Every day I feel like Sisyphus
Hello friends,
I want to start this week’s newsletter with a poem by Maui Smith called “diagnosis.”
the worst part of being crazy is
i never get to be right.
bipolar is really only appropriate to describe
regular mood shifts or the weather,
never the person.
disclosing my disorder turns me stupid &
every stranger into a mental health professional;
thanks, but i cannot yoga my way out of this,
“drink more water” my way out of this.
hell is really empty &
all its devils are here telling me to exercise
when i tell them some days it’s like
i’m pinned to the south pole
watching the universe bottom out
with my belly in my ears &
the impact doesn’t hurt me but i am
stuck, wedged between everything i could do &
the end of everything &
sometimes i stay there for weeks.
then it flips &
the earth is one swarovski crystal
in a fresh gel set because
it’s tacky to play god with busted nails &
i know everyone is tired of watching me malfunction,
i am too. we are all supposed to be
the best cog in this absurd machine we can be &
i am sowing mutiny in the wires,
daring them to define purpose separate from output,
teaching them to hoard electricity
at the base of the spine &
short-circuit for simple fun.
Every line of this poem hit me like a gut punch. I gave an emphatic “YES” out loud when I first read the bit about everyone else becoming a mental health professional. I get that with MS even more than I do with my mental health stuff. Everyone has a diet or a workout to suggest as if I don’t have an actual fucking neurologist giving me advice on how to best manage this disease.
The line that hit me the hardest, though, was, “i know everyone is tired of watching me malfunction,/I am too.” I wanted to cry reading that. So many people believe that I could function at a higher capacity if I only put in a little more effort. Fuck that. I’m exhausted. Every day I feel like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up that hill, only my boulder is consciousness, and my hill is my bed. Every day the mere act of waking up takes such a herculean effort that I feel like I need to rest when I’m done.
Today, I couldn’t rouse myself from the half-sleep of the morning until about 1:15 in the afternoon. When I saw the time, apathetic depression descended. I haven’t had a good dose of apathy in a while. Lately, it’s been your garden-variety depression—a bit of sadness here, some uncontrollable crying there, topped off with a question of why the fuck life has to be so hard. Today, though, oh man. If this newsletter seems a bit chippier than usual, that’s why. When I get apathetic, anger is the one emotion that tends to burst through.
I almost didn’t write to you this week. But (in addition to the fact that I haven’t written for a couple of weeks), I thought it was important to show this side of things. I’m not always hopeful. At times, I want nothing more than to scream into the void until my throat is raw. That’s ok. We’re all allowed to feel like shit sometimes. We’re allowed to be furious. There are times when darkness sustains us better than sunshine and rainbows.
For any of you having a hard time, you’re not alone. Here’s hoping that tomorrow is better than today.
See you next week,
Yardena