Today I feel down. I am questioning all the things I have tried to do, and the things I am trying to do. I just want a job, yet every single one I have applied for and been interviewed for has been unsuccessful.
So what do I do about how I am feeling?
I started doing a finance course – well, continued with one I began about six months ago. And yet, I somehow feel like I am giving up on myself. Why is that? Why do I feel like, because everything isn’t going to plan, I suddenly feel this way? I even played a cash prize competition. It is my go-to when I feel like I have a chance of winning some much-needed cash immediately. But I know that I never win. I will probably never win. Yet, I still play.
I imagine a world where I apply for a job and get an interview. I go there and do such an amazing job that they hire me straight away. My life is suddenly sorted – financially. The truth is that I dread the misery I will feel. I feel this way when I think about working full-time and working for someone else. The lack of being there for my kids and being, outright, a great parent. I also think about all the years I spent in the arts and how that doesn’t matter anymore. I start to dread that this will be the life I always have. I fear that it will all amount to nothing in the end.
Even now, as I type this, I dread to think that I am wasting my time. I don’t know how to live anymore. I don’t know how to be anymore. I don’t think there’s a point to what I do anymore. I know that I am depressed, and I have been here before. I know that I don’t want to hurt myself. Yet, when I read that back, it sounds like I am ready to. So what do I do now?
Some people might say I should seek professional help. But I will laugh and say that I can’t even afford that. I ruptured my Achilles heel, and that brought me even lower once I realised how much I couldn’t do because of it. I close my eyes and imagine a world where everything is bliss. That world is non-existent. My mind is full of an emptiness, an emptiness that I can’t fill.
I draw people in and always try to help them. I don’t know anyone who can help me, so I repurposed that energy into helping others. There’s only so much you can talk about without sounding like a broken record. And then you start to think, why is this person telling me all of this? I realise it’s because they don’t have anyone else to talk to. But also because I never judge. I just listen, because I know how it feels. I listen because I know it won’t matter what I think. But it will matter if they figure out a solution themselves.
Have you ever had the moment when you’ve finished an interview, or even just had a chat with a group of people, and you suddenly remember what you said and ask yourself a million times, ‘Why did I say that?’? Yeah, I have that almost every day. I sometimes find myself oversharing, then become aware of it and loudly say that I am oversharing. Many smile and tell me that ‘it’s okay’ and others just awkwardly smile. Meditation, fasting, exercising – all the things you’re told to do that will supposedly help you get to a better place of understanding your problems, and yet you’ll be damned if you don’t. If you’re a believer in God, you’re told to pray in the hope that God will answer your prayers.
Human beings are interesting. Even though we’re believed to use only 10% (or something like that) of our brains, we seem to be limited in how we live, think and reflect on our lives. Others have it all figured out because they seem well put together, yet underneath it all, they might be worse off than the rest of us who dare to shout out or share our feelings.
So, coming back to why I am feeling like this: I guess I don’t know what to think, but I know that I needed to type it down so that I can feel like I’m able to process and stay sane.
Thanks for reading.