Breaking my hairbrush in half at the handle when I took a mental health day felt like a metaphor for something. So did dropping and breaking my water dispenser. And having that one spot in my floor that always gets broken getting broken yet again. These were all just minor inconveniences but they chipped away at me.
Home is supposed to be a good, safe place, but sometimes I’m just endlessly running around doing more chores and breaking more of my stuff. Then there are things like my car that were not broken by me but might as well have been for all of the work I’m doing trying to get it fixed.
I tried/am trying to slow down. I’ll do something I like; say, rewatching a show. But that leads to situations like almost bursting into tears over watching a cartoon character who isn’t even written to be sympathetic die again. I’ve constructed this elaborate interpretation of him to make him sympathetic and complex because he’s a bad person and I feel like a bad person a lot of the time (I mistyped and wrote simply “I’m a bad person” so that probably says something).
He dies thinking his friends are going to save him. They don’t. They have no respect for him at all. He thought that they did. Isn’t that sad? I think that’s really sad. If you know who I’m talking about you’re probably side-eyeing my choice of blorbo/scrimblo/etc as the kids say. But yeah. Fretting over this garbage tier antagonist and how much the narrative hates him until the end of time.
“This is Miss Veronica,” one of my co-workers said to a group getting shown around our workplace when I got back. “She knows everything.”
“I try,” I said.
If I knew everything I feel like I would’ve figured out how to stop feeling so upset all the time, but I appreciate the sentiment.
As if in echo, someone else at work said, “Oh, good, Veronica’s here! She can wave her magic wand. She can fix this.”
The vibe that I give off, I think, is sunshiny and proactive. While I think that’s still true, I’m also internally stressed and angry. At least, I tell myself, I cope by drawing and writing and the occasional bouts of retail therapy instead of something really truly destructive like alcoholism or drug abuse or hurting myself. I would add “going to the gym” as one of my coping skills, but I’m not entirely sure that that’s helping my mental health as much as I would like. Sometimes I get jazzed and pumped but other times I feel unbearably weak.
As I walked to my car after work one day, I was overcome with the urge to shout. I shouted a soft “AaaAAA” and figured it was a better way to express my upset than throwing something off the bridge I was walking on or punching a wall. Come to find out my boss was walking about five feet behind me. So that’s fun.
On the plus side—because I always have to find a plus side to lift myself back up off of the floor—I like how my artwork is turning out lately. Word vomiting like this makes my chest feel a little lighter. My friends and family care about me. Even when mired down, I find ways to keep trudging forward towards what I want. It won’t be like this forever. I won’t let it.
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