I just can't
I just can’t do anything today, and I’m not even going to try. You’re telling me to try harder and do more and I simply don’t have it in me. In fact, your endless criticism and rambling lecture has depleted my already minimal energy levels, self-respect and motivation. So instead of doing anything with the feedback you’ve just given me I’m going to eat. My feelings. Carbs I think. Yup. Let’s go with pizza.
And here we are. Me, stuffing my face again. To contribute to my downward spiral into obesity, which will just make me feel worse about myself and eat more. Yay feedback loop and self-destructive behaviours. Why can’t I just want less? And care less? And be less? Why can’t I be happy and skinny and plodding? And happy to be skinnily plodding along with my life, doing as I’m told? Why do I always want more and yearn for more and crumble under the weight of my inevitable failures. Why do I want so much and dream so big, but struggle so hard to maintain the motivation and sustained effort to put in the work to make it happen?
Yes. I’m aware the problem is my laziness and entitlement. Thanks, tips. Can you explain to me how to overcome this? Can you break through to me? Because I know the problem and I can’t break through to me. I’ve been lectured on the problem and that doesn’t work. I’ve been gently cajoled, had partners trying to work with me side by side, I’ve had people try shame and aggression and condescension. Nothing has worked. I’ve only become more suborn and withdrawn and disengaged. I’ve lost track of the situations I’ve run from and avoided and jobs and friendships and ideas I’ve lost and given up; because I just can’t overcome the feeling that I can’t do anything today.
Does anyone else feel, can anyone else explain the lethargy; the dead oppressive weight in a heart that’s also racing and fluttering with faint palpitations? How can a heart race and be heavy with dread at the same time? It feels like it’s running the Daytona 500 against my brain, whose thoughts won’t stop churning doom and gloom, rabble and ruin, self-hatred and self-pity. But these negative thoughts, the self-flagellation and spinning top of shame and blame and revenge fantasies rolling around my head are better than how much worse the thoughts could get.
It can actually be shocking, when you’re aware enough to realize that nothing can interest you or motivate or move you, while at the same time being completely captive to your inability to do any single thing today. You can’t read what you normally read or watch your favourite media. Your being is suspended in a stasis of panic and negativity. A decision paralysis. And above all, a desperate need to be free of it, coupled with an inability to face or name the monster on your back, that’s holding you back.
How can you fight a thing when you can’t even name the thing? How do you combat an enemy that acts like a spectre or optical illusion, hovering just in the periphery of your vision, but shrinking and running away when you get closer and try to face it, only to pop back up bigger and more grotesque after you turn your back and look away?
How can you do better when everything simply feels like another rock added to the oppressive weight of failure and self-loathing you’re already carrying?
I have no answers, only questions. All I know is I can’t do anything today, and I’m not even going to try. Today, all I can do is to sit here and survive.
