A Troubled Mind

Had a good week, a good day, and now a terrible evening and night. It's 2am. I can't sleep. I can't sleep because I had a long argument, and now I'm not sure whether... I'm just not sure. What if it gets worse? ...

Nobody knows how much I struggle. Nobody knows how I feel. Nobody knows how bad things truly are. Not even my best friend, whoever that is. Not even my wife. I just want to be alone. Alone with my thoughts. Alone with myself. Alone with my feelings. I don't have time to think, time to feel, time to heal. No time. No solitude. Kids. Wife. Work. Obligations. That's what I have. ...

And again: desperation. And once more: despair. I don't know what I can do. Every day, I'm spiraling down. Every day. I have good days too, I'm aware. But most days are bad. Terrible, even. Most days I break down. Most days I cry. Most days I despair. It's just too much. It's all too much. I'm suffering. My family is suffering. My sanity is suffering. My sleep, my eating habits, my everything. I live in a sunny place, and yet things are dark. I have what should be a dream job, and yet it's a ni...

I just had a breakdown. Again. Cried for longer than I'd like to admit. Again. It's all too much. Too much. Too much work, too much responsibility, too much things I need to do. Too many processes and people dependent on me. Too much. It's all too much. I can't remember when the last day was where it wasn't like this. The last day where I wasn't overwhelmed, on the verge of breakdown. It must have been a year ago. Or two. Or three. I don't know. What I do know is that I've been breaking down al...

Another month has passed, and I'm still tired. No matter what I do. No matter how much I sleep. No matter how much I try to take care of myself. Tiredness is all I know. No energy. No motivation. No spirit. I can't bring myself to do stuff. I can't bring myself to do the things I have to do. I can't bring myself to do the things I should do. All I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep, but I can't. I want to rest, but I can't. I want to take a break, but I can't. Stuff keeps piling up. And I'm ...

I'm tired. I'm so extremely tired. I've been tired for so long. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop. I don't know what I can do. What do I do to make it stop? What do I do to not feel that tired anymore, all the time? I can't sleep forever. Or can I? It's all so tiresome. It truly is. I'm tired. ...

I'm a creative person. An introvert. Which means that most of the time I need to be alone. And sometimes, I need to be alone to do a whole lot of nothing. Or at least what would look like nothing from the outside perspective, from the perspective of someone who is not in my mind. My mind needs space to unfold. Time to process things. And if it is allowed that, sometimes, good stuff comes out. Stuff that most other people won't think of. Can't think of. Don't have the mental makeup to think of. ...

I'm the worst I've ever been. It's probably not true, but it feels like it right now. Not a day goes by that I don't break down and cry. Not a single day. Not. A. Day. Days turn into weeks, weeks into months. It's almost June now. Which means I've had tears streaming down my cheeks for approximately 150 days in a row now. Very few people know. The only one who truly knows is me. How it is. What it feels like. What it feels like to be that drained; that exhausted. What it feels like to be so t...

My body is falling apart. My mind is long gone I guess; battered, beaten, completely and utterly exhausted. Barely functioning. I can't even type right now, let alone think. This first paragraph took me 15 minutes to write. And it's barely a paragraph... I can't seem to get out of the doom loop. A million things to do. Hundreds of things with high priority. Too much on my plate. Too many people reliant on me. Too little time for myself. Too much responsibility. Too much weight on my shoulders. ...

Another day, another catastrophe. I'd be lying if I'd be saying that I'm doing well. I'm not. The walls are closing in, and I don't know where to go or what to do. I'm not a martyr, and I don't intend to become one. The question is, as always, what to do... Don't make decisions when you're angry, they say. And don't make them when you're afraid either. But what to do if you're paralyzed? You can't make a decision in the first place, and that's the problem. Maybe the right decision is to slowl...

I'm doing better now. Not sure why, not sure what helped, not sure if it stays this way. Maybe it's the sun, maybe it's the salt water, maybe it's a little bit of solitude that I managed to create for myself. Maybe it's all of them off. But I am better, and that's feeling good. I would even say that I'm okay right now. Maybe it's just the weather to changed. And I'm not speaking of the external weather, but I'm speaking of the internal weather. Maybe that's just how it is. Sometimes we feel lik...

Overwhelming. That's the one word that sums it up best. I'm overwhelmed, and have been for a while. Not a day goes by where I don't break down and cry. Not a day. Today it was good news at first. Something worked out, unexpectedly. I was overwhelmed by positive emotion. It worked out. I couldn't believe it. I was walking out of the building, disoriented, barely able to find my way back to the office. I managed, but not without tears running down my cheeks from under my sunglasses. About two ho...

And here I am again. Trying to calm myself down. Trying to enjoy the present moment. Trying to relax. Trying to breathe. But I can't. I'm suffocating. I'm stressed out beyond belief. I'm haunted by the past, worried about the future, planning for disaster that is bound to strike. Hanging on with tooth and nail, trying to hold it all together. Company, finances, family, sanity. "If I don't do X it's all going to fall apart." Or that's what my mind is telling myself. If I keep doing X, where X ...

I'm a bit better now. Still sick, still broken, but better. It helped to compost my thoughts yesterday. It really did. All things take time. Healing too. Breaking too, for that matter. It took many years until I truly broke. So why can't I give myself any time to heal? Why is half a day all I give myself? Why not a weekend? Or a week? Or a month? Or a year? I'm feeling well enough today that I'm already slipping back into the same old pattern: endless TODO list. Ready to crush it. Ready to cru...

Water is probably what I need most. Water, silence, and sunlight. Solitude. I'm broken and I need time to heal. I think it was Jim Carrey of all people who mentioned that you'll need "deep rest" if you're depressed. Etymologists are going to hate this play on words, but it stuck with me for some reason. Someone else said that it isn't the water that sinks a boat, but it's the cracks in the hull that let the water in. And someone else said that we all have cracks and that's good, because that's...

I guess I truly am broken, which is why I need a break. But how can I take a break if I don't allow myself to take a break? How, if so many people are dependt on me? How, if things fall apart if I don't tend to them? I guess I'm broken in more ways than one. We probably all are, but knowledge of that is not consolation. That's the thing about the mind: it can know things, and still be helpless. I know, intellectually, what my problem is and what I would need to do to solve it. And yet I can't ...

I'm not sure why I write. I guess it's therapeutic. I probably should go therapy, but I won't. And I'm most definitely not going to take any damn "stabilizers" anymore, whatever that means. The most stable construct in the universe is indiscernable gray goo, and that's what the damn medication turns my mind into. You're alive, alright. But you aren't living. You can't, as everything is gray. I'll take the deep, pitch-black dark of the abyss over dull and boring gray every day of the week. At lea...

Mornings are always the hardest. They always have been, at least for me. Especially during times of overwhelm. Even more so during times overwhelm and sickness. No willingness to get out of bed. No energy to face the day. The agony of waking up. Oh, how sweet it would be to sleep a little longer. Dream a little longer. Hide from reality a little longer. At one time in my life I had days where I didn't manage to get out of bed at all. No food. No shower. No brushing teeth. Maybe I'd manage to ...

I'm feeling terrible today. Not as terrible as I've felt yesterday, and definitely not as terrible as the day before, but still terrible. I've been sick for a week now, and still am. A deep cough, high fever, snotty nose... the whole nine yards. I'm not well mentally either. I'm not sure if I'm depressed or just stressed. Maybe I'm both. I'm most definitely overwhelmed, that's for sure. I've got too much to do. Too many things to take care of. Too many people to get back too. Too many DMs. To...