Unreliable Narrator

I should feel so much calmer, so much steadier than I do most days.  As I look around me right now, I see a drowsy, gray cat one cushion over on the couch & a sweet black cat trying to find a suitable alternative to my lap, which is, of course, currently occupied by a laptop; candles are flickering on the sill of a beautiful picture window that looks out on a sleeping park.  I am warm, fed, relatively comfortable, & very loved.  How can I be ill at ease when everything around me suggests peace, security, & good fortune?

Be that as it may, my anxiety is near-constant these days.  And it is doubtless rooted in the soul-shredding self-talk that underscores and undermines my every thought.  At this very moment I am battling my vicious inner critic who is telling me that everything I'm writing right now is dogshit, that I shouldn't bother trying to communicate anything if the writing is going to be this poor.  And most of the time I submit to this asshole that lives inside my head.  I close the laptop & proceed to mercilessly browbeat myself over my innumerable faults and failures.  This exercise in self-torture begs the question--Why? Why do you do this to yourself?  And I don't have a good answer to that question.  I simply don't know another way.  Or, rather, I understand how a person is supposed to engage with their thoughts/feelings/'self', but I don't know how to make that happen inside my head in any real or sustainable way. 

I don't know exactly when or why this emotionally annihilating pattern of thought developed.  The severity & intensity of the my inner critic has waxed and waned over the years depending on health & circumstance, but it has always been present.  At best, it becomes muted.  If I could point to a single traumatic incident in my past, it might be easier to navigate my way out of this hellscape, but I cannot find anything that seems sufficient to explain it.  And this is really no surprise.  Epic tragedies & traumas certainly occur in this life, but I think most damage is subtle, insidious.  We die by degrees.  And when I think of it in these terms, I can understand much more clearly what has happened. 

I've never been a terribly healthy person.  I mean, I've led a fairly healthy lifestyle, but my body never cooperated & followed suit.  But the medical issues I dealt with from childhood on always appeared more nuisance than dangerous.   Severe allergies & asthma in elementary school that began 15+ years of allegy shots & pills & inhalers to manage symptoms.  Strange injuries from minimal trauma--dislocated shoulder from swimming, severe neck & back pain from god only knows--made me a frequent patient at the chiropractor throughout middle & high school.  The sudden development of a submucous cleft (aka: a hole in the roof of my mouth) meant I needed to undergo surgery in the 7th grade.  I was the first to catch a bug and the last to shake it.  And I was exhausted much of the time--far more tired than a young person ought to be.

But these issues were hardly compelling & certainly no emergency.  I pressed on--through college, various jobs, relationships, the gamut of life.  The painful, crackling joints and pulled muscles were par for the course.  The fatigue was a given.  I believed there was no reason I could not do everything a person my age could do.  I just needed to push myself.  The nights I collapsed into bed and slept for 14 consecutive hours? Well I guess I needed the rest! The feeling that baseline functioning wasn't supposed to be this difficult, this painful?  Well that was what the bi-weekly sobbing breakdowns were for!  After all, the doctors all told me I was fine-- very healthy in fact!  The doctors all agreed that I was just depressed.  And luckily there are pills for that!  Did the pills ever help?  I can honestly say: No, they did not. 

Fast forward a few years ahead to my desk job at big, respected company.  It was not what I dreamed of doing,  but I decided that it would suffice for a little while.  Plus, it came with much-needed health insurance!  But then, a few months in, I managed to throw out my back from, ummm...sitting.  I actually needed to be taken to my car in a wheelchair because it was too painful to walk.  And from that anticlimactic moment on,  I never experienced a pain-free day.  It would be over 5 years of bewildering pain that ranged from extreme to incapacitating before I would stumble upon my own diagnosis--Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome!--via desperate, sobbing Google-research.  My pain ultimately ended up costing me my job & the health insurance it provided.  My pain ultimately brought me to the brink of desperation & hopelessness and convinced me to attempt suicide two times.

When I think about the support system I have in place, it seems ludicrous for me to be so anxious about what the future holds.  When I think about all of the people who love me, it seems preposterous that the running commentary in my head is so self-critical, so denigrating.  But I also think that when you have felt unwell for so long, & have tried to ignore it or fight through it, & when that has only served to make you feel even worse, it is easy to turn all of your despair and frustration inward.  When the only cycle you know is striving to be healthy and happy and normal until you ultimately burn out & must retreat almost entirely & for great lengths of time into a place where there is only room for rest before achieving a modicum of wellness & ponderously making your way back to the vast, racing world.....well, let's just say that isn't a recipe for sparkling mental hygiene.

As I prepare for whatever decision is going to be made in the coming weeks regarding my disability claim, I have to keep a great many things in mind.  I must remember that a rejection does not mean that I will be destitute.  I have a loving and generous boyfriend who has said in no uncertain terms that he wants to take care of me for the rest of his life.  (This is nothing to sneeze at, Tracy).  I must also remember that the decision is not an indictment of me, personally.  It does not mean that I am undeserving of help.  It does not mean that my pain isn't real.

I know I need to work very hard to ditch the mean & patently untrue scripts that have been tatooed into my brain.  I need to write new, kind scripts.  I am NOT a burden, I am NOT a pain-in-the-ass, I am NOT helpless.  And I am most certainly NOT worthless.  I'm a goddam nice person who loves fiercely & feels deeply.  I would never on my worst day hurl the venomous insults I direct at myself at another person.  On the whole I think everyone I know & meet is doing their very best, & that their best happens to be pretty amazing, & often against some pretty tough odds.

Now might be a good time to begin recognizing that I'm doing a pretty amazing job, all things considered.