A starter list of gratitude

I ask that sadness, guilt, shame, self-hatred and anger leave my body.

Thank you to my brain for making serotonin and dopamine.
I thank my brain for helping me survive.

I am grateful for my husband, for shelter, for my dog, for clothing, for food, for air, for where I live, for the trees and the water. I am grateful for birds, I am grateful for seals and sea lions. I am grateful for music.

I am grateful for kind people. I am grateful for my friends. I am grateful for feeling loved. I am grateful for laughter, for moments of shared hilarity.
I am grateful for this space to write these thoughts down.

With this of all things

being sad is past tiresome. It's a new year, but really it's just a different day. It's only an agreed upon frame of reference. I feel like I am waiting but I am only waiting for myself to show up, there will be no miracle, no one will come to save me if I cannot do it for myself. It's a horrible feeling that I cannot find any spark, I think I only have them as I rub off on others, I suppose that is fitting. Wood, metals, they emit energy when struck together. balloons and materials emit smaller sparks as electrical energy. Being alone I struggle to expend my own energy, but I fear being with others, no one knows the fear, I prefer to stay in hiding, to sit with my envy, my sadness, my remorse, my disappointment. I am living in fear of being alive. My courage escapes me, it is dwarfed by my sadness. It is said first mourn then work for change, but I can't seem to stop mourning. I sometimes work through the tears but it gets hard and my tears need their expression this much I know because they persist so mightily.With this of all things I would that I was finished.

Trying to buck up

Wishing I felt happier.
Wishing I could experience joy.

But then it never seems ok to wish for these things when:

I never go hungry
I have a roof over my head
A man who loves me
A family who say they love me
A dog who bites me less every day
An income

so  I try to buck up
but instead feel a fuck up

washed out

pain
in a hole a deep one
pain I'm alive
I guess
some say I'll be missed
for all they call me
i'm already missing
heartaches for want of feeling loved

want to be worthy of this life
want to do something worthy in this life
not this beigeness
this dull numbness that washes everything out
not this in between slashed with agony
not this

stuck at a loss. removed from myself at a distance again. unsure what to do with myself. it's frustrating. so much I could be doing but I remain in stagnation.

blah.

it's such a non-state.

nothing going in nothing coming out.

solid state.

In the club

Warning drama follows: Argh a nice morning ruined by my poor choices. OK so I was already having a bad day and I guess the lesson is that when I am tired, when I have been disturbed in the night by my lovely brain and its propensity for  freakish sideshows (my dreams are permeated with feces, what the hell anyway), that my decision making is definitely narrowed in it's vision of what is wise and what is, clearly, not. A good example of when my desire to fix things should be held firmly in check as it clearly fogs my assessment of situations. AKA back the fuck off.

I know I am trying to learn to be kind to myself, but all I want to do right now is swear and stuff (i was going to say shit as a kind of colloquialism but given my dreams perhaps not the best word).

I am so pissed that i am not doing better, that I remain immersed in depression particularly, true there has been improvement but not to the extent that I am wanting, the extent to which marks health, to me.

Primal scream therapy and an extended round of beating on drums or cutting wood or getting out the old bow saw and cutting big logs and just exhausting this rage I feel inside. ARGH.
I am shaking probably the caffeine isn't helping and so since i haven't been writing I decided to write cause it's like lancing a wound or draining a wound of all it's infected bits. Lots of pus. lots.

Had a really really great talk with a good friend last might, one who really gets it and helps to remind me that I have experienced some difficulties, that the work we did was not your usual caseload and thus must not be measured by the usual standards of what constitutes a normal caseload. What we dealt with, generally on a daily basis, crisis after crisis, threats to people threats to ourselves (when I got my first death threat my boss and I laughed about it, I felt proud like I was finally in "the club"). Trying to ascribe normalcy to situations beyond imagination, beyond "life at home". Trying to find some meaning some measure of what you're doing is helping in a morass of helplessness, what if the recruitment center told you the truth what if the posters told you, showed you what you could really expect. Crazy-making, situations that are all piss and blood and shit in every way, like the pool of money, the scraps of hope almost but not quite entirely obscured by the filth of people doing to people

ARGH.

Impulse Control

So I have completed 12 sessions of neuro-feedback and have been kicked to the curb with my last EEGs showing enough improvement. Went through some feelings of abandonment and have experienced an unwelcome return to the raging self-doubt. I think I have improved impulse control except for hallowe'en (and every other category of) chocolate.

Impulse control
want something don't take it
want to say something
swallow my words
want to touch, push punch
restraint

want want want
don't don't don't
won't won't won't

program successfully installed.