My brain is doing loop-de-loops today. I’ve got this sick
feeling that I can’t shake and it took me most of the morning to figure out
what’s going on: The Shame Game. Everything I’ve ever done wrong, every bad
thing that has ever happened to me, all the bad things that are still happening
to me, my failures, my inabilities, my belief that in should-have-beens, all of
it yammering in my skull full time like a jack-hammer. My house is a wreck, my
life is a wreck, it’s all my fault, and I can’t seem to muster the energy to
fix any of it.
I should be in a better place in my life than I currently
am. Unemployed at the beginning of a massive Depression, dependent on an
ex-husband who thrives on being undependable, with three grown or nearly-grown
children who don’t have gainful employment, my house falling down around my
ears: I could go on for days.
Part of this is just how my brain is wired, and part of
what is going on is decades of conditioning that my failures are completely
within my control. I worked very hard for years on a marriage that was never
going to succeed because the man I was married to has a vastly different idea
of what marriage should be than I do. If hard work was going to save that
marriage, then we’d still be hitched. Hard work has a chance only if both
parties are on the same page pulling for the same goal. I’m actually happier as
a financially precarious divorcee than I was married to someone who did not
have, and never did have, my best interests at heart. Pretty tough to be happy knowing
that my husband didn’t think of me as an actual person but merely as a boundless
resource, incapable of being overdrawn, and requiring no actual maintenance.
Undiagnosed executive function impairments also work
wonders on a life. It isn’t a relief to be diagnosed when the script for lazy
has been all but imprinted on my DNA for most of my existence. I still feel
like I should be able to power through whatever obstacle is in my way,
regardless of what that obstacle is or what my diminished store of resources
holds. It takes a while to stop and take stock: This is what I have vs. this is
what is needed. What I need is one hundred thousand dollars and a stable,
secure job. What I have is a little bitty monthly support check. There’s a gulf
there that can’t just be powered through. What I need is the ability to form an
internally-imposed routine that can’t be immediately thrown off its rails by
every metaphorical shift in the wind, and that just can’t happen the way my
brain is wired. What I need is a couple of 20-yard dumpsters to get rid of the
clutter in the house that is also cluttering up my brain but – well, see the
above statement about the need for a job and cash. What I need is the ability
for bi-linear time travel and what I’ve got is unidirectional.
There is no winning at The Shame Game. I can’t go back
and change the conditions that got me here, I have no way of changing the way
my brain is wired, I can only deal with the here-and-now, and I can only work
on mitigation systems for the issues I’m always going to have.
So, I push away from what is causing shame and paralysis
and I do something that makes those awful feelings recede to the point where I’m
both functional again and capable of taking action on what’s actionable. Hence
today’s pushing away from social media doom-scrolling and then writing a blog
post that helps get my brain back on track.
Now I’m going to find my steel-toes and my safety glasses
and finally get that evaporative cooler framework done that I’ve been promising
myself.
