#bottomoftherollercoaster

It frustrates you. Your inability to do the normal things that everyone can do. It kills you inside makes you feel as though you can’t be a functioning adult. Just earlier you were sitting outside with the dogs, smoking like usual and your mind wandered to the chores you have yet to do inside. By “yet” you mean have been pushing off for awhile. Yesterday was a good day because you finally folded that laundry that has been sitting in the basket for two weeks and the laundry that has been left in the dryer for about a week. All because you were almost out of work socks and ran out of sleep shorts or loose boxers that you wear to bed. You can’t go back to wearing your boxer briefs to bed anymore they feel stifling. None of that really matters because you pushed through and you did it. Of course the newly clean clothes are now residing in the basket and dryer but this is a cycle that is bound to continue indefinitely. The day before that you had cleaned the bathroom and moved the dirty dishes from the sink and into the dish washer. They had been sitting there for a week but once they were gone it felt like you could breathe again. The bathroom hadn’t been really cleaned for probably almost a year but you never really let it get all that dirty. A couple weekends ago you finally cleaned the dining room of the boxes that had started to pile up. You went on a cleaning frenzy because you felt that you couldn’t breathe.

All of this looks good and sounds good on paper. It doesn’t negate that feeling of inadequacy. Like everything in your life it goes like tides. You can’t clean your house or take care of yourself until you can for one day. Today you almost cried because you couldn’t thinking. The issue was the litter box. It is always the issue and for some reason you can’t figure out the best method to clean it and the mess the cats have made on the floor in front of it. It makes you feel like you can’t breathe, you can’t do anything about it. Logically you know you can. You know you can clean it up like you do every other time but right now you just can’t. It just sits there and taunts you. A reminder that you can’t take care of yourself why would you think you can take care of your pets. It’s a spiral thought process that lead down very dark paths. If you can’t take care of your self, you can’t take care of your pets, if you can’t take care of your pets your pets will go without things that they need, if your pets go without their needs being filled then you are abusing them, if you are abusing them then you don’t deserve to have pets, if you don’t deserve to have them then you should surrender them, and if you surrender them then you’ll never see them again, and if you never see them again and they don’t need you and they aren’t around to comfort you then what do you have to live for? 

It’s an illogical spiral that makes assumptions that you know aren’t true. Your pets don’t go without they always have food and water and attention. Yeah there are some days you forget, there are stints you can’t clean the litter pan or are so wrapped up in whatever is going on you don’t realize how bad it has gotten, and yeah there are somedays that you just can’t have them around because they sounds and the needy form of love is too much for you and you have to hide yourself away in your own house. But you also can’t imagine life without them.

You always hear people discuss the spoon theory. It makes sense to a fault. The main fault is that you can’t wrap your head around certain intangible things. How many spoons do you get? How much is each task worth? You know it’s all relative but that doesn’t make the concept any easier to grasp. You’re an adult, with a full time job, a mortgage, a car payment, insert many more bills here not to mention more obligations. You’re an adult who has to feed themselves, bathe themselves, has pets to take care of, and lives alone. You can’t be rationing out imaginary spoons to decide what is worth doing because it isn’t a choice anymore it is necessity. So you do you do everything, all day, everyday you have no down time you have no relaxation and things start to fall by the wayside but what can you do? Sure you can deal out the spoons to the most important matters: work, bills, pets, food but even that can become too taxing. Dwindle it down then: work, bills, feed and water pets, frozen meals and skipped meals. On the worst of days you’re lucky to get even a bit of it done but the only thing insured to be on the list is work and boy would that take so many spoons. 

There truly is nothing wrong with your day. It was just a rough end is all and most days end this way but something about today makes your heart pound. Clock out and walk through the warehouse, scroll through Twitter on your phone, don’t make eye contact. You’re good at hiding your emotions everywhere except your eyes. Right now you know that if you made eye contact all they would be looking back at was a glassy eyes mere seconds from crying held in a way that seems forced to neutral. A vacant stare perhaps because at this point you aren’t looking at them. There is a war waging in your head and speaking to coworkers is the last thing you want to do. Not like you could hear them over your thoughts. 

With your usual quick pace you make it to the doors in about four minutes. Throwing away your mask at the trashcan next to the door you push your way to freedom. Like always that air makes it feel like you can finally breathe again. You’re still far from a sort of comfort zone. Making your way through the parking lot you quickly unlock your truck and sit down. You don’t know why this feels like you’ve been being chased but now that you’re here you can finally start to wind down. So you hurry up and sit there. You don’t do anything, you don’t even start the truck, you just sit and stare out the window watching another person walk by. Why does pulling out of a parking space with someone nearby make you anxious? You don’t have the answer to that one. 

Thinking back you realize that you haven’t actually done this in a while. You used to do it all the time when you worked at the retail store. Where you would get off work and go and sit in your car, play on your phone, smoke a cigarette or three and just not move. It was like unwinding, or avoiding the enviable, back then you didn’t want to go home. It was either to go back to your dad's house with his psycho girlfriend, when you lived there you spent most of your time in your extremely small room because that was the only place your cats were allowed to be. Maybe that's where your hatred of shut doors comes from. You can’t sleep with the door shut anymore it gets too stuffy. Or it was when you were living with your now ex fiancé and her brother and sister in law in a two bedroom apartment. That just didn’t have the space for everything so it was always cluttered, no matter what you tried to clean and organize it could never stay that way. Though if you were being honest with yourself it was because you didn’t want to have to go back and deal with your fiancé. Her constant whining and getting mad because you had to work all the time and when you were off she had to work and “how dare you go do things on your day off if I can’t come with you.” You understand that because you feel the same way but you never voice it because you realize how dumb it sounds. Not saying you are perfect. Far from it but you are your own worst critic. 

Looking back on those times now it seems to have a golden haze. Better times? Nostalgia? Back when you felt like you meant something to someone. Now you just get to go home and come back to work and no one knows where you are or what you’re doing and they probably could care less. Sighing you sit up and finally start the truck throwing it in drive quickly to make sure you don’t just sit there with it running. 

Taking off you take the scenic route through the park, driving is always good for clearing your head. You can’t drive too far though you still have to go home and let the dogs out. You still have work the next day and that comes quicker than you’d think. You make the loop through the park up some very shitty roads with potholes that you have never seen filled, back onto the main street in the area and into your driveway. Your house has an ominous feeling to it. You just know that when you get inside the dogs will be happy to see you. They will be bouncy and rambunctious and you just really aren’t in the mood. Too much activity will set you off but there is no real way to escape it. So you just push through. Like you do with every other aspect of your life you keep pushing like you're trudging through knee deep snow. Just as expected when you open the doors they are excited to see you and you wish you were more excited to see them. You shut off the alarm and make your way to the backdoor to let them out. This time when you get outside you don’t actually feel any better. You're tired, you're anxious, you are still on the verge of tears and you are one small annoyance away from losing it. You smoke one cigarette, try to calm down, stop scrolling through social media you’re making it worse, grab for another cigarette, stop looking at Facebook memories you’re making it worse, grabbing another cigarette and your lighter falls out of your hand tumbling down the steps with each roll you can feel your heartbeat picking up. It’s not enough but you decide then it’s time to go inside. The dogs don’t want to listen to you and that ticking inside gets quicker. They finally come and you're seething just right on that edge you slam the backdoor and that's when it happens. Your phone falls out of your hand and onto the floor. It’s like watching it in slow motion. The ticking stops and the explosion comes. “FUCK! Are you FUCKING kidding me?” Swooping down you pick up the phone and take the briefest second to make sure it isn’t broken but that isn’t going to stop the tantrum you’re in. With what you can only describe as a growl you shove your phone in your pocket, you have to get it out of your hand before it becomes a projectile. Erratically you search for anything to throw, to hit, to do anything to just release this aggression but there is nothing. Your chest heaves with the tearless sobs that work up through your diaphragm. Grabbing either side of the archway between the kitchen and dining room you try to put your head against it. You move too quickly, instead of just placing your forehead there you more like head butt it. In some ways the pain makes matters worse, but in some ways it seems to center you. Balling up a fist you aim a punch at an area you know there are boards. You don’t want to hit something to break it, you want to hit it to feel the pain in your knuckles. This first hit is the hardest and maybe there is one or two after that but it’s usually that pain that takes the break down out of anger and into tearless crying. Turning around and sliding down the wall you sit there and try to cry. The tears don’t come. They never do come. You can count on one hand how many times you have cried in the past 5 years. You wish you could, you think that maybe one good cry can make you feel so much better but you just can’t do it anymore. You’ll always remember those words “Don’t cry in front of me, tears to me are like blood in the water with sharks” or just the simple “Your feelings don’t matter” 

You're doing it again. Staring at the wall unmoving, but as your vision fades from clear to blurry and back again the tell tale static clouds over the image. That's what it is though, an image. It doesn’t feel like real life anymore just like you are floating and staring at a paused screen. An image of a wall. The subtle movement in the lines before you as they bend back and forth are all you really need to know you are still breathing. You aren’t sure how long you have been blanking but noticing is a good sign that it’ll stop soon. That being said you still can’t feel your limbs and so trying to move them is nigh impossible. Finally though you manage to move your sight it's sluggish and it means you're coming back. The next thing you can move is your neck slowly looking back and forth and down to your hands. Slight twitches at first until you can flex your fingers then moving up your arms the feeling and movement returns to your control. But honestly the hardest part is last. You have to stand up, not that it is necessary but if you don’t you run the risk of spacing out again, and no one wants to be held hostage by their own body. It takes a while to gather the gumption to move your feet, they tingle from the numbness subsiding and soon there are pins and needles running up your legs. Now put it all together. Move your eyes and head, find a place to put your hands, use your arms to push yourself up, search again for a stable surface to grab onto, stabilize yourself while your legs continue to stall. Take one step and then another after four steps you start to feel normal again, you start to feel in control again. You feel like you have made it out of the woods, that you have accomplished a difficult task, just for it to all come crashing down. You don’t remember why you froze, what happened that made you become near catatonic. It wasn’t something big, there was no unexpected death, no terrible news, no real danger. Just the accumulation of stress and anxiety, the depression and anger dragging you down and finally your mind shutting itself off in a state of protection. It never helps. Instead of allowing yourself to fall victim again you make yourself move, distraction is the best method and games are a good way to keep mind occupied instead of fretting. 

Leaving the Living Room, keeping your head down and eyes cast to the floor while going through the Dining Room and through the door into your “office” the only thing that makes it your office is the expensive PC and dual monitor set you bought when you were manic. At least you were happy then. Other than that the office really just has some work out equipment (that you bought when you were manic and hardly touched), boxes from Amazon purchases, your old monitors that go with your old PC, and a wall mounted TV. All of which were impulse purchases, subtle reminders all over your house that you are in fact not well, not doing good, and hardly in control of yourself. Hell even this house is an impulse of a manic episode. Being both your escape and safe place and your biggest regret. 

Now that you sit at your desk you can’t help but notice the mess your life has become as the Dining Room sits right there in your peripherals. The table is covered in junk and more boxes of more things you bought when you shouldn’t have. There is hardly a Dining Room any more. You always tell yourself that you’ll stop, but all it takes is another obsession, an inkling of a thought that blossoms into an unneeded need. You need even more now to distract yourself. So you do the only thing that seems to work. Play a game on the computer and zone out on it for hours. 

By the time you decide to check the time four hours have passed and they felt like only one. Your joints are stiff and you can’t straighten your pinky finger without a little pain. That only really means you need a bit of a break before you continue this gaming endeavor. Standing up you feel multiple joints in your body pop and crack. Your muscles ache with the strain of moving for the first time in hours. Keep your head down as you walk through the Dining Room, but nothing can save you from the heart ache at seeing your kitchen. You suppose it could be worse but you were raised in a very clean house with a relatively strict mother who would definitely not be approving of the state of your house. It’s always the kitchen that hits the hardest though. When you had bought this house a year ago that kitchen looked completely different. You spent four weeks straight working on this kitchen, from repainting to putting in a new floor just so you could let it fall apart. But you do what you do best, avert your eyes and open the fridge which is honestly no better. Old food that should have been eaten days ago sits there mocking you. Another way of wasting money, it’s become a trend with you. Those around you tend to think you are good with your finances and if paying bills on time is all there is to go by then yes, you are good with your finances. Making a mental note to clean the fridge, which you will forget every time you look at the fridge for the next week, you grab out an energy drink. It feels like an addiction now, it kind of is a caffeine addiction Soda just doesn’t do it and the cans are just too small, say that to all the half drank cans of soda and energy drinks on the coffee table in the Living Room. No use thinking about that now, this can will join the ones in the office that are also half drunk. Moving along you whistle for your dog, and just as she always is she bounds up happily and wags her tail, her mouth open in a way that it looks like she is smiling at you. 

“Let's go outside” To that she jumps around and heads to the back door. You haven’t spoken in probably the last six hours and you can feel it in the way your throat felt scratchy and mouth felt dry. Going through the back door you once again move quickly as to not remind yourself of the mess your life is. When was the last time you cleaned the litter box? By the smell of it, it had been awhile and in this downward spiral you can tell it’ll be awhile more. 

There is something to say about fresh air, it always has an uncanny ability to make you feel ten times better than you felt in the stale indoor air. Yeah you may live in a city, and yeah you may live in a poor area of the city that is predominantly populated by meth addicts, and yes sometimes you can smell someone cooking meth in the air and the only reason you know what that smells like is because you have lived in this neighborhood for a long time. That does not diminish the fact that fresh air no matter how hot or how cold will always make you feel better. It’s dark out right now, there is a distinct lack in sound other than the buzz of bugs, a few cars, the occasional sirens and of course your dog. She has a hatred of anyone walking near her yard, bikes, motorcycles, and the mailman. You sit down on the back steps and pull out a pack of cigarettes. Cigarettes stopped feeling cool around the time you could legally buy them, but at that point they were no longer an accessory but a necessity. They calm you but really it isn’t the tobacco or the nicotine it's the deep breathing. The way you smoke a cigarette is actually very common to deep breathing exercises. You put the cigarette to your lips and take a deep breath in, holding it for a moment and then slowly releasing the breath. After the first drag you already feel calmer. Sure you could stop smoking and just take up deep breathing exercises but something tells you that you will never stick to it. What do you care about honestly, you obviously don’t have an issue wasting money on frivolous things, and you aren’t planning on living long and for as long as you can remember you never thought you’d live long. You just don’t see yourself growing old and wrinkly, in fact you have currently made it much further than you even considered possible. 

After finishing that cigarette you consider lighting another but your dog saves you from yourself by deciding then that she needed to bark loudly at god knows what. So you call her back in and though she too can be rather distracted she eventually comes happily inside trotting by you without a care in the world. Retracing your steps you keep your head down to not focus on the mess areas of your house until you are sitting back at your computer chair, your still unopened energy drink in front of you perspiration gathering on the outside. You’ll continue to ignore it though as you are back to the game and the outside world once again ceases to exist. Thankfully you can’t remember why you were so upset in the first place. 

This lasts until well past your bedtime with work coming up next evening you should really get to bed but if not the computer keeping you up the YouTube videos playing on the TV as background noise will. There is just something you hate about stopping a YouTube video in the middle of it. So you have to finish it. It’s fine though you know yourself and you know that you can run on little to no sleep. As it finishes you have to physically force yourself to shut down the PC and TV and make your way to the Bathroom. Unlike the rest of your house the Bathroom is relatively clean, it's just one of those places that drive you insane if it isn’t clean. Reaching above the medicine cabinet you grab down two orange pill bottles. ‘Lamotrigine’ and ‘Buspirone’ are supposed to help fix your head, maybe they are working but you honestly can’t tell. The only one that you can tell is doing something is ‘Bupropion’ and really that's only because it wakes you up it’s why you have to take it before work. It’s also why you feel more and more comfortable pushing the limits on bedtime. “If I don’t get enough sleep its fine, my meds will make me more awake and alert.” You also have prescribed sleeping pills but you don’t take them. They are only for dire situations but the last time you took them your dreams took a dark and rather gruesome turn so you stay away from them now. You glance over to the shower and consider that you should take a shower but “I can’t I have to go to bed for work” and “I don’t want to I’m too tired” also “I’ll just take a shower after I wake up” Which you know is a lie, they all are. You aren’t too tired, you don’t care about getting sleep for work, and you won't do it when you wake up. You can’t say why but you just can’t take a shower right now. So you don’t. You leave the bathroom without another thought and grab the cup by the kitchen sink, fill it with fridge water, and swallow back your pills. You hope the neighbor hadn’t seen you through the kitchen window. It’s an absurd thought but the idea of someone knowing you have to take pills to feel a semblance of okay is terrifying. 

When you were first diagnosed with a mental illness you were around the age of 7. It was depression and anxiety, things you started suffering from after your parents divorce 4 years ago. Though being 7 now and understanding divorce, try explaining that to a 3 year old who doesn’t understand why Daddy isn’t at home with them and Mommy. You were given your first prescription pills at the age of 7, and though she meant well your mother lied to you about what the pills were for. Your father on the other hand did not lie to you, was it because he cared? Maybe but mostly you think it was to be defiant towards your mother. The two hated each other at this time period. By not lying to you he made you upset with your mom for not telling the truth and resentful of the pills or as he referred to them “crazy pills”. 

“Crazy Pills” that's what you think when you take them, when you look at the bottles in the bathroom, when you even remember that you need to take them. One little phrase from nearly 20 years ago and it still haunts you to this day. It has foiled every other attempt at getting better mental health. But this time will be different. You hope. 

Once you have downed your pills, you start to feel this strange anxiety. It’s a morning anxiety usually where you feel this need to move and everything is going to slow. Quickly turning you head up the stairs to the second floor, it's more of a finished attic space where the ceiling height in the middle is just an inch or so above your head. This is the best part of your house. It’s the cleanest because you only come up here to go to sleep or fold laundry. Ducking through the bedroom door. Hurriedly you get undressed down to your boxers and turn on the fan. Crawling into bed you plug your phone in and grab a dissolvable melatonin, hoping that it’ll act quicker than your sleep anxiety can. If the sleep anxiety hits first you’ll be up for another three hours at least. It’s then that you remember what had put you in such a terrible mood. Scrolling through your phone you come across a post from a member of your “friend” group talking about how they all went and did something “had so much fun with all my friends!” You weren’t invited. You had always felt like you weren’t really a part of the group but you had always said it was because of your paranoid thoughts. Day by day though you start to notice that no, no you were right. They don’t care that you aren’t around, they don’t miss you, they wouldn’t notice if you disappeared, they wouldn’t care if you died other than to garner sympathy for themselves. You realize once again how much time and energy you’ve wasted on people trying to be who they want you to be just to be thrown away. Again. It stings a lot worse now, they are still friends with your ex, they still hang out with her and talk to her. Your breakup was mutual but no one thought to ask you if you were doing okay. Why would they? You don’t show your feelings, how could they possibly know you have any if you never show them. Robots don’t have feelings and at this point you just feel like a robot. A shell of a person. You do as you always do, distract yourself. Flipping through tabs on your phone you find one of fanfiction and start reading until the melatonin kicks in and finally you are asleep. You’ll wake up multiple times before you actually get up. You may get up in 3 hours or 8 but at least now you can sleep and forget all your worries until you wake up and they all come crashing back down on you.