You Mean, You Can’t Read My Mind

Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people…but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.
– Steve Maraboli

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
– Carrie Fisher

I don’t get resentment. I can’t help but feel it but at the same time, I realize it’s pointless. It’s the results of expectations not being met and a lack of communication. Both of these things I’m guilty of so really the only person to blame is myself. 

If I set an expectation, communicate it, and it isn’t met, I don’t know who’s fault it is. My anxiety will tell me it’s my fault, but according to that bitch, everything is my fault. Why do I care so much about who’s to blame when something goes wrong? Why does it eat at me like a fucking poison?

Like most things I don’t have an answer, though my mental illness will say it’s because I have to control EVERYTHING. If something goes wrong, my fault. If I get in financial trouble, my fault. If I have to choose between eating now or paying a bill, yup my fault.

I started writing this hoping it would help… and it’s just deepening my depression. If my recent string of posts has told people anything, yes I think I’ve fallen into a depression again. I’m not happy, no matter how much I try to be it just rings hollow. Every time I try to take care of myself anxiety and depression double team me to remind me that I’m shit.

The news is depressing and discouraging so I only look at it in small doses, focusing instead on podcasts and looking for Star Wars news with Episode IX now filming. Enter my tag team of self-destruction reminding me that I’ve become the thing I’ve said since I was a kid I wouldn’t be.

Storytime to explain that. I have this vivid memory in 8th grade of reading The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen and thinking because part of my family is from Germany I had a duty to learn as much as I could about the Holocaust. It was my job to learn and do what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again, even if my ancestors were already in the US when it happened. 

Flash forward to now, watching Darth Cheeto run for office and fucking win by running on a platform of fear and division. The things happening in my own home country right now are horrifying. Rumors about Transgender individuals getting their passports revoked, asylum seekers being denied, families being ripped apart, detention centers that are an awful lot like concentration camps, states passing laws to protect businesses from discriminating against the LGBTQ2IA community. There are fucking alarm bells going off in my head 24/7 because I’m watching history repeat itself and I’m not doing enough to stop it.

Mental illness is the enemy of logic. I KNOW all I can do is be informed, vote, use what little platform I have afforded to me by being a cis-gender white woman to amplify the voices of others. It’s perfectly okay to only spend a short amount of time looking at the news, I don’t have to plug into the 24 hours news cycle. Enter mental illness and the fear of missing something important.

The world is on fire, history is repeating and I’m doing NOTHING. Therefore I am shit. That was the point of the story… Yup, I’m sure that only makes sense in my head because anxiety logic leaps.

Like, I know none of this logical. So my brain tries to distract by making me obsessed with other things. Which really just makes it all worse. It’s infinitely frustrating that I’m trying to just… get back to a good middle? MER. Have I said how much mental illness sucks? Fighting with your brain and the chemicals it creates is exhausting.