So yesterday I got a call from a hotel I applied online at, for a night auditor position, and I have an interview on Tuesday at like 1:30, and only because I said I wouldn’t be available until early next week. My van has very little gas in it, likely barely enough to get me back home to my parents’ house this weekend (they’re like a 40 minute drive away, not terrible), so I’ll have to ask them for gas money, because the hotel is a 15 minute drive away from where I live, and I likely wouldn’t have enough gas to get to the interview and back, and then back to my parents’ house.
The reason I didn’t ask them for money weekend before last, when I was last there, was because mom made some passing comment about it would be a tremendous weight lifted (or whatever wording she used, I can’t recall) if they didn’t have to pay for some of my stuff. She didn’t even say it in an accusatory way or anything, but seeing as dad had just paid a 300+ dollar energy bill for me, I didn’t have the balls to ask for extra money.
I have two checks worth about 60 bucks that I’m sitting on because I have no open bank account, and my old bank won’t cash checks they didn’t issue if you don’t have an active account, and the places in the area require a current driver’s license/ID to get checks cashed. And my ID has been expired since November, so I’m lowkey mentally preparing a script for in case I get pulled over every single time I take my van somewhere. It costs 32 freaking dollars to get my current ID, which is stupid. How does it cost them 32 dollars to print my photo and a few tidbits of info on a stupid plastic rectangle? Whatever.
My cat’s out of dry food, and so far she’s been getting spoiled with canned chicken because my ebt card can buy cans of chicken, and even with scrounging for change in my entire house, and my van, I will probably barely have enough to buy a 1 dollar bag of food for my cat, and that won’t even last a week. So once again, I’ll be asking my parents to loan me gas money, and I’ll spend part of it on some fuckin cat food.
Back to the job thing for a minute, I literally didn’t even get to have a rush of “FUCK YES I HAVE AN INTERVIEW”, it literally went straight to “oh fuck, a night auditor? I don’t want to work at night, I can barely function during the day, and my sleeping patterns are already fucked up beyond all recognition”, never mind the fact that back in community college, I took the 2nd to lowest level math class they offered, and I still only passed with a D. I can’t do more than simple addition in my head, I can barely read face clocks, I’m literally terrible with numbers. This is the problem with putting in as many apps as I can, even to the places that ‘won’t call for an interview’ or positions that wouldn’t be a good fit. The problem is that I’m already coming up with all these reasons why it won’t work, so when I inevitably (in my mind) don’t get the job, I’ll actually be lowkey relieved. Being bad with numbers is a legitimate reason, everything else has been thoroughly shat out by my negative automatic filters. So in addition to the fuckload of guilt I schlep around literally every single minute of my waking life, I’m berating myself for not being able to think myself out of this.
It’s been my thinking that, if I’m aware of something, I should be able to fix it automatically/with little effort, or I’M A FAILURE. I think stating any legitimate obstacles or difficulties is just me being a lazy ass and trying to justify being a lazy ass because I ‘just don’t want to do it’. Because admittedly, in the past, I have done those sorts of things. Coming up with a list of places I supposedly applied to, just to shut my parents up, because I wasn’t going to get the jobs anyway, why waste the effort? Etc.
No amount of anyone else telling me otherwise, that I’m not a failure because of same, I think they’re just telling me what I want to hear, just saying it because they don’t want to deal with the huge episode I’ll have. So, every reason why something can’t happen/why it is difficult, legitimate or not, is an “excuse” in my mind, and with this kind of thinking I’m literally going to feel this shitty forever, and I’ll never get on top of anything.
In the past, when I was far shittier than I am now, my parents would ask if I “can’t” work at a place or “won’t.” Some of them were, won’t, to my parents’ credit, but many of the reasons I had were legitimate (or I was being genuine about thinking they were legitimate). So somewhere along the line, my thinking got distorted into “All the reasons you have for doing/not doing things? Excuses, really you SHOULD whatever”.
I’m reading a book by Brene Brown, and it’s kind of eye opening. I had heard my mother (who’s a librarian and very avid reader) mention that name, but to be honest, I didn’t really think much of it until one of my favorite voice actors name dropped Brene in a poem in his poetry book that was just somewhat recently released, and that my sister ordered for me as a surprise. And I even feel bad about that, because my mom has complained before that she can tell dad he should do something for years and he doesn’t take any stock in the advice until it comes from doctor, even if the doctor says the same damn thing that she’s been saying.
If you made a huge flow chart (think really huge, stretching into space tbh) of all the problems I have, all the mental health bullshit, almost all of it boils down to one derivative: guilt/shame. I have a unique ability to feel guilty about almost everything, even to the point where, I’ll feel guilty just if someone thinks I did something, even if I didn’t do the thing. It’s fuckin wild, I feel guilty about shit I couldn’t have even possibly had an effect on, and as I said before, being aware of something and being able to change it POOF LIKE THAT seem to be one in the same in my weird ass distorted brain. Recently my mom has had to put her dad in a nursing home (currently temporary but it’s likely he won’t be able to go back home) , and I once rapidfire texted my sister back and forth that if I hadn’t been such a fuckup and cost my parents so much wasted money over the years, they wouldn’t be worrying so much about being able to afford putting grandpa in the nursing home. Even typing that sentence just now almost made me watery eyed. It comes up in therapy constantly about how I wasted so much of my parents’ money over the years, and right now I rely on them to pay my bills, and that isn’t fair, I should be far past the point where I can support myself, and I get stuck in this terrible revolving door of Guilt for my Past Mistakes and then the Guilt is so overpowering it literally hinders any Progress I Should Be making. My anxiety always adversely affected me in some ways, but it’s now gotten to the point where it actively interferes with and impedes my ability to live my fucking life, and I can even feel guilt about THAT.
It also comes up in therapy constantly that so many others have so much more to deal with than I do, and they’re getting through okay. I hear my mother’s voice, or my friends’ voices that damn they wish they had that little to worry about or they wish they had so many hours of sleep as I get, or they wish they had as much free time as I do. Meanwhile I’m here with all the sleep, all the free time, and I’m still barely able to function? It makes me feel like a spoiled little shit who’s been given everything in life and is still failing, and then I get sucked into the “what’s the point, why are you even here, if you weren’t such a fucking wuss you would just go play in traffic on the interstate and get it over with” whirlpool, which often takes an hour of crying uncontrollably and a 2 hour anxiety/stress nap to emerge from.
Anyway, speaking of mental health, I have therapy in like half an hour.
♫ friction and harmony ♫ 