Nothing is getting better. I am still the exact same person, who thinks in the exact same ways, only now I am embarrassed of the way I am. I’m completely tired of myself.
Today we talked about acronyms. The obvious one (only really because of Death to Smoochy, which is what I always think of) is HALT. Well, I am at least three of those things almost all of the time (hint: I don’t get angry often, and when I do I find the feeling to be almost unbearable). I feel unempowered to do anything about feeling like this.
- - I cannot sleep any more than I am sleeping.
- - I do not have the energy to meet any more people than I already know, and I certainly am not able to establish stronger connections with the people I do know.
- - I usually feel like I don’t have enough money to buy enough food to make me feel satisfied (and the kind you can eat quickly), and when I DO have the money, I usually choose the wrong things, so that is the one thing I can sort of change.
Work is work. Dog-walking is dog-walking. When you are doing those things you can’t be connected to another person, or eating, or sleeping. Those things are how I spend at least 10 hours of my day.
The other sort-of acronym is “PLEASE Mastery.” I had never heard of this one. (The authors are really stretching the concept of an acronym, but that’s ok.)
- P L is physical illness – ok, I haven’t had any of that for almost the entire time I have lived with Michael, unless I do have depression with a physical cause, in which case—yikes
- E is eating, preferably every 2-4 hours, preferably each thing having some balance of protein, fiber, and fat. I definitely do not do that. It is also a huge thing for me. I did buy some granola bars and apples, and am going to try always keeping them around. This is going to take a lot of work for me to get up to speed.
- A is “altering substances”, like drugs or alcohol. I already can barely drink, because it makes me so tired and depressed. But I like drinking, so this makes me sad.
- S is sleep. See above. I go to bed most nights around 11 (sometimes 10:30) and get up most mornings somewhere between 5 and 6:30. As far as I can tell everyone in America is able to live on this much sleep and somehow I can’t and it makes me feel like I am lazy and being constantly judged in addition to being tired. (My therapist doesn’t like when I have feelings about my feelings, especially if they are judgey, but I mean, come ON.)
- E is exercise. Here is another problem area that I could change. I feel unable to due to lack of energy, but maybe if I eat better that will help. Right now, my physical activity is walking around town for 2 to 3 hours a day. No aerobic anything apart from occasional jogging, no strength training. In order to work on that, I would need to eliminate something somewhere — down time or sleeping time.
- “Mastery” or “mastery experiences” apparently means feeling a sense of pride or self-satisfaction about something each day. Hoo boy. Usually I guess I can use “taking good care of Fritz.” Sometimes: “finishing laundry,” or “making a new file system.” Nothing else from the last handful of months comes to mind.
The major problem is that most of the time I can’t really think straight. Everything feels fuzzy, and it is hard for me to think about anything that makes me sad or vulnerable, so those things don’t get addressed so that I can think about distracting things, like the internet, popular culture, Fritz, or—best-case—work. When I start to try to address more important things, I have an overwhelming urge to get in bed and never get out again. Is this just adult life? I need someone to actually tell me whether or not this is how every person experiences life and it is just that most people are less whiny and paralyzed about it than I am. I need to know that. And if this is just how life IS, are people having children just so they won’t kill themselves?
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Things I needed to address that I didn’t get to:
- This morning I was walking Fritz alone and it was extremely quiet. Start to cut through playground that is sandwiched between a public elementary school and a Catholic church. Notice there is a person in the playground. Realize it is an adult male. With Crispin Glover hair. Get so nervous that I get a stomachache that doesn’t go away until 2 hours later. Obviously take the long way home.
- Given the lower resources I have had over the last month, I lost it while talking to my parents. For me this means I have been quiet and on auto-pilot and not pushing back against them. Which means they are expecting me to visit for Father’s Day. And I don’t have the confidence in my car, the money for train tickets, or the time, let alone the emotional resources. But my dad already took the day off, and M has been ignoring my mentions of it, which means there is going to be a major blowup somewhere by someone before Sunday and I don’t know how to handle it.
