A Week in the Life of Someone with Mental Illness
Author's note: First I believe the week begins on Monday. If that invalidates all of my arguments and points attempted to be made, well you may have too strong of a stance on this issue. But. I'll argue it with you. I have done so before.
Monday is hell. The world seems pre-conditioned to dislike Mondays, Bob Geldof and the murderer he was referring to being just a mere and slight observation of a good chunk of what the entire Western world believes. For someone like me, I absorb the feelings of others, I take it all personally. I can't help it. This day is on you.
Tuesday of this week opened with the best of intentions. I woke up at 4.00 am, as I do when I have a proactively good attitude about the future. Oh, and by future, I mean all of it. I feel the glee of a perfect life ahead of me. No sleeping in because of all the reasons I sleep in (more on that later.) I extrapolate the feeling of good as if it will last forever. The day won't beat me up, I have all of my sayings in order to push myself (mostly about assertion and the like.) Luckily this continued long enough in the day so that I could fake enough greatness to satisfy the picture I feel I need to paint of myself for others. I consider this a good day.
Wednesday starts in hell. All of my feelings about the future have flipped in the absolute opposite direction. Again, my brain—or the brain that feels these things, as I truly believe I have more than one—only accepts absolutes. Shit is bad with work and money and everything all at once. Hell. To me, this will last forever. I will never not feel this hell. I work to merely put fires out in order to attempt to get to a point where I am not being screamed at because of the two-hundred-plus projects I manage[1]. I am a failure and I end the day as a failure.
Seeing as I have been launched into hell the previous day, Thursday is a fog of anxiety. I remember none of it other than not wanting to be in this world.[2] I spend a good part of the day in bed. I think.
Friday is spent obsessing. This is my day to worry about the only free days I can possibly have to extricate myself from 15-hour workdays in a business I'm already unsure of. But obsession here manifests itself in the opposite way of the other myriad feelings I've had about my entire life this week… I am not thinking of the here and now. Every potential email or instant message could ruin what I need Saturday and Sunday to be. This is not comfortable, but it could lead to comfort. I make sure I do absolutely no work that could possibly go wrong and bleed into needing fixes over the weekend.
Saturday, most likely, everything is fine again. I feel I can slightly cut myself off from my business and do creative things. Now, as of late, my only creative outlet has been this here site. That's ok. I also promote my artwork. I also have fun programming projects to do on the computer to better automate my life. If I can avoid people at work (and by avoid I mean mitigate potential disasters with whatever wording is necessary to push off problems into Sunday or Monday) all is pretty good. I feel… well, unfulfilled. But I feel an odd "unfulfilled" on Saturday. I feel like I can be fulfilled if I just act on certain compulsions. Something. Not sure. But I know fulfillment is possible. I hope for the day to not end. That is why I woke up at 2.30 am.
Sunday should be like Saturday, but I often find myself with the energy to approach work projects proactively. That makes me happy. I own part of my business, I am not an employee. Though my business now involves other people, and my feelings on other people are tepid when I'm in a good mood (less than tepid if worse.) Sunday should be good, other than as the hours pass it becomes closer to Monday. My fears of what Monday will bring increase by the second. I can actually feel it. Ok, that was hyperbole. By blocks of minutes.
That is a typical week. I have OCD. I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I look at this and think: crap, please don't tell me I'm also bipolar.
[1] There is not a typo nor hyperbole in this sentence.
[2] It's ideation. Don't call the meds, ok?
