Fear

I had a few better days.  Today was… shaky, and tonight it’s falling apart.  I had therapy today and it was a particularly tough therapy day.  We talked about writing, and talked about what Sir and I talked about the other night and…  what I wrote, and my feelings, and what’s happening with my depression and my writing and my bipolar…

I’m supposed to try to develop softness towards my fear.  We identified that I’m afraid of writing, maybe afraid of seeing myself… because writing is… who I am inside, and I’m afraid of seeing that, and the fear is creating the wall, and if I soften to the fear the wall might become more workable…

But I spent all of today in a state of low anxiety.  And tonight in a state of high anxiety.

And I feel… just tired… and weary…

Because I’m depressed.  Because I have bipolar, and this is part of it.

I’m also supposed to continue to name my symptoms and my disease to help me disidentify with it.  Growing up, feeling this way was just… normal… I didn’t think of it as something that happened TO me, it just… IS me.  And I internalized all of the messaging about it, because, other people didn’t know it was a disease, either.  I was told, “Smile, you’ll feel better.”  I was told that I was just unmotivated, an underachiever, lazy, “low-energy,” a “downer.”

In their defense, sort of, bipolar with childhood onset really wasn’t… something anyone knew about when I was a kid.  In fact, bipolar II wasn’t even recognized by the medical profession until I was a teenager, and I wasn’t actually diagnosed until I was in my twenties.

By the time I was twelve, people were realizing SOMETHING was wrong with me… I was taken to doctors and started seeing a therapist (who was TERRIBLE!).

Actually, my parents were taking me to doctors when I was 6, because they thought there was something wrong, but the doctors all tested for… physical things.  I was tested for epilepsy and learning disorders and giftedness…  I was given special accommodations at school (sort of).  But nobody really knew what was wrong.

So… I internalized this identity.

It is incredibly hard to separate it now.

It’s like having asthma.  I only learned that I had asthma (first time anyone did a test) two years ago.  My entire life I simply believed myself to be… out of shape…  Even when I was playing three sports, and literally running miles every day.  I would look at my teammates and see how much more they could do and how much less out of breath they were doing it, and how quickly they caught their breath when they were winded, and I just internalized that I was… just… less than they were.  I learned how to hide my breathing the best I could… and I was just ashamed all the time that it was so hard for me to breathe because… I thought… it meant I was fat.  It meant I was out of shape.  It meant I was lazy.

I had fucking asthma.  But… that never occurred to me (or anyone else).  It’s hard to undo 30+ years of identity.

So even now, two years later, with an inhaler and a spacer and meter I’m supposed to use… I don’t really believe I have asthma.  My brain knows it (sort of).  But I constantly think… they just did the test when I was sick, so of course I failed it.  I don’t have asthma NOW.  Or I think… I just climbed these stairs yesterday with no problem and today I’m out of breath, so clearly I’m just not trying hard enough today…

And ultimately, when I am out of breath just walking my dog (even though I walk him every day, twice a day) I think… I’m just so fat.  Instead of, “Hmm, trying to eat goat cheese is making my lungs close up, probably means I can’t tolerate the dairy of ANY animal…”

And depression is even worse.  Because, even though I’m a slow learner, most people “get” asthma.  There is… slightly… less shame or stigma around asthma.  I can tell someone, “Sorry, I just can’t go running today, my asthma is acting up,” and they don’t push it.

But if I say, “I can’t go running today, I’m too depressed,” I would get, “Come on, it will make you feel better.”

I get, “Shake it off.  Just try to force yourself to get up and do something…”

Really?  Should I also force myself to breathe when my asthma is bad?  Because, you know… Of COURSE I’M FUCKING TRYING TO BREATHE!  I’m also TRYING TO NOT BE DEPRESSED!  It just doesn’t work as well as SAYING it does…

But I’m as bad as everyone else.  I shame myself ceaselessly, because… that’s the identity I grew up with.  And that’s the one that keeps being reinforced every day by the rest of the world.

I don’t even have any fucking medication.

Everyone else gets to do this with meds to help… and I can’t even take the meds.  I have to just try to survive on my own.

And… I’m so… tired.

I’m just so tired of existing.

I don’t want to kill myself.

I just want… it to stop hurting.

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