My brain is exhausting
Posted: May 11th, 2016, 1:08 pm
So there's this email I need to finish writing and send. It's kind of a stressful email, but not as stressful as I'm making it. In order to get to the point of being able to open up my laptop, I first had to do this:
1. Smoke a cigarette.
2. Lie in bed with my head in my hands for 20 minutes because every time I thought about doing something productive the voice in my head would get overwhelmingly loud and mean and I'd be paralyzed.
3. Listen to a guided meditation about healing your inner child and cry in bed for another 20 minutes.
4. Decide to write this post, because it was a reason to open my laptop that didn't trigger that vicious internal monologue, and would get my brain into writing mode.
5. Respond to someone else's post about talking to yourself, and start writing this post.
Here's what still needs to happen, assuming everything goes to plan and I don't need to backtrack to curling up with my head in my hands:
6. Write out a list of the steps involved in finishing the task, broken down into the smallest, most manageable chunks possible. (See below)
7. Publish this post.
8. Look at the response I just wrote to that post about talking to yourself, just to see if anyone's read it yet.
9. Open the TextEdit document in which I made an outline of the email I need to write.
7. Read the outline.
8. Delete the parts of it I decided today don't need to be included.
9. Fill in the missing chunks, ie turn it into an actual email.
10. Open Gmail.
11. Copy the text and paste it into a new email.
12. Format the email to look more professional.
13. Send that fucker.
And I just feel like, jesus fucking christ, that is a lot of work just to write an email. Like, what would I be able to accomplish if I had a brain that would just let me come home, send an email, and get on with my life? And I've ridden the Bipolarcoaster enough to know that it's not gonna be forever and the tide will turn and easy things will eventually feel easy again, for a while. But it's so shitty knowing this is always lurking around the corner. And it's so exhausting. Like, when my body is tired, I sit down on the couch and put my feet up. When my head aches, I take ibuprofen. When I have an itch, I scratch it. My body can experience all sorts of uncomfortable things, but there is almost always something simple I can do to find relief. There's some kind of off switch. But there's no off switch when my brain turns on me. It hurts so bad, and there's no simple way to make it hurt less. It takes a ton of energy and compassion and time and thought and bravery to make it hurt less, and those aren't things I have in spades when I'm depressed. You have to stand up straight, throw your head back, turn around to face the darkness, and throw your arms open wide to the pain if you want it to get better. But all I want to do is curl up and hide. I just want it to stop. David Foster Wallace called it "a nausea of the soul," and he was right. That's how it feels. I'm nauseous, I want to throw up, but there's no such thing as sticking your fingers down your soul's throat. The soul doesn't have a gag reflex.
So yeah. Hi. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed. Wish me luck.
1. Smoke a cigarette.
2. Lie in bed with my head in my hands for 20 minutes because every time I thought about doing something productive the voice in my head would get overwhelmingly loud and mean and I'd be paralyzed.
3. Listen to a guided meditation about healing your inner child and cry in bed for another 20 minutes.
4. Decide to write this post, because it was a reason to open my laptop that didn't trigger that vicious internal monologue, and would get my brain into writing mode.
5. Respond to someone else's post about talking to yourself, and start writing this post.
Here's what still needs to happen, assuming everything goes to plan and I don't need to backtrack to curling up with my head in my hands:
6. Write out a list of the steps involved in finishing the task, broken down into the smallest, most manageable chunks possible. (See below)
7. Publish this post.
8. Look at the response I just wrote to that post about talking to yourself, just to see if anyone's read it yet.
9. Open the TextEdit document in which I made an outline of the email I need to write.
7. Read the outline.
8. Delete the parts of it I decided today don't need to be included.
9. Fill in the missing chunks, ie turn it into an actual email.
10. Open Gmail.
11. Copy the text and paste it into a new email.
12. Format the email to look more professional.
13. Send that fucker.
And I just feel like, jesus fucking christ, that is a lot of work just to write an email. Like, what would I be able to accomplish if I had a brain that would just let me come home, send an email, and get on with my life? And I've ridden the Bipolarcoaster enough to know that it's not gonna be forever and the tide will turn and easy things will eventually feel easy again, for a while. But it's so shitty knowing this is always lurking around the corner. And it's so exhausting. Like, when my body is tired, I sit down on the couch and put my feet up. When my head aches, I take ibuprofen. When I have an itch, I scratch it. My body can experience all sorts of uncomfortable things, but there is almost always something simple I can do to find relief. There's some kind of off switch. But there's no off switch when my brain turns on me. It hurts so bad, and there's no simple way to make it hurt less. It takes a ton of energy and compassion and time and thought and bravery to make it hurt less, and those aren't things I have in spades when I'm depressed. You have to stand up straight, throw your head back, turn around to face the darkness, and throw your arms open wide to the pain if you want it to get better. But all I want to do is curl up and hide. I just want it to stop. David Foster Wallace called it "a nausea of the soul," and he was right. That's how it feels. I'm nauseous, I want to throw up, but there's no such thing as sticking your fingers down your soul's throat. The soul doesn't have a gag reflex.
So yeah. Hi. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed. Wish me luck.