I’m gonna be ranting here because I don’t want to drag people through this. You can hit the skip button. Or scroll on by.
And don’t worry. I should be over it soon. Ranting here helps.
I’m almost finished writing KFZ. The one novel of mine that just might fucking make it and be my doorway to a better life.
The one novel that’s been fucking cursed, on and off, since I started writing it.
I’m nearly done with it. On one hand, I’ll be glad to hand it off to someone else? But I’m kind of dreading the levels of doom that may descend once I get past the editing stage.
I’ve had low-key anxiety for almost ten goddamn months. All related to KFZ.
And it’s coming out in weird directions. Because I internalise my problems. Because the people I do have to talk to about this nonse start rolling their eyes or acting bored when I start talking.
I’m convinced that my mental issues are not big enough to worry anyone with, and circumstances haven’t been nice for keeping the flare-ups at bay.
Give you an idea: We’ve been scraping by for the last couple of months. Just enough to pay the bills and pay for food. And sometimes we have to wait for the next pay to get the food. Or pay the bills.
But Chaos needed tuition fees because her ASD is a little too extreme for mainstream public school to handle. She goes to a school for autistic kids three days out of five and the tuition fees… well… hurt.
Mayhem needed new shoes. Growth spurts are a bitch. His new size 10′s cost me $120. And that was the CHEAP option. He also needed socks and things.
I get a supplement from our dear darling government, just in time to prevent me getting ulcers again. It has covered shoes, tuition, and a couple of warm things for Chaos because she’s skinny and needs insulation.
I’m going to have less than $200 of that left, shortly. Not enough to buy food and necessities for a week.
And then I get a call from Mayhem’s school about missing books that he’s supposed to be doing his work in and…
And I Spiral.
Switches inside my head are flipped. I am in Apocalypse Mode. Everything’s a disaster, it’s all my fault, and if I don’t pull out all the stops to help my children, the world is going to end. Or my world is going to end because government people will take them away and feed them to the pedos.
I am grasping at straws in a blind panic to find ANY material to help him. And in that panic, I yell at Beloved.
I am not aware that I raise my voice when I panic. It’s a thing. I’ve only recently become aware of it.
Beloved is far away at work, and I call for a fix to a file that won’t play. I can’t understand why Beloved is so glibly dismissive while I’m deep in the Spiral. And in trying to communicate why this thing is so important, I yell. Unaware that I am yelling.
And then Beloved hangs up on me and turns the phone into ignore mode.
I am seriously deep in the vortex by now, so I end up sobbing into Beloved’s voicemail about how I need things to work and everything bad is my fault and so on. Including a liberal half-dozen I’m sorry’s and an uncountable bucket of sobs.
I’m out of control. Trying to find anything in my hoarded media. Obsessed. Escalating the significance of three days’ school to two weeks. And I can’t let it go because of a blinkering effect that happens in the Spiral. That ONE THING is the only thing that can save my world.
Some semblance of stability is attained when I find DVD’s that fit my search parameters and I thought it was all over.
No such luck. Some part of me is still in Apocalypse Mode, and the least little setback is a potential disaster. Any tiny criticism is something I MUST FIX NOW, etc. And somehow I can operate on two levels, simultaneously explaining to Mayhem that I’m blinkered on trivia whilst still being stuck on solving that trivial problem.
Anxiety is my copilot. We’re late in getting to school. But all is still well.
I get home safe, dreading the next bill that is going to put my funds under my survive-the-week limit. And I try something.
I talk to myself.
I’ve heard good things about visualising panic and stress as a small being that needs nurture. Something soothing etc [Hugs from Beloved help, for the two minutes they exist]
I start telling myself that I have to be kind to me, because I’m having a bad day. It starts working. I start pep-talking me.
We’re going to do our writing things so that I can sell KFZ and make it big and have the good things and finally give Izzy a hug.
And I start sobbing again. Uncontrollable gasps.
I don’t understand it myself. The postcard she sent [I wasn’t expecting anything at all… getting it was like a bolt of pure sunshine] was like… a solid boost. The best thing to happen. It helped me feel good when I was creeping around the borders of depression.
Why would I cry at such a good thought?
Why would I be so scared about it?
Am I letting the Dark Side of my brain rule me again? Am I so convinced of my own inevitable failure that it’s impossible for me to believe I’ll succeed?
Am I heading for another breakdown?
I don’t know. I wish I did.
What I do know is that I’ve got to keep trying to succeed until failing literally kills me.
It is far better to try and fail than never try at all.
And if I do fail all the way to the grave, I want my epitaph to be “At least I tried.”
Okay. Good news, bad news. Bad news, I started sobbing and panicking again when I typed that… Good news, now I know what I’m so stressed about.
Trying
and failing
for
the
rest
of
my
life.
Holy FUCK, I am a god-damned fucking train wreck.
It takes me this fucking long to work out what’s bugging me. THIS much train of thought.
And I’m still gasping and stressing.
I am going to immerse myself in my favourite things until this mood finally fucks off. But not a jiffy before I do my writing things.
Because I HAVE to keep trying.