Yesterday was a weird day. It should’ve been an easy one. It would’ve been for most people. My morning class was cancelled. This morning class, with lecture and lab combined, is about 3 hours long. So it takes up a good chunk of the day. Without this class, the only place I had to be was to my evening class by 5:00. I had some homework left to do for that class, but not a lot. And of course, plenty of time to finish it with the whole day empty.
The day started off ok. Rather surprisingly actually, since I didn’t wake up until noon. I don’t know what time I fell asleep since I’d been watching tv, but I know it was right around midnight. Yes, you read that right, a 12-hour night! I felt pretty good, though stiff and more than a little groggy. It took me a long time to really wake up. I think my body is just really not used to sleeping that deeply and for that long! Anyway, I’m thinking this is where the trouble started. Looking at it now, 5:00 really isn’t THAT far away from a groggy noon wake-up. I didn’t have near as much time as I thought I did.
In my slow wakeupedness….I lounged around and talked to some friends online. After talking for a bit I realized it was already 2. Yikes! Not so much time left to do homework considering I need to leave at least a half hour before my class to get there on time. I got off the computer and you’d think I went to do homework, right? Well, you wouldn’t think that if you know me…lol I remembered a phone call I needed to make to a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while. Part of it was “business” related, but then we got to chatting. Probably good for me to talk to someone but before I knew it it was 3:00.
Hung up the phone…and you’d think (hope) I’d go get ready and do the homework now, right? Ha. I actually did manage to go take a shower and get dressed at this point…but then…I wonder what’s on tv. Oooh crappy daytime tv. Hey look it’s Judge Judy. A friend and I had been talking about her but I’d never actually watched the show. Hey no time like the present! (Yes, that’s really what happened. No, sadly enough I’m not kidding). Luckily, Judge Judy is only a half hour show. Unluckily, there’s another episode on after the first…and the previews after the first made it look exciting. Or something.
You’d think I’d do homework while I watched Judge Judy. It’s not like that’s a show that requires your full attention. And that had been the plan. But not the result. And while Judge Judy is on we’ve moved right past “free time” and in to it’s really time to get ready and go to keep from being late. But that doesn’t give me any more focus. I finally got the really important part of the written homework done, and decided I’d just turn in the rest of it the following week. (That’s a really horrible thing for me to decide, considering that this assignment was already a week late…I was supposed to have turned it in last week when I was panicking too much to go to class. But the other part was related to the midterm so it HAD to be turned in. The rest was “just an assignment.”)
I started to pack up and get ready to go, but then realized I’d completely forgotten to study for the quiz today. CRAP!! It was essential that I at least look at the material so I pulled my computer back out and went through the email of what I’d missed during class last week. At this point it’s already about 4:45, so I’m well past the time I should’ve left.
I finally ended up leaving at about 4:56. For my class that starts at 5:00 and is 20 min. away (plus 10 min for parking and walking to the building). Yeah… I considered not going but since I’d already begged to be let out of class the previous week, and this class only meets once/week, and I had to turn in the stuff for the midterm, I just really really couldn’t miss it. To make matters worse, I hit crazy traffic. I’m not used to taking this drive at 5:00…it’s very different then when I usually drive mid-morning. Anyway, I spent the entire drive stressed and so so angry at myself for being so late and so unprepared. This professor is so willing to work with me and help me out, and here I am coming to class REALLY late and without my work done, all because I’d been watching Judge Judy.
Being angry at myself is a major trigger for wanting to cut (and eventually for bad memories) because I want to punish myself for screwing up so bad. It’s times like these that I fully realize how far I am from the person I want to be and how angry that makes me. I know on the one hand it’s not the end of the world to be late for a class or turn in work late, but that was my ONLY job for the day and I had blown it royally. I managed to get to class ok and it turned out the professor had been late too because of traffic…and the first part was spent going over the midterm stuff I hadn’t turned in yet, so I didn’t miss too much. But I still spent the whole drive being so angry at myself (and traffic), which led me to think about things that had happened in the past when I’d done bad things, and thinking about wanting to cut…and it all just put me in a horrible mindset. By the time I got to class I was shaking so bad and so out of the present anyway I could barely make sense of what was being said in the lecture. Don’t tell my DBT teacher! Lol Really though…this was a whole ridiculous and easily avoidable scenario. If I could’ve focused at any point and done what I’d needed to do….left when I should’ve…accepted my fate rather than stress about it so heavily…etc. etc.
The moral to this very long (but come on…you enjoyed it, right?) story is that downtime is not my friend. If you give me a schedule of everywhere I need to go in a day and each thing falls right after the other I will do it all no problem. But give me a big empty day with any number of tasks to get done and I just don’t do it. And it’s not that I’m so heavily distracted by what’s around me (Judge Judy isn’t THAT good!). Instead it’s that I can’t seem to do what I want/need to, so I look around for things to do instead (internet, tv, etc.). You could take away any of those distractions and I’ll just find another one to fill its place. I’ve tried writing my own schedule to follow, but it just doesn’t happen if there’s no accountability or consequence if it doesn’t happen.
In the case of yesterday, nothing bad really came of my downtime besides being a bit rude to the professor so willing to help me and a bit of unnecessary stress. But weekends are when I have so much downtime, and weekends are when all the issues (cutting, relapses, plain old misery, etc.) have all happened.
Every Friday afternoon, when all my groups are done, I tend to freak out. I’m hit with the realization of I have nowhere to go for 2 days…and what the hell do I do now. No matter how much I plan/try to structure it, I end up alone with my thoughts. And that’s NEVER a good thing right now! It used to be that I’d come in to the weekend excited thinking about all the fun I was going to have and all I was going to accomplish. Now the mere mention of Friday gives me panic attacks. That was definitely a big part of last week’s blow up. When IOP kicked me out I realized that my “Friday night” was starting way earlier than planned. That added a whole bucket load more stress because I knew I had nowhere to be, and no place where anyone would miss me if I was gone, for another 2, almost 3 days.
I have no answer to this…for now it’s just going to be part of life I think. I know I could schedule myself more….work, clubs, etc. are out there…but a person does eventually need downtime. It’s a big catch 22. Also as I talked to my t on Tuesday, it came up that I’d been more or less successfully sober for years leading up till the last 6 months or so. I wasn’t sober the whole time, but when I drank it didn’t lead to so much craziness, and I didn’t depend on it nearly as much. The big difference seems to be that before I was working myself to the bone…either multiple jobs or jobs like summer camps, firefighting, etc. where the work is 24/7 and drinks just aren’t available. It’s MUCH easier to avoid when you’re exhausted and just want to fall into bed as soon as work is over. The bad thoughts are easier to avoid then too because you don’t have the time or the energy to think. But I’m hitting a point now that I don’t want to “need” a job that exhausts me to that level. I want to have a home life and be able to enjoy time just being. Also, everything that I’ve apparently been in denial about has caught up with me, and even when I have a huge list of places to be I started losing the ability to get there. I started showing up later and later to work, or just not showing up at all. I was starting to have many more days where I was “sick”, mainly because I just couldn’t get it together to show up.
So now it’s the usual dilemma….how much structured time is healthy? Yes, it keeps me out of trouble but it doesn’t give me a chance to practice with unstructured time and it leaves me more stressed than ever because I feel like I have no time or am too tired to get homework done.
-------------
That's what I wrote earlier, in a break between groups. Now I'm done with groups for the day and having a total panic attack. It's 2:30 on Friday afternoon and I am absolutely losing it about it being the weekend. Logically I know it's ridiculous but I can't help it. I had the art group this afternoon and I asked if I could bring something home with me for the weekend so I'd have a project to do. She said no (which I expected bc of budget concerns that's a big no no....they flipped out about me wanting to take a pen home one day). When she said no it was all I could do to make it out of the room before I started sobbing. I know I'm not crying over the lack of an art project. If I really wanted to I could probably go to walmart and buy myself something like that for cheap. But that's not the issue. The issue is me wanting to hold on to being here (at the therapy place) because I'm safe here. As much as I hate it here sometimes, I know I can't fall apart too badly here. Ok, I've had multiple episodes of sobbing sitting in the grass outside the building trying to figure out what to do, but the point is that when I'm in a group I'm safe. People understand and care about me there and I have a place to be. Outside of here, I really don't have a place like that. So now I'm feeling like crap and trying to hold back the tears. This is getting ridiculous!
No comments:
Post a Comment