Avoinding
I’m back to avoiding again. Some progress and then … plunk. That’s my pattern.
I’m feeling pretty defeated right now. I think it’s important to make note of this because I’m wondering if my moods have a pattern as well. Maybe I’ve been misdiagnosed with depression – I don’t know.
It’s weird, it’s not just my mood it’s how I feel about myself. Right now I feel like I can’t do anything. Really down, defeated, useless, incapable of anything at all. The reality is I know that’s not true – but that’s how I feel. I worry that this mood will show through at work again tomorrow. My last ‘down mood’ got me into a little trouble at work the last time. Not real trouble, it just made things kind of complicated and now I’m hoping to avoid any further “complications”. But when my mood is like this it’s hard for me to fake things. So, I hope I can fake things and be all “up” when I go in tomorrow.
Anyway, that’s it. I’m feeling down. Defeated. Bogged down in this chaos. I’ll have to take note of when it starts to change again. I started my period yesterday, perhaps that’s a factor as well – although I was starting to feel this way a few days ago. Now it feels pretty set-in.
When I avoid stuff it’s like I’m huddled inside of myself scared to death of something. It’s weird. So I just curl up on the couch and avoid. I don’t even go on line. I just get lost in my thoughts, fantasies or the TV. Sometimes I don’t even eat, which is really unusual for me. It can last for hours – just smothered in my mind. It can actually last for days, but the sitting and not moving – just kind of being like a zombie goes on for 8 to 12 hours at a time. It’s like I’m on my couch terrified to move.
Well, it’s all worth making note of. Not sure where it’s all going. Not sure if I get like this when I start to progress because there’s a part of me that’s afraid of moving forward in a positive way … don’t know if that’s it or not.
The weekend is over. I did nothing. I feel bad. Sad. Disappointed in myself. I’m not looking forward to the week ahead. Wish I could just stay inside my head forever. Well – that’s how I feel right now.
Just Re-Read My ‘About Me’
I re-wrote my About Me page around the end of May I think … just a few weeks ago. I was feeling pretty positive about everything. It’s weird, but right now I feel more like the ‘About Me’ I wrote a year ago – defeated.
But I showered, went to work today – that actually felt good. At the end of the day I wished I could go home to a clean and organized home instead of the chaotic mess in which I live.
That’s what makes me feel defeated … knowing I have to return to this place and knowing this is how I live now. It’s kind of exhausting.
But having to leave this mess is scary too. Like I said in my previous post, I woke up afraid to wake up today. I was afraid to get on with the day. That’s kind of exhausting too.
Then when it was time to come home I felt defeated.
Then when I’ll have to leave tomorrow I’ll feel fear.
Aggghhhrrrr……
That was a scream, lol.
Funny – but not.
Anyway – that’s the circular nightmare I’ve got myself stuck in. That wasn’t a very grammatically correct sentence – but it was a correct assessment of my swirling mind.
Present, Past, Future … Whatever
I always hear that living in the present is the best. Living in the past is dwelling and doesn’t get you anywhere. And why worry about the future when it hasn’t happened yet.
That’s what I always thought.
But I watched a brief presentation (can’t remember where as I’ve been watching a lot lately) where the presenter stated that it’s better to be future oriented … goal oriented. Because that way you’re working toward something and … in my interpretation of it, you can do the things you have to do in the present, maybe things you don’t want to do, because it will lead to something … hopefully something good.
One of the studies sited was the one where kids are put in front of a marshmallow (ever see this? I saw it years ago on a documentary). Anyway, they’re told not to eat the marshmallow but to wait and if they wait until the person comes back in the room they’ll get 2 marshmallows. About two-thirds of the kids eat the marshmallow … immediate satisfaction. Well I guess years later they went back and interviewed the kids and those that waited and didn’t eat the marshmallow … and then got 2, did better in school, on SATs etc.
Immediate gratification. That’s my life. And this presentation I watched earlier today made me realize that I live too much of my time in the present.
Like this weekend. I’ve been enjoying myself, just doing nothing – not showering, not going out, not cleaning-up, not organizing my life. I just hung around doing stuff I like – eating, sleeping, reading, watching TV, surfing the net. Maybe it sounds like heaven to busy people, but by Sunday night it leaves me anxious, angry and defeated.
I didn’t do anything that will make my life easier next week. I’ll have to fumble through my week yet again. Looking for stuff. Everything all mixed up. But given 2 days to sort some stuff out I chose to sit and ignore it all and be in the moment of pleasure. Not taking into consideration the future consequences.
Same with my eating. Why deny the pleasure now? I’ve never been able to make that connection that these pleasures I’m partaking in now will have serious and detremental effects on me in the future.
I realized this about 18 years ago. 18! But basically forgot about it, or ignored it, until today when I saw this video presentation. The presentation itself wasn’t that good…which is one reason why I can’t find it again now. But that’s not what’s really important here. What’s important is that I need to adjust the way I look at the things I do. I need to make the connection that doing something now will have a positive (or negative) effect on me in the future.
Goals have never been my friend. I’ve never been goal oriented. My brain doesn’t even seem to think that way. It never occurs to me to make a plan. To be honest, it’s hard to even figure out what steps to take.
Anyway. Here it is about 8:30 on a Sunday night. I spent most of yesterday recovering from my stressful week. I have to say, I was tired, sore, in pain, my stomach was out of control and my head was aching. I couldn’t focus and felt really foggy. That was Saturday.
Today I was up around 9am but then fell back asleep until about 3pm. Waste. Now I’m sitting here anticipating the panic that will soon grip me because I’ll realize Monday is coming and I’ll have to go to work and I don’t want to. And I’ll start freaking out that I didn’t do anything in my apartment and be upset about the state of chaos and mess. Then I’ll be so stressed I’ll be unable to sleep and ultimately be late for work. I’ll wake up and be terrified to get out of bed. Yes … terrified.
That’s how I feel in the mornings. Terrified. Terrified to greet the day. I envy those people who wake with the wonder of what the day will bring. People who welcome the day. I’ve never been like that. I’ve never felt that way in the morning not even when I was a child. Waking from my wonderful slumber was always sad and scary to me. My dream world was where I wanted to stay. The real world was too mean and hard … and made me sad and scared.
Here I am47 and still reacting to the world in the same freaking way.
Why?
I don’t know.
Dreams, Fantasies, Nightmares, Life
It’s very warm here today and I’m debating whether or not to put the air conditioner in the window. I hate the sound of the AC and it takes up almost my entire window, which sucks. Plus it’s extremely heavy and I’m not even sure I can do it myself – and there’s no way I’m asking someone to come in and help. But I get it up there every year on my own so I’m guessing I can do it again on my own.
It’s funny that on this first warm day of the season I was looking at winter photos online. Trisha Romance’s artwork caught my eye. It’s so pretty. I think I like the nostalgia, eventhough I don’t ever remember a time like this.
I do find it interesting that most of the paintings I like of hers either have no people or only one child in them. I think that’s because I think of myself as a child, not an adult. As for the paintings with no one in them that may come from the fact that as a kid whenever I’d dream of my future there was usually no one in it. It was usually just me dreaming of me being alone. How prophetic.
That painting of the little girl at the door feels so comforting to me. I was pretty independent as a kid – well independent or ignored. Which brings me to the 2nd painting with the kid outside all alone. That’s very familiar. But I like the images. They’re sweet and a little sad.
I love this painting because it reminds me of some dream-like fantasy I had of what kind of house I’d love to live in. The odd thing is when I was a kid and would dream of such things quite often I was one of the kids of a large loving family, not necessarily the parent. If I did think of me as the adult I’d usually be alone, or maybe be married with kids … but that was a bit of a foggy dream, not really clear. Sometimes I’d think of me as an older woman with my life behind me, living with memories of a family who had once lived there. I think that’s kind of odd, actually. Rarely did I ever dream of, or have fantasies of, me interacting with people. I find that very telling of my real life.
The few times I was interacting with people quite often it would be with my parents, mostly I’d be showing them how much better of a parent I was then they were – telling them the right way to parent a child like me. Sometimes now as an adult I have similar dreams. It’s kind of like I’m going back and re-parenting a part of myself. I find those dreams kind of comforting. Perhaps my subconscious is helping me to feel better, I don’t know.
Anyway, a lot of this is on my mind lately because I’ve been having some reoccurring nightmares. They’re not gruesome or anything, but they do leave me with my heart pounding and with lots of fear, anger and ultimately just sadness. Sometimes they’re so emotionally overwhelming I’m just kinda numb. Then in order to avoid them I try to stay awake as long as possible which triggers my insomnia which obviously creates more chaos in my life.
The dreams are about me being an adult and still living with my parents. That may sound humourous but it’s not. And I think I pretty much understand what they’re telling me. They’re telling me to break free of all this crap I put on myself and to take control of my own life. To live my life on my own terms without torturing myself with what I think my parents would say.
My subconscious is basically telling me to grow up, I guess. I find I have these dreams when I’m really stressed or when I’m trying to make changes. I’m in the middle of lots of changes right now so it makes sense that they are happening now.
The dreams are quite scary. My parents are caricatures of all their negative personality traits. I’m acting like I can do whatever I want because I’m an adult and then I realize no – I can’t do that. There’s that startling moment where I realize I’m trapped and am unable of doing anything I want to do or unable of doing anything positive for myself. It’s that feeling of being “trapped” that is so fearful. My future is laid out before me and it’s unchanging and trapped and ugly and scary and it all makes me angry and hopeless.
I wake up and feel like there’s a heavy burden put upon me. I remember all the very negative experiences I had from childhood and the memories are intense and vivid. Then I’m burdened with the consequences of all those experiences – that being my current life. All of that leaves me feeling overwhelmed and often unable to do anything constructive.
Like today, I’ve been in a lot of physical pain. Not because of the dreams but because of PMS, etc., and I’ve pretty much spent the day drugged-up so I wouldn’t feel the pain. Which totally makes sense, but it highlights how I’ve spent most of my life – I’ve done things (still do things) to avoid my feelings. Things like hoarding, overeating and hiding in my apartment. I don’t use substances to numb myself, instead I’ve found other destructive ways to accomplish that numbness.
So when these ‘dreams of me being stuck as an adult living with my parents’ come along it highlights how I’ve been hurting myself. It forces me to look at how badly I treat myself on a daily basis. Most times I don’t look beyond that because I’m too afraid, but just writing about it, for the first time, is helping me to now move on. For the first time I’m reacting to these dreams in a different way – so I hope to get a different outcome.
I didn’t even start out writing this post thinking this is where I’d get to. I was just going to write about how I liked the paintings – and now look where I’ve ended up. Like most posts, this is kind of like a stream of consciousness for me. But it’s been good for me to get these thoughts out there. The more I put them ‘out there’ the less they’re able to stay rotting inside of me.
To Do List
I don’t actually have a ‘to do’ list. I hate them. They inevitably become little lists of my failures littered about the place.
But it’s almost 4pm on the last day of the long weekend and I haven’t done anything. And what I mean by that is I haven’t cleaned-up anything. I have gone out twice during the weekend – which is good. Usually I won’t go out just for enjoyment, I only go out when I have to which means on a long weekend I could be stuck inside for 3 or 4 days and that’s not good for me.
Several years ago I would go weeks, then months, without going outside. The longer it went the worse I got and the more afraid I was to venture out. I don’t want to get to that state again which is why I now have a job where I’m required to be out of the apartment most of the week.
I snapped this photo during one of my outings. These trees are all over the place and they’re all blooming – so pretty. Even thinking about my outings is lifting my mood – which tells me I need to do that more.
So what do I do now? If I start to think about all the things I’d wanted to do but didn’t I’ll just get overwhelmed and start to panic. I’ve done that already today. I hate that feeling of panic creeping upon me.
The sun is still out. I’ve only been up for about an hour, which pisses me off, why didn’t I get up earlier? I first woke around 9am but went back to sleep. I really hate when I do that! Yet I do it all the time when I have a day off.
Just sitting here thinking about what I want to do is causing me anxiety. So I think I’ll go have something to eat, since I haven’t done that yet, and then just do something. I won’t assess or think about it – I’ll just do it.
Crap – just typing that is freaking me out. How insane is that?
Okay – gonna go doooooooo something.
Fireworks
It’s a long weekend and I can hear the fireworks going off somewhere in the city. I used to love fireworks. I haven’t gone to watch them in years now. Hearing them is like this huge cosmic notification that there are families and friends gathered together somewhere having fun, or pretending to have fun, and I’m here at home all alone.
I never wanted kids and I don’t regret not having them. I never thought I’d make a good mother and in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have. But sometimes I wonder if I had married a man who actually loved me, and who wanted a family, would I have had children. When I think along those lines I often think I could have been a good mom. If life had taken me down another road – or if I had taken another road. Who knows.
I actually liked being married. I like being single, but being married was better in some respects. Not when the marriage got bad – that comparison doesn’t really work. But when things were good I enjoyed it. We did things. We went places. Financially I was much better off, I had a home and a new car, beautiful furniture and lots of nice things.
Not to sound shallow – I know “things” don’t matter compared to relationships, but the reality is life is hard when you can’t afford “things”. There have been times I couldn’t afford food & shelter – all the basics. Now I can afford the basics but that’s it. Nothing more. Sometimes a little “more” would be nice, and by more I mean simple things like a new pair of shoes, going out to dinner, being able to afford enough gas for the car so I could go for a long drive, stuff like that.
Aside from the financial benefit of being married I did enjoy the company. I am fully aware that I don’t love him, never did, and I don’t want to get back together with him but there are times, like tonight, when I really do miss having someone to talk to, listen to, share ideas with. It can be lonely. Of course feeling lonely is much worse when you’re in a relationship and feel like you’e all alone. Yes, that’s much worse. But I can’t keep denying the fact that I am lonely now.
Loneliness is one of the reasons why I hoard. There are others – it’s not that simple, but lonliness is one of them. Same reason I overeat. Hoarding, eating – they keep my mind busy so I don’ t have to think about what I’m feeling.
I was out for a drive tonight and was feeling good. I remembered the last time I was outside I felt good. I took a moment and really thought about how my actions were making me feel. Being outside in the sunshine made me feel good. That was a good thing to recognize. Also a good thing to remember the next time I want to stay hidden inside my apartment.
I’ve always found the summer harder on my depression because so many people are out and about. Families, friends – they’re all out having fun. It highlights my aloneness. I’m hoping that this summer will be different. If the fireworks are any indication I seem to be going down the same road. Or – maybe the fact that I’m noticing it and writing about it will help me change things.
