November 11, 2023
I’ve set out to do many things today, and have lasted about ten minutes, tops, on any one of them. My mind is racing, I’m anxious, and I’m full of anger. I can’t accomplish much under these conditions. I was able to change the litter box. A five-minute task. Feel good about that. But vacuuming up the litter proved too much.
I’ve reading to do for school, and I can’t quiet my mind enough to get through a paragraph. I start thinking of everything else crowding my mind and my life and I just can’t focus. I set the book aside.
I look at Facebook, which I despise doing and despise myself for doing. I find a comment I vehemently disagree with and skewer the author. I feel justified. I remember I’m not supposed to be wasting my time on Facebook and I remember I’m in seminary and focused on developing my spirituality and in light of that, I should stop being such an asshole, so I close Facebook and go to the news.
The news simply lathers me up further. I delete the news to get it off my watchlist. Then I don’t have to think about watching it because it’s not there. But now I look at the list and see my news is no longer there. Where is it? Did mom delete it? Goddamn it! Mom deleted MY SHOW! I restore the news from the deleted list and start to watch it. Oh ya. I watched this. I deleted it. Not mom. I’ve so many things to be angry with her about right now, but I can’t blame her for deleting my news. No. I deleted it. Why? In an effort to pull my focus off the ugliness of today’s events and prepare my mind for my studies.
I turn back to the textbook I abandoned a half hour ago. Still can’t concentrate. I push that one aside and take up another. Pointless. What good does it do to show up for class having done all the reading and having absorbed so little? Pointless.
I consider lying down, listening to a podcast. I think about how impossible it is for me to just be in silence. I have developed this idea that if I’m not feeding my brain with information, not listening to a podcast or an audiobook, I’m wasting time. I’m desperate for silence, for calm, for stillness, and I can’t get a hold of it. Everything I do seems to push it further from me. Of course everything I do pushes stillness away, because duh, everything I do is completely counter intuitive to the quieting of my mind. And yet all the things I fill my time with are valuable important things. Right? They are, right?
This is anxiety. This is mania. I have no idea how much of the turmoil is because of what I’m doing, or how much of what I’m doing is because of the turmoil. I’m in torment.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash