Impulsive. in Mental Health

I’ve always been an impulsive person. Snap decisions happen far too often, and they’re usually bad decisions. I fly through a range of emotions in a heartbeat, thoughts and feelings all jumbled up in my head, whirling like a kaleidoscope, and there is no way to tell what’s right or wrong. I don’t know if that’s just who I am or if it’s a symptom or side-effect of mental illness, or maybe even if it’s not a totally abnormal thing… I just know that it feels like being on a really scary roller coaster sometimes. I say a thing or do a thing and immediately think, “Why the fuck…”

What I am not is an intuitive person. Like… my instincts don’t work right or something. Okay, bullshit. I’m going to call myself out right now. My intuition works just fucking fine. I ignore it, okay? I have never let myself trust it. Couple that with impulsive decision-making and…

I fuck up a lot. Or I feel like I do, anyway. I say awkward shit, or weird shit. I make crazy impulsive decisions. I do things without taking all factors into consideration. During these times, I often convince myself that nothing I do matters anyway so I might as well do XYZ (usually something impulsive and stupid). I’m careless and reckless.

Sometimes I’m capable of the deepest of thoughts and other times I am incapable of thinking at all. I feel it happening, like falling into a role I have been cast to play. No thought required, just go through the motions. Behave in ways that I think will please others and keep my head down. Try not to draw any unnecessary attention to myself. Just gotta make sure everything goes just right, just how it’s “supposed to be.” Those are powder keg moments. Or days… The slightest disruption can tip me right over and suddenly I’m thinking again, and feeling again, and it’s crashing in on me like waves and I can’t breathe and my vision is all blurry because tears and my entire body goes tense.

That’s what I’ve been feeling for several weeks. Not just moments or days. Weeks. Slipping into a manic depressive episode at a really awful time in both my professional and personal life, trying so hard to just keep my head down and get shit done and get through what I could get through on a daily basis. I’m only capable of so much during times like that. Some days, it’s literally getting out of bed, going to work, and coming back home. That’s it, that’s all I can do, my kid is eating pizza or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, and I’m not eating at all because it would require effort. The very thought of eating anything repulses me, makes me nauseous.

On those days, I can’t pay bills, or even remember I have them. I let a $25 failure-to-show-proof-of-insurance ticket go so far that I just had to pay $220 for it so they wouldn’t suspend my license. I pretty much forgot the ticket the day I got it. Remembered a couple of times at wrong moments and promptly forgot again. Remember a time or two while sitting in front of my computer, where I could take care of the thing with a few clicks, and still do nothing.

And I try. I sit here and I tell myself, “Go, do, be. Something, anything but this. Move.” But I just… can’t. I am so overcome with feelings of exhaustion and utter defeat that I just can’t human anymore for a bit. Sometimes I manage a little something. Wash a few dishes, take out the trash. But it’s exhausting and I just want to cry and then I feel like a failure, a good for nothing lazy jerk.

I still have that awful tendency to overlook red flags, especially when in certain mental states, like this current episode. I think it’s because maybe I’ve never known a guy who didn’t have any so overlooking them is like… the default setting? Like, every single man I’ve ever let into my life has had red flags almost from minute one and I’ve overlooked them, pretty much automatically. I need to be less impulsive with the overlooking of the red flags. Overlooking and just accepting red flags without evaluating them is irresponsible, at the least, and can be potentially dangerous. There are common red flags among domestic abusers, for example. I know because I’ve ignored the same red flags several times to the same disastrous ends.

Being impulsive without recognizing it immediately and evaluating the impulse before following through is a huge red flag within myself. I know I’m impulsive. I know I overlook red flags. I also know that I overlook the red flag within that is me overlooking the red flags without.

I wasn’t like this always. I have steadily grown worse over the years, and I wonder if it’s the progression of bipolar disorder or the progression of ADHD, or a combination of both. Or something else entirely. Because I want nothing more than to be the neat and ordered person I used to be. I mean, sure, back then I was dirt poor and living in a tiny 1-bedroom apartment with my year-and-a-half old child. I had almost no belongings. My daughter had more clothes than I did. My shitty little apartment was always neat and clean, though. And I think to myself, every once in awhile, just get rid of everything. Make a big pile and light it all on fire, eliminate the noise, there’s too much noise, too many things all around me all the time, clothes and junk mail and random shit that doesn’t belong where it’s at. Destructive impulses. I am, generally, capable of not giving in to those types of impulses. I mean, I’ve never burned down my home or anything, so that’s good, right?

I know how I got where I’m at. I may not know if chemical imbalance exacerbated it or not (it most certainly did, stop lying to yourself, girl), but I know how I got here. I can trace every single step, every impulsive decision, every time I ignored my intuitions, every time I ignored red flags. All the steps that led me to be the person I am now. Clutterbrained and scatterbrained and impulsive. My impulses scare the shit out of me, ya’ll. They have proven time and again to be wrong. I can be so reckless, careless… downright stupid.

It’s all self-destruction, ain’t it? I have spent years and years of my life slowly self-destructing. Tearing myself apart one brick at a time.

Why?

Because some really shitty people spent years and years of my life helping me do it, teaching me how, convincing me that I deserved all the pain and misery, that I was not worth better or more.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how your own mind can be turned against you. When someone tells you something enough times, you can’t help but start to believe it. It’s psychology. And it’s especially effective if the person telling you the lies about yourself is someone you love and trust, someone who is supposed to care for you and keep you safe. Those people can convince you of anything. And they convinced me that I couldn’t trust myself, my own mind, my own instincts. Because I was “crazy,” I wasn’t fit to make decisions for myself.

Ya’ll, I was never “crazy” by any stretch of the word. I could be talked into a complete and total breakdown by people who knew which buttons to push, and the people I allowed into my life, that I didn’t listen to my instincts about, knew all of the buttons. Hell, I told them how to push most of those buttons myself. Because, you know… I mean, Sperm Donor, he just wanted to help. He was gonna fix me. Yup. Fix me right up. He knew everything about me and just how to use the worst parts against me. And he did so almost with glee. He would literally get this gleam in his eye, this sparkle, as he said something particularly horrific to me that he knew would break me, bring me to my knees. He would laugh when I cried. Wanker did the same.

For years, I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I felt like I was out of my mind. Totally certifiable. But the only crazy I’ve ever been was the crazy they made me.

Now. To control the impulses and listen to my instincts more. To recognize when thoughts and feelings are valid and not just an out-of-control, wandering mind. To address thoughts, feelings, impulses, and instincts head-on so they don’t run me over. I want to be more assertive and feel comfortable doing it. More blunt, more open, more honest. I want to stop making things about me that aren’t about me at all, because when I let myself do that, let myself focus on some negative thing about me as the cause of something when it’s not, I tear myself to pieces. I start looking at all the negative things about myself and can’t think of a single positive one. And, you know, not everything is about me or my worth or lack of worth…

No, not lack of worth… I am worthy. No lack of worth here. 100% worthy. What happened to me in the past, what was done and said and taught to me, is not who I am. It does not determine my worth, my future, or who I am. I do. And no matter how much I fuck up, no matter how many mistakes or missteps or careless words or reckless behaviors, I am worthy. I am scratched and cracked and scarred, and I am still worthy.

(deep breath)

Last updated September 12, 2019