There is something extremely annoying about right now at this time. I have good ideas for things, e.g., post topics, kids’ crafts, showering, but once I get serious about doing any of those things, they just take too damn much effort; I’m just too tired.
When I’ve told my therapist about this crushing–Yeah. I know. Dramatic much?–tiredness, she’s brushed it off and mentioned how she gets tired just thinking about cleaning out her basement. OK. So me thinks she might not be picking up what I’m putting down.
I genuinely love her and she’s a rock star therapist but she just didn’t “get it.”
I’m not talking: “Fuck. There’s so much to do and it’s gong to be a huge pain in the ass and I’m gonna get all sweaty and I’d much rather be playing video games or removing my left eye with a grapefruit spoon than lifting one finger to clean the basement.”
I’m more like this: “Fuck. I know the kitchen looks like hammered ass and I haven’t showered in a week–though I’m not going to think too hard on that one–but just the inkling of thought about doing anything with the kitchen wears me out. Makes my arms heavy.
Overwhelms me to the point I don’t know where to start so I just don’t.”
The differences are there and they’re subtle but they are there. Or I might be just using this as a bullshit excuse to be a lazy ass who doesn’t pull her weight around the house.
I mean, I AM a bit of a lazy ass.
Maybe this is an excuse? These are the things that go around in my head incessantly until “Call Me Maybe” infiltrates and nothing can stand against that crap.
The Adderall I’ve been on for a few months now has done wonders and helped quite a bit with the unmotivatedness [I made that up. Feel free to use it. No credit needed.] but the bitch of it is I have to be motivated enough to take the pill.
How’s THAT for a catch 22?
Running also helps.
Who in the history of the world would have thought:
- I’d ever run when it didn’t involve fleeing from some potentially deadly creature and/or event.
- I would enjoy the act of running for running’s sake?
Like the Adderall, running has such a positive impact on my mood that it’s embarrassing I wasted so much of my life without either. I mentioned this to my shrink after a month of taking the Adderall.
Shrink: “How’s the Adderall working for you?”
Me: “It has literally revolutionized my life! I’ve started running and I actually finish things. I’ve managed to keep the kitchen picked up for two straight weeks. That’s huge for me! It makes me sad to think how different my life might be if I had discovered both of these fifteen or twenty years ago.”
Shrink: “But then you might not have turned out the way you turned out.”
That last statement is a bit of a double-edged sword, isn’t it?
I’m not in a particularly awesomesauce place right now and go from WOOOOHOO FUCK YEAH to meh routinely. I convinced myself in 2012 that my meds weren’t doing any good, that they would never do any good and continuing the dosage was dumb and all of it was a waste of money.
The thing that particularly blows about titrating meds–especially when you’re [I’m] not in a consistent mental state–is there is no definitive test to know if the meds are working. It’s not like my shrink can order a blood test and know for sure I’m where I need to be; it’s subjective and I fucking abhor subjective, especially when it comes to something like this.
There’s also the little issue of not all shrinks knowing what the hell they’re doing and, like with everything, you have to be willing to advocate for yourself and that tends to be hard as hell when you’re not feeling particularly assertive and would rather just go along with what the pro says.
In my case, my friend Jennifer was right and the Straterra wasn’t playing so nice with the Lamictal and was bitch slapping the Lamictal into a “I ain’t gonna work no matter what you say!” kind of thing.
The good thing about my brand of crazy is I haven’t had a suicidal thought since I was about 17 and don’t plan on being that selfish; I have way too many people who depend on me to do that to them. That and even when things suck major ass, they’re still better than a pine box under around six feet of hard, red, Alabama clay.
I’m rambling.
I apologize.
I had a minor epiphany a week or so ago that I’ve been playing it safe and I’ve been trying to be someone else or maybe trying to be what I thought other people wanted me to be and let me tell ya, that shit is exhausting.
This is one of my most favorite quotes from Erika Napoletano‘s TEDxBoulder 2012 video: Rethinking Unpopular and it kind of slapped me upside the head like a five day old carp:
Give them tools to help them know whether or not they should love us, and give it early and give it often. Because that’s when we stop wasting time, both ours and everyone else’s.
Fairly simple, right?
And kind of scary but I suspect it will greatly assist me in the venture of saving a modicum of sanity. If nothing else, I’ll hopefully be less mentally exhausted since I won’t be worrying about self-censoring. Love me. Hate me. I’m too damn tired of working so hard to please everyone.