Tired

One of the tougher things to overcome in my battle with anxiety and depression is how physically draining the struggle is on a day to day basis. Stress from work, stress from health concerns, stress from managing personal finances, maintaining good relationships – it’s like balancing on a tightrope 35 feet above lava while juggling venomous snakes. Slip up and any one of them can ruin you.

The truth is I want to be better, do better, but better isn’t always possible. More often than not I have to be okay with just breathing. Breathing is survival at the most basic level, and it has to be good enough.

The hum, the white noise of anxiety prevents relaxation, prevents sleep. Sleep deprivation produces the best fuel for anxiety because when I’m exhausted I’m not doing anything at 100%, perhaps not even 50%. This level of fatigue causes minor mistakes to appear as catastrophes, slip ups in social situations to appear as insults, and the physical pain from lack of activity to become paralysis. All of these things feed into my anxiety, the mindset of not being good enough, which in turn feeds depression and self destructive thoughts.

The cycle, the treadmill of anxiety-depression-anxiety-depression never lets up. All I can do is try to whether the storm as best I can – accept, distract, escape, accept, distract, escape until the worst of it passes, which takes all of my energy, to the point that I don’t want to think anymore, but then I continue to think, often at warp speed, about all of the things that can go wrong, that will go wrong, and then into what will I do if everything goes wrong?

Thoughts like this last for hours into the night so that when 7:30am rolls around, I’m primed for another day of anxiety, depression, and exhaustion. Each evening ends with a different version of “how many mistakes did I make today?” Fortunately for me, I am able to get help, get treatment, get medications, and lean on Michelle and Dominic, all of which help, but I’m the one that has to get through each day so I can get to the next day, and the next day after that.

It is never easy, but at least I am still here.