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Does having a public journal even have a point?
If I am posting things that aren't being read or cared about, why don't I just write them in a notebook?
Having my thoughts and experience thrown out into the ether with no one returning the call is pointless.
I can't focus on my job. I want to be at home with the cats.
I am feeling emotionally burned out. Talking about emotions and having to engage the world and loved ones is getting to me. I can't do it anymore. I feel stretched thin. To paraphrase Bilbo, like butter spread too thin over bread. I can no longer be present to people in my life. I don't even want to see my friends anymore. I have no interest in checking in on them. I can't even be there for my husband, anymore, and he is sensing it. I keep saying the wrong things. Keep responding the wrong ways. Saying too much or not enough. Retreating from his need for comfort and a soft place to fall.
I am not there for my mother, either. All the requests to hang things and get things and fix things and move things and wash things were getting to me. And my mother knew it and so she got extra help through the Department of Aging. I am relieved, and yet it makes me feel like shit because it reminds me that I have failed yet another person to be there for them in the way that they need.
I feel spiritually burned out, too. Religious expression in all its forms and functions are grating on me something fierce.
And here I am a member of a religious community, and I really don't want to keep going through the motions. Even though I like the people and do get emotional fulfillment from the fellowship and friendships, spiritually I don't believe in it. But since we are such a small kindred and one member is dead and another has decided to indefinitely take a break, I feel an even greater obligation to stick around and do what I said I would do. I fear I will lose the friendships with two of the members that I made through it. But, man, it hasn't felt completely right to me. If my husband weren't really invested in it, I would have walked away months ago, just as I walked away from Christianity.
I am drawn toward secular Buddhism, too, because of its promises to alleviate the suffering that comes with expectations, but Buddhism is wrought with religiosity and problem people. Online Buddhists are annoying as fuck.
I feel stuck. I have no one to talk to about such things because a lot of it is just too private. Or simply there are no words for it.
Actually, I don't WANT to talk to anyone about my feelings. I'm sick of talking about feelings. I'm sick of always having to talk about "what is wrong." Yes, I have an eating disorder, yes I have depression and anxiety and self-esteem issues and chronic pain and my body is falling apart and there is nothing I can do to stop the slow and inevitable decline into being disabled like my mother. Yes I don't make much money, and every time my husband's job starts getting to him I am yet again reminded of how I failed him in another way. And then I have to also be emotionally and physically present for others?
I'm just selfish, I guess. I am no longer dependable. I am resentful, absent, uninterested in other people's struggles. I am a shitty wife, a shitty daughter, a shitty friend.
I would just love a really long break -- months, maybe years -- from the slings and arrows of these things we call emotions. I fantasize about just dropping everything and doing something completely drastic. Like, stupidly contradictory fantasies of either going to a Buddhist monastery and eating vegan in pure silence or joining the military to go shoot up terrorists. So, I essentially want to either kill my selfhood through Buddhism or kill other people through combat. I'm weird. And neither one is reasonable in the slightest. And it isn't like my emotions wouldn't follow me. They would be exacerbated, I think, by either of these experiences.
I think I'll go home now.
If I am posting things that aren't being read or cared about, why don't I just write them in a notebook?
Having my thoughts and experience thrown out into the ether with no one returning the call is pointless.
I can't focus on my job. I want to be at home with the cats.
I am feeling emotionally burned out. Talking about emotions and having to engage the world and loved ones is getting to me. I can't do it anymore. I feel stretched thin. To paraphrase Bilbo, like butter spread too thin over bread. I can no longer be present to people in my life. I don't even want to see my friends anymore. I have no interest in checking in on them. I can't even be there for my husband, anymore, and he is sensing it. I keep saying the wrong things. Keep responding the wrong ways. Saying too much or not enough. Retreating from his need for comfort and a soft place to fall.
I am not there for my mother, either. All the requests to hang things and get things and fix things and move things and wash things were getting to me. And my mother knew it and so she got extra help through the Department of Aging. I am relieved, and yet it makes me feel like shit because it reminds me that I have failed yet another person to be there for them in the way that they need.
I feel spiritually burned out, too. Religious expression in all its forms and functions are grating on me something fierce.
And here I am a member of a religious community, and I really don't want to keep going through the motions. Even though I like the people and do get emotional fulfillment from the fellowship and friendships, spiritually I don't believe in it. But since we are such a small kindred and one member is dead and another has decided to indefinitely take a break, I feel an even greater obligation to stick around and do what I said I would do. I fear I will lose the friendships with two of the members that I made through it. But, man, it hasn't felt completely right to me. If my husband weren't really invested in it, I would have walked away months ago, just as I walked away from Christianity.
I am drawn toward secular Buddhism, too, because of its promises to alleviate the suffering that comes with expectations, but Buddhism is wrought with religiosity and problem people. Online Buddhists are annoying as fuck.
I feel stuck. I have no one to talk to about such things because a lot of it is just too private. Or simply there are no words for it.
Actually, I don't WANT to talk to anyone about my feelings. I'm sick of talking about feelings. I'm sick of always having to talk about "what is wrong." Yes, I have an eating disorder, yes I have depression and anxiety and self-esteem issues and chronic pain and my body is falling apart and there is nothing I can do to stop the slow and inevitable decline into being disabled like my mother. Yes I don't make much money, and every time my husband's job starts getting to him I am yet again reminded of how I failed him in another way. And then I have to also be emotionally and physically present for others?
I'm just selfish, I guess. I am no longer dependable. I am resentful, absent, uninterested in other people's struggles. I am a shitty wife, a shitty daughter, a shitty friend.
I would just love a really long break -- months, maybe years -- from the slings and arrows of these things we call emotions. I fantasize about just dropping everything and doing something completely drastic. Like, stupidly contradictory fantasies of either going to a Buddhist monastery and eating vegan in pure silence or joining the military to go shoot up terrorists. So, I essentially want to either kill my selfhood through Buddhism or kill other people through combat. I'm weird. And neither one is reasonable in the slightest. And it isn't like my emotions wouldn't follow me. They would be exacerbated, I think, by either of these experiences.
I think I'll go home now.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-08 08:48 pm (UTC)From:And, if you ask me, you cannot give to others what you do not have. If you're running on empty it is fine not to be able to give to others as you would want. If your spiritual path is taking you away for now, you should follow it. Hopefully it doesn't have to be all or nothing, but you will know what's right for you. Personally I've found that doing something, no matter how small, can help me feel more in control of my life, of myself. This horrible feeling, it isn't forever.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-20 06:02 pm (UTC)From:As for people reading and responding, that is true. Some people might be reading. But I only have like three friends on here, lol, so I don't expect to get many readers as it currently stands.