My Current State

My Current State

It is 4PM and my brain is wiped. I am on yet another journey. This one has been long and heavy so far. I have so many emotions and they don’t all meet in the middle smoothly at all. Let me just go back a bit and tell you about the drama in my life. I call that drama bipolar disorder. And it is severely altering my day to day life. 

I have struggled to be consistently reliable to a job position for years. The outcome is always a layoff. If not that, it is me frantically running away because I am terrified. I’ve been hesitant to share this but I feel that I have to. I want to be completely transparent. This last position was referred to me by a great person. We worked together previously and he brought me in for an interview at his place of work knowing my background of not being present. I thought in my head I was just going to take the interview to practice my skills and return the respect. I of course owned the interview because I was my bubbly self yet professional, and kind. I will say I am a great employee…when I show up. I left the interview and we were all on cloud 9. The owner was probably the best business owner I have ever met. I saw higher numbers on my offer letter than expected and right away told myself I could do it this time. This I’ve noticed has become a pattern of mine, for a long time. Let’s talk about the fact that I was also in school at night at this time and didn’t have much time to breathe. But I still took the job. I think I lasted a little over 4 months. I always tend to take on way too much. When I was younger I always took on 2-4 jobs. I was always moving. My goal was always distracted and always changing.

When I started to notice my struggling and my grades declining, I took a leave from school because I was just in a really bad place, which upsets me because I for once was doing very very well. But everything else in my life affected it so much that I had to be safe and take that leave and not a bad term. When I was at the office, it was almost all wonderful. I was good at the job I was training to perform and I was able to speak to different people every day (I love to talk). But the darkness just follows. It came swinging in and pounded me into the ground. Let’s just say my thoughts become so low and sometimes scary, so I sleep. I sleep hours and hours. I sleep the suicidal thoughts away. Sometimes days and days. It affects my hygiene, my thought process, my relationships, my dog’s schedule, my work, school, my life.. Waking up out of my lows just feels even worse than before I would go to sleep. This obviously won’t put me into a bright and happy mood waking up because I think most of us know that oversleeping comes with depression. How am I supposed to get myself to work when I can’t even get out of bed because I know in my head with certainty I will never be anything? My mind is weak and the depression beats my ass. I will never be better. I will always be a complete failure (x10). My circle has gotten smaller and it is all my fault. I fight to think just one positive thing about myself during these times and I cannot. I literally never have yet.. It blows my mind how people in the position I am put in (or put myself in, I don’t know!) are able to function and are able to just simply get from A to B. That is SO strong of you. My paranoia also for some reason has filled me with the fear of driving from point A to B at times. I also get HIGH anxiety at times. The anxiety can come after missing work and going back because of what others will think of me. It is awkward and I hate the feeling. It can also be from too many thoughts about the future, finances, friendships, even sometimes just existing. Have I pushed myself through these shitty times? I can say yes but the percentage of me actually getting up is at an extreme low.

Anyway, these awful moments do get better. They get better and then my head just feels like it is restarting. So far the better days have only been temporary so far. I know bad days will happen, I just wish they wouldn’t affect me the way they do. Give me a flat tire or a sold out flight I can’t get onto. These highs and lows are really overwhelming. I really think people do not understand sometimes. Some see it from their perspective and don’t understand or simply don’t believe yours. Another moment of anxiety that flies through me is when I would go back to work after a bad spell I would feel so much pressure and guilt from everyone around me. Why wouldn’t I? They had no idea what I was going through and they probably wouldn’t even understand. I think they began to not even take me seriously. Can’t blame them.

When there is no low, there could be a stable moment where I see what is going on and what I need to fix. I feel more grounded and I do what I have to do. I just get through the day. I dance in my car as I blast Ariana Grande. I love that feeling. Just feeling in control. Feeling some kind of normalcy. Then there is that feeling of a lack of breath and an increased pulse rate, along with a racing heartbeat and most likely a slight increase in my blood pressure. I rise and rise until I think I am happy but I am talking a mile a minute and planning the whole next year. My brain moves so fast in different directions and I can’t keep up. If I get triggered by anything during this state, I react in a very negative way and I can’t even tell you how I get myself so worked up (I’ll go deeper into that in another rant). I am not in a normal state of mind. I am manic. Sometimes during these episodes, I get filled with so much anger and when it gets to that point, it is very hard to calm me down. I completely black out and don’t remember much at all when I come to. Why am I so angry? What puts me into that place of rage? I am trying to figure that out. Just another # on my list to work on.. When I go full panic, my body feels like it is flying yet it tingles and feels quite heavy. I’m explaining all of these feelings because maybe you feel them too. And I for sure don’t want to be alone. I hope you reading this makes you not feel alone either. I’ve been put on medications, a lot of them, and I’ve been somewhat “fixed” but I still have so much more to go. I am not me. I am the closest to me I have gotten so far, and that is not saying much. The side effects of these meds are brutal. And obviously something is not right because I am still going through these struggles and I still have not been able to learn to cope and keep myself afloat. So, now I do what is necessary after being laid off and this time, I am finding help for myself. I’ve always sat in my sorrow but I haven’t done anything to feel better about myself. I am not committing to anything until I can break through this. 

I plan to enter an outpatient program that hopefully can help me mentally get stronger and a way to learn better coping skills. I am now going to take the time to take better care of myself mentally and physically. There is so much I know that can be done. It is so overwhelming on where to start. That is why I am choosing to get help. I choose the route of being 36 years old in a weekly therapy program with no accomplishments or better skills because I am not mentally ready or capable to consistently work and simply be my best potential most days. How can I? I have different thoughts of myself and the world around me every single day. I miss me. So so much. But I am sick of failing over and over again. Small goals they say, yea I know. That in itself makes me nervous. But I’ll do it. I know I’ll do it. What do I think of when I think of me at my best self and where I want to be? I need to start caring about myself..all that self care and self discipline..I need it more than you can ever know. I want to be stable and happy for myself and my family to not be worrying about me, for my boyfriend who supports me through everything I’ve went and am going through. I want to feel emotions so I can return the love he and my loved ones give me every single day. I want to be trusting to become a wife and start a family. I want to be well enough to help others. I think it feels so good to help people. It is therapeutic to me. I want to be able to get up in the morning and fight what comes my way, and me be for once be the winner. I want to not pick at every single thing. For example, recently a social media user who is close to mutual friends (or ex-friends) unfollowed me. I wasn’t sure of why she unfollowed me and I didn’t understand what I’ve done wrong. But in reality, I don’t even care about this person. Like, I really do not care in the least bit. Not saying anything bad! But WHY do I allow my mind to pay so much attention on something so small? It all wraps around the way I feel about myself. I just always think I am to blame. But fuck that, I’m not and my life did not end over these petty things. All of these negative thoughts drain my energy so much. Just have to learn to control it. That is why right now, I am the most important part in getting better. I want and absolutely need to help ME…in very small increments at a time of course. But as I move forward, I hope to become a better version of myself. I am trying to keep that mentality as much as I possibly can. And I know one thing, I am not turning back.

Here we go….

Written on June 21, 2021

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