~d-path

I was distracted while she made suggestions on my letter. Maybe I was still stinging from her telling me it was “terrible,” but she was making good points about what to change and why. I was just struggling to stay focused on them. It made me feel worried about the future.

“Do your legs hurt?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Why do you do that? Every time I have anxiety you roll your eyes. I never did that to you.”

“Not EVERY time.”

“No sometimes you just get mad, of you just sigh really loudly.”

“Well it’s annoying. Sometimes you just need to suck it up and get over it.”

“I have never done that to you. I never roll my eyes at you when you feel bad or have anxiety.”

“Because I didn’t tell you.”

“You asked me.”

“I didn’t have to ask you, you were just glazed over and not even paying attention. You won’t even engage.”

“I was shifting my weight. I was doing a good job and I was asking questions and we were talking. It is hard for me but I was doing a good job.”

“I would think you would have read my suggestions by now. What have you been doing?”

“When? I was reading books with N, and then lying on the floor with her.”

“What were you doing while you were lying on the floor?”

“I was resting.”

I was reading twitter. Truthfully I really was resting by doing that, I just didn’t want to say I was reading.

“I’m sick of being a coach.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I’m sick of being a coach.”

“Be clear.”

“I have to coach you, I have to coach the kids, nobody ever helps me.”

“I always help you.”

“We’ll it’s never urgent.”

“Is this about the shed?” She had asked me to clean out the shed/studio so she could use the whole building and not just the front half. I hadn’t finished it all winter and finally spent the remaining four hours on it a few weeks ago, after she suddenly became furious over it.

“When else?” I asked. ” I always help you.”

“Other things. You just don’t take me seriously.”

“Yes I do. Very seriously. Look, if you’re going be resentful about helping me then stop helping me.
I don’t want your help if that’s how it’s going to be. I wanted you to read the letter because I was proud of it. I thought it was good.”

“What? You wanted help on it. Oh are you going to be all hurt now?”

“Yeah I do, but I was proud of it. I don’t want your help at all if you resent helping me.”

There was silence for a while . I stared at the solitaire game on my phone at the counter while she stood behind me. I did not want to look up.

“Are you going to say anything?” I asked.

“No.”

Then silence again.

“Here, call your prescription in,” she said, picking up and slamming my anxiety medication on the counter. “I didn’t do it for you. I stopped helping.”

(via cbmartin)

How could I forget something so important?

It’s been three years since A. came home from the doctor and shared that he suggested I get a vasectomy. We talked about her and her ability to handle another child after her depression. We talked about her psych medication and how it would have a terrible effect on a baby, and how we couldn’t risk it. I went to my own doctor a few weeks later, and while there I got the name of a urologist to call. I kept the number in my wallet a while, then programmed it in my phone, trying to think of a good time for elective surgery. That took several months.

Then 2010 ground into gear, and I was overwhelmed by my failings and lack of hope, leading me to therapy after shouting at my family, then finally, in the Fall, to a doctor when I lost all hope. I stopped exercising or eating well around that time, and was starting to lose track of bills and payments. 2010 was a blur of sorts, a horrible year in which I struggled to see if anything could ever improve, a year in which I pulled into my shell and just tried to keep up with what was thrown at me.

And that’s when I suppose I forgot. Everything all came to be about me. I couldn’t be a rock for anyone anymore. I still carried the doctor’s number but must have convinced myself I was too busy trying to keep from failing miserably to step outside a private phone call. I was miserable and I didn’t go do it. 2011 came and went with me putting that responsibility down a level in its importance.

Not until this year did I start to find my old optimism and engagement, or any unforced sort of hope. But it’s been three years. Now she’s worried she could be pregnant, and rightfully furious with me for forgetting our primary reason for avoiding that: birth defects. It makes no sense that I could forget. I feel horrible about it.

Could I be that self-centered? I suppose I actually have been, since my time for myself has come at the expense of everyone else’s needs. But of any needs that is one I shouldn’t have neglected or put aside. How did I block it out?

So my psych tells me I have anxiety (which I knew) and not ADHD. His suggestion is that I can’t focus because I am overwhelmed. Too much to do or too many things at once, or even multi-tasking, send me fleeing to purposeful distraction

I think that sounds about right, actually. Still, I’m slipping further behind in my work as I try to methodically order my days. It’s helping but it’s hard to do.

When we spend time explaining our feelings in a way that feels to us like it is importantly nuanced, that is difficult to say, that is something even we don’t fully understand, to have it summarized back in five simple words feels like a slap in the face.

Even if the blunt assessment is accurate, perhaps especially if it’s accurate.

To hear it three times in a row feels like mocking, like our feelings are being tossed around the room, like our motivations are simple and only an idiot could spend so much angst working through the realizations and half-developed notions of behavior that we’re only now forming about ourselves, finally, at long last, like an illiterate man waving in the air a written guide to life.

Sometimes the struggle to talk and understand each other can leave us feeling alienated and simple-minded, or worse, judged, and we need time alone to digest the possible revelations we’ve already spoken out loud. Time to cry, to heave, to think, to sit with our fears that we’ve carelessly laid raw for both of us to see.

sagerabelaissoul:

Just had a really intense session about depression and life’s challenges and the first post to appear on my Dashboard is this one ….

We sometimes almost seem to wish we weren’t, that we are unique in our misery, but that tiny voice in the back of your head is the one that knows.

The one that says “I’m okay. I’m really okay”.

Be okay, because you are.

cavum:

I am okay (by nyoin)

(via sagerabelaissoul)

I don’t know how panic attacks work for other people.

For me, I can hear my heart pounding, and feel like I can’t catch my breath. I don’t know what will happen to me if I don’t escape the din of the people around me. Everything becomes too loud, happy sounds or angry ones are overwhelming. I have to get out immediately to an empty room, or outside, just away. It’s urgent, like the noise and activity are going to physically overwhelm me and I’ll pass out. I feel lightheaded; my neck, legs and arms tingle and ache.

I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough. I just have to sit here awhile. I’ll leave the room and will help soon, but I simply can’t handle it right now.

Can’t focus at work. The more I have to do the harder it is. My therapist thinks I have ADHD.

Like now. I need to be working on a schedule, reviewing project budgets, contacting consultants. But I’m posting this instead.

I guess when the fear level gets high enough I will panic and work late to finish.

Sometimes it seems insane to spend 50 hrs a week in a cubicle for 50 years, motivated to produce by fear of failure.

If not, it could probably send you there.

shortformblog:

Popular webcomic “Hyperbole and a Half” returns — with a lesson

Allie Brosh is back, guys! After a six-month hiatus, beloved webcomic “Hyperbole and a Half” (a popular MS Paint specialty with a huge fanbase) returned with a fresh update. In it, Brosh talks about why it’s been so long since the last post: A case of depression. Give it a read, folks, and send some love her way. Welcome back, Allie! source

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On staycation all week; been looking so forward to this. Friday night I left work late and it felt like I was headed home go Christmas. Now it already feels like a jail. I feel foolish for imagining I’d have any free time. Those days were over a long time ago I suppose.

(via theformofbeauty)

(via cerebrospinalien)

jennilee:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”  - Steve Jobs

(Written address)

Dude starts a company in a garage with a friend before he has life responsibilities. It’s fun and it takes off. He’s a relentless perfectionist, cruel to those around him, and loves his work. Doesn’t want a family. He never gives to charity, hoards as much cash as humanly possible, finds his life purpose in his job and encourages you to do the same.

He dies of cancer at a relatively young age and is compared to Ghandi because his company gave us the iPad.

He makes some good points about not settling, but starting your life’s work at an extremely young age with some fortunate choices is not the norm, and his advice is irrelevant for most people. They can’t just “quit,” not without losing their homes and not if they want to support their families.

Are we learning it is better not to care? To leave your kids in the pursuit of your dreams? Should we all be like Gardner (of Pursuit of Happyness), and leave our son in a brothel, homeless, while we give our all in the search for money and a successful career? Is there no way to balance family responsibilities, and more importantly family love, with our natural desires to do great work?

Must we sacrifice our lives in order to live them?