“You do not have to do good, but you cannot do nothing.”

_{Searows, Wild Geese}

I find myself distraught, exhausted, and melancholy. How much longer can I go on as I am now? There is deep fear in me, and deep discontent, and I only let them surface when I feel equipped to handle them – which has been not at all, as of late. I am snapping in and out of moods too quickly to write about. By the time I am able to sit for a moment and collect myself, the emotion I am collecting myself over has left me. All that remains in the dregs of my barrel is exhaust of the highest magnitude.

I have never loved my job, but I have tolerated it well. I can’t tell if it is the time that has passed with no help, or the incessant questioning and pestering that has pushed me to this point, but I suppose it does not matter because there is no coming back from where I find myself now. The redeeming qualities of this work have narrowed down to mere pebbles in the quarry, but what guts me most is the anger.

I have never been fast to anger. I’ve prided myself on my control, my empathy, my patience. It is all foreign to me now at this place. The upset used to be contained within working hours, but as the fullness of it presses on and on within my body until I might burst, I have let it seep through the cracks of me into everything. I am angry at my friends, I am angry at my partner, angrier at myself than I have ever been. My fuse is cut shorter and shorter – I react abundantly to small qualms, waste precious energy on inane moments. The anger, more than anything else, is egging on the exhaustion. They are intertwined in ego death, feeding each other my heart.

I feel most unlike myself. The guilt of my behavior is backed by the strangling fear that maybe this is who I really am, have always been. I am lashing out as an angry dog, which is followed instantaneously with deep apology. How many more pardons can I beg on my hands and knees for before I go unanswered? I know the threshold is approaching; if not for the people around me, then for myself. I do not know how to regulate this, and I do not know how to find the resources to teach me, and the boxed in-ness of it all freezes me entirely. I cannot move if I cannot trust my mouth to speak.

I will write a book. That is the only thing that I can see through all of this. It is not waiting at the end of a shining tunnel – I can see it sitting atop my grave. I have to crawl to it, dirt and rock cutting beneath my fingernails, making my anger into movement. I have no other choice. It is this, or the death of my character, my soul, because it cannot stay like this forever. My wick’s end is in my line of sight.

Until I unfreeze,

G.D.