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I kept having the same nightmare last night, several times over: Husband and I are living in a hotel or other small reduced space. He's working nights and he comes home carrying a box of his stuff. He sets it down on the nightstand and tells me he's lost his job. I wake up and go in to hug him because the nightmare scared me, and ask him to tell me he's still got a job, but he shakes his head no and I wake up. But I'm not awake. I just keep waking up into variations on the same theme.
Husband currently does have a job where he's working nights, but it's underemployment with no benefits and far outside of his usual field. It's been more than a year since his unemployment ran out, so he needed to make some money to help pay the rent. I recently had a financial come-to-Jesus moment about how quickly we're running out of money and feeling terrible about my spending. Now I'm really paranoid about money. Also, I'm feeling terribly guilty about spending any money on myself. Husband is definitely depressed, which both makes me worry and makes me feel more depressed. It was his birthday yesterday so I brought dinner home for us (burritos) but I felt guilty about getting guacamole on mine. Heh. Guacamole guilt. Guacamole as food gilt.
I feel really cut off but I can't engage with anything right now. I'm a member of two different mental health support groups on the book of face, but I don't have the spoons to help anyone else right now, and there are people who really need help badly, and are demanding it. It's not a competition but I feel awful, both for not being able to help other people and for how much I have to be grateful for and for still feeling like I want to die all the time. It's more of a nebulous "I don't want to exist in this world anymore" feeling than anything specific, plus I have an agreement with my husband that I will not do anything. I made a promise to him, and promises apparently mean something very very important to that battered little core of self I have barricaded inside this body.
Even though I've pretty much cut myself off, I still can't help but keep looking at what's going on. Maybe the disengagement is both punishing myself (You don't deserve anything so nice as friends. They won't even notice you're gone.) and relieving myself of responsibility for others. (If they don't see you they can't ask you to do or give more than you can. Again.) Really, it's not their fault that my version of doing and giving tends to be to exhaustion. I'm the one who needs to learn to set those boundaries and fucking say no. But right now my no consists entirely of not being there at all. At least I can tell myself that it's a boundary, even if it's too fucking far away.
I'm also trying to limit my news consumption, especially with the recent massacre in Las Vegas. My blood boils when I hear or see anyone saying "There's nothing we can do" when there's plenty that can be done. Before this weekend I had gone back to listening to NPR on my commute, but now hearing the blathering of "conservatives' and "Republican politicians" literally makes me so angry I'm a hazard on the road. So channel surfing via the seek button it is, and even with one hand on that button I'm still a safer driver than if I was screaming back at the radio.
Husband currently does have a job where he's working nights, but it's underemployment with no benefits and far outside of his usual field. It's been more than a year since his unemployment ran out, so he needed to make some money to help pay the rent. I recently had a financial come-to-Jesus moment about how quickly we're running out of money and feeling terrible about my spending. Now I'm really paranoid about money. Also, I'm feeling terribly guilty about spending any money on myself. Husband is definitely depressed, which both makes me worry and makes me feel more depressed. It was his birthday yesterday so I brought dinner home for us (burritos) but I felt guilty about getting guacamole on mine. Heh. Guacamole guilt. Guacamole as food gilt.
I feel really cut off but I can't engage with anything right now. I'm a member of two different mental health support groups on the book of face, but I don't have the spoons to help anyone else right now, and there are people who really need help badly, and are demanding it. It's not a competition but I feel awful, both for not being able to help other people and for how much I have to be grateful for and for still feeling like I want to die all the time. It's more of a nebulous "I don't want to exist in this world anymore" feeling than anything specific, plus I have an agreement with my husband that I will not do anything. I made a promise to him, and promises apparently mean something very very important to that battered little core of self I have barricaded inside this body.
Even though I've pretty much cut myself off, I still can't help but keep looking at what's going on. Maybe the disengagement is both punishing myself (You don't deserve anything so nice as friends. They won't even notice you're gone.) and relieving myself of responsibility for others. (If they don't see you they can't ask you to do or give more than you can. Again.) Really, it's not their fault that my version of doing and giving tends to be to exhaustion. I'm the one who needs to learn to set those boundaries and fucking say no. But right now my no consists entirely of not being there at all. At least I can tell myself that it's a boundary, even if it's too fucking far away.
I'm also trying to limit my news consumption, especially with the recent massacre in Las Vegas. My blood boils when I hear or see anyone saying "There's nothing we can do" when there's plenty that can be done. Before this weekend I had gone back to listening to NPR on my commute, but now hearing the blathering of "conservatives' and "Republican politicians" literally makes me so angry I'm a hazard on the road. So channel surfing via the seek button it is, and even with one hand on that button I'm still a safer driver than if I was screaming back at the radio.
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