In case anyone out there is wondering how things are going in the “problematic world to be in versus my reservoir of resources” department, here’s the email I just sent to my therapist.
Some asshole has been outside somewhere in his car with his stereo subwoofer cranked for at least half an hour (and intermittently all day before that) and it’s not just the sound of it, it’s vibrating my apartment walls and floor and I legit ten minutes ago went outside and screamed “this shit in vibrating my apartment, shut it the fuck off” into the sky and then came in and stood shaking in the bathroom for five minutes and had a serious conversation with myself about whether or not I had anything heavy I could throw at whatever car it is. I got maybe 65% of the way to actually looking for something. I thought maybe the shovel outside would work. I am losing my mind and there’s no ear protection in the world that blocks low frequencies let alone that IT IS VIBRATING MY APARTMENT. I do not have the resources to keep living with shit like this without going diagnoseably insane.
Ten minutes after I started writing it, they (the subwoofer) seemed maybe to have finally driven away. Then again, who knew. But I wrote it, so I sent it.
Ten minutes after that, I tried to do dishes (which I’d kept putting off because lately things like that just make my upper back erupt in tension and pain) but only ended up with my elbows on the edge of the sink, head in my hands, rocking back and forth, as the hot water from the faucet I couldn’t even bring myself to turn off sent steam around my head.
Five minutes into that, I had a full-on, slide-to-the-ground sobbing breakdown on the kitchen floor.
The tipping point between head-in-hands and sobbing-breakdown was the realization that there’s nothing I can do about any of it. I can’t make the world less problematic and I can’t prevent days where that problematic is high and the resources are low to the point where I’m screaming into the sky of my neighborhood for the second time in four days.
This is just how it’s going to be, and somehow i have to get through X more decades of it. And I don’t right now know how to do that. And I don’t think anyone else can tell me.
(Just kidding about “my reservoir of resources”. There is no reservoir. There’s only whatever small stack of resources I have on the start of any given day to get through that day.)