Nightmares and daydreams

I had this awful nightmare last night. It should be noted that I have scary/unpleasant dreams all the time, my primary consumption is horror and engineering simulations/texts, so that tends to reflect in my dreams.

After last week’s crash and burn, finally my former therapist reached back out. She featured in the nightmare, criticizing me for not adapting better, and when I woke I realized that if it was up to me I’d never talk to her again. I told my wife, got some pushback there, but what can you do?

There’s something I thought I would get, maybe that I used to get from therapy and don’t now. Eight therapists in four years, two of whom I actually liked and wanted to keep working with, it was not to be. So I feel like I’m just rotating through various people that want to do the bare minimum, but in terms of getting greater insight or healing, it isn’t happening.

Then there is the energy issue. I’m running at a constant energy deficit right now; Today I got somewhat ambitious and put a squirrel baffle on the pole that will hold my bird feeders, when I get the energy to collect them, refill them and rehang them. A chore that literally used to take me 30 minutes is now stretched over two weeks. Then I realize that a good 4-12 hours a week were once focused on trying to figure out what I needed to for therapy, and now that’s my time again.

On the other side we have a daydream, a fantasy of a life I’d like to have.  I spent the last week coming to grips with being considered for  a job, one that I might really want. My ability to hope is hampered, but as my wife said; this job seems like it was custom made for my career, combining my interest in research and working with young people. Then again, I’m trying to bury the concept of career behind busy hands and a busy brain. Weekends are still awful, because I don’t hear anything, and I slow down to rest, and my fears/despair/inadequacy tend to catch up.

Part of getting older seems to be learning to live with my limitations. The problem I have is trying to explain those limits to anyone else. I tried to pray again, in vain hope that God would have valuable insight into what I should be doing, no such luck.

I’m tired of feeling broken, and like something is wrong with me. Supposedly, so goes the mythos that those around me reinforce, I’m a highly intelligent and capable person. Hence, one must conclude that the things I cannot overcome would be even less achievable for persons of average cognitive skill. When I was honest with people, I kept being told how much lower other people’s standards are, and to be kind to myself. The question is why? I’m not happy with the results, therefor I must look for a new direction, or make the one I’m going in work.

It feels like all the determining factors, at least the ones that matter, aren’t in my control. So I rage against a society in which I do not fit, do not belong, and now would prefer finding a new more distant way of relating to.

If prayer worked, I have so many people rooting for me. It remains central to my understanding of the world that no matter how many people desire something to be, it does not make it so.