My brain is broken

It's very difficult for me to cry. I haven't been able to have a good cry in many years, and the few times I did manage, it was short and restrained in a moment of exhaustion. It's not something I've chosen. Maybe it's because of all the trauma. Maybe it's because of my medications. Either way, when I can't cry I become angry, and I hate the way it feels.

I was surprised when I started crying while going through my songs on Spotify today. It wasn't any of the songs in particular that triggered it, but a fear that's been slowly coming to the surface over the past several months. With my health being poor, and just being utterly exhausted, my body was just finally at its limit. Among everything else going on in my life, I've had a deep fear that I may not be able to ever write the same again, if I could write creatively again.

It's been a rapid decline since a powerful trauma trigger back in April that re-traumatized me all over again. I went into hyper-vigilant mode for months, and I've written about all of it here, I think. My health declined; everything just declined and my life continued to throw things at me I couldn't handle. Small things became big, and soon, I realized I couldn't even sit to comfortably read a book without OCD and brain fog making it nearly impossible to take in information, without getting tension pain and headaches from focusing so intensely. I become stressed because I end up re-reading the same lines over and over and over and over, and I realized it was a mix of worsening OCD and my mind just not taking in any information.

I've had to edit stories I wrote before all this worsened, and it's been hell. Re-writing a few sections of my novel I'm releasing in September was like trying to figure out math while having dyscalculia, which I have. I'd end up with headaches and tension pain everywhere just trying to brute force it. The entire time my heart hammered and my jaw clenched tight as I became more and more frustrated with myself. Why couldn't I focus? Why was I re-reading the same sentence ten or more times like I was stuck in a terrible loop?

Could I even write stories anymore?

I began to worry over some of the bad reviews of my published novels, my first in particular. Not a big enough vocabulary. Boring style. Et cetera. My mental health wasn't so great when I wrote it, have I just been on a mental decline since? Can I not write well anymore?

Can I even write anymore?

Sure, I can type journal entries. That doesn't take much effort. I'm just pouring my thoughts onto a page about my life. I'm not using any imagination or creativity. The complexity doesn't matter. But do these even make sense? Am I even perceiving what I'm writing correctly?

It's a mess. My head's a mess. And when I started crying today out of nowhere I realized just how bad it's been. I'm scared I can't write another creative work. I'm afraid I'm writing gibberish that doesn't make sense to anyone but me. I'm frightened that there's something wrong with my brain.

My psychiatrist told me once that when my brain starts acting funky with memories, or when it acts wonky with time perception when I'm having a depersonalization/derealization episode, that it's temporary. It's not an actual problem with my brain or memory, it's a symptom of the mental illness that will fade or go away when I go into remission. I'll be able to file memories again normally and my brain will work like it should.

But I'm getting worse. I can't trust myself to word things correctly, and I can't trust that I'm reading my own words right either. It gets ten times worse when I'm talking about important social issues or about anything sensitive. I get stuck in a loop reading and rereading in case I said it the wrong way, lest people attack me online for a mistake or I get cancelled. I've been misinterpreted before in the worst way that caused some massive trauma I'm still cycling over today.

It led to some of this, to me not being able to trust my own brain. I'll try to read back something I wrote but I end up reading it aloud to hear how it sounds, just to be sure I read it correctly. And when I miss words or accidentally skip over a word, it makes it so much worse. 'See? You can't trust your own mind.'

I miss the days when I could write without the tension. When I could think creatively without feeling like I'm forcing it. When I enjoyed the editing process so much because I could see my stories taking shape.

Now all I experience is doubt. Worry. Anxiety. I can't even read others' books. I've powered through some, which exhausted me. I'm so tense all the time that I'm getting regular headaches where I rarely had even a low-grade headache before.

How do I trust myself and my own mind again? How do I relax when I can't remember what it feels like to be relaxed? How do I look forward to better days when my life has been awful since last November, despite taking all the steps to make my life better? How do I do any of this when all I have is myself to help myself, when I don't have anyone else here with me to maybe take out the trash or do a couple chores, or to handle some of the stressful shit until I can finally start to recover? Many people have romantic partners, room mates, or family to help them. I don't. I live alone and I have to deal with things even when I can't.

I can't recover. I'm scared something is wrong with my ability to write. I can't think creatively, not like the days not so long ago when I had an endless fount of ideas and was always taking notes for new stories. I don't even remember my dreams anymore because I stopped keeping a dream journal due to exhaustion.

I'm just scared for my other health problems that I constantly have to justify as 'no, it's not just my anxiety,' in a chronic state of burnout, and lacking help after trying to find it and being turned down everywhere. I just don't know what to do.

It's why I've been playing video games lately, one especially that I've practically memorized. I'm struggling to take in some of the new books I'm finding in it still, as it's an open world D&D game, but it brings me comfort that I can remember what to do, where to go, and see that I still have the ability to retain all of that information.

I just feel like I'm living in my own purgatory right now. I'm not sure what to do about it.

©2024 Shane Blackheart