Issue #52: To Be or Not To Be Is Always My Eternal Fucking Question

I did not have to cut a bitch as I now have a job.

I have a TinyLetter extolling the hows, why, and wherefores of said job but this is not why I'm here today but having a job is the reason I've been silent for so many months. I hope you still love me.

I went into crisis mode last night that was triggered by some work stuff. Hitting quick, I felt useless and questioned "Why am I even here?" about my job and life in general. (The latter is known as suicide ideation in which you are not actively planning on killing yourself but if by happenstance you weren't here on earth anymore, you may not mind. Hearing a name for this was a relief because there was a name for it and by gum, I mostly need things to have labels so I know what the fuck is going on. But let us repeat for the back of the crowd: I am not actively trying to kill myself.)

So, we ordered Indian for dinner and I fell asleep on the couch at 20:00 and woke up long enough an hour later to zombie walk my way into bed after doing my nightly ablutions (floss those teeth!). I slept fitfully, it punctured by the sounds of the basketball game TEH was watching. I flipped and flopped a lot looking for the cool side of the bed but couldn't find it. Our condo is roughly 1000sqft of open space and every noise is amplified. We were lucky with a built out bedroom but the walls don't reach the ceiling so you can hear everything down to even if the dog farts in the kitchen.

My alarm went off like usual this morning and I felt awful. The depression hugged my every curve and I felt slightly nauseated. The dog had to go out so I shuffled down to the back parking lot, watch her do her business, came back up and fed her and shortly after, turned on my work laptop and shot an email to my boss TEH was coming down with the plague (true) and I was feeling the effects (50% true). I said I was going to work from home that day and as I work from home Friday and Mondays, it gave me ample time to ditch the bug. Work has a pretty flexible sick plan but I wasn't really sick in so much as depressed and the idea of getting ready for work, driving in, and working around the Queen B's (explained in the other soon to be released newsletter) felt too much. Working from home was the solution rather than taking a sick day.

I went back to bed for a few hours and got some more, though tepid, sleep, ate a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios and went right to work.

The day has come in fits and spurts, one minute I am feeling normal only to be hit with depressive thoughts that suck what's left of my energy and that lasts for an hour or so before the cycle starts again. The normality didn't last that long. I canceled my trainer for the night but my simple chores of putting away clothes and cleaning off the dining room table feels heavy in my head. I just don't think I can do it but laying down watching classic noir films with TEH seems like a feeble excuse when I can physically do those things even though it just feels impossible to do so. The world will not end if I don't do those things but in my head, everything will have gone to pot if I let them go another day. 

I have not showered today but I will tomorrow. I am getting some relief this weekend with an incredibly open schedule after a month plus of jammed events and outings between work and weekends which is good because if it wasn't as open, I would probably cancel everything.

The work trigger, totally benign and harmless now that a day has gone by, was the tipping point of a borderline state that I've been feeling for the last month or so. Everything feels so huge and burdened that I sometimes forget how to breathe. My therapist and I have been working on my self-esteem and self-worth. She is concerned I am trying to do so many things at once I am not giving myself time to recover and recuperate. This is not the first time I've heard this but I pish-poshed her anyway. But now that I feel the effects of that pish-poshing, I wish I would have listened to her more.

Change is so slow. So ungodly and horribly slow.  I feel like I'm drowning when everyone else thinks I'm doing great. It's frustrating to watch myself from the sidelines where my third eye sees me going through the motions and wants to shout, "hey fat ass, why are you eating/doing/walking/breathing that thing? You know it's horrible/terrible/awful and it will shorten your life/make you fat/drain your energy." But I keep doing it anyway because there is a minute bit of relief in eating a piece of cake or buying a new purse. The relief is fleeting but in that moment, that solitary moment of respite, everything feels okay but I'm wise enough to know that the crazy is held at bay just for a moment before it overwhelms you again. 

You always hear about "getting through to the other side" when people talk about recovery or addiction or mental health or a myriad of other things that are a struggle. If you can take that drug, write it out, exercise your way to youth, spill your guts, and live to tell the tale then you can do anything. You will have proven that with hard work and determination and lots of support, you can beat this thing whatever that thing may be. But when you're in the midst of it, circling the lower rungs of Dante's Inferno, you don't have the energy/strength/will to push through. Sometimes you just want to sleep for a very long time. But if you don't take those first steps, if you don't muster up some kind of energy to push through, not only have you reneged on yourself but you have crushed the hearts of those around you. 

Sometimes the push is false but we do it anyway because it hurts more to see you in pain rather than admit we can't do the work. Somtimes that work is rewarded by happenstance and well, that was a very good thing, wasn't it?

I want to leave this on an uplifting note whereby jolly gee whittakers, I can strangle the hell out of this thing that haunts me and I will make it my bitch. But not today, maybe tomorrow, maybe this weekend, just not today.

Lisa xo




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