When people see my posts, they often get the impression that I am really productive, focused, confident, and have my life together. That is the image I like to portray online. I often post only the good things that happen. Who wants to talk about the bad stuff? It’s nicer to just post when I’m having fun, doing things, out and about, and functioning well.
But that’s not the reality of my life.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have a wonderful life. Absolutely the best life I could ask for. I have loving relationships with Brad and Tamara, I have three amazing dogs, we live in a nice place, we have enough food to eat, I have people who care about me who pay for things I want and need like vacations, hearing aids, service dogs, and wheelchairs. We get out regularly to do fun things, and I have all the medical care I need. All these are great things!
But the truth is that I am often paralyzed by anxiety, self-hatred, feelings of failure, and depression. Many days I wake up and simply cannot do the activities I had planned for that day due to these feelings. Or I do the activities, but cannot fully enjoy them. So often when I am trying to have fun, I have a loop of negative self-talk playing in my head.
My relationships with those closest to me suffer because I cannot understand how they can love such a terrible person as myself. My relationships with my dogs suffer because I feel like such a failure in caring for them that sometimes I just give up and have to ask for help.
Just last night, for example, we were playing our favorite dice game, Farkle, after a lovely meal that Tamara cooked for us. I had everything in the world to be happy about. Yet I was fighting back tears and feeling like I wanted to die (note, not suicidal, more like not wanting to be alive anymore and not wanting to kill myself). This feeling is a familiar one for me.
When people tell me I’ve achieved so much in life, I cannot believe them. When they remind me that I have a PhD, I feel like I got it fraudulently… I feel like everyone knew I wasn’t going to continue in research, and everyone knew I needed to graduate in order to get back on the medication merry-go-round, so they just gave me my PhD out of pity. Everything in my life that I have earned, I feel imposter syndrome, that it wasn’t really deserved, or that people didn’t know the real me when they honored me.
So yes, I look put together and productive. It seems I can juggle many balls. But the reality is that I feel like a failure behind the smiling pictures. I do have fun in life, but so often my life is tainted by anxiety and depression. So that is the reality. I’m working on changing it with therapy, but I wanted to let you all in on my inner life, the life behind the veneer.