2024-06-04 (Tuesday) — Rapid Decline

Mostly these days I’m just numb.

There isn’t much feeling anymore.

Even my concern for others is more a shade of lifeless grey than a feeling of the heart. It’s just instinct, the automatic, the default program running… while the rest of me is… coming apart.

The breaks from the numbness generally come in the form of a deep, almost primal agony–a combination of fear, hopelessness, rage, and desperation.

I don’t think I can make it into the next chapter of my life with the number of pressures and stressors that crush and suffocate me.

I’m trying to be strong. I’m trying to be smart. I’m trying to hold it together at least enough to make it through this tsunami without making ill-advised decisions out of sheer desperation.

But my hope is as a single photon in the dark and infinite expanse of the universe. Is it there? Somehow, yes. But it’s so… small.

So far I’m succeeding in avoiding making the larger ill-advised decisions. That’s a success, I suppose.

I’m making plenty of the smaller ones.

I’m so tired.

That hope/push thing.

Today i railed against god… why am i here if my brain is so monumentally incapable of processing through the stresses and pressures I feel?

Life is misery, and it’s all because of my own handicapped brain. No one to blame. It’s me.

Though I find plenty of rage to direct at god, plenty of vitriol to spew his way.

I’m declining quickly. I can see I’m making progress at getting to a place where I can find at least a little rest from significantly reduced pressures and stressors, but I can feel my life energy diminish at a seemingly more rapid rate.

Will I find a way to survive?

Yes. I always do, but I’m living… always on the edge of breakdown.

I throw tantrums like a two year old, but they are the anguish of overwhelming hopelessness and pain and fear coming together in a consuming agony and rage.

Sounds closer to the shrieking of a wild animal than those of human speech pierce the air when the numbness gives way to that overload of emotional stimuli.

This usually comes as something I’m dreading facing not only gives me the challenge I’d feared but then just kicks me while I’m down–again and again and again.

And I’m left exhausted. Discouraged.

… And back to numb.

Occasionally, there’s a semblance of my heart that comes through. I see a family member struggling, and my heart breaks for them, and I actually feel it. I see my mom, so tired and full of care, a lot of that because of her worries about me, and I want to make sure she knows I love her, and I feel that most nights, wanting to catch her before she goes to bed, so I can give her a hug.

But most other times, I’m numb or anxiously wasting time in front of a screen because I’ve got no resilience left, and every road is full of more than I’m emotionally capable of handling.

Taxes… health insurance nightmares… broken cars… broken equipment… Everywhere I look, it’s just pile after pile of stuff to be done, and everywhere I look, it’s obstacle after obstacle to accomplish all those things that need to be done.

The simple has fled. It’s nowhere to be found.

What remains is project after project to work through and complete, none of them quick, all of them challenging, many of them brutally so in my current condition, and there stand I, hanging by a thread, without resilience, nearly without hope.

I’m doing a lot of self medicating.

Lots of TV (via YouTube). Lots of food that’s not good for me. Nearly daily trips to porn this and porn that.

I disgust myself.

I’m just a shell of myself, and I’m merely existing… only surviving.

I’m miserable.

I’m trying to help and serve even more, and I want to do it, but it brings only fleeting happiness. The void within me is too large, and i seem to be punished for trying to help and do good–no good deed goes unpunished, etc.

Had dinner with Jim, don’t remember when. Last… Friday? Took him out to a Mexican restaurant in Pea Ridge. Ate meat. Ashamed of myself for eating the things I’ve eaten lately because it goes against what i believe.

But it’s… part of my self medicating right now. I want to go out to eat. I don’t have the bandwidth to try and figure out a Vegan option. It’s just… too much stress for me.

Anyway…

Getting the skid steer fixed has been a nightmare. I should have just taken it somewhere and had someone else fix it. I’ve spent so. much. time on it, and it just keeps going sideways.

I’ve made progress, but it’s one step forward, three steps sideways. It’s been brutal.

I’ve worked a little on JustAnswer stuff, not a lot. Way behind last month already.

Oops.

I’m exhausted.

I’m sure there’s plenty to say, but… I can’t remember. I think the massive stress has overloaded my ability to remember. My memory has been terrible for a good long time. Sometimes it feels like early onset Alzheimer’s. Hopefully it’s just near constant emotional overload.

I wonder sometimes if one of my anguished tantrums might leave me with a brain aneurysm.

The emotional pressure is so strong it just overloads my mind and I think partly my body as well. There’s a sense of physical pressure in addition to the mental and emotional.

We had dinner at the deck on Sunday. I pulled weeds because i felt crappy there were a lot of weeds growing through the mulch. It… didn’t look good, in my opinion.

So I pulled weeds until it was looking decent, to my perspective. And then I joined the rest of the family to eat. I didn’t want to be there. I don’t want the attention for the work I’ve done to make that area look beautiful. I want the acknowledgment, but in a passing comment here and a passing comment there, not as the focal point among many people. Mostly, I just want to see people enjoying it, knowing that what I’ve done was actually meaningful for them, knowing that they actually appreciate it and use it, and aren’t just being kind because they know the efforts I’ve put in.

Though I didn’t want to go because of my mental state, I went anyway, and it was good to be there.

Monday and Tuesday I spent time trying to fix the skid steer with no success. Long hours full of discouragement and despair.

I don’t have the energy to think of much more.

One fairly large piece of news… I canceled all my marketing as of Sunday.

It’s a huge step, and it is time, but in my state of numbness, I felt almost nothing. In my current mental state it was just a black and white decision with no feeling or emotion attached to it, Not really even any apprehension to speak of. It was like checking an item off a list that’s almost meaningless, like going to the grocery store or taking out the trash.

But it’s a pretty significant step forward and away from mechanics.

I had more to write… more summary of days… but it’s all faded now… and I’m tired…