The devil made me do it

Stop beating myself up?

I think I’m done doing that and now I just want to isolate and lick my self inflicted wounds.

My lover said stop beating yourself up.

So, I’m not going to do it out loud any longer.

I will find a quiet spot and ponder.

I did that once. Then I did it twice. Before I knew it, I had been doing it for a few months straight. It just kind of happened.

Usually at about five or six o’clock at night, I would have to concede to myself that I hadn’t done anything all day except sit by the window.

One day turned into the next and eventually they were all one big blur and I could no longer keep track of what day it was when I woke up.

Then came the tiredness and the overwhelming feeling that I was drowning in the work piled up around me, and not knowing where to start because it seemed like everything was an insurmountable task. And the neverending plight of not being able to find anything because you aren’t organized… flashlight, scissors, that bag of stuff you bought at Walmart.

That wastes time so you continue to get further behind.

And you forget what gives you pleasure.

You stay inside the house and life passes you by and your friends and loved ones are screaming out in worry and confusion, fearful of what’s going on in your head after you’ve abandoned them without a moment’s notice.

They feel sick and helpless because you shut them out.

Some of them stay for the long haul and others just move on, afraid of not knowing what to do or how to react or help.

What seemed to spark that downward spiral was my lover’s year long absence. He had lost his job and his wife was retired and we sometimes went a whole week without talking and it left this huge hole. I felt completely abandoned and fragile because it was then that I fully understood that his wife truly did come first and whatever price he had to pay for that, he paid, even if it meant forfeiting me.

Reality check.

I realized that I had been living in a fairy tale.

And it knocked me on my ass. I grew depressed because I was experiencing a vicious withdrawal of the dopamine he had provided my brain every day for 8 years running. I ended up in a diagnosed state of catatonic depression. The word “catatonic” describes exactly how you feel, too.

When I was in this depressed state, my lover never gave up on me, or on us. He began to call and he never stopped, whether I answered or not.

Eventually he only tried every three days or so, but one time, he coaxed me out and I drove halfway to see him and turned the car around. It frustrated him and he exploded at me on the phone. He later apologized and called himself an asshole.

That day was a turning point.

He told me he was at a place where he had to give up if I didn’t do my part of the work to maintain a relationship and I began to cry. I didn’t want to lose a man that refused to give up on me. But I was hurt.

I said, “I just want you to love me.”

He said, “I can’t, if you won’t physically see me. If you let me see you, I will.”

So I drove to him.

And that was the beginning of my healing.

I don’t want to slide down that slippery slope again. I take a handful of meds each day to stay on this side of it.

So now when I want to hide, I do it in plain sight. I do it outside or I drive somewhere, so I’m not barricading myself into a room, occupied all day long with my own persistent agenda running through my head.

Once again I am plagued with not being able to shut my mind off, and this manifests itself as nervous energy.

The more I think about it, the more I don’t want to self medicate that way, by isolating, inside OR out.

It was a bad experience all the way around, depression.

The little devil on my shoulder tells me there has to be a better way.

So maybe I’ll try rebellion instead.