I feel like I should be doing more, making more — hell, making anything — and generally being more productive.
But I just have nothing. No motivation. No ideas. No compulsion to create. I keep feeling like I’m just wasting time, just keeping my head down and hoping that today will be better than the day before and that this string of days will come to an end in a spectacular rebuke of Depression and Anxiety.
But that doesn’t seem to be how this is going. I’m not really living right now. I’m just existing and the frustrating thing is that I know it doesn’t have to be this way, while also knowing that my brain is wired a little sideways and it’s going to be like this until it isn’t, and there’s not a lot I can do about that except realize that this isn’t forever, that I’ll heal the grief that opened up a few months ago, and the fresh pain and grief that recently opened up will eventually join it.
I sit here at my desk and stare are a blinking cursor for what seems like hours. I type a few words and delete them. I get up and walk around the house and up and down the block, trying to shake loose whatever is blocking up my ability to be creative, to feel like it’s worth the effort, and it just doesn’t seem to be working.
I’m doing my best to give myself permission to accept that my brain isn’t really on Team Wil right now, and not beat myself up about it. I’m clinically Depressed at the moment, but I’m still grateful that I can afford to have a string of days (stretching into months, now) that feel sort of debilitating and I don’t have to worry about not making a mortgage payment or feeding myself. All I have to do is take care of myself, take my meds, talk to my therapist, and work on proactive things like meditation and exercise that are usually good and helpful for my wonky brain.
Today, I feel marginally better than I did yesterday, and yesterday I felt marginally better than the day before that. If that’s how it’s going to go, I’m happy to accept marginal and steady improvement, however long it takes.
Can I admit something?
I’m scared. I’m terrified that being unproductive and not creating anything new for weeks or months at a time will catch up with me, the world will move on, and my fifteen minutes will be up before I realize it. I’m feeling my age, and though I pretty regularly feel like my best days and best work is behind me, I know that isn’t true. Now, if I could just convince my brain to accept that and stop trying to make me feel like there’s no reason I should even try to be creative.
I realize that’s irrational, but the Super Happy Funtimes of my particular version of mental illness is really good at making the case for it being correct and inevitable.
And the thing that’s so dumb? Tomorrow, I start work on something awesome that I love, that I deserve, that I get to do because I earned it with my hard work and ability as an actor. I know all of that, but I don’t feel a bit of it … and yet I will go to the studio in the morning and I’ll love that I get to be there, I’ll know that I deserve it, everyone there will be happy to see me, and I’ll feel like a total fraud.
Well, maybe writing about those fears and putting them here will help me trick my brain into giving me a break so I can just enjoy the experience and feel proud of myself, instead of the overwhelming sadness and hopelessness that’s currently filling up my life.
