Striving for Perfection.

  As a good human being, I have always wanted to find ways to be better.  As I have grown older and life has become more complicated, I don't even know what better is.  I know that looking back over the years, I am definately not better.  My constant focus on making sure everyone around me is okay and that I am not overburdening my friendships has left me tired.  I have always tried to be better since the first day I learned that I am a sinner, and God wants me to do better.  I know what I have become is the result of human efforts to acheive what only God can, but the habits are hard to break, and the way I think of myself is almost impossible to fight.  Yes, I can pray about it, but what then?  I have serious anxiety about failing in even the smallest way, and it triggers some of the most embarrassing coping mechanisms. 
  Today, I started my spiral because I WANTED to eat a cupcake.  Yeah, I didn't eat one, but the fact that it was there made me mad, and I shouldn't be mad - perfect people don't get mad, and so on.  So, I ate some dark chocolate instead, but oh no, that was a slip as well.  No substitutions, bad food is bad food, and hate yourself for eating that garbage.  Then, the unhealthy desire to just hate myself and proceed with a full on binge starts to tickle my brain, and at the same time, I want to hit the restroom and vomit.  I am fighting it now, knowing that I should just forgive myself for eating chocolate and move on.  I hate myself for being a failure.  I have failed in such a minor thing, but my mind makes it so large and important.   I can't seem to use reason to argue with it. 
  I know that having an eating disorder is not so rare.  I know that there are a lot of emotional issues associated with it, and that I can find healthy ways to address these problems, but I am ashamed that this is even a problem.  I am a grown-up not some emotional teenager with hormonal issues.  But here I am, examining myself, hating myself, and hating that I hate myself.  The day started well.  I messed up and couldn't ride my bike to work because I lost my bike lock.  I adapted my plans, and decided I could just do my swimming instead.  Oh, happy day.  But, I didn't really let it go.  I am mad at myself for being disorganized and for losing my lock and ruining my plans.  I thought I did okay, but I am trapped in this way of thinking, and even when I think I get past it, I don't.  My brain feels cluttered with a mess of emotions that I don't understand and don't want to have.  I wish I could push it all back down, and ignore it, but I am pretty sure that's what got me in trouble in the first place. 

I hate myself today because:
-I see myself as disorganized
-I ate candy I shouldn't have
-I drank diet dr. pepper
-I didn't bike to work
-I look ugly
-I am emotionally unhealthy
-I have to sleep to much
-I don't sleep very well
-I didn't make food my husband liked

And there we are.  I don't know what that tells me.  Something like, I'm a crazy person, but that is just somehting I'm coming to understand about myself.  I suck at being happy.

Irritable, Angry, Sad. . .

  Some days you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed.  On those days, I tend to put on a happy face in public and grumble about irrelevent things when I am alone.  I found myself angry and yelling at people who were not there while I drove my car today.  It kind of made me feel like a crazy person.  I don't express my emotions often enough, and in some ways, I think being a little crazy at times might actually help me to overcome my mental health problems. 
  Today is another day in depression.  It seems like my life is just too exhausting for me to get through.  I want to be dead.  How many of these days am I going to make it through.  I know that suicide is not the answer to my problem.  I know that I need to think and act differently to change the way I respond to problems, but the process is slow, and I feel exhausted!  I can't help wondering how if my efforts are going to pay off.  What if I fail at therapy?  What if I am as happy as I can be?  Maybe I don't even have depression, and the world really is just as gloomy as I see it.  Oh, Aldous Huxley, you could have ended your book better you insensitive bastard!  There, see, strange misplaced anger is happening.  I wish I could read.  I wish I could leave work and spend an hour on the elliptical machine reading a book about characters who fall in love and fight zombies.  I barely have the attention span to get through a magazine article these days.  I know things make me sad, but I can't pin down why these past couple weeks have been so bad.  I feel desperate- I can feel it in my throat and my chest.  It feels like I can't quite catch my breath.  I am trapped, pacing in some imaginary cage, but I don't know who put me here.  In some ways, I have had more anxiety about my treatment than I actually have in my life, and I wonder if being in therapy is somehow triggering the depressive episodes more frequently.  That seems like a step in the wrong direction, but they say therapy is the way to go with these things.  But, I am the worst patient a therapist could ask for.  I want to get better, honestly.  I am just so afraid to talk about things, and that causes me to kind of shut down and be on my best behavior during my sessions. 

Is the depression serious enough?

  A depressive episode actually lasts more than a week or two, sometimes longer.  I don't think I have very many of these types of depressive episodes.  I am more along the lines of, hold it together, hold it together, hold it together, shit, I'm crying on the bathroom floor again.  I am sure this means that I am not seriously depressed.  I am capable of laughter.  I exercise, and I try to eat healthy foods (except when I fall apart, but that is for another blog).  I don't drink alcohol.  I try to get enough sleep.  Now, I am trying to cut back on caffeine.  And for all my efforts, I found myself unable to get out of bed today.  Typically, I am triggered by my inability to sleep.  This time, I was going to go for an early morning bike ride, and I woke up at 1:30 AM, and I could not fall back asleep.  I had to end my ride early because I was too sleepy to keep riding.  So, the thoughts went like this:  I am too sleepy to live my life.  I sleep too much to live my life.  Why do I even try to do anything if I can't finish it because I need to take a nap in the middle?  I was angry.  I was frustrated.  I was disappointed.  I don't know what I should do when I feel like this.  I know I currently react in a way that winds me up in bed unable to will myself up to feed the dogs.  I know this is an unhealthy behavior.  I wonder what other people do.  Maybe other people sleep better.  Maybe other people would be able to finish the ride.  Maybe it doesn't matter to me what I would do if I were normal.  All I need is to be able to live my life without constantly worrying about how it is going to affect my sleep.  I manage to get out of bed, go to work, and be a responsible adult, so I may have some form of depression, but since my episodes last a couple days, I must not be that bad.  On a similar note, I have been trying to figure out if I am having suicidal thoughts or just normal healthy thoughts about death and dying.  I don't intend to go through with any plan, but my innocent little daydreams about how I might die are taking a turn for the self-inflicted.  These would all be good things to share with my therapist . . . if only I didn't want her to think I was doing well.  I am tragically bad at therapy.  Ugh, no one who reads this needs to call me.  No doubt I've been trying to deal with this longer than you know, and if it concerns you that I might hurt myself, I won't.  I am trying to get better; I'm just really really slow at it. 

Am I normal?

I am often criticized for tying to put labels on myself, but I take some comfort in classifications because then I don't need to feel alone and disconnected.  I consider myself introverted.  I might be shy, and I am probably slightly antisocial.  I have been told it is unhealthy for a person to isolate themselves.  Or, perhaps it is a sign that a person is unhealthy that they would desire to isolate themselves.  I would never pretend that I am well, but the fear that I have is that I am not normal.
  My friends are good people, and I do enjoy their company, but I sometimes feel too tired to spend time with them.  I will drag myself out, have a fun time, and then analyze the entire evening to see if I did or said anything more stupid or embarrassing than the last time I decided to try to have some fun.  "No one even remembers you said that!"  I try to remind myself.  But, whatever foolish thing I let slip or unbecoming behavior I had haunts me.  The memories are as clear as day.  They take up that place in my brain where most people must keep their confidence.  The other thing I like to remind myself of is that doing stupid shit is a part of living.  It is funny.  I try to laugh.  I am just embarrassed, and ashamed that I am trying out for the part of the unintentional jester.

  When I am out with a group, I try to be a part of the group, and if I were to just passively exist while others laughed and carried on, I would feel far less anxiety.  If I am talking to a stranger about things that are personal to me, I will often get nervous to the point of sweating.  I tend to change the subject or make a joke to keep things from going there.  This works well to keep the nerves in check as well as keeping my number of friends to a nice manageable number.  Unfortunately, I don’t actually have anyone to talk to who doesn’t make me nervous.  I probably fear their reaction, but I know what they will say.  It is always along the lines of, “oh, I’ve been there.”  or “You’ll get through this” or even, “I would feel so ____!”  No one ever says, “You are the biggest failure I’ve met!” or whatever it is I seem to be afraid of.   

  I know people who will ask everyone their opinion before making a decision to make sure they have supporters.  It is no different telling someone something about you.  You want to know there are other people who understand what you think or feel and have the potential to think or feel the same way.  I don’t do this.  I don’t even tell my therapist most of the things I should.  I’m not very good at therapy.  I am trying to work on dealing with my feelings.  I am trying to work on having a more positive response to stress/anxiety/anger/sadness.  I am trying to feel normal.  Right now, I feel ashamed of what I do and how I feel, and because I will not talk about it, I suffer alone.  I will sometimes think that I am fighting things alone, and that makes me proud of myself for being so independent and strong!  Unfortunately, I will lose control, and then I just fall apart all alone.  But, for the most part, people see that I just pick myself up and go on about my day.  It is only messy for me, and I think I like it that way.  I guess I could label myself as a “private person”.