but today I made this list in my head:
* I haven’t written more than a page on my (10-year!) novel in the last six months.
* I haven’t written more than a half-dozen poems longer than 3 lines in the last couple of years.
* I have been dreaming a lot, but can’t remember anything.
* I’m always tired.
* I haven’t made a piece of jewelry since Christmastime.
* I’m 40 pounds overweight.
* My ankles and wrists always hurt.
* I don’t have a single friend of my own in Olympia.
* I only have one friend in 100 miles, and I haven’t talked to her, not really, in weeks.
* I have credit-card debt.
* My kitchen is mostly-disassembled, and I don’t know what to do next.
* My garden is half-dead.
* And so on…
it goes on like that, the rambling list of anxious dread in the back of my mind, for a long time.
I’m not sure if I’m even going to leave this post up (will I regret it in the morning?), but tomorrow I think I’m going to figure out what mental health professionals are covered by my insurance, and then see if any of them will do me any good. because I can’t go on this way, not at all. I feel drained of any creative energy, terrified of the future, paralyzed by doubt. I hate myself this way, and I can’t stop it.
that’s what I hate most about this feeling…I can’t just say to myself to cut it out and just start doing something, being different, being the myself that I want to be, ought to be, but I can’t. I’m just too……
ugh. not going to write any more. going to go back to trying to clean out the abyss of papers on my home office desk, and hope to god there’s not some forgotten bill or yet another project I was going to do but didn’t…..
You would do well to remember that you are a magician. It’s so easy to forget, and even easier to assume that someone else is a better one.
Yes, go. Best thing you can do for yourself.
If you want a sympathetic ear, advice, commiseration… you know where I live.
thanks, both of y’all. I was going to delete this entry this morning (replace it with a copied poem), but now I think I’ll leave it.
Go see your doc and have him/her check your thyroid levels. I went through similar problems (and continue occasionally) and found out I was hypothyroid. I had weight gain, depression, and absolutely no motavation. I feel a lot better now.
thanks…that’s actually one of those things I’ve been meaning to do…a friend of ours died (and came back!) a few years ago due to a misdiagnosed thyroid disorder.
Sorry to hear about that, Elaine. When my mom was in ICU last month, it was because she stopped taking her thyroid meds over a year ago. She was anemic, because the thyroid assists in blood production (hormones, or whatever). There were other problems related to her deadly low levels and if she had waited a few more hours, she wouldn’t be alive. You can have the condition for years, I did & my mom too, and can live a seemingly normal life. But if it gets misdiagnosed as epstein-barr or as something else, it can get worse.