When it comes to courage, I'm the first to admit that I don't have any. There are some things I do that other people may think are courageous, but I promise you, they're really mostly because I'm too lazy to care. Things in this category include: blogging about all of my problems for the whole Internet to see, writing stuff and letting people critique it without becoming a massive pile of negative emotions, eating during class, and singing to myself when I'm walking to school or work. If I were embarrassed by any of these things, I assure you that I would not do them.
However, there are things that I am rather squeamish about, and most of them are behaviors or actions that other people would consider normal. For instance, I have a job where I work in my campus bookstore and I help people find things that they don't know how to find. I am getting to the point where I am pretty good at finding things even if I don't know where they are beforehand. However, if I can't find something, I feel like a tiny crumb of insignificance, failure, and guilt. I turn into this ridiculous mess where I am convinced that every person I have ever met is looking at me and thinking about how appalling my lack of basic competence at life happens to be.
And this is something that happens A LOT.
Here is a sample of my day today, and you will understand what I mean:
7:30- alarm rings. I set it back to 7:50 because I am lazy. I feel a small amount of guilt but am too tired to care and besides, nobody will notice but me.
7:50- alarm rings again. I convince myself that I don't need to set it back again because I'm going to get up in five minutes anyway. I feel guilty right before I go back to sleep.
8:30- I sit bolt upright in bed, staring horrified at the clock. I sit there filled with remorse and guilt. What kind of a responsible twenty-year-old college student can't get up on time for class? I have half an hour until class.
8:35- I shake away the guilt, remind myself that I am an adult, and get out of bed and start getting dressed. I cannot find the clothes I want to wear today. It takes me five minutes to put on my new bracelet because I have tiny, yet amazingly clumsy hands. I berate myself for not being more organized and responsible.
8:45- I am finally dressed, but I am also starving. I think about it for a while, then decide that it is not necessary for me to be on time to class, because I woke up late. I eat a chocolate muffin that my roommate made using my mother's recipe. The endorphins momentarily assuage the guilt I feel at the idea of being late to class.
9:00- I realize that if I don't leave now, I will be very late to class. The momentary pleasure of chocolate has gone. I have another muffin to help me feel better.
9:15- I decide that class is overrated, and am instantly overwhelmed by guilt. I get on the computer to check my email.
9:55- I realize that I am going to be late to Russian class. I realize that the guilt I feel at missing my first class is not enough to spur me to go to my second, and sink deeper into my little cesspool of guilt.
10:30- I argue with myself about calling in sick to work, then realize that I am a lazy piece of crap. I grab my coat and begin walking to work. It is cold and I am miserable because I may be well-rested but I am also irresponsible, lazy, and disgusting.
10:55- I arrive at work. I clock in and start working.
1:56- I clock out of work. I feel like a miserable vomitous mass because I am awkward and shy and I don't know how to talk to people and sometimes I can't hear what they're saying and sometimes they can't hear what I'm saying and sometimes I do stupid things and sometimes I realize that I don't know what I'm doing even though I've been working at this place since May and I should know what I'm doing and sometimes I feel stupid for asking questions and sometimes I feel stupid for not asking questions and I am a nerve-wracked mess of fear, slight nausea, hunger, headache, worry, the desire to cry, and the desire to curl up in a ball and hide.
2:30- I arrive home and think about how awful I feel. Despite the fact that I really do want to cry and eat donuts, I decide that writing a blog post would be a more productive use of my time.
So, you see, I have this problem. It's a pretty big problem. It prevents me from functioning like a mostly normal human being. I second-guess everything I do, I regret everything I've said the moment I've said it. I do stupid things and have to try and fix them, and in the process do even stupider things, and it feels like people are sitting back and watching me fail and not showing me what I'm doing wrong- but I know that they're not going to say anything, no matter how incompetent I am.
My mother told me that she was shy and insecure in high school, and she's told me about other experiences she's had that made her feel awful. And I hear her stories and think, "I have no right to feel as bad as I do about these little mistakes I make." But then this nasty little voice in my head says, "But you make five million of those tiny mistakes every day, and then you feel bad, and you should feel bad for feeling bad because you don't need to feel bad, you're only human."
And then I try to explain to people that everything I do is horrible and they say, "BUT YOU'RE ONLY HUMAN, DON'T CRY, YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL AND SWEET AND A GOOD PERSON AND I LIKE YOOOOOOOUU," and then I feel even worse because I know, deep down, that they are wrong. I am a lazy, miserable, nerve-wracked piece of crap whose existence is divided between my actions and negative commentary upon my own actions.
This is why I don't like to talk to strangers. Heck, this is why I don't like to talk to my friends. I am so afraid of screwing up that I don't even want to try to be normal; it's easier just to hide in my room and think about how paranoid I am that everyone who has ever claimed to be my friend actually hates me and wishes I were dead. Or maybe they don't wish that I were dead, because they are much better human beings than I am. Instead, they wish that they were not acquainted with me and my awkward interactions because they must surely be suffering vicarious embarrassment upon my behalf. I am the only human awful enough to sometimes wish that I were dead- or, at the very least, unconscious.
And this is the state I am in, approximately ninety percent of the time. I do something- or I fail to do something. I immediately regret my choice and begin to berate myself. I begin to believe that I am a horrible person and that I deserve all kinds of horrible punishments. I don't even try to focus on these negative things, but they come crowding in around me, my little demons, whispering about how awful I am or how stupid I am or how ugly I am, telling me that this person hates me and that other person thinks I am an utter idiot and that somebody else wishes I didn't exist.
There are only a few things that can make me feel better without reservation. One of these things is animals, and another is babies. Babies and animals are judgment-free carbon-based life forms, and even if you are a stupid, lazy failure like me, they will adore you. And I can sit there, holding a baby or an animal, and I can touch a warm little body and believe, even for just a little while, that I am worth something. Somebody once held me like that, after all.
And the other thing is writing. Reading is wonderful- it is an escape from the world and its follies, an escape from myself. But books end, and guilt opens the portcullis of my mind once more and comes flooding in like molten lead, destroying everything in its path and burning everything it touches. But writing- I can always keep writing. There is always some new world to find, some new world where the guilt cannot touch me because in that world I am not the guilty one.
I have not recognized these things about myself for a long time. I didn't know that my constant state of self-hatred and worry were symptoms of my depression and anxiety. I didn't know that the more it happened, the worse it got. I didn't know in high school that someday I would strongly consider ending my own life. I didn't know when I was twelve years old that I would grow up into a troubled adult. I didn't know when I was nine and my little brother was three and just diagnosed with autism that I would have mental disorders less severe but ultimately far more painful than his. I didn't know when I was five that I would have to take pills everyday, pills that would regulate my hormones and help me to produce more of the kind that would make me feel less like a piece of garbage and more like a human being.
But I know now. And you know, when I was twelve or thirteen, I would have tried to glamorize this darkness in myself. I would have tried to make it mysterious and romantic. But it's not. It's really not. Depression sucks. It feels like nothingness. Add anxiety to it, where you're constantly worried about how dead inside you feel, and it becomes even worse. These things are not beautiful. They are sneaking away from parties to cry in your room because you don't understand how other people manage to talk. These things are wondering how much ibuprofen it would take to kill you. These things are thinking that stepping in front of that speeding bus would hurt much less than just trying to get through the day- the only downside being that you might not die, and it wouldn't be worth it if you didn't die. These things are wishing you had a legitimate reason to hate the person you've become, but realizing that you don't. It's not logical, it doesn't make sense, it hurts and it aches and it's poison in your brain, your heart, your soul. It's when colors fade and sounds slip into the dullness of another day. It's when you can't cry even when you want to. It's ugly and painful and it's numb.
And yet, every day I get up- at some point. And I go to work, and I come home, and I do my homework even though I don't want to. And I smile for the camera, and pretend to be happy, because believing might make it so.
And I understand that people get down on themselves. I understand that people regret their mistakes. I get it. But unless you are painfully reminded of how horrible you feel every time you try to think a new thought, you might not get it.
Some people say, "Well, buck up! Get over it!" Those people do not understand. Other people might be able to struggle their way back to sanity, because they find meaning in that struggle. But for me, all of my senses are wrapped in cotton and wool, and it's not that I don't want to get over it, it's that I can't. I am incapable of just becoming happy at the drop of a hat. I can choose to hide it. People who say that happiness is a choice have never experienced depression or anxiety. But choosing to act happy is a choice, and I try to do that whenever possible. I don't want to make other people feel as bad as I feel, so I choose to let them believe that I'm happy. And sometimes, I really am. Those are the moments that make me choose to go on.
No comments:
Post a Comment