Sometimes late at night my thoughts run away from me. It feels like I’m trying to chase them through darkness. I can’t catch up and everything I do to stop them makes them swirl around me faster and faster. They mock me. They torment me. They enrage me and shame me. If I could just sleep they would stop. Tears fill my eyes and a ball of dread fills my stomach. My cheeks feel warm and from experience I know there’s nothing I can do to stop the impending self-hatred.
Everything I have done has brought me to this point in my life. I know how lucky I am to have such an amazing family, a wonderful husband an adorable and cuddly dog. A fantastic wardrobe… In this darkness nothing matters. I can’t talk myself out of how stupid or ugly I am. All that matters are my mistakes and my failures. I can’t let go of what I could have done differently and appreciate where I am.
I feel like the world’s biggest fraud. I feel like I’m cracking into a million pieces and every time I try to muster a smile and go about my day everyone can see I’m a second away from shattering into a million pieces.
This has happened before and from experience I expect it to happen again.
I quit my new job… After 5 years (and 2 companies) I finally came to terms with the fact that banking just wasn’t for me. The thing I’m beating myself up about it that I knew it all along. It’s been a month without the constant stress and dread. A month I haven’t had anyone but myself tell me my best isn’t good enough. It’s been a huge relief not to hear it from outside my own brain, I just can’t help but wonder what it’s going to take to stop it completely. I have tried in the past to drown it out with various degrees of success and more failure than I can measure.
I look around me and know I am not that different from others, but nighttime arrives and I couldn’t feel more alienated. At midnight I couldn’t feel more lost and alone with my feelings and thoughts. It feels like somehow I always end up here…. Alone late at night with the ghosts of my past, wondering how I can banish them and enjoy my future.
It’s happened before and from experience I expect it to happen again.
Shanna Geezy 