There is something about having a mental disorder (I should not singularize that—mental disorders) to the magnitude that I have mine that people don’t quite understand. No matter how well tuned my medication is, how well tuned the architecture of my thought patterns are, I am never on a road to being ok that is on a straight line upwards. No matter how steep the slope is over time, things don’t keep getting better. They go in waves. I feel, at times, as bad as I have ever felt. I often feel manic, like I have conquered all of my illnesses. It is not a straight line (slow or fast) to being better. It is just hoping that when stasis hits—oh, and stasis here is the goal—it is somewhere in the middle of the aforementioned highs and lows. The highs are not sustainable. The lows are, well… let’s get into them for a bit.

I wrote this at a very low point. I’m not going to edit it. It means something, every word does. I have OCD, I feel it is woefully incomplete—but I’ve learned that is how I am going to feel about anything. So I can let that go.

I get through to nobody.
I can’t pretend to play in an extrapolated life.
I’ve learned to have demands.
I have no means to carry out those demands.
I can’t move people into action, I refuse to.
That? That I do eighteen hours a day.
This? This I do zero hours a day.
Oh, I can talk about scales and nuance.
Words, these are, that go nowhere.
I consume, around the edges, of everything.
None of this is my life.
I don’t penetrate.
My thoughts go nowhere.
Waste of neurons, all of this.
I work.
I work a lot.
I work far more than anyone can see.
I know this because of the length of the list of things that don’t happen.
A world of things not happening is where I am.
Hold on a second, I am being overtaken by anxiety.
Rest, it appears, only comes in the form of a heart attack.
I’m going to refuse to have a heart attack.
I’m going to demand.
Let’s see where those demands fit in.
Demands are as good as sleep in this world.
I won’t fail.
Then there’s the issue with friends
And shirts not fitting right
And exhaustion to a level that can’t be described in words
And usefulness