Today was one of those days where I just… I’m tired of life.
😞
I’ve been hoping somehow that maybe getting the non-profit stuff going might give me something to hold on to, but I think it might be too late.
There’s no more excitement in it anymore. Just stress, pressure, and fear.
And I’ve been wondering, as I make this change, this shift, how am I going to be able to support myself. With those concerns, I turned again to stock trading today. Hadn’t done it since sometime last year, May, I think.
Today was just more of the same. I want to believe that I can do it. And I was successful at first, and then I stuck around, and lost a bit of money.
It wasn’t much money at all, really, but I’m just going to hang it up I think permanently. I sort of clutch at the thought of hanging it up permanently, because part of me thinks that somehow I might be able to do it someday, but my health won’t let me do it right now. At least that much is certain.
It was probably the worst decision I could have made. I got up early to do it, so I was way tired, and then I lost a bit of money, and the stress, the anxiety of trading flared up my stomach issues in an instant, and I’ve been messed up all day since. So obviously my body can’t handle the extra stress in it’s current state.
I was a little discouraged at first, and then I was more amused at myself than anything for trying once again and having the same result.
Then, somewhere, somehow, and I’m not sure how, that amusement turned depression in seemingly almost an instant.
I think being so tired had a good bit to do with that. And being unhappy in life in general for so long now has a good bit to do with that.
I was so exhausted today.
And then as I was getting ready to take a nap, I was cruising Facebook marketplace, and there were a whole bunch of just ridiculously inappropriate ads. They’ve gotten more and more insidious over time, and more explicit– a lot more explicit.
I was frustrated with them because I’ve been doing really well lately in that stupid porn addiction that I’ve struggled with since I was a little kid, And I’m tired of being bombarded by it everywhere. So I was frustrated and started just scrolling through the classifieds to click on those ads and block them.
Then there was one that was so explicit that I was just left sort of in shock. It was basically just straight up porn right there in a Facebook Marketplace listings page full of cars and trailers and land for sale and whatnot.
I stared at it for I don’t know how many seconds, that circumstance where you’re looking away and then looking back and then looking away and looking back. The battle of where the eyes focus. The thought running through my head “is that really what it looks like!?!?!” But trying not to focus on it because… well, it’s basically porn. Except history tells me that it I were to zoom in on the picture, they’d be wearing clothes designed to look like a naked body.
Anyway, I blocked the ad and reported it as offensive and inappropriate, just as I had with all the others.
From there, I kept searching for more ads, but in the state that I was in, part of it was in order to block them, and part of it was because I wanted to see more ads.
Yuck.
Gratefully, I appeared to have succeeded in blocking them and keeping them from coming back. Persistent hard refreshes of the page yielded no more offensive content.
🤞
But part of me felt pretty crappy for looking at that one picture for however many seconds that I did. I was definitely in shock, but I should have marked it as inappropriate quicker, and not giving it even however many seconds I gave it before coming to my senses.
And I felt crappy for the part of me that kept looking for more ads because i wanted to see more ads because they were titillating even if the other part of me was also trying to block them permanently.
It’s not a religious thing anymore, for those of you who might be concerned about that. It’s a self-discipline thing. It’s an honor thing. It’s about who I am and who I’m trying to be. It’s about the strength that I want to have. It’s about being able to master myself.
It was really really really hard to have that happen today. In the grand scheme of things, it’s almost a blip. I don’t really consider it a relapse, but it certainly was crappy, and it comes only a few days before what was supposed to be a milestone celebration for me and my fight to overcome that particular addiction in my life.
It’s funny because part of me looks at that situation and feels awful and part of me looks at what I did as a major success– having been blindsided when I wasn’t seeking it out, being absolutely exhausted, and being extremely vulnerable as I was depressed and discouraged and struggling… I didn’t let it go any further than what I explained above. So part of me wants to say it’s a success, but part of me is very disappointed in myself that I even allowed what I did to occur.
And the reality is that now there’s no joy or excitement or anticipation in that milestone. There’s just big question marks. How do I treat what happened today? What does it mean for my sobriety? I was excited to reach that milestone. Now, with tears in my eyes as I write this, I just feel defeated. It feels like the milestone is going to have a big asterisk on it. Feels like I can’t celebrate because now it’s in question.
Defeated yet again with the stock stuff.
Perhaps defeated? with the porn stuff.
And even if not fully defeated with the latter, still… I might as well be because I’m just broken in pieces almost as if I’d had a real relapse.
Honestly, I don’t know what to think, and that’s why there’s no more excitement in the milestone that was coming up. Just questions and fear and discouragement and… More questions.
So I didn’t work today. It rained a good chunk of the day, pretty awesome thunderstorm. But I was so down in the dumps today that I couldn’t enjoy the rain. I’ve been almost a zombie today. My face I think is probably been pretty much expressionless all day. I took a nap, but I kept waking up over and over again. I woke up just as exhausted as I had felt when I went to try to nap.
It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a nap.
I got up and tried to get myself going so that I could beat back the depression. I went and got one of my mini excavators and started working on the driveway to fix it. Between the weather and people driving up our driveway who don’t know how to drive up a dirt road, it’s been hammered pretty good, and the spinout spots were so deep that it was a jarring, jerking ride Just to drive up and down our driveway.
So I spent some time working on that, and then once done with that, I spent some time trying to dig a trench to bring water to the garden. Should have been done years ago, but the ground was so rocky that I never was able to get it finished.
It’s still not done, but it’s a heck of a lot closer now than it ever has been.
I’m still broken in little pieces right now. It’s past one in the morning, but I’m still just a mess. Monotone speaking. Expressionless face. A zombie. Tired. Tired of life.
Hope something changes soon because I don’t know if I have the strength anymore to make the changes myself.
I’m trying.
I tried to do good today, to be of service. It didn’t help me feel any better, but at least it’s a benefit to other people.
I also did a search for Lift the World as an organization name in Arkansas, and it appears that no one has taken it. So… Maybe I’ll get on that tomorrow.
And I spent some time working on a logo for the organization.
Like I said, I’m trying. There’s just no hope behind it anymore. No excitement. No drive. It’s sort of a last gasp hope that doing what my heart longs to do might help me survive this other mess that I have been no match for, this situation that I have let destroy me and have honestly no idea how to live with.
Tough day.
~ stephen
Lift the World 