Writing to reach me

"Our first problem is to accept our present problems as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they are...avoid turning this into unrealistic alibis for apathy of defeatism, and can allow us to know we're human and not perfect, and to regain our peace of mind."

In any aspect of who I am, I let my family down, I let countless work colleagues down, I hid from standing up to things I needed to face into. I was fearful and all I am doing is extending the fear even further - making myself unlikely to sleep all weekend, increasing the panic and the anxiety that changes the speed of the blood flowing round my body. My work was not good enough, I didn't do work I said I would, I didn't have good ideas, I didn't support enough, I wasn't good enough. I feel not good enough. I spend my week grasping for the weekend, to turn off the guilt and to see days of doing nothing stretching out ahead of me, and I spend the weekend too cold, too dark, punishing myself by not treating myself to a proper meal or heating, taking myself to bed because it's horrible to sit on my own in the pain I'm feeling. 

I'm grateful for good food and warmth, for babies and beds and a strong brew. I'm grateful for brindle dogs with wet noses and paws like flares. I'm grateful for no-one knowing what is going on inside me or on my screen, when I feel like the churn and swirl will drive me to run out of the building, and cry and rock and hug something. I'm grateful no-one knows how little I remember or how much I have on. 

I'm to blame. From start to finish. I'm not good enough. I don't work hard enough. I'm not able to get a grip on myself. I feel ashamed and I don't tell anyone near to me, no-one knows and so no-one can help. And still I carry on making my life worse than it needs to be and bringing anguish on my partner. Who is nothing but hope and support and love and who I push away and pull faces at and criticise and fall silent at innumerable times a day. And still I mess it up. A gratitude list My little nephew, who is the best little chap. I'm warm in my bed, with the chance to try again tomorrow I still haven't heard every song by Neil Young or Bob Dylan The poem Annabelle Lee by Edgar Allen Poe That I'm going to see the TS Eliot prize nominees read their poems at the Southbank Centre That my partner is being so very wonderful

I don't know if I can cope with my job. It feels like it's just too much for me. When I look back on all the times I've felt like this, it's always been my fault. Somehow I could have worked harder, or asked more questions or asked for help more or pushed through the fear and "got over it", "chosen it's not that bad". But if I leave this job, will I ever feel strong enough to do anything else, won't every other job feel like a consolation prize to the job I should have been doing if I wasn't such a failure. I can't do this job and I'll ruin my life if I fail in this job. This presentation is everything. It's all I've ... I can't go on writing about it, because it is all I've thought about for weeks, and I've spent hours working on it, and many many more hours not working on it and worrying that I'm not working on it. And worrying I'm not working on it when I should be working on it. and worrying...

I sleep fitfully and creep and crawl into a new year. I awake feeling shaken and jarred, not wanting to make trouble for the person lying next to me, not wanting the first morning of the new decade to start with tears and frustration, hiding from the truth. The truth is that I don't know what I can do to make this better, that I feel so raw and bruised that the smallest cross word will send me into panic and tears. And I don't know why. And I can't help it. And I feel so guilty for feeling this way.  And he can't help but upset me. And it's not his fault. And all I can do is apologise again. And again. I'm honest and the suffering soul beside me brings me tea and steps on egg shells and carefully tests me all day, asking how I am feeling and what he can do. I feel so much love, but it's a love borne out of gratitude, grateful that he's not yet been driven away by my neediness. I want to be strong enough to be enough and feel enough and feel that he...