The thing that makes me feel stupid and miserable …
… and the one other thing that makes me feel clearer-headed and more emotionally grounded.
When I come home from work I'm often completely spent. Hungry, exhausted, burdened by the emotional weight and shame of all the chores I promise myself I'll take care of after work when I wake up — because in the morning I feel fresh, and I'm in a hurry to get to work, my head full of ideas, feeling like I'm behind (I'm always behind). And if I manage to get a few good, productive days in a row, I tell myself I'll finally catch up and be at peace for once. Then I promise myself I'll take care of everything in the morning after getting home from work, because after a full day of frantic catching up I'm so tired when I finally collapse on my couch — so utterly and totally exhausted and depleted and done — that I can't even bring myself to clean a single dish. The best I can manage is eating something packaged in a plastic bag that I can stuff into my mouth by hand.
At that point I usually feel so much shame about having no energy left, about falling behind my daily obligations and ambitions, that I can’t just rest. If I try, the pain bubbles up, and I reach for my phone or the remote and let the YouTube algorithm drown out the noise in my head.
But of course what I actually need is rest. And every now and then I manage to just lie there and stare. For half an hour, maybe even an hour. I sit in the pain and let it wash over me. I observe it like a spectator. I look at it from different angles. I magnify it, trying to make out its details. Then I zoom out until it’s small and contained, and I mock it. I turn it into something outside of me — even if I can still feel it — something like a reflection in a mirror.
And after a while of playing with it, of toying with it, it’s used up. No more pain left to examine. And I’m left with a little less shame and a little less hurt, and a little more energy than an hour earlier.
And I think to myself: why can’t I do this every day instead of numbing the pain by surrendering to garish images and noises from an electronic toy?
Because it’s easier. It’s easier because it’s a habit, and it’s easier because it’s easy. And when I think about that, the shame comes back, and almost automatically — without thinking, without even noticing — I reach for my electronic toy to drown it out again.