All This Wastin Inside

Somewhat apropos I hear the lyrics of Outside in my head today.

"I'm on the outside
I'm looking in
I can see through you
See your true colors
'Cause inside you're ugly
Ugly like me
I can see through you
See to the real you..."

or even

"All the times that I cried
All this wastin
It's all inside
And I feel all this pain
Stuffed it down
It's back again
And I lie here in bed
All alone
I can’t mend but I feel
Tomorrow will be okay"


I saw my friend Sharon a week or so ago, who handed me a bag from her nurse practitioner with samples of Lexipro. maybe 10 day’s worth? She put a million parentheses around it, as if I were going to be insulted and she was positively Chinese waiter in her obsequiousness. 'Really" I assured her "I’m NOT insulted. Truly"

I have been - and said it often - anxious since forever. Anxious and - not depressed - but of a depressed nature that I work daily to overcome. And it’s difficult. I feel periods of happiness, many in each day, many minutes of hours, in life Id say I am happy slash satisfied. But joy or release or even relaxation are foreign to me.

When I was younger I could sleep away depression. If something was getting to me, something had me anxious, two days in bed, some bad tv and a few jumping jacks and Id be good to go. Now it’s much harder. Because there is no sleeping in, and no reprieve from tasks, from chores, from ideas or challenges to do the next thing. As I write this I feel breath in my throat. Minutia. Trash bags filling my driveway of stripped wallpaper, of a months worth of recycling. Broken barrels where squirrels gnawed through for snacks. One small area consuming me, taunting me, needing to be organized and cleaned - then on to another then another. I can feel each thing calling for attention and taking even the time to write takes away from the next thing to do.

Logically, I’m insane. Its trash. Its paper. It can wait.
Illogically I’m consumed with penance projects. If you do THIS then this reward will come. If you do that, then THIS will happen. I furiously try to create order and harmony with limited time and tools.
"just LIVE your life" My god, a nickel for every time and I could BUY a new life.

That aside, today is crushing. Its 10am and instead of feeling like the day unfolds in front of me, I feel the countdown timer screaming "FINISH SOMETHING" "Do SOMETHING" "Finalize Something".

I’m irrationally mad at my husband - feeling so much that so very much of all this stress is the result of this move, or living in the house that needs work with him abdicating all responsibility. His solution to throw money at things assumes that we both have money - which we do not - and that there is a team of designers waiting to solve for us. He thinks you can call any fence guy, and a landscape designer from HGTV appears. So everything we do, everything we need, is left to me. Every trash bag chewed through - mine to clean. Every sock not sorted, every paper not filed, every call to return, every minute of every day is full of tasks that have somehow become mine. Yes, it's life for sure. And I’m lucky to be able to complain about my first world problems. Nonetheless I’m depressed constantly because the never ending relentless weight of it consumes me.

I put the Lexipro in a cabinet. do I think it would help? yes. But there’s something in me that feels like I can be fixed some other way. That if only I solve for x, create for y. If only I get things put away, sorted, cleaned, repaired, planned, landscaped, finished - then I will feel peace. That if only I work harder. And harder still. Maybe skip sleeping? Maybe skip reading? watching a show? But wait. I have skipped those things. And I’ve skipped friendships, and the gym, and hobbies, and exercise. I somehow created a situation where I put my fist IN the bucket of water and the water overflows to clean up, and I take my fist OUT of the bucket and the water simply flows into the hole.

Lexipro would make me not care. Id have the same life, I just wouldn’t give a fuck.
I'm not sure that that’s the answer I want. That feels like masking vs fixing.
But at my age, if its not fixed now, will I ever be fixed?
And am I meant to be?

If you broke your leg, you'd use a crutch. Yes.
If you had an infection, you'd take an antibiotic. Yes.
So if you cant regulate your emotions, why not take something to smooth them out? I do not know.

Because it feels like quitting I think. Because if I dont drive myself to do this, it will grow into more tasks, more projects, more minutia. By staying up daily, managing the tide, arent i keeping it from flooding? Or am I looking to stem the flood with packets of brightly colored craft sand.

And I look to my left, and to my right, and I find myself resenting, hating, annoyed by, annoyed with everyone around me. because Im angry all the time.
Because Im not sure how I twisted myself into this person that I am today.

Every decision I try to make I feel angry making. Im not sure I can trust any of my feelings because they all are existing under the umbrelaa of being angry. So did this person betray me? Blow me off? Insult me? Who knows. Am I terrible for not calling? Not seeing? Not responding? Who knows. All the rules of etiqueete seem to have changed, the rules of friendship seem simply to be "Stay false" and the rules of marriage and mothering seem to be "Stay strong".

Im tired. Sad. Discouraged.
I have a LARGE box of boy shoes. Larger then a jumbo box of diapers or a storage tote for ice skates. As large as an amazon delivered shopvac. And within, all the pairs are jumbled. And almost every day i leave the house without putting shoes on my kids because I cant find the match. So today, my task is to go to the $1 store and buy cheap ziplock bags, gallon sized. I will SORT those m*therf*cking shoes one by each and label each bag with the sizes and know, for f*cks sake, just WHERE the goddamn shoes are in the morning. Its going to take me 2 hours. I dont see anyone else living this way. Im crazy I think. and sad about it. So I'll hide it and go out today and charm the doctors assistant, or make the dentist laugh, or smile through the phone at my inlaws all the while sad that I am me and that the tide of possessions and products and tiny chores floods me.