All of my life I have felt like a burden. I recognize that I require a lot in order to be okay and I cannot seem to allow others to help me take care of me.
This extends to most facets of my life. I avoid asking for help or asking other to modify their behaviours to help alleviate negative feelings that I have and it’s happening again.
Progressively over the past two months I’ve been in a rapid mental decline. I essentially lost my main source of income and quit my main hobby that provided me with a great deal of dopamine in order to focus on creating/finding new opportunities for myself. I’d like to pretend that I haven’t been silently struggling, but the reality is that even when I’ve opened up to others about how I’m doing I haven’t been as honest as I probably needed to be because I fear that I’m being “too much”, “too needy” or “dramatic.”
Quite frankly, I’m already annoyed with myself for the three paragraphs above and I’m even more annoyed that my next sentence is going to be “because of my ADHD,” but here it is…
Because of my ADHD it’s rare to not have dozens of thoughts running through my head. Oftentimes, I’m not even aware of all of my thoughts and they later manifest in dreams or when things go downhill, nightmares. For weeks now I have been unable to sleep. I get a maximum of 5 hours of sleep a night, though on average it has been about 30 minutes of sleep. Historically, for me to feel well rested I need between 9-10 hours of sleep, so I’m clearly nowhere near my mark.
There are a few major themes in my dreams lately:
- Screaming, with everyone I know walking away telling me I’m crying wolf
- Losing my loved ones, whether it’s to death or them choosing to cut me out
- Having to remove myself from loved one’s lives in order to keep them safe
- Giving up and “ending myself” because I’m exhausted, alone or because there’s no other option
Mixed amongst these nightmares are real life events that my brain relates to these themes, but the dreams are just getting more and more concerning.
Admittedly, these themes began to pop up in my dreams months ago, though the dreams always had some saving grace near the end such as my husband or a friend helping taking me out of the space, but this week it’s all ended in death. I have watched my life in disarray too frequently this week to even pretend that I’m okay. The frustrating thing? I cognitively know that none of these things are true, but I carry the emotions inside of me daily.
I’m a stupid person who has hidden this from most people in my life, since cognitively I know that my brain is just being awful and telling lies; but this has even extended to not communicating with my husband. I’ve been withdrawing more and more from friends and family, becoming a lot less social or keeping up our regular social norms because “I don’t need anything.” Truth be told, there’s a part of me that still feels that, but I think this is why both the nightmares and the insomnia are getting worse.
I can’t lie, only a few hours ago I was still artificially separating myself from people. Leaving discord channels, culling my friends list and essentially cutting off potential communication from those I do not consider myself close with or people who I have not spoken to in a significant amount of time.
There’s one person I’ve spoken to about a good portion of how I’ve been feeling and even brought up the fact that I still feel like a burden even though they repeat I’m not, but I cannot help feeling that way. Perhaps it’s because I’m genuinely tired of the fact that I feel this way and that I already find myself so exhausting, thus I project the feelings I have towards myself onto what I think others feel about me. I keep repeating to myself that I’m in my 30s and am well aware of the tricks my brain does, but is that part of the problem?
My husband and I are typically extremely close and very communicative. It’s rare that I don’t express my feelings to him, so I’m actually not sure why I didn’t this time. There’s a good part of me that believes it’s because we’ve been through similar things in the past so it feels redundant to bring it up. For example, recently I’ve been feeling extremely worthless, uncared for, second rate, and overall a burden or nuisance.
I recognize that I’ve been in need of taking up space because my life has felt like it was in shambles, but I generally feel awful to do so. Basically, if I take note that someone else is in need I hyper focus on them instead of myself because I know that “my shit just ain’t going away.” Now, this isn’t to say that I always feel this way. While yes, I have always had an underlying amount of sadness, I have generally been able to experience happiness amidst it. Recently, it’s just been “you’re always feeling shit, but sometimes you have big enough distractions.” Typically on days where I have had enough distractions I communicate that I am fine, or even that I am well, because that is “my truth” and not intended as a lie; but I think it’s been counterintuitive. The alternate is just something I hate even more.
You see, more often than not I’m truthful about how I’m feeling, stating things like “I’m holding in” or “I’m pushing through” but when it goes on for too long I begin distancing myself from people because well… people get tired of that. Perhaps I need to take more responsibility and address the more emotional requirements I have in those moments. For example, the biggest cause of all of this was the lost income, so I make that my primary focus to talk about in the initial conversation, but we’re at a point where I’m feeling all of these tangental emotions that you wouldn’t think are associated with the initial problem.
To dissect it further: Losing my income really took a hit on my self-worth. While yes, I recognize I am a hard working person who is not worthless, there’s no way to ignore the fact that those thoughts pop up quite a bit. Related to the lack of self-worth, my closest friends and I typically have banter that’s… well, a bit demeaning. We’ll call each other names and pretend to hate each other and again, while I cognitively know that it’s because we actually love each other a lot and find it funny (and I still do) perhaps my brain dumps aren’t aware of it. Perhaps these dreams are regurgitations of events that took place and because of ADHD, while I’m sleeping my brain is just repeating things that are said, but rewriting tones and moods, allowing my brain to self-sabotage more.
I mean, realistically that’s a huge part of having ADHD. I can walk away from a neutral or even positive conversation, but in rumination or anxiety it can become a really negative or awful conversation. So, would it just be best to express that while I’m feeling like the depressed Pillsbury Dough Boy we cut all the poking fun?
It’s so stupid, because even while writing that I’m immediately like… but it’s always so much fun when we do it, but am I just self harming in another way? How messed up is that?
But then brings me to the main thought that’s looping in my head. I obviously need to be coddled right now. It’s stupid, but I need people to remind me that they like me and shit right now… is it horrible that I feel like it’s stupid to ask for that? Is it stupid that me asking people to “just state their real feelings for me” for the next few weeks until I’m back on my feet is “small of me” or “too much.” Like, fuck my drag.
Welp, I have to be honest, writing all this out made me tired enough to sleep, so even though I probably have a million other things to say, I’m going to cut this here and potentially add more later.
Goodnight all.
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