Goldilocks

I’m always out of balance. Either I sleep too much and can’t get up in the morning, or I wake up too early or am awake for a couple hours in the middle of the night. I try so hard to get my sleep schedule right but it never feels right. I want the regularity more than anything in the world.

Sometimes I am so overwhelmed by life and its demands that any text message I get feels like too much pressure for me, I feel a sinking sense of obligation and irritation —especially for daily contact. I feel like an asshole. Other nights, I feel bored and lonely and just scroll through my phone trying to find someone who will message me…. craving attention and feeling abandoned by the “busy” people in my life who can’t make time for me… and just get so grossed out by neediness and attachment to my phone.

Sometimes all I want is a break so I can do nothing… sometimes I have too much down time I don’t know how to fill. I get depressed when responsibilities are relentless and depressed when i have too much quiet time to sit with my feelings.

Sometimes my hobbies fulfill me and I’m in a flow and I love that I am someone who has multiple interests beyond work & netflix… other times I slog through my hobbies as “the distraction” coping mechanism and I just feel myself going through the motions and I’m not sure if it’s just a form of avoidance.

Sometimes I crave friendships and being out on the town and the excitement of spontaneity that can come with socializing… but then I’ll be out and craving the comfort of the home where I don’t have to perform and be joyful.

I haven’t figured out any kind of formula. I feel like a pendulum just constantly swinging from one extreme and then to the other side and back again. I don’t think of myself as someone who is never satisfied — but it does seem like a never-ending quest to find the Goldilocks “just right.” I can be present and in the moment, but what works for a moment just always seems to get ruined again. I can’t replicate what works and avoid what doesn’t. It’s the opposite every time.

I find myself mired in self hatred right now— because of my hypocrisy. Because my shame and embarrassment that stems from hating some people who seem to be demanding my attention and then being obsessed with those who gave me the kind of attention I wanted only to take it back…. with the same explanations of being too consumed by life that I gave to people who were annoying me. I felt guilt before that I was treating people unfairly and now I feel my neediness to others is just driving them away. Everything about myself irritates me.

It’s like I never advanced or grew from my 12 year old self even though I am 40 now and a grown ass woman. There are parts of me, the way I feel, the way I behave, the way I react, that makes me so steeped in disgust or self-criticism. Despite all the years of therapy and exploration and mastery of understanding the root of my issues, I don’t change.

I am never complacent. I try harder than anyone I know to be a healthy contented human being. Self-awareness, following the supposedly tried and tested regiments of healthy eating and exercise and hobbying and meaningful work still leave me stranded in this land of everything always feeling wrong. Me always feeling wrong.

I don’t self harm as often as I have in my low period. But I won’t ever rid myself of this coping habit. I will never turn to holding a cube of ice or tensing and relaxing my muscles to overcome fits of overwhelming emotions. I can’t beat my demons and I wish I felt accepted the way I am. I wish I could say aloud all the ways I hate myself and no one try to fix it, encourage me to fix myself.

I wish I could just figure out my body and how to get myself to sleep every night enough hours uninterrupted. Don’t tell me again how critical sleep is to my mental and physical health — I’m already obsessed. And I’m a constant failure nevertheless. I just can’t get it just right. I feel ashamed of wanting things, of needing anything from anyone, for having expectations, for feeling hurt and justified by how someone has hurt me, of how little the overarching course of my life improves and that i seem to bounce from crisis to crisis, of the chronic nature of my depression that I can’t overcome, of my weight gain, of . . . of who I am.