There are days where I feel so sensitive, so misunderstood.
Maybe it's my own fault.
I got into a conversation and said something that holds more meaning than I realized without
voicing what it is that I was saying or hoping for in response.
Something I feel vulnerable about that is met with the response that I find unhelpful and
invalidating, where I am not provided with the reassurance that it turns out that I had
been secretly hoping for, needing.
Nothing feels more frustrating and disheartening than when you feel the onset of what I like
to refer to as a mental spiral, where you express something in a nonchalant manner that
you know is more like a loaded gun when the response comes and it's something akin to
meh.
It's all good.
You'll be fine.
It's really not that big of a deal.
I just find myself looking at my phone and saying, well, fuck me for talking to you.
I now hate and resent you.
Maybe not hate.
It's just that this response is not what I was looking for, nor is it what I needed.
It invalidates my entire experience of how bad the things that I lived through were and
how little I was made to feel and great fuck me then.
A note.
I do realize that this would have gone completely different had I voiced that I was needing reassurance
and love as a response to feeling more vulnerable on that particular day.
Instead, I chose to close the message and not respond.
This is where I feel like I could snap back angrily, where I notice that I feel worse
than if I had kept my thoughts to myself to begin with.
I also find myself thinking, just because you can survive a situation and come out on top
doesn't mean that I can.
It doesn't mean my mental health is there, and then I feel like complete crap and I spiral.
I start the usual, wondering what is wrong with me that others can just go forth, move
on from a situation like this, and aren't experiencing the same visceral responses that
I do.
It must be a me problem.
It's just me that reads into these things and takes them the wrong way.
Maybe I'm the only one who struggles in this way after all.
So what is it then?
What's wrong with me?
Why can I not be normal?
I tell myself, on repeat, your feelings are valid, baby girl.
Through your experience, it's okay.
I feel like a liar because everyone else seems to be against it, because they don't agree.
I know they likely aren't truly feeling these things, or attempting to project them onto
me in this way.
But it's a tone that makes me wonder if they are in fact trying to tell me, get over yourself.
Stop being so dramatic.
So I pause and ask myself, am I being dramatic?
Sometimes it feels like I'm going to die.
Like a dangerous pit of fire is waiting to consume me if I return to that world.
I am left feeling stuck, so out of alignment, and I just feel like the word fuck encapsulates
it perfectly.
I don't know.
I don't know what the answer is.
And so we enter the stream of mental thoughts that indicate a fear of uncertainty.
At the time of recording this, I was reading a book called My Wife on the Psych Ward, and
it was causing me to feel all the feelings, increasing my struggle, and causing me to
question my perception, my sense of reality.
I've never been admitted to a psych ward, though it was something I fantasized about
as a break when I was my most tired self.
Knowing that if I went this route, I wouldn't be judged for calling in sick, it was a fleeting
moment in the dark, many, many years ago.
The book follows a husband and his experience as he supports his wife through her diagnosis
of bipolar schizophrenia and its first appearance and subsequent reappearances throughout their
relationship and what exactly that looked like.
It depicts her during stressful times in life when she lost a job she had worked so hard
to get and she was proud of.
She suffers a psychotic break where she begins hearing voices, believes she is talking to
the devil.
She stays at a facility, is eventually discharged, and suffers from depression for some time
in the aftermath.
It isn't quite clearly explained how and when she improves, but eventually she does.
I will admit the writing in this book is not my favorite and I wouldn't read it again.
They decide to start a family and have a little boy.
She re-enters the workforce, finds another job she is so proud of.
One day there is a staff meeting talking about how the company plans to restructure moving
forward.
Thus begins the anxiety as the last job she lost was prefaced with the concept of restructuring.
This is something that seems to ebb and flow in her line of employment.
She begins expressing how she is convinced that the restructuring is happening to make
way for an excuse as to why they will let her go as she fears being fired.
It wasn't voiced in the meeting that anyone would be let go, but she is convinced.
She starts wondering what she did wrong to cause them to do this and what it is about
her that makes it impossible for them to address her mistakes head on rather than making it
a big ordeal where it's easier to blame restructuring than to simply pull her aside and speak with
her.
This particular passage led me to feeling extreme unease.
Do I have some of this illness she has?
This very clearly describes my own thought patterns and feelings where I think everything
is somehow my fault.
I am the reason for changes that are needed to be implemented in the workplace, the unnamed
subject of targeted mass emails.
I find myself asking, am I actually insane?
Did the psychologist misdiagnose me all those years ago or did he just not dig deep enough?
Sometimes I actually believe I might be unhinged, convinced something must be wrong with me.
I just don't know what it is, and for some reason I'm not being told.
I want to know what it is so that I can get better and be able to move on with my life
because I can't live like this anymore.
I can't keep living in a disregulated state that I constantly find myself in.
It's so fucking hard.
I booked a much needed therapy appointment the following day because I truly felt I'm
going nuts.
I just feel lost on so many levels.
I think about how many notifications I have that yet again remain unanswered.
Tanner came and went.
I didn't answer the messages.
They piled up.
I share this vulnerable part of myself where so many people seem to relate, where they
want to reach out.
A part of me loves that, but a part of me feels like I can't do this.
I feel bad admitting this.
I want to create a safe space for people, but then people ask me for advice off the record
topics and things that I can't translate onto the podcast due to anonymity.
I will respond and I feel really good about it.
And then more responses come.
They keep coming.
They want to keep talking and it never ends.
I feel guilty.
There were messages that have been sent to me containing heavy material that I haven't
opened.
It's been months.
One in particular, a friend being impacted by recently discovering she may require assessment
and further diagnoses.
I saw the little notification bubble that detailed how it impacted her, shattered her.
I haven't even acknowledged it.
I feel like the world's worst person.
I don't even know how I can address it at this point.
Should it be awkward to say, hey, I know it's been three long months, but I'm letting you
know I still plan to get back to you.
After all the emotions she's went through, processed in this time and dealt with, never
mind the hurt that I didn't answer, acknowledge or respond to her reaching out to me, the
hurt that I likely caused her.
I feel like a shitty human.
Sometimes I wish I didn't have to keep up.
I just don't want to.
I don't know how.
I don't know what to do.
I feel like I'm so fragile, so incapable of doing things.
I've been away for over a month.
It's been fantastic because I haven't had to talk to people.
I could pretend my life didn't exist and I could pretend the pain away, but it's still
there.
It's still painful.
I don't know what is wrong with me.
What is happening?
Why can't I cope?
Why can't I be there for people?
I feel like in some ways I still can't function at a baseline level, or is it that other people
don't have these types of experiences or encounter scenarios to the extent that I do?
Am I just an extraordinarily heavy feeler where I put myself out there and it causes people
to relate, to want to chat at a level that is just uncommon?
I don't know what's going on.
I can't even function.
I can't do this.
Whatever this even is, it's hard.
I want to be able to.
I just feel like some days are a struggle.
A struggle to persevere as I am, as a person with only my life in mind on a day to day
basis.
I end up spiraling because the reality hits me that I'm just never caught up.
I'm never going to be caught up.
Time's running out.
Money's running out.
I'm still here.
I still haven't accomplished what I set out to accomplish in any significant way.
Deep or form.
I feel like shit about it.
I was hoping it would be peaceful, but it feels like a forced peace.
I have shame in not responding to all my messages, all those I've left on read, the
ones I haven't gotten back to, the meaningful and important conversations.
It's not true peace.
It's not true quiet or true settled.
There's always a to-do list and somehow it's not even my own to-do list.
It's getting back to people.
Is this a lack of boundaries?
This is where I find myself conflicted.
I want to be someone who provides material and resources, support to those struggling
in ways I've struggled.
At the same time, I feel like I can't even support myself and putting myself out there
is great, but I didn't expect it would come with homework.
Unpaid homework at that.
I'm doing this for free, extending myself, exerting myself, my emotions, all these parts
of me for free.
I can't say to my friends, yeah let's have this conversation, but you need to pay me.
That's just shitty and not a true friend, and it's not what I set out to do.
I think I somehow was hoping for neutral ground, where I could support people through the podcast
without then having to support them individually.
I don't think this is the truth or necessarily the case, but there are times it feels so
heavy and I don't know.
These are the thoughts that swirl through my mind and I don't know what to do about
it.
I don't know what to do about me, about any of this.
It's so overwhelming at times, I'm just one person.
I feel as though I don't know who I am, I am so lost about it.
When I started this, I left my job.
For a long time, that job was a huge part of who I was as a person, who I identified
with and that's a problem.
I knew I had to break free from it.
I have tried so hard to sever that tie in doing this trip, repeatedly telling everybody
and myself in attempts to convince us all that I am not a nurse.
That is not my identity, while all the same, not even knowing who I am.
When Tanner left after visiting, all I come up with is asking on repeat, who even am I?
I was wrapped up in being a nurse for so long.
Even if I didn't know who I was at the time, that didn't matter.
I had a community that I belonged to that I was a part of, whether I truly fit it or
not.
I was still in this community that existed.
I was a part of something, regardless of my success.
And now, I'm not a part of anything.
I'm just me floating around, doing whatever this is.
Whatever this is that feels like it has no direction.
It's a doing of a thing that people perceive as a vacation, of running away.
And maybe that is the case.
I don't even know at this point.
It's so alienating, because I don't even know who I am.
I'm not a nurse.
I'm me.
But who is that?
Who even is that?
What value do I bring into the world, into life?
Add that to all the unsettled feelings of not knowing who I am, where I belong, or what
I am doing.
It feels like something's wrong with me, because I simply don't know.
One would think, this is the most opportune moment, where I could just exist as a person.
Be accepted as a person with no emphasis on what I provide or what services I can give.
But again, I don't even know what that means.
What do I bring to others in this life?
All of it seems wrapped up in an existential crisis.
I can't wrap my head around it.
I don't know what it means.
I don't know anything.
Again, I feel lost.
Seeing Tanner solidified all of this.
My wounds, my anxious attachment styles, my needing someone in a way that allows me to
feel important, to have value through someone else, it spiked.
I had believed it was gone and dealt with, but wow, how did I ever believe I was secure
in myself before this?
Was I even secure?
Or was it a facade?
I don't even know the answer to that, it just feels so messed up.
When he was here, I neglected myself unintentionally.
I got so lost in the moment.
I didn't wake up early.
I didn't meditate.
I didn't take time for myself.
I still haven't meditated.
It would be midday and I'd realize I haven't taken my medication.
My meds, that I take every day in the morning without fail, that I have done so diligently
for years.
Two days in a row.
2pm rolled around and then I'd think, shit, and I'd take them.
I would wake up and didn't even think about it.
It didn't occur to me this was a part of my life that I needed to partake in.
It feels like something in my brain is wired in such a way that I become forgetful, lost
in another land, where a situation that I'm in enables me to forget who I am, my values,
my morals, and I'm so wrapped up in it that it seems I forget what I stand for.
I then come back to reality at some point and realize, oh my god, you're failing yourself.
What is wrong with you?
What are you doing?
Why are you like this?
But I don't even understand it myself because it's out of my control.
Perhaps there's a chemical delay, something wrong with my mental ability.
The worst part is watching and seeing it happen.
I feel so sorry for myself.
It's almost like I wonder if I need mental accommodations because this isn't normal.
I hate it.
I thought I was able to care for myself and be in society but clearly I can't.
Maybe I am in a lower echelon of functionality.
Maybe I need a caregiver or someone to keep me on track.
I look at this and think, god, that's so heartbreaking.
What if it's true?
And I can see it and I know self-awareness is such a curse.
I'm doing the best that I can but it feels like it's just not enough that I need to
resort to asking for help.
That someday it'll involve asking someone to take care of me in the areas I cannot manage
to care for myself, where I worry that I will inflict caregiver burnout and resentment onto
someone I love.
This isn't humbling.
This is embarrassing.
I'm ashamed.
Naturally, I want to run away but since I'm as far away from home as I can get, I wouldn't
have a choice but to turn and run home.
And that won't fix my problems.
I would be running home to dump it onto someone else and expect them to fix it for me but
they're my problems to fix and I just don't know what to do in this moment.
I still don't know.
I don't know who I am, where I'm going, how or where I'm going to end up.
I'm ashamed and today I feel particularly small.
It's shitty.
That's all there is to it.
I just want to be okay.
In feeling this way, I worry it means I'm not okay.
It's been a month and a half of being off work.
If I'm not okay now, how long will it take to be okay?
Will I run out of money before then?
I'm just exhausted thinking about it.