stop all the negative thought. I am on the hunt for a new therapist. Okay, I haven't been exercising overmuch. I've been trying to make myself get outside and get sunshine. I've tried that whole be optimistic about your day, think positive thing. It's exhausting. I am failing. I am just so sad. I recognize I have no good reason, but the feeling just weighs me down. Sad, and/or anxious. I'm tired of it. I've prayed for relief and gotten small snippets. I've had moments of clarity where I've felt balanced and believed my life was not so bad. Those moments will not stay. My friends are all too far away or too busy. Everyone has their own lives and they can only give me so much. I try not to be crazy about demanding from them.

I feel gross. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I've tried giving myself mental health days and it's not working. I still don't want to be at work. I have never been so unproductive and cared so little before at this job. I'm going to care when it all comes crashing down.

Make it stop.

The Point of Me?

The good news is I am feeling better than last week. I've found a place of semi-calm. I still am not sure of... well, of anything. I don't know what I'm doing or who I'm trying to be right anymore. I seem to have no vision for myself. I do my best at work, but I seem to be going nowhere and no one seems to see me going anywhere. That's not to say that I don't do a good job, or that my boss is not happy with me. I just  think she doesn't see me as ever being anything more than what I am now. And I'm not sure she really sees all of what I am now. It's hard to go into detail about how I'm feeling on this one without going into detail of what my job is and the why's and the how's, but that's not something I want to do on this blog. I think I bought all the things adults would tell me as a teenager and young adult about how talented and good I was, and how I had a bright future. And now people have stopped saying that. And my friends and my coworkers are continuously telling me ways I could be doing better, and how I'm selling myself short when I actually thought I was trying pretty darn  hard. So if you are working hard and getting things done and no one sees those things, does that maybe just mean that you're only mediocre in talent, and that's why they aren't seeing it? I know what I would say to someone who says things like this. But this is how I am feeling, and what I am thinking, and this blog is a place where I can be honest about the ugly, self-loathing thoughts I have. That way, maybe if I let them out and let them breathe and take a look at them, they will look silly. That's the hope. Right now I just feel like they might be true. Maybe I will never be anything more than I am in my career because I don't have that remarkable something. My boss doesn't seem to see it in me. My coworker that I swear used to see it in me, doesn't seem to anymore. So I ask again, what is the point of me?

Killing the Anxiety

This icky feeling is getting really, really old. I'm tired of it. I am hoping I am on my way out of it. Sometimes I think I'm coming up out of it, and then I wake up with it again, or I sit and relax and my brain starts going and I find myself back in an anxious state. So annoying.

I have a friend who has a very dry sense of humor who jokes about being "dead inside" when she's feeling down. I've been thinking about that phrase a lot lately. I kind of miss the times I have felt "dead inside." It used to be weird and concerning to me when I would go through periods where I was the opposite of emotional. I would not be able to remember the last time I had cried. I would not freak out about things that I knew I would "normally" be upset about. It would really trouble me.

I miss that. I would like to be dead inside. I'm ready to go back to that. How do I get back there?

Worn Down with Worry and Yuckiness

You know that icky, anxious, worrying feeling you can have when something is really not going right in your life? I have that right now. It started with my PMS. I sunk down into an icky place, and I allowed myself to isolate and basically hide in my room the majority of the three day weekend. I did still go to church for a few minutes, and I had dinner with my parents one night, so I give myself points for that. 

The annoying thing is that this bout of anxiousness is not exactly about something specific in my life I feel like I can fix. It's not really about a situation, it's more just about who I am. It's accompanied by a large dose of self-loathing, too, which is fun. Maybe it kind of goes back to my feelings about the fallout from setting boundaries with Red. It was his birthday this week. I haven't talked to him since October last year, when he told me repeatedly via text to F off. That was the last I heard from him. That hostility was his reaction to a letter I wrote saying that I couldn't allow him to treat me the way he had been treating me anymore, and telling me what I needed. It was much more firm than I've ever been. But it was necessary. And he could not forgive me for it. 

So this week was his birthday. And if there is one thing I know about myself, it's that I define being a good friend by the things I do to show support and loyalty, and showing love in many ways, including on their birthday, because they are important and I remember those dates. And I did not text, call, email, or message him on his birthday. I don't know where he is, or what he is doing. I'm pretty sure he's still alive. Intellectually I know this is the healthier choice for me--to not reach out to him. If we were still in contact he would still guilt me, do things to offend and degrade me in passive aggressive ways, and make me cry. Also if I knew the things that he was allowing to go badly in his life I would want to fix it all for him. This is not healthy for me. Our relationship would not be healthy at all. I know this. But I feel, at a very deep place in my heart, like a horrible friend. And like I don't know the point of me. 

I've cut the friends out of my life who I really felt like needed me. The ones I have now don't really need me. Sometimes they are in need, and i can help fill a need. But they don't really need me. They can go weeks without really talking to me or seeing me and be fine. They have stuff going on in their lives. They have partners and kids and hobbies and social circles all outside of me. And I have nothing. 

I do have friends. And I have family. I have people I care about who care about me. I have opportunities for beautiful moments. When I feel like making effort, I have people to make plans with, and things to fill my time with. But I feel like I have no world. I come home to an apartment with no one waiting for me. I don't have a home base with people who love me where I can go whenever I need to just be in a happy little cocoon of love. I mean, I do have places I am welcome. But not all the time. Because they have their lives too, and their home bases are already filled with the people who belong there. 

So I feel like I have no place and no purpose. And I don't understand why I can't have that place and purpose with the people that I love. I feel like they are not allowing that place for me in their lives. 

And this is where the self loathing comes in. I don't feel like my insides are very pretty right now. I feel as awkward and skittish as certain people have observed I seem lately. I annoy myself as much with my anxiousness as I seem to be annoying those who have to be around me daily. I don't want to be around me either. Gifts and talents I thought I had I'm not so certain I have now. No one else seems to see them in me, so maybe if I ever had them I don't now. I have the revolving thought, "what is the point of me?"  Now, I am a religious woman. I have always believed that we are all God's children, that we are special, that we all have gifts and talents and special things about us, and that we have a purpose in life and things we are meant to do and all that stuff. I still do believe that about other people. I look at my friends and see them fulfilling their purpose in so many ways, and I see them flourishing and progressing and touching others for good. While in some ways I can still convince myself that I am touching others for good in at least some ways, I am feeling very much like the great impact I thought I could strive for in life is a joke. The people I thought I could touch for good seem to not need or want my touch. The things I am doing to try to make myself better just seem so pointless when, after all that effort, I spend a whole week in this horrible sucking void of happiness. If I can't even keep perspective and find my happy place in times of despair, how can I progress into a place where I'm a decent person. My friends look at me all sad and try to encourage me to seek relationships to fill my life, but they don't want to spend time with me. They say I am so nice and so sweet and if I just put myself out there I will find someone to love me. I'm at a loss as to why they think this is possible. 

See? Ugly thoughts. I have not really expressed too much of them to my usual confidantes. Coolgirl would tell me I need to get counseling or some other practical thing. Shorty would as well. BFF would just feel really bad and wish she knew how to help me, and then I would feel bad for bringing her down. She would also be mystified and not understand why or how I could be in that place, which would only remind me how much of a mutant I feel like. I know that talking to a counselor is the practical solution that many would suggest for this. Hey, if I were the sounding board to something like this, it would be my suggestion. But I don't feel like sharing these ugly thoughts is going to make them go away, and I don't feel like it's going to fix anything or help lead me out of this dark place. I do think that this is partially a chemical imbalance. It's worse around my menstrual cycle, and exercise helps lift my mood. 

What I think I need to do is exercise fairly religiously, possibly multiple times a day. Darn apathy is not helping me break into that habit. I also think I need to look at the things I'm doing medically. I have already contacted my doctor, and we've discussed some things that I can start doing right away. One of them is birth control, which is thought to help regulate things like cramps and mood if you have PMDD. (Awesome that I can start finding new disorders to label myself with, right?) So we will be trying that. In a very, very small place I feel a spark of hope that there may be a light at the end of this dark tunnel. But I don't want to get my hopes up, and I am also fairly fearful that I'm stuck with this crazy brain for the rest of my life and there's nothing I can do about it. 

When I was a teenager there was a lady at church who would sit out on the couch in the lobby during services and cry. I would walk by her sometimes when I was avoiding being in Sunday School. Often there would be another woman comforting her, listening to her, or just being there for her. I always felt bad for her. Somehow, someone told me or mentioned in front of me that she was depressed. I didn't really understand that then. I didn't get that it was a disorder. I wondered what in her life had happened that had made her so sad. I remember thinking that she looked like she was in a lot of pain. I've been thinking recently that I might have turned into that woman. Mind you, I'm much more solitary in my suffering, and I try not to be the woman making a spectacle in the lobby. This might not be the best thing, since she had women trying to help lift her up and I run home from church and hide so that they don't see what a mess I am before I start crying. I have let a few individuals in, and they have been a comfort to me. But I don't want to be the poor woman they feel they need to do their christian duty by. I know they say you need to allow people to serve you, so they can reap the blessings and be God's hands and all that. But I don't know how to do that. I suck at asking for it, and the friends that I want it from don't seem to have the time or capacity. But I need some love. Can't they just read my mind?