If you’ve known me or read my blog for any length of time, you know I am not exactly “sane.” For most of my life, I went undiagnosed, but anyone who knew me knew something wasn’t quite right.
Well, a couple of years ago, I finally was given a diagnosis, Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Recently, there has been talk about the possibility I’m misdiagnosed and I’m actually extremely bipolar. But, that’s the nature of mental illness.
You can collect them all like pokemon if you try hard enough.
During the best times, it isn’t fun.
But, we aren’t living through the best of times.
We are living through an age of madness and chaos.
You would think having madness and chaos inside my head would prepare me for all of this. And, honestly, when it was a matter of spending 90% of my time in this small 10′ x 12′ room, I was good.
Social isolation? That’s easy.
But, today has been hard.
Anxiety is a terrifying in so many ways. It has significant physical impacts and they rock through you, over and over and over again. It’s bad.
But, the most sinister part of my anxiety is its one big lie.
My anxiety likes to tell me I am responsible for everything…
See, my brain tells me I am supposed to see all of the possible angles and find the solutions. I’m actually pretty good at that most of the time, which only feeds into my anxiety’s delusion.
I’ve got Spider-Man’s problem. To paraphrase:
When you have the power to stop the bad things from happening, but you don’t, then the bad things are your fault.
-Basically Uncle Ben
See, my anxiety blames me for everything bad that ever happens because I didn’t stop them and should always be able to stop them.
I can read the pattern, so I should be able to stop the things from happening, right?
So, I’m spiraling…
I’m sitting in my house. I’m locked in my brain. I’m watching what I genuinely believe to be the death of my values and ideals.
And tomorrow, I will try to go back to doing my job. Being a useless cog in a wheel.
And I’ll still be ill.
And we’ll all still be scared.
And we’ll know how fragile everything is.