Fighting the Tiring Fight

Last week was a new experience that I have never encountered before and I haven’t really figured out what I did differently, but I did want to share and reflect on it’s happenings. The Brain Demon was coming at me hard, like a football player about to sack the QB. I was having a hard time waking up, I felt like I was sick in the mornings, I was having a hard time at night functioning after I got home because I was so tired. He was riding on my back and weighing about 50 more pounds each day. I could see his plan of trying to pin me down and drag me into the valley, but what was different this time was…. I was able to resist.

This past week was kind of all around different for me. I had the best optimistic attitude and smile even when the hard shit was happening in the background. I chose to be happy and I stuck with it because it was important to me to stay on the sunny side. When the Brain Demon was sizing me up, I was deciding how to bring joy to someone else so I could find a genuine place to be happy. This is abnormal! But, it is obviously where I need to focus my attention. If I am able to see the mudslide before it completely lets loose, maybe I can continue to keep it at bay by focusing on a more positive side of things. Maybe that’s what finding genuine happiness does for you, it gives you a shield to protect yourself with. Maybe that’s what happens when all the things that are weighing down your body and soul are let go, you are able to fight the imminent battles more aggressively because you can put the upmost energy into them.

Finding happiness has been that constant struggle between, “I’m going to be okay”, “I am definitely not okay and my life sucks”, and “I am on top of the world!” All the extremes, all the time, no matter what. I have had all kinds of days and all kinds of feelings, and I still do have bad days, but I am getting stronger at them. It’s amazing how you go so long not knowing how to control your feelings and thoughts and then you hit rock bottom. There is nowhere to go and no one to really help you up (there to support you while you get up, YES, but they can’t help you out of rock bottom), you have to figure out how to claw your way out and realize you are all you really have in the end. You have to learn to cope with yourself.

What I find so hard is that I can be genuinely happy and see that everything is going so right, how am I still being blind sided by all the sadness, anxiety, and pain. It makes me furious with myself. What the F*** is wrong with you! Everything is the best it has been in years and you can’t get your shit together! I have like the meanest inner bully, but she is so tired of living this way. It is completely exhausting and frustrating when your entire life is run by how you wake up in the mornings. It is so discouraging when you start doing so well and getting it all together and then it f***ing crashes down right in front of you. I even bragged to some of my closest friends about how far on top I was last week and, like always, it is a hard, fast fall right back down to the bottom.

I thought maybe if I was more persistent than the Brain Demon that he would give up and let me skip this ride, just once…. Instead, he gives me a harder blow, with worse symptoms, and stronger feelings each morning. He knows how to make the bad thoughts flood in, he exhausts me by letting me think I am strong enough to outrun the feelings and then when he is tired of letting me run, he gives me more than I can handle because I am already exhausted from running for so long. He catches me and I am barely functioning by then and then it is decision time. It is easier to give up and stop living this way, stop the constant chasing and running, stop the constant hurting and confusion, stop the burden of what my brain does and effects in my life or, I can take the hard road, which drags me through the mud and rocks for a while then eventually let’s me stand up. Again and again and again…..

Sometimes when I am trying to decide if the fight is worth it I try to decide if I am ever going to be out of this cycle? Is this a rest of my life thing? Can I do this for 45+ more years? Do I want to put a, maybe, one day family through this? I sure as hell don’t want to pass this hard ass life onto another human! I wouldn’t torture anyone with my Brain Demon, and the thought that I could pass him down even in the slightest way, scares me beyond words. Do I want to put a spouse through the uncertainty of which person they are going to be with that day? How unfair is that… leave someone wishing that the real Priscilla was home today instead of a scared, sad monster who doesn’t want to get out of her pajamas.

What is most discouraging is the trickery that, “You are strong enough to beat this!”Oh just kidding, give it a few more days until you are non functioning then I will overpower you completely and crush that hopeful spirit. Every cycle we go through gets a little worse. The symptoms are a little more severe, the thoughts are a little more powerful, and the fight is a little harder to conquer. I hate that my goal for today is just to remember my purpose to live.

I don’t have much else to say this morning….

Our Story ;sn’t Over

P<3