I Just Want to Feel Good

My actual brain.

I can’t laugh at myself today. I can’t make self-deprecating quips about my lack of productivity and post links to all the best sweatpants in size XL. I can’t even come up with something modestly hopeful like exercise and cleaning routines. Today I feel like I am living out a nightmare.

My life has become what I always feared the most: total paralysis. I’ve always been very driven and equally dramatic, so the worst thing in the world to me was always the idea of doing nothing. And here I am.

I’m lucky in many ways in my life; I am well aware of that. I have a devoted husband and a loving family, I own a house with a lovely apartment to live in, and my small disability payments are supplemented by my husband’s income. We are physically healthy. We don’t suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction, severe debt, or legal trouble, and our lives aren’t complicated by having children. I know I should be grateful.

I’ve been keeping a gratitude log in my bullet journal and I’ve listed all the things I’m grateful for every day: Matt made me my meals, Matt rubbed my feet, my parents are healthy, etc. But thinking about these things only seems to make me feel guilty. I know the whole idea with this is to feel happy and content with what you have. But instead it makes me feel guilty that I’m so taken care of, that I’m free of so many burdens other people have. And I don’t think that’s what the gratitude log is supposed to do.

Matt read an article recently that said studies show that daily gratitude practices don’t help with anxiety or depression. I could have told them that. So I stopped writing these things down. I already thank Matt for everything he does for me when he’s doing it. I don’t need to keep a running tally of everything I need to feel guilty for.

But gratitude log aside, what I wanted to say was that I know I’m lucky, and to many people it seems like that should be enough to make me happy. But I can’t appreciate any of it. I can see good things and know that they are good logically, but emotionally I am unable to feel good. Like I said, I feel like I’m living out my worst nightmare.

It could be worse, I think. I could have cancer, I could be physically disabled, I could be alone and unloved. Those things seem much worse to me, but they would also be clear and apparent and not my fault. The illness I’m stuck with always leads me to think that this nightmare is my fault. It makes me think that I didn’t try hard enough or long enough, that I made bad decisions, that I failed in some way. I try to tell myself it’s not true: this is a chemical condition, a disability the government recognizes as rendering me unable to work to support myself. I tell myself I’m doing my best, and that I’m going to keep getting better.

But every day I scream at myself inside my head that I’m stupid, that I’m a pathetic piece of garbage and I should just die already. The screams tell me that my life is over and that my brain has turned to mush after all these years of being depressed and useless. This torrent of rage directed at myself is relentless. It keeps me pinned to the bed, unwilling to do anything for fear of doing it wrong, for fear of getting my hopes up and then suffering devastating disappointment.

It’s even hard to distract myself with meaningless things. Watching TV or even reading books makes me think I’m wasting time and that my life is pathetic and sad. So I’m back to trying to get something done, failing, and screaming at myself again.

Every day when I wake up, I’m surprised by the cold, grey reality I’m faced with: the harshness of the light, the distance I feel between me and my surroundings. I feel some relief in my dreams- there’s a warm closeness, a snug malleability to everything. It’s such a contrast to the hard rut I walk into when I wake up.

I lay in bed today thinking, I can’t stand being like this anymore. Today I’m just going to be totally different. The world will open up and I will have a choice in the matter. I will have a say in what I do and how I feel. And then I got up, and it was the same as it always is.

I’m barely clinging on to the pathetic routines I have in place. Matt and I went to start our home workout today. I had had my three cups of coffee and three hours of sitting around to get my strength up. I went down for my first push-up and I couldn’t do it. I started crying and curled into a fetal position. I laid on the bed, Matt brought me a Klonopin and some water, and I cried for a while.

And then we tried it again. This time it worked. I did my push-ups and my squats and whatnot and walked on the treadmill for 10 minutes. And everything snapped back into place. Eat breakfast, check box. Wash dishes, check box. Cry some more and get a foot rub.

As I write this, I think that I should be grateful. I was able to get the exercise done. I should be grateful I’m able to keep to my simple routines. I should be grateful Matt helps me so much every day.

Then I think, this is all I get? The way things are for me right now- this is it for me? It doesn’t get any better? And I’m angry. And I’m screaming at myself again that I should be getting more done, that my daily routine is pathetic. And I want more than anything to just disappear, to get to start over and do it right this time. I want more than anything to be able to wake up and for things to be different. I just want to feel good. I want to feel content wiping the kitchen counter and taking a shower and reading a book. I want to feel satisfied with myself, with what I did today. But my brain won’t let me. It won’t let me feel good.