Dinner needs cooking. I know this. I know this every single day and yet, there is it. 5pm sneaks up and suddenly it’s there and overwhelming with the lack of possibility. Dinner needs cooking, again.
I wake up in the morning and I am a whirlwind spinning in place. Can’t settle, can’t concentrate. Around and around and around I go, bouncing from task to task until three hours later I realise I’ve forgotten to eat breakfast and my cup of tea sits forgotten and cold on the edge of the bench.
And so I force myself to sit, to work through it. Paperwork first, then recipe creation, a new cup of tea twice microwaved sits to the edge of my laptop. I tweak a recipe and then I have to stand up to look for my recipe notebook.
Three seconds later, I’m half way to my other work space and I’ve forgotten what I was doing. Maybe it was lost in the cries of mummy, needa bottle and can I have a biscuit please mum, and pillow me, and where’s my game, has anyone seen it?
Or maybe it’s just gone and I’m left spinning in circles again in the kitchen, forgetting what I was doing, until I head back to my laptop where the recipe remains open, waiting for me to transcribe it.
And we start again.
Around and around in circles I go while I fight my brain every step of the way.
The payoffs: obsessive memory. amazing information recall. being able to work through a soap recipe on pure muscle memory because I love it and I’m obsessed. hyperfocus when I read.
I’m not sure it’s worth it when I’m standing in the kitchen again, peering into another cold cup of forgotten tea and trying to remember if I had lunch, while I eat all the chocolate biscuits because I need something easy and fast to bring my blood sugar up before I throw up.
So I spin, and I sit, and I dance around, forgetting everything I’m meant to be doing, unable to focus for more than a few minutes. My brain twitches and I stand up, walk around, flick my fingers over and over, fast, faster.
It’s exhausting.
I want so desperately to be one of those women who is organised. I want to steadily make my way through tasks, ticking them off. I want to remember the permission slips and lunch orders every Tuesday, and the home readers, and hats and to name all their jumpers. I want to remember we eat dinner every single day instead of being surprised every evening with the knowledge I should have planned ahead better.
My brain is broken and having to fight it every moment of the day is a battle I keep losing.
There are things I can do, diagnoses to pursue, but who has the time (and just quietly, the money), to seek out a psychologist and then a psychiatrist for everything? I’m already stretched thin, pushed to my limits.
But I want more. I want success, and a firmly comfortable middle class lifestyle. I want to love what I do and earn all the money. I want money in the bank, a safety net for us all.
I want things to just work for me.
And my brain makes everything so much harder than it has to be.
Some of what you go through sounds very similar to what I have gone through my whole life, Von. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy massively changed my life for the better, in every way. Not sure if you have ever had psychological support before, but in Aus you can get 10 sessions bulk billed in a 12 month period if you go to your GP and explain you are suffering anxiety/depression and ask her for a mental health care plan.
Some psychologists (like the one I work for) will fully bulk bill if the GP asks, some always charge a gap and some won’t BB, so you have to make sure of that before you go (and take a copy of your care plan with you!) Most importantly, if you don’t feel the therapist is helping you, do go and find another one who does.
Please forgive me if I sound like I am telling you what to do or lecturing. As someone with a great deal of personal experience of mental health/depression/anxiety issues I do tend to harp on a it, but it comes from a place of wanting to share the help it took me so long to find.
Apparently 80% of people have their mental health improved by simply turning up and talking to a psychologist, no matter what their specialised field of therapy or level of expertise. And 46 (or it might be 48) percent of Australians are experiencing mental health issues, according to the Australia Psychological Society magazine I was perusing.
I fought the notion of psychological counselling for 20 years. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t. It was nothing whatsoever like I thought it would be, and it gave me such an improved quality of life.
I did read something hopeful though, it sounds like your physical energy is up somewhat. At least I hope that’s the case.
And PS, I will deffo be buying more soap, but my little credit card, which is the one I stick to for all my internet purchases as it has a small limit, managed to go over the limit completely with all my ebook purchases and the kids buying stuff from iTunes and steam over the holiday period, and I just had to pay a massive overlimit fee and more to bring it down again. So fucking annnoyed, that wasted money would have bought me loads of soap! Anyway, once I am sure there’s some space on my battered little card, it will be soap for me, I don’t like using the ordinary stuff now, I’m spoiled!
Al
You’ve just described my life. Except for the soap. Maybe the soap would make me feel more productive. Digital products require cohesive thinking and mostly my thoughts are scattered. And dinner. Every goddamn night. Who would have thunk it?
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