Life has been pretty hard the past few months. My moods have been strangling me more and more, and it’s getting more and more difficult to do self-care and homecare. This last week has been especially rough. It’s getting harder and harder to stay out of the hospital. It’s just too much for my coping skills to handle. But then my counselor said, why are you stuffing it all in? You need to get mad!
Mad?
I don’t do mad.
Only I do, just not intentionally...
I get mad by yelling at my best friend when all she is doing is to try and help me. I get mad at my counselor when she has good suggestions because I didn’t think of them first. I get mad at my mom for having an injury because it’s just one more thing to worry about.
I get mad at them because I have stuffed in all I could possibly stuff, and I’m starting to explode.
And I know they are safe.
They are not going to leave me if I’m mad.
For over a year I have been struggling with chronic sinus infections. Nobody can figure out why or what to do next, and they have pretty much all given up. So, I gave up, too. I didn’t fight anymore, I didn’t stand up and say, “You have to help me!” I just gave up and decided that I was going to have to suffer for the rest of my life.
I started a new job, which I absolutely love, but it has shown me just how hard it really is for me to work. That I am never going to be able to work full-time again, it’s just not an option. That as all my friends are posting their 17th or 20th or whatever year of teaching, I am always going to be stuck at three. And it sucks. And I should get mad at my bipolar. Or I could even get mad at God. But I just stuff it in.
I decided I wanted to start dating. I am longing for someone to love that will love me back. Someone that I can cuddle with and share secrets with and share my life with. But I can’t even keep up with changing my clothes. I can’t use a stove, I can’t always shower, my life is pretty rough. How can I bring someone into that mess. But if I don’t, how will they feel when they discover that this will happen….over and over again…because I have a cyclical illness. Again I should be mad at my illness, or at God…but I stuff it.
I wish stuffing worked.
I am super amazing at stuffing.
It doesn’t work though. It is a short solution, but eventually you run out of room. Things come out that you don’t mean to say, and you may even hurt someone you love unintentionally. It sucks.
And so I’m going to work at “doing mad”. Getting mad at the situations and people that are making my life really hard, and standing up for my rights. Probably I’ll write. It’s easiest to put my words into writing. But maybe one day I’ll be able to say it, too. To stand up to the person that’s hurting me and say, “This is not okay.”
Maybe. But not today. And that’s okay, too.
Comments