Panic.

I can’t sleep.

That’s not really anything new, but I feel like I’m on the verge of a full blown panic attack and I’m just sitting here counting the hours as they slip away knowing I’ll be tired for work tomorrow and know in my soul I need to take the day off to reset my brain and mental health but then I’ll panic because I’m afraid that admitting that will lead to me getting in trouble. I love my job, I seriously love working so much, but I’m not built for a 9-5. My life is chaotic, I am chaotic, and I’m unreliable. There’s always SOMETHING that comes up. I get sick. A family member needs help. Im exhausted and just need to sleep in. I have to have some test done. My braces need to be tightened. And then these moments – where my anxiety is so unbelievably out of control that I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight and I just start crying for no reason and spiral into these what if scenarios until I’m drowning in made up scenarios in my head all depicting me as a failure overwhelm me and I know, I KNOW I need to call in for my sanity – happen, and I feel so guilty about all the other bullshit I’ve missed work for so I don’t call in and the panic ensues.

I need to go to counseling. I know that. I feel that. But you know why I don’t?

One hour wouldn’t even make it through one wave in this tsunami of mental chaos I have in my head.

Seriously – one hour just isn’t enough and sometimes I think the best thing for me would be be able to set aside a full day or weekend to work one on one with a counselor so I could just fill them in on everything in my head, in my life, everything they need to know so that I can actually start working with someone on a weekly basis. Why doesn’t that exist? Most people struggle talking about their issues but for me the opposite is true – I want to talk about them. I NEED to talk about them – but there’s so many intersecting issues tangled up in my head it would be years before we even got anywhere near progress with me. I know that.

So here I am. Laying in bed slowly driving myself crazy because I don’t know what to do anymore. I always thought having a partner would help me to feel more loved, less lonely, more whole, more valued and more worthy but it hasn’t. Everyone always said it and I always criticized – go back and read the past blogs, I was an ass about it – but it’s true. Finding a partner didn’t fill the void or get rid of the disgust I have in myself, my body, my habits, who I am as a person.

I have a partner who is honest with me about everything, even his biggest faults, who tells me he loves me and that I’m beautiful and yet I still sit here paranoid that he’s going to find someone better, someone more interesting, someone better looking, someone more worthy of love than me. Every moment I don’t receive attention, affection, or validation is a moment I start ruminating in my head about all the ways I’m failing as a girlfriend, as a role model for the kids, as a worker, as a friend and as a person. I tell myself that he finds me lazy, or boring, or frustrating or annoying or ugly or disgusting for no reason. I tell myself that I’m not good enough and he’s going to leave me some day for someone better.

And it’s not fair.

Not to him, or to anyone in my life. I spiral into this deep over-analytical hole in my own mind and extrapolate it to everything I do and all my relationships. 9/10 they start not because he said or did anything to warrant them, but because I interpret everything someone doesn’t do or say as a failure on my end in some capacity. Honestly sometimes Allan literally will say “I love you too,boo” and I will go down this tangent of “does he really? Why didn’t he say it first? Does it annoy him that I say it so much? I wonder if he would be happier with someone who didn’t need to talk as much. Is he happy? What if he isn’t and he just feels stuck with me? Is he just waiting for the best time to leave me but he’s trying not to be rude? Should I bring it up so he doesn’t have to? God I can’t bring it up I’d be devastated. Why am I so crazy? This is crazy right? He probably thinks I’m crazy. I’m sitting here crying and I don’t even know why. I wish he’d hold me so I knew he loved me.”

But the thing is – all of that was MY OWN DOING. And I do it with everything. Lately I’ve just been more aware of how my self-hatred plays out in my relationship because I’ve been trying to be more self aware and let him know when I’m doing it because I realize it’s unfair to just have these inner spirals and then get to the point where he’s like “what’s wrong?” And I just unleash a world of inner thoughts he had no context for whatsoever and expect him to know how to support me or want to listen.

And if you’ve gotten this far – let me just say – he has literally done nothing to prompt this blog. Like I literally sat here freaking out about work tomorrow because I couldn’t sleep and this is where my mind has taken me. I have no control over my thoughts anymore and I’m just constantly panicking over the worst case scenario over and over and over again.

I’ve always known I’m like this. I mean hell, most people I meet know I think this way cuz I talk about it so much, but I always thought the missing piece was being alone and that if I had someone it would help heal that part of my loneliness but the scariest thing is realizing how wrong that’s been. Even now, in a relationship, I feel so isolated and alone and I’m pushing people away and making up scenarios in my head for no reason. Why do I do that? Why can’t I just look at this man sleeping next to me and trust him when he says he loves me?

And I think the answer is simple, it’s because I hate myself so much I can’t even accept the love I’m given by someone else. I am so disgusted by who I am and the choices I make that it doesn’t matter that he says “babe, you look great, wear that dress” I still don’t want to take pictures with him because I know he’s going to look amazing and I will hate how I look in the photo and then wonder what everyone is thinking about him dating this fat, disgusting woman.

I know I’m generally a good person. I try to be honest, kind and make people laugh. I try to listen and do things for people when I can and I work hard at my job and always try to find ways to improve. I don’t struggle with substance abuse or really dangerous ways of numbing myself to the world like some but I still hate the core of who I am and the type of person I am so much.

I’m disgusted by the fact that I eat terribly, I never work out, I sleep all the time, I don’t try to improve my appearance, I’m not very active, I don’t think I do enough to organize the house or clean or take care of the pets, I don’t text my friends as often as I should, I’m never one to plan events or follow through with plans, I forget important holidays/birthdays, I don’t call enough, I still haven’t gone to help my step dad with his computer, I don’t do enough for my parents or my brother, I don’t see my nieces and nephews as much as I should, I’m constantly taking half days at work or have some sort of medical/personal/family reason why i have to miss time and that’s super annoying to manage, I spend money I don’t have and despite having a good job i never have money because of all of my debt, I can’t do simple things that shouldn’t be hard to do like wake up, get ready, have a routine, take a walk, put the dishes away, — lthe list goes on and on and on and on.

And I have so many people in my life who try to be supportive and offer suggestions or advice or help and I have an excuse for everything but the truth is I don’t want to do anything. I’m so overwhelmed with everything, all the thoughts, all the ways things go wrong, all my responsibilities, all the reasons I have to just keep going that I can’t even find the will to start. I don’t know where to start and I try to start and it never ever works out.

I’ve tried meditation. I’ve tried books. I’ve tried taking a class. I’ve tried medication. I’ve tried working out solo and in groups and with one person or friends across the country and nothing ever sticks. I’ve tried journaling, planning, calendars, budget trackers, self help groups, counseling, positive affirmations, deleting apps off my phone, distracting myself, writing, hobbies, supplements, literally EVERYTHING.

And I always, always fail.

I’ve yet to find anything I can stick to. Anything I can devote time and energy to at full capacity and keep doing for myself.

And I’m just so tired. I’m so tired of feeling like this and of making myself feel worse by placing all these assumptions about people’s actions and what they mean in my head without them doing anything to deserve it. Im tired of wasting time I have doing nothing when I could be doing anything. Im tired of not being able to be happy even when I’m surrounded by people who love me because I hate being around myself.

What’s even more crazy? I hate myself so much and then I also wonder why people don’t want to do nice things for me. Like I sit here, hating myself and my own personality/character/actions but then make myself feel worse by reminding myself that people don’t throw me parties for my birthday or accomplishments, or buy cute things that reminded them of me, or send me messages telling me they’re proud of me or thinking of me or miss me or love me or anything silly like that and like HOW FUCKED IS THAT? Like honestly – I will sit here and replay all of those things in my head and think about how no one came to my graduation for grad school or how I’ve never had a birthday party I didn’t throw just to justify to myself how much I don’t deserve anything.

But the real messed up part of all of this is why the hell do I feel entitled to all of that in the first place? I’m not a good friend, I’m not one to ask people to hang out in advance or check in when people are busy, I don’t throw parties for people or even keep plans half the time so why would I feel like those things not happening to me prove that I’m not deserving or horrible?

I don’t even know where this is going anymore. Its been an hour since I’ve started this and I’m less panicked than before but I’m still just as weary. I wish I could call off work tomorrow. I wish I could be a better friend. I wish I could do more for my family and reach out more often. I wish I could be a better girlfriend who didn’t need so much constant validation and emotional support just to function. I wish I could be a better employee without things that pull me away from work. I wish I was a better role model for the kids in my life. I wish I was more attentive to the people in my life. I wish I could wake up and work out any eat better and make meals and clean the house.

I wish I didn’t need to write these blogs just to calm myself down. I wish I didn’t need to share them to explain to everyone around me why I’m spiraling out of control all the time.

And I wish that anyone who’s ever felt like I do could realize that it’s okay to not be okay. Everything in my brain tells me that’s not true but I know in my heart that it’s valid and just because people don’t understand or accept mental illness doesn’t mean it isn’t fucking hard work and that it’s okay to not want to have to do that work sometimes.

I love so many people in this world. I just wish I could love myself that same way.

Guilt

Guilt is wracking my brain HARD tonight.

My anxiety manifests as this overwhelming sense of guilt for anything I do. Sometimes it gets so intense I lose the ability to function entirely and have a full-blown panic episode from my spiral into self-hatred and turmoil.

I do a lot for a lot of people. My rational brain knows this and accepts it as truth. I don’t do PHYSICAL things all the time, but I provide a lot of emotional and financial support for a lot of people and there are times where I do physically go out of my way to help others when I can – taking them to appointments, running errands, doing a task etc. Logic would dictate that because I do so much for others, I’m subjected to burn out and fatigue.

But if I feel tired, worn down, depressed, burned out – I feel this overwhelming sense of guilt because of it. I berate myself as being lazy, unreliable and miserable and therefore not worth anyone’s time or patience. I know that sometimes my mental exhaustion gets so intense it manifests into physical sickness and if I don’t take time to rest it will only get worse but I still feel horrible calling in sick to work or asking to start late to get more sleep to operate at my best.

I know that I cannot save people. I cannot do things for them, I am not supposed to be responsible to care for them and yet I find myself constantly putting myself in financial or emotional deficits trying to do it anyway. If I make decisions that give me boundaries to protect me, I feel such intense guilt that I tell myself their emotional well-being after my distance is my own fault and I’m the one to blame.

I know these thoughts are not facts.

But let me tell you, it is so hard not to have them. I have spent the better part of the last 5 hours spiraling out of control with guilt over accepting a new promotion and leaving my team at work, moving out of my apartment and leaving my brother on his own for the first time since he was diagnosed with cancer, not doing a better job staying connected to my friends and checking in on their well-being, and worrying that I am not an attentive enough girlfriend because I take naps when I’m tired and sometimes don’t get everything done I’d like to or clean the house often enough. I worry that I’m not going to be a good influence on my boyfriends children because I don’t know how to be a mother and I’m so broken in so many ways myself. I worry that I should be taking my pets to the vet more often and then I worry that if I take them I’m going to learn they’re going to die.

The irrational worry and guilt completely spirals out of control in my head until I’m left breathing heavily, on the verge of tears, wanting desperately to sleep my life away. If I take that time to sleep, I wake up and hate myself for wasting time and being lazy. It’s literally a never ending cycle.

I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to just believe that I am enough for the people in my life and if I wasn’t they would tell me. I don’t know how to create boundaries and not take responsibility for other peoples decisions and actions. I don’t know how to trust when people tell me they’re not mad at me and don’t hate me. I don’t know how to stop worrying that I’m not good enough for anyone in my life.

It’s exhausting and it’s weighing on me pretty badly today. I feel like I owe everyone in my life an apology right now and I don’t even know what I need to apologize for I just feel like I should.

I’m overwhelmed and tired and lonely and exhausted to my core. I feel like I am letting everyone around me down with every decision I make and nothing I do is the right choice.

I’m sure I’m not alone – I’m sure many people struggle with this. I just wanted to be honest because I’m at the point where I will probably go quiet and take a nap and disappear for a while.

It’s possible to have every kind of support system and still feel this way and I’m learning more and more that my deep sense of loneliness is less about how many people I have in my life who love and support me and more about how many people I believe I deserve to have love me.

Day 310

How is it possible we’re over 300 days into working from home? Somewhere along the way I got numb to this feeling of complete isolation. 310 days of working from home, staying inside, and minimal social interactions. 310 days left to my own thoughts and subsequent spirals into depression.

Yikes.

For a while, it seemed like things were getting easier for me. I felt more rested, more balanced, more in control of my chaos. I found myself unaware of how I was feeling and not drowning in my own misery. Slowly, that feeling has returned, creeping into my bones and weighing me down as I trudge through, day after day after day. I’ve always described my depression as this sea of chaos and sadness that drowns me as I try desperately to tread water and stay afloat but lately that sea feels more like a swamp. It’s thick, visceral and clinging to my skin as I trudge forward, weary and broken, not even sure of my destination.

My New Years resolution was self love. To learn about it, to feel it, to embrace it and to embody it. I’ve become so lonely that there are days I choose to sleep through because it consumes me and I can’t bear the weight. I decided that I want to learn to enjoy my own company. Love the very best and very worst parts of myself. Appreciate my body and all that it’s given me. Enjoy who I am and what I love without judgement or scrutiny from myself.

Days like today, I feel like I’ve set myself up for failure, again. It’s hard to love and accept yourself when you’ve never known anything else. My entire life I’ve felt this sense of disgust when it came to my appearance, my achievements, my abilities. No matter how thin I was, I was never as thin as other girls. No matter how pretty I looked in makeup, I was still ugly without it. No matter how talented I was, I still made mistakes. No matter what I accomplished I felt like an imposter, someone who cheated or half-assed her way there, incapable of acknowledging the hard work or effort I put in. These thoughts were validated through toxic friendships, loveless relationships, judgmental and distant family members and my own predilection for seeing the good in others but never in myself.

So when I have spirals like I’ve had the last few days — where I’m indulging habits I know aren’t healthy, or seeking validation in all the wrong avenues and then subsequently crashing into a wall of self-loathing that tumbled over me while I lay there, huddled together, filled with shame —it’s hard to see the hope for the end result.

This work is difficult. This work is not going to find relief over night and if I was talking with anyone else it would be so easy to see the light at the end. So easy to grant them grace for their courage and strength to continue that trudge through the mud and despair. So easy to admire their resilience and ability to find ways to laugh and smile despite everything they’ve endured.

But for me?

I can’t give myself that same credit, that same loving grace. Maybe it’s because I know the difference between when I’m trying and when I’m not and maybe I know that sometimes I don’t try to change very hard because I’m tired. Maybe it’s because I’m honestly incapable of being a completely rational person. Maybe it’s easier to go with what I know and find comfortable, even though it’s lonely and dark.

Regardless, I remain aware of the fact that this is something so important for me to continue to work on. I’m so aware of how toxic I am to those around me, unfairly placing judgements or words in peoples mouths based on my own irrational thinking. I want someone to love me for who I am but in turn, I can’t even do that myself. It’s unfair of me to put that burden onto someone else without carrying it myself as well.

I joke a lot that I’m crazy but sometimes it’s really scary the lengths my mind will go to convince me that I don’t deserve the things I want. In those moments, I really DO feel crazy and completely out of control of my own rationality. I seek validation from others about my appearance and when I get it, I question their motives and skew the narrative in my head to prepare myself for the worst case scenario because I believe that’s what I’m worth – the worst case scenario. I never believe that I could be deserving of the happy ever after, the positive outcome.

The idea of me finding love and happiness within myself and someone else loving the dark and light aspects of who I am is more improbable to me than outlandish alternatives. Someone finding joy in my company and caring about me is not something I’m able to fathom on a rational scale because I can list a thousand reasons why even I don’t believe I’m worthy.

And it’s just not fair.

To me, or the people who offer parts of themselves to me through friendships, partnerships or relationships. I hope that I can continue to push through it all, because I believe we all deserve a happy ending.

In the meantime, I’m tired and my best efforts aren’t much lately. Nothing else to do but trudge forward and hope that the path reveals itself soon.

Stop

Do you ever try so fucking hard to do something and just fail miserably?

I tried so hard to have a positive mindset today. I got up. I got dressed. I sat at my desk. I focused on positives. I tracked what I ate.

Didn’t matter. By the middle of the day I wanted to curl in a ball and sleep. At dinner I ate my meal and could only think about how hungry I was. By 8 I was wishing I would fall asleep because I was so lonely I had just been staring aimlessly at the wall. My 10:30 I caved and ate some toast. I never eat fucking toast and I went and killed any chance of staying under my calorie count in the span of minutes.

Some days it’s hard to find the point. I’m still alone. Still sad. Still impossible to love. Still fat. Still not good enough. Still bored. Still miserable.

I’m thinking if I just embrace it and lean into it this time, maybe I’ll come back from it better than I have because what I’m doing hasn’t worked. I deleted my social media apps on my phone and now I’m finally going to see just how little interaction I have if I don’t desperately grasp at straws on the Internet for the world to see, hoping someone will give me a like or a comment I can cling to. I’m going to just embrace the darkness and let it take me under and stop caring because even when I do all this exhausting work, I still end up here anyway.

Here’s to sleeping when I want to sleep, eating when I want to eat, and embracing the loneliness that haunts me every day by isolating myself even further from reality.

See you on the other side. Hopefully.

My Best Self

This is an open letter to everyone in my life right now. It’s not an apology, so to speak, but rather an explanation of sorts based on a realization I’ve had over the course of the last few days. I’ve been incredibly introspective as I’ve spiraled these last couple days so as usual, here is a blog about my feelings for no one in particular to read.

We are still living through a pandemic, and regardless of how you feel about that politically, economically whatever – it’s still a reality of what we’re all experiencing day to day. We’re now 6 months into quarantine and 6 months into work from home and 6 months into limited social interaction and I’ve realized just how much that has taken a toll on who I am as a person and I think I need to explain myself in some way for the version of myself I’m giving others right now.

I am a career driven person. I’ve spent the better part of the last decade solely focused on my educational and career goals and none of those things ever included finding a way to work from home as a permanent option. I am a social being by nature and I do my best work when surrounded by like-minded individuals all working towards common goals. Am I a homebody at heart who prefers game nights with friends to going out to bars? SURE AM! But I didn’t realize how much of my social interaction was dependent upon going to work everyday to interact with my coworkers and just how much that fed the loneliness in me. Not having the option to just audibly talk through scenarios with people around me has significantly decreased my happiness with my work and my effectiveness overall and I often feel like I have to force myself just to make it through the work day.

I am a lonely person by nature – we know this. Just ready any of my Facebook statuses or blog posts and you’ll be certain of that fact. Six months of isolation has really taken a toll on me and I am just not able to function at my best self right now. I miss people. I miss laughter. I miss feeling connected to anyone over anything. I had blood work done yesterday and I was so thankful for the small talk I had with the nice phlebotomist taking my blood because it made me feel connected to someone for the first time in days and literally improved my mood ten-fold. (Side note: this pandemic has made me so appreciative of people and their ability to be kind, but that’s another blog) The small doses of interaction I’m getting just aren’t able to sustain me long enough to be a full-functioning adult right now and I need to remember that ITS OKAY THAT IM NOT MY BEST RIGHT NOW.

I am not a lazy person. I am hard-working, capable, driven, passionate, enthusiastic and at times highly entertaining individual. I have worked my ass off to achieve everything I have in life, by myself, without being told, because I care and I have goals. But right now, six months into working from home and never venturing outside my house, I am struggling to have even the most basic of routines. My sleep schedule is erratic and non-existent at times, some days I don’t even get dressed and when I do it’s often workout clothes, I barely leave my bedroom and if I do it’s only to go into my living room or kitchen, both filled with nothing new and no people to interact with. This lack of structure is making me less productive as a worker, as a person, and less engaged as a friend and family member.

So this is where the apology part kicks in – because I just need to tell people that I’m sorry you’re not getting the best version of me right now. I’m just not physically and mentally capable of being my best. I’m not sorry that it’s happening because it’s not in my control, but I am sorry that I’m not able to be better for others right now.

God help me as I try and navigate dating during a pandemic, which is in and of itself a whole cluster fuck of problematic, but then I have to manage the shame I feel being this shell of a person who can’t get her shit together and go to bed at normal times but like – I promise, I’m worth the time if you look past all that? 🤣 Getting to know people is difficult enough but it’s like skipping a thousand steps to be like hi, this is me during an intense depressive episode that never ends because our world is shit and I’m already attention deprived being someone who’s perpetually lonely and has been single forever but now I’ve been in isolation for six months so my need for attention is on overdrive but like I promise I’m not clingy and I can actually be a normal adult with characteristics that are appealing! (Did you breathe while reading that because I didn’t while writing it). 🙃

Anyway – to my coworkers, my friends, family members and anyone else who interacts with me and feels like it’s just not the same or there’s something going on – you’re right, it’s not the same, and I am not functioning as the person I know I’m capable of being. I’m working hard to try and work out and be healthier but the reality is that every other moment I have is spent laying in bed wishing I could see my friends or go into work again. I miss structure, I miss people and I miss having reasons to WANT to get out of bed.

Throw in the political climate and the bigoted shit show I see on social media every day from the dehydrated orange peel we have as a president and his supporters and sometimes it’s just a lot and I’m not able to do much. I always say “there’s no reason for me to be depressed right now, I don’t know what’s happening” but the truth is there are a lot of reasons for me to feel this way right now and I’ve just gotten so used to them being a normal , every day occurrence, that I’ve blocked them from my mind as a reasoning.

I’ll end this by saying that if you’re feeling similar things, on a smaller or larger scale, that’s completely valid and absolutely okay. People are still gonna expect shit from you like nothing is going on and the world isn’t crumbling around you because we’re selfishly motivated and just as a whole a society full of greedy, economically driven ass-hats, but fuck the world and fuck everyone’s expectations. At the end of the day, you can’t give people what you don’t have and if you need to lay in bed just to get through to the next day right now – do it. The important thing is that you get there. The rest will work itself out in time.

Love to all of you beautiful people who take the time to read this shit show of my thoughts. I appreciate you and I miss you all.

Imposter

I can start to feel it happening now; that moment where I start to slowly retreat inside myself and succumb to the unrelenting self-doubt and disgust. I’ve had so many good days lately that I almost forgot that my “normal” consists of a constant cycle of self-deprecation and disappointment.

It’s hard sometimes, wanting to be transparent with your mental health struggles while simultaneously being hyper aware that your honesty could strain your relationships or skew others perceptions of yourself. I strive to champion people with mental health concerns and lift them up for being honest and open, but I face the same fears most everyone else does when they happen to me. I worry that if I’m honest about how frequently I feel so negative, I’ll lose people because they’re afraid to drown with me. I worry that if I acknowledge my feelings and admit that I struggle finding balance I’ll be perceived as weak or lazy. I worry that if I admit I feel lonely and disconnected others will think I don’t genuinely feel happy or connected in moments i have with them. I think people often have a misguided understanding of my confidence level because I’m so public with this blog but the truth is, I don’t write these because I’m comfortable with people reading them. I write them because they help me process the cyclone in my head and the idea that someone might read them scares me just enough that I tell myself I have to keep my head above water enough that someone won’t think I’m totally drowning and call me out on it.

I don’t think that last bit makes much sense, but in my head it’s enough to get me through to the next moment so that’s all I really need. It’s been a rough couple days for me and I’ve felt myself spiraling downward but I’ve been unable to really stop it and i realized at this point I might as well full out embrace it because otherwise it’s going to explode sooner or later. So even though I’ve been on this quest to lose weight and work out every day, I’m going to take the night off and try not to be too upset about it. I didn’t want to work out yesterday and I made myself do it and it was horrible and it made me more frustrated in myself for not being capable of getting through it as easily as I would have liked or know I’m capable of. That just led to me questioning myself, beating myself up mentally, and waking up today already defeated ready to deep dive into a full blown pity party.

I have imposter syndrome as much as the next person and I just hope one day I can be as kind to myself as I am to others who I often provide support to when they’re feeling low. I claim to be this transparent person, unafraid of sharing emotions without shame, but the truth is I worry about it constantly. I hope that I learn to come to a place where I can be honest and transparent about how I’m feeling without this shame spiral surrounding those feelings and constantly worrying about how the world will view me if i admit that I’m just not in a good headspace. I wish I could have some minor set backs and not spend the rest of my time criticizing myself for falling off the path and just get back up and keep moving.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow brings a new day and a new mindset.

106 Days

I really hate how rapidly depression can turn your mood around.

I’ve had some really good days recently. Days where I was able to cook a full meal, go the entire day without self deprecating thoughts. Days where I actually tangibly noticed I felt happy (without the aid of outside people or influences) for the first time in what feels like an eternity.

But right now it feels like I’m drowning.

Nothings happened – nothings changed to cause this shift in mood but maybe that’s the whole problem right? 106 days of the same. 106 days trapped in my own head trying desperately not to go insane. To be fair, the last two weeks I have been able to spend some time with friends and family in person, and I’ve even gone on a date, but for the most part I still spend 97% of my time completely alone with my thoughts.

In some ways the moments of interaction were almost a tease. Spending time with loved ones is just a reminder of how lonely it is to come back home to no one. Going out in masks and dining at tables with booths taped off just feels like an eerily dark dream of what life used to be like instead of reality. It’s all a lot to take in.

I think what scares me most these days is how I’m not getting better. Over the last year no one could blame me for feeling depressed, I’ve had horrible things piled on me one right after the other – my aunt got cancer, then died, my entire world shattered, then my brother got cancer and I had to watch him endure chemotherapy and a transplant and accept the fact that I couldn’t stop to grieve – I had to keep going, I had to keep working, I had to keep waking up because life just doesn’t stop when you want it to.

But he got better. Thankfully, miraculously, he is in remission. My aunt is gone and can’t come back, but time and life move on and now I’m left here waiting for the moment when I go back to being a functioning person again because I SHOULDNT be so depressed anymore. But regardless, I find myself having nights like this more often than not. I can’t sleep, I have nightmares when I do, and I’m constantly exhausted from this pit of nothing I feel. And I still have to keep going because life doesn’t stop… but I wish sometimes it would.

I just wish I could be this person who takes the negative things in their life and uses them to motivate them to be better; I wish I could exercise and eat less and run so I could lose weight and love my body more and be more attractive so I could have more confidence and find someone who wants to spend their life with me so I’m not so lonely and sad all the time. But instead – I bust my ass trying to motivate myself to workout 30 mins a day and constantly fall off track two weeks in every time – or I eat myself into oblivion because I’m stressed and don’t know how else to cope. Or I cry because I’m lonely and make depressing public blogs about my feelings ruining my chances of ever convincing anyone I’m worth loving or getting to know.

And I sit and stare. God, so much of my time is spent in my bed staring at NOTHING. No music, not tv, not even my phone. Just me, here, wishing things could be better. Getting lost inside my chaotic headspace and losing track of time until suddenly it’s already past 10 and I’ve done nothing with my day and I’m already dreading tomorrow.

And that dread turns into anxiety that keeps me awake until I finally succumb to sleep in the early hours of the morning just to drearily wake up and force myself to make it through another day tomorrow.

There’s just so many things depression takes from you and gives you in their place. Instead of happiness I am empty. Instead of relationships I have questions about why I’m never good enough. Instead of sleep I have nightmares. Instead of laughter I have tears. Instead of drive I have exhaustion. My mind is just a constant loop of all the scenarios in my life I wish could have gone differently and it feels like one day I’m going to get trapped inside and never be able to get out.

And, as always, I’m so lonely.

You don’t think about it but human touch is something that can provide so much healing without words or anything additional. Just a hug. A shoulder to lean on. Not having that, for my god, 8 years now, is just really. Really. Fucking. Hard. And it sucks.

I just wonder how many more days I’ll have to wait and pretend I have the strength to endure this all alone.

Float on

Sometimes I fear how people would think of me if they knew just how dark it was inside my head.

I drown inside my mind but constantly bring myself to bring my head above water because I’m scared that if I let myself truly feel the depth of the pain that I’m in it would ruin everything I’ve worked for. I’ve built this dam around my mind, constantly shutting it away for the sake of my job, my family, my friends – occasionally letting it slip through the cracks, but always patching it up before the waves get too big and I lose control.

If my thoughts spilled out the way they rage inside my head, they’d wash away my credibility as an employee, a leader, and a worker and the career I’ve worked so hard to build would collapse. If my feelings poured out in the torrential storm that fills my head I’d destroy the few relationships I have left that mean anything to me.

The world wants to claim mental health is important and pretends to combat stigma but the truth is we’re ill equipped to love those who struggle without condition; we justify, label and scrutinize the pain others feel putting bandaids on deep wounds. If you’re honest about your reality, you’re just seeking attention. If you’re honest about your thought process you just have a negative mindset. If you’re honest about how often things torment you, you’re annoying and people stop listening.

So I continue to patch the dam, plugging the holes in hopes that today won’t be the day everything gets flooded by the tsunami in my mind. If I’m honest I’d rather just drown – I’d rather get caught in the waves and let the current carry me away because I’m really tired and I don’t know how else to stay afloat. I don’t want to die, I just want to be carried away to somewhere better… somewhere I don’t feel this torrent of emotions all the time. Somewhere I’m safe and loved and people choose me.

But I love my job and I can’t risk what would happen if I were to drown.

And I love my friends and I don’t want them to feel like their love isn’t enough.

And I love my family and I can’t burden them with having to deal with me on top of everything else.

So I’ll continue to patch the dam I’ve built around my mind and hope that this time it lasts longer before the next leak creeps in.

But I wish I could show people how dark it is in here. I wish I could let go and float away and come out somewhere new.

Day 24 or so

“Someone will love you when you love yourself”

Whenever I’m feeling like this – depressed, lonely, worthless, ugly – I always think of that stupid phrase because it’s the first thing everyone says to you next to “omg you’re amazing! You just haven’t met the right person yet” and I just want to publicly say that it’s complete bullshit.

Honestly, though, where do people think self esteem issues come from? If enough people tell you that you suck, and enough people reject you for long enough you start to realize that there’s SOMETHING about you that isn’t worth everyone’s time. I mean, I love a lot of things about myself – I am funny, I’m pretty talented for your average person, I try to be caring when I’m not overwhelmed with my responsibilities, I would argue I’m more resilient than most people you’ll meet, I’m intelligent and goal oriented and I like to think that I am good at making my partners feel loved. That’s a lot of things that I love about myself. So where is this person who’s supposed to love me?

The problem with the idea that people will love us when we love ourselves is that it’s putting this notion that we have the ability to alter the way others think of us, just by changing how we think of ourselves but the reality is that’s just not true. I literally cannot control how another person sees/thinks/ feels about me. If I could,Harry Styles and I would be married and isolated together in our English palace right now. I can put positive vibes into the universe and attract positivity back, but that still doesn’t give me the ability to change someone’s perception of me.

And I will admit that it’s never attractive to see someone constantly complain or put themselves down – I will give everyone that – but also, what the hell do you think happens when every time you put your heart out into the world – vulnerable, bare and ready to be loved – and the person you try to give it to is like NAH, HARD PASS but like, I think you’re awesome and we should be friends and stuff. Or worse, they say nothing at all, ghost your ass and date someone else. Or my favorite combo – friendzone you, date someone else, then complain about that person because they’re not really that compatible but they hot AF.

It just sucks – a pandemic is terrifying enough, but going through this shit alone, LITERALLY, is fucking terrible. Like I want someone to talk to when I’m bored, or feeling sad or scared or happy or anxious or depressed and I don’t have that. Friends are great and I’m lucky to have the ones I have, but it’s a different kind of connection when you have a partner. And it’s especially hard to experience never ending solitude not knowing if you’re going to ever see anyone again and if you’ll die alone with your braces and your cat.

Worse than even that is having people you want to text, people you’re drawn to on a weird, deep level that you can’t explain, and knowing you can’t. Knowing that it sucks for you to stay silent but literally just doesn’t bother them, their life is literally no different, and you’re drowning. Human emotions are the worst, and I hate that I can’t control how I feel about people even when I want to. I can’t turn off my own feelings, which is why it makes it so much harder to know that I definitely can’t make them turn theirs on. And then you’re stuck in a vicious time loop of thoughts and emotions that go unanswered and your heart is racing and before you know it you’re having a panic attack because you care so much about something or someone that you shouldn’t and you feel like an insane person and you just want to SCREAM.

I wish I knew why I wasn’t attractive to people – and I don’t mean that necessarily in a physical sense- I just mean in general, why am I not worth a relationship? What is it that stops people from considering me worthy of intimacy and deeming me just worth friendship? Sometimes I think that’s the most frustrating part of all because then you spend all your time wondering what’s wrong with you and how you could change yourself to be better all while never really knowing the answer.

And yes, I know, “I’m amazing, I’ll find him! He’s out there” but honestly, I’m not saying that I’m not amazing – I’m saying that I am and still, no one wants me and I don’t get it. And I’m sorry but it’s been 7 — yes 7 YEARS – since my last relationship. That’s a long time to be alone. Before you tell me how I’ll find someone, ask yourself if you’ve been alone for 7 years first – it’s fucking terrible.

Also, how is it possible for me to connect so deeply with all these people all the time and have literally no reciprocated feelings on their end!? Like that is the biggest mindfuck – am I making this shit up? Am I romanticizing things that aren’t there? How can something seem so obvious and right and make so much sense on my side and then be totally fucking nothing of note on the other side? Like honestly – HOW? I have a horrific pattern of doing this so I’m thinking this is my issue here but I’m just baffled by how I can feel a connection so deeply while the other person could give a shit if I was around or not. It’s insane.

I know everyone will roll their eyes and brush this off as a girl being ridiculous and once again, Kayla’s sad and complaining – I’m not unaware of the person I am, trust me – but I’m alone, and I’m sad, and I’m crying, and I want to talk to someone but I can’t, and I don’t wanna talk to friends because I feel stupid (but don’t! — I know, that’s what you’ll say, “don’t you can always talk to me!” But I really just wanna talk to one person and that’s not gonna change by talking to a friend) and sometimes writing on here makes me feel like maybe I’ll be okay If people know how I feel and I don’t have to “look them in the eye” as I say it, so to speak because even though I’m vocal about my depression I’m actually deeply embarrassed by it and I don’t really like talking to people about myself directly because no one knows what to say and I end up just saying things to make them feel better and change the subject.

I just wish I could hug the people I want to hug and fall asleep with someone or be able to know that I’m not bothering people and feel like I matter to anyone at all and that someone out there wants to do all those things with me too. It’s so heartbreaking when you don’t get back the love that you desperately want to give.

I’m so lonely.

Ugh.

Late Night Reminiscing

About a month ago, I went to my Little’s house for Friendsgiving with my sorority sisters and she had gotten out her yearbooks to look at her and another of my sisters old photos and senior quotes and things. I was hoping her husbands’ yearbooks were there because he and I went to school together and I was curious about mine. They weren’t and I had forgotten about it by the time I’d gotten home. Yesterday, my friend was moving and his wife had found our high school year books and so I decided to take out mine and laugh along with them, states away, at our horrible pictures and stupid messages.

Looking at my year book is always an emotional rollercoaster for me because I look back so fondly and wish I could relive those days but when I really think about it, I don’t know that I’d love reliving them. I hated myself so much back then and I just remember not eating, crying over boys and mean girls and just drama, drama, drama.

I was curious to see what I wrote in my senior yearbook for my goals, memories and advice and honestly I was a little surprised by what I had to say.

My hopes for the future: go to college, become a writer, get married, be happy.

This was shocking to me because if you asked me now what I thought I’d written I would have assumed it was something about becoming the best in my career or whatever – I knew I wanted to be a writer out of college – but I became so career obsessed over the last 10 years that I was a bit surprised to see I had such simple hopes for the future.

I’ve accomplished only one of my hopes and that’s a little disheartening, especially considering it’s been 12 years. It made me self reflect to see that even 12 years ago, my hope for myself was to just share my life with someone and be happy. I think somewhere along the line in college I really lost that ambition and became this hardened person who tried to find ways to escape my relationships whenever they felt like they were headed towards marriage or the possibility of sharing “too much” with someone. Granted, I haven’t been in a relationship in almost 7 years so who’s to say how I’d react these days. I can’t even fathom anyone wanting to be in a relationship with me, let alone pushing that away but, I digress.

If I look back at my last 4 relationships, I ended all of them. I left Andrew because I didn’t want him to lose his goals and dreams to be closer to me, I left James because I lost sight of every aspect with myself when we were together, I left frank because he cared about me so much more than I could care about him and he deserved to be loved better than I could love him, and I left Jason because at the heart of our relationship I felt empty because of how it all began and never felt like we ever really connected over anything outside of Greek life and the college experience.

Now, throw in a dump truck load of trauma and toss it around through out the years of those relationships and that will fill in the holes of my timelines and ultimately become the bumper cars that pushed me towards bad relationships or away from good ones, but at the heart of everything, it was always me leaving and always me craving something else, something better.

I think that idea of craving something better is a theme in my life because I look at this beautiful, beautiful girl who I feel so distant from, who absolutely hated herself and her body, and I wish I could shake her and make her realize how much happiness and love and beauty she had. Even then, even in high school when I was a size 8 and cared about my appearance, I couldn’t find happiness. I couldn’t find a way to love myself or my situation. That feeling stayed with me, every day, and just grew and grew, as I grew, and now I’m this shell of a person incapable of loving myself, incapable of believing someone could love me, and so overweight and disconnected I can barely look in a mirror.

Sometimes it makes me wonder what I ever thought happiness should look like.

My memories: things that made me smile and inside jokes with my friends, one for each year of high school, but my very last one was “time spent with the boys”

This one made my heart smile. I think it’s easy for me to romanticize the relationship I have with them now that we’re adults because we have truly known each other since we were kids and we still try to make time for each other, as best we can, even now — not to mention everyone’s married and working on babies – but sometimes I wonder if I romanticized too much and sort of “made up” the friendship I had with them in my head like we were closer than we really were. I do that pretty easily, and friendships that last 20+ years are incredibly rare so it’s easy to question that sort of stuff, but seeing it written there, in 2007, affirmed for me that I’m not necessarily the crazy girl who made these boys up that I sometimes feel I am.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely loved them more than they loved me back then. My pages are filled with messages of “sorry we always make fun of you, but not really” and various jokes that are probably borderline cruel (maybe not even borderline) but boys love differently so it makes me smile looking back on it. To look back and see that even then, they were my final thought, makes me happy. They are the memory that stuck out the most to me – the people who shaped my heart and taught me how to really, truly, come to love friends as though they’re family. It also retroactively justifies the buckets of tears I cried at Mullets wedding just thinking about how far we’ve come.

Anyway – I’ve gotten off track a bit.

My advice: love the friends you have and befriend the ones you don’t.

Again – honestly surprised at seeing this. I think I’ve gone through so much of an identity crisis lately that this helped me understand that the core of who I am has always been about loving my friends. Sometimes I don’t know how I survive everything I’ve been through – losing a sibling to Suicide, car accidents, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, family members with addiction, an eating disorder, losing my aunt to cancer, caring for my brother with cancer – it’s all honestly too much to take in sometimes and I think the thread that has helped hold me to this world, to my last shred of sanity, has always been the love I have for my friends and how grateful I am for the relationships I have.

People hear about “the boys” and they genuinely question why I speak to them but the truth is – they are a part of the makeup of my soul. They are in my DNA, for better or worse, and I think having that friendship to look at and cherish over the years has honestly kept me tethered to reality when I’ve wanted to slip away. So many times I have wanted to give up but when I look at our memories and the lives they’re living now I’m just filled with happiness enough to push through. They have taught me so much pain, but also so much forgiveness and love.

My sorority sisters helped me survive losing my brother and kept me alive when I struggled with depression in college (though it may have also introduced me to some easily accessible bad coping mechanisms, but that’s another story) I can remember my heart swelling when my sisters came to his funeral, only having known me a few months, and holding me when I cried the night he died. My sisters who’ve walked in on me self harming and held me and loved me. Meeting my little gave me a love so pure I would go through all the drama of college again, just to meet her. My little connected two halves of my heart and married my Mullet and brought me some of the purest joy I’ve ever experienced

My friendship with Danielle and her family loving and accepting me helped me survive some of the most difficult times I’ve experienced with my own family and walking away from a friendship that had turned toxic and detrimental to my health. Having her family become my extended family was the only thing that got me through so many days where I felt like I had nothing else to live for.

My work friends at brockport helped me survive some of the most stressful work I’ve ever done, made me laugh every single day, and supported me when I had tragedies or health scares of my own. They’ve continued to believe in me, even after I lost everything I thought I knew when I had to leave student affairs and continue to make me laugh, despite our distance. (Sarah, Im grouping you in this group here just an FYI)

My friendship with my cousin and her friend group helped me get through losing my job, my career and my way of life after coming back home. Having friends that feel more like family with every passing year made it easier to come home and not regret that decision. And they make it easier to tolerate work now that half of them work there too 😉

Now, it’s 3am and I may be romanticizing again, but I don’t think I am. I think that for as deeply as I feel this depression I am in, I also feel other emotions deeply, like gratitude and love for my friends.

While I’m grateful I am able to feel this deeply about friendships, I just wish I could feel this way about myself. I wish I could see my world for what it was in the moment, rather than looking back 12 years later and seeing the happiness I was blind to then. It makes me wonder all the things I’ve missed these last few years, and all the things I’m missing now, because I can’t recognize happiness for what it is.

In college, I took a class called self in society and there was a moment where someone told me I was beautiful and I full out sobbed because I hated myself so much and just couldn’t see what she saw and it felt so genuine that I was forced to believe her and it shook me to my core. That’s how engrained my self-hatred really is. That moment was a defining moment for me and sometimes I think i spend a lot of time chasing that feeling. I look back at the girl I was in high school and I feel so sad that I couldn’t see what I see in her now – someone so beautiful, who loved so deeply, and was full of life. If I could write my hopes for the future now, I’d say that I hoped to become that girl again, because I can see how beautiful she was, but I should probably wish to be able to love myself for who I am now.

I feel like so much of who I’ve become is the physical manifestation of the hatred and disgust I’ve had for myself over the years and I just wish I could learn how to embrace who I am and believe I’m worth someone loving me the way I love others – because I do love others, a lot, and I think that’s always been the person I was at my core, even when I didn’t know it.