Issue #51 This Is What It Feels Like When A Battery Is Drained Of Power
I have finally figured it out my malaise: I'm mentally and emotionally exhausted.
I toyed with the idea for the last few years I must be depressed but I did not fit the criteria for depression. I got excited about new things and I found I wasn't lacking in enjoying things. I sleep fine and I don't have a problem operating 99%. I enjoyed interacting with things and look forward to places to eat or visit. My medicating therapist and I went through my drug list and that all seems to be fine. My regular shrink and I have talked about this and she doesn't see the signs for depression. I practice self-care: recent obsession is taking a scalding hot shower then applying buttercream frosting smelling body butter and slipping into leggings, sports bra, t-shirt, old man cardigan, and slippers. I feel like I'm constantly being hugged and it is awesome. I've started going to yoga classes and I get a massage once a month. TEH and I are doing couples' pedicures. I read more and I try to mediate (but I often forget).
To sum: I enjoy and interact with things that already exist but I'm too mentally and emotionally exhausted for everything else.
I also don't get angry.
The current state of worldwide affairs? Don't give a shit. Deep discussions with my brother about upcoming elections in 2020? I cannot summon up a modicum of interest other than the left presidential candidate better not be an old white man. Stigma and state of mental health, being fat, or generally marginalized? Eh, whatever. I should be fired up but in the end, I could care less. I have a laundry list of topics to address all of these things and I am stuck staring at the keyboard with nothing to say and it is frustrating because when I sit at the keyboard or shove a pen in my hand, I am doing nothing but bear down on myself while my mind remains blank.
(This newsletter doesn't count with the idgaf attitude because it's like writing in my paper diary but even then I am struggling to write here today.)
We can also add memories to the list so it's:
lack of creativity
lack of anger
lack of memories
A couple of months ago, I wrote about my love of Caitlin Moran (there are a lot of parentheticals) and talked about the finding of "you-ness" which I never knew was lacking until I started reading her books. I also talk about how " ...eventually, the stabilization came, much of the excitement of the things I loved diminished greatly and I had no interest in discovering new things." And now I realize that isn't necessarily true. Finding new things to love and due isn't the problem; rather it's making the new things itself. For fuck's sake, I haven't knitted anything in at least two years.
So back Caitlin. I read her work religiously every week in The Times and she writes on everything from being a mother earth goddess to how her crushes are no longer of men but of anthropomorphic characters from Monsters, Inc. Every week I have the near same reaction: Why am I not writing about these things too? It's not that I want to write her life but I want to write mine which some say is pretty interesting. It's not as if I don't have a lifetime of memories to grace upon which are now scattered to the wind. It's frightening how much TEH remembers of my life than I do myself. I grab at whatever information comes to the forefront only to have it slip away again.
So:
lack of creativity
lack of anger
lack of memories
So the aha moment is I have extinguished creativity, anger, and memories as a form of self-protection and I can't figure out how to get them back.
Lisa xo
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