i see the glow from far away / it haunts me now, straight to my grave

So my last journal entry (lj link | dw link) probably made me look like an entitled brat. And to be fair, which I try to be sometimes*, I can see why someone would get that impression, and certainly for any one forthright & honest person who might've commented on it, I'm sure a dozen or more had the same thought.

(* As Oscar Wilde may have said: Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.)

I don't really feel like I owe anyone an explanation, but I'm giving one anyway because I wanted to clear some stuff up, and because I don't actually think of myself as a spoilt, entitled brat.

The reason I wrote that entry was because it was an interaction with my family which did not make me feel horrible. I thought to myself: 'I will document my mom coming in and asking me for something I can't do right now, and then leaving calmly when I tell her I can't because that actually kind of makes me happy that she's not bitchy about it and she understands!'

She asked me to go to the grocery store but yesterday/Monday was not a good day for me to leave the house, I was tired and I already felt mildly grumpy and I had no energy/spoons for no discernible reason.

Unlike the way the interaction was written, I did actually let her finish her request and thought about whether I should force myself to do it. The request itself was immaterial, so I edited it out, but re-reading it I gave the impression that I interrupted her, which didn't happen in reality.

In reality, I also went into the living room a few minutes later and smoothed over a number of arguments that were happening about my younger brother's packing to move into his dorm room, because that's something that's easier for me to do, and gave her time to calm down while I supervised the packing for a couple hours.

Furthermore, it's not like I was wasting what energy I did have on "frivolous" pursuits: panda had asked me if I wanted to go to the movies and I'd told her no as well. It had very little to do with "oh god I am so lazy how dare you ask me to contribute to the running of this household" and everything to do with "I am so cranky today I can't imagine leaving the house and also I should probably take a nap."

I'm not writing this explanation of my last entry to complain. I don't want to be like "woe is me" because honestly, it's really not.

I'm sure that a lot of people would love to sit at home & be on the computer fucking around all day and receive a tiny amount of money from the gov't and live with their parents who don't force them to do anything.

Maybe. I don't actually know how many people like that there are out there.

But I personally am not one of the people who would choose this, even though what I just described is basically my life. I would rather have energy and get to do things, many things, lots of things, but that's not a choice that I get to make.

I do try to do things, but whenever I get to a certain point of doing 'too much' (for me) everything blows up in my face and then I generally assume that everything will get much worse, so a lot of the time if it's not urgent/important it's much safer for me not to wear myself out and actually be able to take care of myself & my dogs.

Otherwise I end up doing shit like lying in bed for two weeks straight, which I did last December (and many other times besides that) and it's not very much fun, although I don't remember most of it because I was asleep almost the entire time.

Seriously, it's not like I woke up one day and thought 'I know, I'll sleep 14 hours a day and never have any energy and be mostly incapable of regulating my emotions and have panic attacks and horrible depressions every winter! It'll be awesome!'

It's not a choice. I'm disabled. I don't want to be, but I am, and while I'm doing my best to manage it, I'm never going to be able to make the easy decision of "well, I'm out of sorts today, but my mom deserves better so I'll go to the store."

No, instead it's "well, I feel out of sorts today, and though my mom deserves better, if I leave I'm likely to either have a panic attack in the store AGAIN and/or come back and sleep through the next day, when I've already promised to be helping my younger brother move into his new dorm room along with my mother & sister."

So yeah. She does deserve better. I would like to think I do too, but it's not a choice I get to make.