mind-vomit

I should be sleeping right now if I want to keep in line with the plan I have for tomorrow (first church service, meet up with Sammy, go home and get dressed for Anton and Laura's wedding and then wedding the rest of the evening), but I don't feel inclined to do so right now.

I don't feel like doing anything else aside from this actually, because I haven't written or even tried to write anything in months owing to a self-perceived lack of time available to write, or that is to say, write without sacrificing time to sleep or do other activities and errands, lest I fall behind in whatever my day-to-day-to-long-term schedule is.

It's gotten to the point where having to meet up or even talk with people, take out the trash, do dishes, do laundry, clean the house, show up and be present at work, and so on, feels burdensome and tiring... let alone the usual long-term needs like addressing my long-term professional and life goals, [lack-of a] love life, and coming to terms with whatever this quarter/spiritual/identity-life crisis I've been going through is.

The things I get distracted or preoccupied by: games, shows, music, books, podcasts and news, travel-planning, bookstores and museums, learning new things; these are all hobbies I enjoy regularly, but have focused on (read: made to-do lists of) unhealthily to the point where it would take me years to get through the combination of all of them without even taking into account normal life functions like those listed in the last paragraph. I've curated those lists to the point where I don't ever have an excuse to be "bored," because I always have something I could be doing that happens to line up with both an existing list and my current mood (and I can only have so many different kinds of moods before they start to cyclically repeat themselves. Right now I'm in a Fire Emblem/podcast/read-this-long-ass-article mood.)

And then in the back of my mind, real-life starts to kick in, and I remember that I too have life-responsibilities I need to keep up with:

- this project at work with an upcoming deadline that needs attention because everything that could go wrong feels like it's going wrong right now (although not all of it is my problem, and in fact I'm probably the least stressed on my team on that front).

- this upcoming open-ended small group that I have to prep for leading this week... and for which I still haven't figured out what I want to do yet because the ideas I have in mind need at least a week for me to prepare mentally, and I don't actually have a week because my family is coming up.

- speaking of which, this home I need to clean up for family coming up because I haven't unpacked or sorted out anything or done the dishes even since I got back from my trip a month ago.

- this wedding (the first of 6 this season) that I need to figure out how to dress for because my formal-attire wardrobe is out-of-date, because I've been losing weight (just cause I felt like it although I kind of also have body-image issues; stop telling me how skinny I look already) and never really had my suits fitted to begin with because I never normally need to dress up anyway, and the stuff my parents left me feels 4 sizes too large compared with my current fashion-taste/mood (and whoever invented the concept of formal attire should just go die in a fiery pit in hell ugh fml firstworldproblems nohashtaghashtags unnecessarystress depression)

- these friends I have to try to make some time for so that I don't look like I'm falling off the edge of the earth right now and I wonder sometimes how I can still function in front of them.

- these therapy sessions that I never seem to have the right thoughts prepared for because whenever I'm actually at therapy, that means I successfully got out of bed in the morning and was able to prepare to go to work (not that I haven't yet but still), so whatever frantic thoughts I'm feeling now feel completely alien to me then.

tl;dr: When I was running down the stairs tonight to head out for my friend's bachelor party-dinner/frantically running back up the stairs to look for the things I usually forget or misplace, like my keys or water-bottle or phone or jacket and it takes multiple trips to get everything, because (as my mom says) I'm scatter-brained and careless about where I put all of my possessions and can't even remember to put them in the same designated place every time, I collapsed in a heap in the middle of my stairway for about 5 minutes and broke down sobbing because I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take being, or trying to put on the air of being, an adult when I don't feel like I behave like one, because I am the opposite of everything I value/have internalized as value in an adult.

I haven't heard myself cry that like in a long time. Usually I don't listen to myself when I cry (because I'm generally not self-aware enough to), but it was jarring to be able to both hear myself cry on a meta-consciousness level AND actually be engaged in the act of crying at the same time, all while drowning in the onslaught of thoughts I couldn't even entirely form into words yet:

- thoughts about how not "on top of things" I was (the way my old college roommate Jason used to put it) and how out-of-place I felt in the wider scheme of adult life when trying to buy my suit today and the (possibly-imagined) funny looks I got from the attendants for my lack of familiarity with all things formal fashion.

- thoughts coming from moments of feeling both alienated in the presence of others and unable to relate to their normal everyday experiences because my empathic senses lately have been out-of-whack and mostly self-centered. (Yes, that sounds nice but that has nothing to do with what I'm feeling right now.)

- thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and futility whenever anyone these days tries to ask me about my work and love life, because ultimately I haven't exhibited any sense of ambition or desire in those parts of my life lately, and haven't really in a long time, and I don't know why outside of a growing sense of being unable to force myself into that mindset of really wanting those things. I don't want anything right now other than the little things I already am pursuing, things that generally matter little to most other people anyway.

- thoughts of anger and frustration:

-- at the way my life itself feels artificially constructed from a combination of my baser impulses and societally imposed life goals (love, job, house, family), rather than what I really want, even though what I really want is still ill-defined right now.

-- at my general inefficiency in time management when it comes to simple things like shopping for clothes for myself (spent 6 hours today although half that time was figuring out where to go/eat) or leaving the house in the morning because I never know where I put things a half-day or a half-hour or a half-minute ago.

- thoughts of paranoia, that something is fundamentally broken or sick in my head right now because what normally functioning person breaks down uncontrollably right before attending a normal social function and successfully gets away with it without anyone noticing

- and don't even talk to me about God right now (I know I've said this here before but this still holds), because I have so many other unresolved problems with God and the church and basically the world at large (enough to fill up another 5-page long letter like the one I already sent my pastor earlier this year), that I'd have to address first before even considering bringing this up. (This John Oliver video, while not directly related, captures a similar sense of the frustration I feel, including my inability to trust my own feelings in dealing with any of this because my own feelings and emotions are fickle and at odds with reality.)

Don't ask me if I'm okay if you've read this post, because at this point I wouldn't know what else to say any more than what's already been said here (and I'm not suicidal, just existentially depressed). During the dinner tonight I was wrestling with conflicting emotions, happy (because the company and food were great), sad (because of earlier) and confusion at my own state of being because I don't know how to behave outwardly in that situation, other than to simply react to whatever's happening around me as I normally would. Sometimes I wonder what it would really take to make me crumble in front of other people, because I've somehow managed to survive for this long despite all internal mind-spasms to the contrary.

And I apologize if you're one of those people who've complained to me in the past about never talking/hanging out/reaching out anymore. Perhaps I'm doing a good job of putting on the air that I'm busy (well technically, I am busy too; see above), but lately I've been lacking the capacity to really initiate things with people unless it was already convenient to do so, like people who I already see around on a regular basis cause of circumstance anyway.

These days whenever I have free time to myself, I've been selfishly guarding it because I can only behave normally in front of people for so many hours in a given week. That and I can't handle the uncertainty of texts with no response right now (oh god I'll never survive online dating at this rate if/when I start). Even something as simple as a delayed overnight response about ordering dinner the next day made me go into fuck-this-I-hate-dealing-with-people mode for a few hours this week. No hard feelings towards that person, just towards the evil necessity that is the institution of texting and instant messaging at large, even though I am just as flaky at responding to people given that I can only respond when I am in the right "mood" and therefore am a hypocrite.

And with that, I need to sleep now if I'm going to survive tomorrow. This is why I haven't been blogging these days even though the process of writing this out feels somewhat cathartic. Good night.

Actually, I'm getting tired of ending my posts the same way every time, so I'll finish this by noting that the noise my air conditioner makes (especially at night) feels uncomfortably like the sensation of falling down a seemingly never-ending but possibly definite pit. Not that I've ever done so myself, but I've experienced something close to it at some point in the half-awake/half-asleep state while in bed in the past, which typically leads me to wake up in a jolt, because who likes the sensation of precariously falling and not knowing the moment when they'll crash into the floor.