A slight tear in my reality and the (scary) progression of burnout
In my two most recent posts I talked a little bit about how I’ve been having a crazy few months and how I believe it’s been affecting me. I’ve kept the explicit details of my life private despite the brief mentions of some of my daily discomfort because I grew up with internet safety PSAs and am convinced I’m gonna get killed for sharing my first name or something. Still, even without going into extreme detail of every trauma I’ve experienced and every casual injustice I live on the day to day, I feel like it’s clear to see that I’m going through it. For the entire month I’ve had this blog it has been my intention to not dive into anything too seriously dark, when it comes to my own inner workings. I wanted to take my focus away from my mental stability, in a general sense, and not put this side of my reality out into he ether if I could help it. That was the plan, but I don’t think that would be fair of me to do to myself. Especially not today. Not right now when I have this energy built up in my core. I suppose a content warning is in order in case you, dear reader, are sensitive to the topics that come along with being mentally unwell.
I want to believe you’re smart and can tell that I have been struggling with my mental health for a while. At the point I’m at being in the trenches is just part of who I have become as a person. That’s something I struggle to accept as I would hate to be that inconsiderate person that brings down the vibes of any room and emotionally clogs up anyone they come into contact with. Realistically, I know I’m not like that. Funnily enough I’ve been told by many of my friends that I am a very positive person lol. I work to make sure I don’t get consumed by the darkness, I guess is what I’m getting at. I have gone through so many depressive episodes in my life, gone through so much bullshit that I am fully aware when it’s happening. I can tell when my thoughts are getting darker, usually near when my period is going to start, or after something brings up past traumas that I have over-analyzed a million times. I can work through it because I know the drill. Ride it out, rest up, drink and eat well, maybe take an edible or have a beer or something. I’m normally very vocal about how I feel to my friends and to some extent the family around me. I haven’t been diagnosed since I was 13, I’m untreated and unmedicated, and I haven’t got the slightest clue where to begin with any of that so! I’m not new to this, I’m true to this.
All that to say that it’s been feeling different lately. I have been feeling different. The feelings of emotional and physical exhaustion from how much I have been working, the build up of frustration at my living arrangements, the stress of having enough money in my bank, the worry I have that my pets are well taken care of, the insecurities I carry around because I am not societally successful, the anxiety from the world we are all living in, all of those are normal feelings for me. I am usually feeling two or three of those at a time and I can rationalize them or talk myself down. Sometimes I just need to cry about it a little bit and move on, but lately I have been feeling it all at once, at every moment that I spend not scrolling to numb and dumb myself. Depression normally feels heavy (yes, it’s a physical feeling for me), as if my organs weigh twice as much as they should. I feel like it’s been getting heavier as these last three or so weeks have gone by.
I had the day off yesterday and I realized I had a day and a half to pack for my upcoming trip (that I’m finding hard to get excited about because we will not be sleeping enough). I was talking with the friend I’m going to meet and I was mentioning how horrible I was feeling. That heaviness fell on me suddenly and I could not shake it off. I couldn’t just move on from it. I felt like my brain was stuck on this feeling, kind of like a scratched dvd or something. The feeling of overwhelm at the thought of packing and traveling and gas prices and no sleeping was growing and growing until I hit a point where all I wanted was to die. Suicidal ideation is also something I have been dealing with for a big part of my life, shocker. I’m used to the “I wish I could vanish” thoughts, but in the last year or so it’s started to shift. Now it’s a lot more of “I wish I could end it” which is not great. Don’t worry, though, I won’t actually be taking any action. It would be a lot of work, probably painful, and it would make life harder for my friends and family so I don’t have any real plan or desire to go down that road. However, the thoughts are there and they cause me distress whenever they become frequent. Yesterday specifically I realized the path I was spiraling down and it freaked me out how calm I felt compared to my emotional state before I had the “I should end it all” thought. It really freaked me out, actually. I really hated it. I then realized that I have these trips planned for this month that I paid for so I can’t just die now. And I’m going to Dollywood in June for a friend’s birthday trip, so I can’t just die now, I just bought the tickets! Those thoughts really upset me. It made me angry to think about how I have promises I need to keep so I can’t kill my self, even thought I have never had actual thoughts of attempting suicide?? It was a very bizarre and very scary moment. I got my period like an hour after that so i chalked it up to that. I took and edible and played video games and read a book for the rest of the day, so it ended pretty okay.
This morning was also bad. I woke up in a horrible state of mind, thus why I’m writing this right now at 10am on a sunday. From the moment I got out of bed and got into the shower to deal with my bleeding, I could not believe I was going to go to work. My shift was supposed to be from 11am to 8pm with a one hr break in there somewhere. As much as I hate my job (it’s a lot) I will go in to bad shifts just like everyone else. I’m not scared of calling out but also, money, yknow? So I started moving my body in the motions I needed to start getting ready for work, but that energy from yesterday was still there. I could not only feel the heaviness inside of me, but I could feel it turning into something more sour. It feels like the heavy blob that is the depression was being surrounded, consumed by the sharper feeling of anxiety. I could feel it on my skin, in my chest. My brain was going a million miles an hour while also being completely empty. There was nothing and there was everything and it felt like the force my body was exerting just to exist was going to tear my physical body into meat ribbons. I decided to call out of work, which was a good thing too because four or so other people also called out. It was going to be a horrible shift. Even after getting the stress and heft of having to go into work in my condition was lifted, I was still not doing well. I pulled out my keyboard and ipad to start writing this as a way to ground myself, I guess. I have heard of the idea of people’s realities “tearing” before, but this is the closest I think I’ve come to that. I’ve had some intense anxiety attacks before, thankfully only twice or so, and those felt different from this. With the anxiety attacks there had obviously been a reason why I had lost all sense of self and all of my composure, which fixed itself once the source of my anxiety was dealt with. I’ve had more general bouts of anxiety where I can feel the chest tightening and general malaise that I’m so used to, which I can shake off or just wait to pass. This felt different, it felt deeper in my head than any of the anxiety episodes I’ve had. I didn’t feel like screaming or crying, I could breathe fine, I was just not all there.
I mentioned in the end of this post how I experience my reality from deep inside my skull. I usually see my physical experience as if it’s a video game and my mental self is the thing controlling it. My thoughts kind of reverberate from the very far back of my skull to the front of it and out through my physical body. Does that make sense? It’s like a long hallway. This morning my self was way far back in that hallway, much farther than usual, and grasping my physical reality was a lot harder. It’s not like I was hallucinating or anything, I just couldn’t process anything. All of my emotions were so dull and far away and yet so physical and heavy. For a few seconds after it faded, as I was writing the very beginning of this post, I thought that maybe that’s what a tear in my reality feels like. I feel a bit better now even with the heavy brain fog my period always brings me, so I’m just going to chill out for the rest of my day. I’m going to lay down and read or play some video games, maybe nap. I’ll pack up a few things for my trips later once the pain medication kicks in and I can stand better.
There really is no point to this post other than maybe “admit” to someone just how bad today was without worrying my close friends and family too much. I’ve been okay thus far so I’m sure I’ll be okay today as well. Thank you for reading if you’ve managed to make it down here. I’m not one to beg for engagement, but if you have any similarities on how you experience your reality I would love to hear about it. I feel like I sound loony if I try to explain it to anyone but I think I’m not really that far out lol.