Your readers don't need to know ever single detail about every single misfiring of every single neuron in your brain, Raquel.
This is going to garner a lot of unsolicited advice.
They're going to send Bellevue right to your door, stop playing!
But, this is the year I've chosen to be fearless, so here goes.
It usually starts immediately after a string of really great days: my hair is behaving, my belly isn't protruding and the plumbing in my bathroom is running smoothly (no, seriously, this house has the worst pipes ever. It must be a gazillion years old. And that's not a metaphor; I literally have to call my landlord every three months because a shower turns into a flood in 2.7 seconds. But anyway...). I'll have a seat and think, Life is great!
Then it gets out of control:
Well it's great except for A. Yeah, if A were all straightened out, life would be great. Oh and B, too. That is something I've been meaning to take care of for years. What's taking me so long? UGH and I forgot to take care of C like I said I would this week. Dammit, my entire TO DO list went to hell and it's already Thursday so there's no time to catch up. And I need to handle D right away. I'm running out of time on that and if I don't fix it the repercussions will ruin everything. Whatever, everything is ruined anyway. I'm so fucking lazy and stupid! Why didn't I just take care of this shit earlier?
And then I get online, not to take care of business but rather to distract myself from all the thoughts that won't shut up. But what the internet does is accentuate all the people who have seemingly better lives than I do and that makes it worse.
They have their shit together, why don't you? Y'all are the same age and that person over there is way younger than you and they have it together. What the fuck is wrong with you? I swear you're a waste of skin sometimes. I'm so over you!
That leads to my old friend Binging. And Sloth. And I sink into a hole so deep but it's comfortable there. I know this place well. My ass groove is still cemented in the couch down there. It's hard to breathe and it's foggy and I can't really see the doorway that leads out, and that part is a little scary, but it's comfortable. It's cold and it makes me feel numb and apathetic and I find it hard to care about anything, even my own children, but it's comfortable.
Sometimes the only way out is to be forced out by an outside force: a threat from Cablevision that my service will be shut if I don't pay this bill or a note home that N missed an assignment- surely a sign that I'm a bad homemaker and mother, respectively. But sometimes something inside makes me snap out of it. It's like only one of The Voices wants me to be happy but she's been kidnapped by the others and every time this happens it takes her longer and longer to escape. She breaks through somehow and gets me to feel something, anything, and she's so loud and powerful that I cannot ignore her.
You have to do something or you're going to die here. And it's just not our time.
So then I come out of it and begin the task of assessing the Katrina-like damage left in the wake of my Spiral. I put together a plan for how to fix it all and become overwhelmed because there's so much to repair.
How can I do this all? I'm only one person. Why can't I do this? I need so much help!
Who's going to help you? There is no one. You made this mess. You have to fix it. Stop burdening people with your shit. How old are you, still looking for bailouts?
That Voice is particularly hard to argue with because she's right. I'm almost 37, still looking for someone else to fix me. And that's when I realize my "strong Voice" has been abducted, again, so soon, and now even she can't help me. So I'm half in and half out of the hole, knowing that I have this list of things that must be done but lacking the courage and strength to put on my big girl drawlz. Eventually, she'll escape again, and in that window of freedom I'll make more lists and maybe even get a few things done, but how long until then?
I don't know what I'll do if she never makes it back.
*smooches...hoping I didn't scare you off*
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listen, this is just my reality. that's what you come here for, right? Also, Bellevue is spelled incorrectly in my tags and it's driving me even crazier that there isn't an easy solution to fix it. It's all I can think about and it's keeping me up at night. Welcome to my brain.
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