I suppose I can’t say I haven’t been productive, but I have not made the kind of progress I want to make–on anything.

Sometime in early November or late October I injured my MCL, and I’m awaiting results to see if I will need surgery or just PT/rehab, so lately I am unable to do a whole lot physically apart from limping around.

This is difficult for me. I busy myself with things to distract myself from unpleasant thoughts and dwelling on subject matters that will only lead me into dark places, but with my mobility limited there’s very little of what needs to get done that I am capable of doing.

This weekend a neighbor-kid will be helping me with some work, so hopefully with his labor I can at least get some of the debris cleaned up from the back part of the property so our fire risk is reduced. This will be the first time I’ve hired a neighbor-kid for work and not been the neighbor-kid getting hired, so it’s kind of funny how that goes. Maybe if it works out well this can be mutually beneficial and I can have some help getting stuff done and this kid can save up for this PC or whatever it is he’s working toward.

It’s also a difficult time of year.

Dad died shortly before Halloween; his birthday would have been in early November and we always celebrated Thanksgiving together, and then Christmas comes along after and I always saw both parents for Christmas.

It’s strange to go, in such a short amount of time, from feeling completely overwhelmed by the holidays because I was just one person and I felt like I had to make time for everyone. To… now, where I feel like the only person who’s really concerned about my presence is my wife. Everyone else for whom I was a meaningful figure for the holidays and not essentially a guest or a distant relative you talk to once or twice a year is gone. I’m non-essential for everyone else. If I don’t show up, I won’t be missed.

And that’s not meant to disparage the kind people who extend invitations, who offer to include me. It isn’t that I’m not grateful to even be thought of.

But it’s also not the same thing. And it is hard to watch families enjoying what I no longer have. I don’t resent them for it, but it’s still painful. It is hard to be around happy people who are enjoying themselves when all you can think of is death. It is hard not to feel like an asshole who is just ruining the experience for everyone, and that it would be better if you dealt with things alone.

So do I choose isolation, and trying to distract myself from all of this with diversions, likely only further entrenching my increasingly reclusive tendencies, or do I try and force myself to push through it, aware that I’m probably kind of lousy to be around right now between the physical pain and the generally dour disposition?

Is the socialization just another diversion? A different way of distracting myself?

Is isolating myself only worsening the way I feel about things, even though it usually feels like the only thing I really WANT to do?

I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter, there’s only so much I can do about any of it until I can get around again.

I guess I just need to make it to January and we’ll see where things go from there.

But I can’t help but feel… something like anger, at myself or at the world, or who knows, that with how little time we get on this world, here I am stuck in this… pit of despair. I don’t have many people left, but instead of making the most of the time we still have, all I seem to be able to do is dwell on what I’ve lost.

How does this help me at all? How does this accomplish any productive end? How does this honor them?

They were never the type to sit around idly, dwelling on their feelings. They were both “go-go-go” from morning ’til night their entire lives, and they’d want me to continue to send myself out into the world to find what good there was to find and to explore things not yet seen (by me, at least), and they’d want us to enjoy each other’s company.

I feel like I’m failing in that.

I feel stuck. Or adrift?

But I also can’t walk right now, so… my options are rather limited. And let’s be real, with my imposter-syndrome even when I’m kicking ass I feel like a failure who has merely manipulated people around me into thinking I’m more competent than I really am, let’s not pretend that feeling like a failure is a particularly unique condition for me.

My mom would want me to be kind to myself. My dad would want me to be practical.

So at least until I’m walking around again, I guess I should focus on the things I can do while sitting around and worry about what kind of progress I’m making once I’m fully mobile again. Dwelling on everything else serves no purpose, and just wastes energy on something that ultimately drains me and leaves me less able to do the things I still can do.

I’m at war with myself. And it’s not even a decent war with clearly declared sides, this is like some Spanish Civil War shit where you can barely distinguish one faction from the next and every thought that percolates into my mind seems at least initially just as plausible as any other. It’s only after mulling them over for some time I can sort between them to varying degrees but even then, I don’t feel equipped to readily recognize which lines of thinking take me into toxic, depressive zones and which are just normal grieving.

As someone who spent a lot of time working on my bipolar/OCD issues, I got really good at guarding my thoughts against lines of thinking that would trigger a significant mood shift or an anxiety spiral. In my 20’s I was basically at the mercy of my issues, but in the past 5 or so years I’d say I learned how to “feel” them coming on, some unique texture they had, a faint tinge of self-loathing or who knows what.

But I can’t recognize these thoughts in the same way. Whatever bouncer is employed by my mind can recognize the OCD/bipolar streams of consciousness and says “nah, you guys can’t come in, every time you show up you wreck the place.”

But these grief thoughts look and feel just like every other thought until I chew on them for a while. I’m blind to the differences between them and the others, though I can feel that the differences are THERE and it’s somehow just a matter of my being unable to perceive and process them as I engage them. It’s as if I could observe them in someone else and that extra layer of distance would be enough for me to say “hey, hold up now, you’re drifting into some dark shit and that’s not going to help you,” but when it’s me and they are my own thoughts I’m too close to see what I’m working with until it’s already upon me.

So… I guess that may be a thing to work on while I’m stuck sitting. How do I tell “good grieving” from “bad grieving” before I’m stuck in the middle of it? How do I go from reacting to being proactive and guarding myself before I am overwhelmed with these things?

I’ve learned how to do this before with other issues so surely this is possible.

Maybe as a starting point, remembering fondly what was is not the same as mourning what’s been lost. I can do the former without always descending into the latter and if I do I will probably be able to better honor their memory.

We’ll see how it goes. There are good days and… less good, and as you may have guessed, these last few have been difficult.

Reader, if you exist, I hope you’ve had happy holidays so far and continue to do so until whenever your holiday season ends–Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Ramadan/Diwali/New Year, and any other winter holidays I might have excluded. If they’ve been happy, then I hope you’ll take a few seconds to enjoy what you have more (if only because it won’t last forever), and if they haven’t, I hope you can endure until things are easier. They will, inevitably, get easier, though there’s admittedly no telling how long it’ll take.

Take care of yourself, and be kind to yourself. Life’s hard enough without being cruel to yourself.

PS: Make some art!

-E