The Rationally Irrational

CW: Discussion of suicidal ideation and mental illness. I am not suicidal, but this does discuss the general patterns which have lead me to being suicidal in the past. 

I've decided I have to do the thing I've been avoiding doing for a few years now, go back to therapy.

I'm doing this because I can currently see how the tendrils of my mental illness are getting in the way of my writing. I'm not feeling badly, but I can see how this thing which has undermined my success and progress all of my life is coming to influence my ability to write. It's essentially throwing boundaries to writing up faster than I can dismantle them. Over the last few years, I've done relatively well with getting through whatever mental minefield I encounter in order to write and get writing done. Unfortunately, as this aspect of my mental illness is a part of me, as I've progressed, it's not defeated, it just presents in new ways.

It's a funny thing to say, "I have PTSD." It's what my diagnosis is. It comes with different executive disfunction issues, depending on the individual, but those aren't the worst of it. I know I can learn to deal with those. I have, at many points in my life, developed Rube Goldberg style systems to deal with it. I can build workarounds. I know that can be done.

What doesn't come with saying, "I have PTSD," is the general populations recognition of the thing that, to me, is more pernicious and insidious. That is the feeling and the sense that no matter what I do or what I've done, no matter how hard I might work, no matter how vigilant I may be, there's a part of me that undermines it all because it seems to act on the belief that I don't deserve anything good in my life. I am not enough. I am terrible. Really, it seems like the intention is to insure I end up in position where everything I have built, created, tended or worked for is gone, and I'm once again in the position where life seems unlivable. It always ends up in the same place, with me feeling like I don't deserve to live.

To be clear, I don't feel this way now. I know from experience that this is how it works though. I can run from it in a number of different directions, but it always catches up. 

At this point, I'm coming to see that this part of me is already trying to undermine my success as a writer. I've started to see there might actually be a path to becoming a writer who can financially sustain themselves. I don't want or need much. I know I can work however hard it takes to achieve that. I know I'm intelligent enough to discern how to get there. All of that being true, I'm absolutely terrified of achieving that, and having this thing, what we call mental illness, pull it all down on top of me. I've also been afraid because for many years, I used work and staying busy as a way to run from it, but when I'd achieved more than I had at any other point in my life, it was responsible for pulling the rug out from underneath me. It destroyed the best parts of my life, and eroded my ability to access the best parts of myself, the things I had been able to use to keep it at bay until then. What I didn't realize was using work and staying busy as the thing to keep it at bay meant I was already running on fumes and teetering on burnout when it started knocking pillars out from underneath my life. There were no reserves in the tank. I was worn out before the fight was in full swing. 

The truth is, if PTSD is anything at all, for me at least, it's the unshakable belief somewhere inside my own unconsciousness, that I don't deserve fulfillment, happiness or even to live. Whatever that is, whatever it is one might call it, that has to go. I deserve to try and have a life without that. 

I've accepted that I'm taking on what many people would see as an irrational belief, this belief that I could sustain myself through my writing. I understand that it looks that way when we look at the number of writers who never get there. My response to this is that we all have irrational beliefs of some kind, and for a lot of people, those irrational beliefs have some positive outcomes in their experiences with living. Hell, I even believe it's irrational. There is no reason to believe I will be able to succeed at making a living as a writer, in the face of how many excellent writers never do. I don't care that it's irrational. I'm choosing to believe it, because right now, that's what I need to keep trying. At the same time, I recognize the trap that this is. If I don't deal with this now, it's going to eat away at whatever opportunity might come my way, and even if I recognize it well enough to take advantage of it, half of that effort will involve fighting myself, this thing. 

For the last few years, I've avoided therapy, because part of this cycle has been that I begin to decide to try to put myself back together, after having had an long term acute episode, and I do succeed in starting to or in getting completely on my feet. One of the strange traps of our current health care system is the in between period, where you're not completely destitute, and maybe you can even afford health insurance, but the cost of the health insurance means you can't afford the actual care the health insurance is for, because of co-pays, out of network costs etc. I've had the experience on more than one occasion of picking myself up, following a long period of suicidal ideation, which systematically destroys my life, and starting to move forward with rebuilding my life, only to find that I've succeeded in doing so, which has resulted in not being able to continue the care necessary to get me to that point. When the choice starts being a roof over your head or the medications and therapy that helped you get there, it's pretty easy to choose the roof over your head. 

Not to mention that if If you happen to live in a place where mental health care is easy to access, and the providers aren't so swamped they all have months long waitlists for new patients, consider yourself among the lucky. Finding a therapist that can see you is not as easy for everyone as picking up the phone, much less finding one you can build a real therapeutic relationship with. 

More than anything else, I can see the way this fear is effecting my ability to write or to even think about how to build my future as a writer. I'm just constantly terrified I'm going to start to succeed or even get to the point where I can say I have or am succeeding, and this thing, this mental illness that has haunted my life, is going to tear it all down, again. It's preventing me from moving forward.  

This is probably the first time in my life I'm approaching therapy as a preventative though. I'm not experiencing suicidal ideation. I'm not just coming out of a long period of acute symptoms. I'm doing pretty well, all things considered, but I need whatever this thing is to be gone. If not gone, I need to know I have the tools to be able to prevent it from blowing up my life again or I need to know I will never have that, that I need to be content with where I am in life now, and that I'm never going to be able to make a life with writing. 

I've never looked at my mental health, and the maintenance of it, as preparing to succeed. It's always been this thing where I'm trying to get rid of some awful thing about me. In some ways, it still is that, but I realize at this point, no matter how much success I reach, no matter how many goals I fulfill, whatever other measure one might use, I'm not going to be able to enjoy it and feel good about it if I don't deal with this, and in turn, I'm going to end up undermining my own well being and success, which always ends up hurting other people in my life too. 

It's easy to keep it at bay when there's nothing it can take from me. I'm recognizing now that even the idea of having things I want in my life is something it can take, and because of my experience, that's terrifying. It hasn't quite meant a complete paralysis, but it's sure meant having to work that much harder just to do the simple things like sit down and write. 

Because I've lived with this for so long, there's also a part of me that thinks I can't ever get rid of it. I have no idea what it would be like to live without knowing some part of me wants to kill me. I can't remember life before it. I imagine there was a life before it, but there isn't enough of it in my memory to prove it either. Maybe that's wrong though. Maybe I can have a life without this or even a life which is marginally less harassed and abused by it. The last time I thought I had it beaten, it was a catastrophic mistake, and I guess I'm afraid of that too. 

What I can say for sure, is that "deserves got nothin' to do with it." There are so many absolutely horrible people out there, with all the best life has to offer at their fingertips. The bottom feeders who've built lives profiting from pain and ignorance, and there are sure plenty of those fucking people. They aren't fighting some part of themselves that says they don't deserve to live, much less thrive. I can honestly say that when I look at the world around me, nothing I've done would earn this as the punishment. What must it be like to be a Sackler? I can't even begin to imagine. What kind of sweet delusions must they live with? 

I'm not perfect, for sure. I've hurt people. I've been careless with their feelings and their trust. I've hurt people I loved most, consumed by this thing, unable to take into account how its effect on me was burdening them. I've been selfish at times. As far as I can tell though, that's all pretty average for human beings. People have hurt me in very similar ways, and you know, I really have never held that against them. Sure, I get angry for a little while, in response to the pain, but it never lasts too long. Maybe it's because I understand what it is to hurt people without ever intending to, but I can look back at almost every instance of people I care or cared about hurting me somehow, and I can see what they were struggling with, and feel sympathy for it. I have really just counted it as part of the messy business of being human. Somehow, I have never found my way to believing I don't deserve this thing, and that in a real world sense, whether or not I deserve it doesn't even matter.