I don’t want to get better. I want to be better.

I’m tired. Mental health struggles are tiring. Depression is tiring. Anxiety is tiring. An eating disorder is tiring.

They’re boring too. They bore me. I have the same problems and I fight the same battles day after day. For every step I take forward it seems like there’s an almost equivalent knockback. This makes progress slow.

I work on my depression and anxiety comes to the fore. Work on the anxiety and the eating disorder says “Hey, how’s it going? Just thought I’d pop back up for a visit.” It’s frustrating in the extreme and it’s starting to piss me off. I’m tired of doing the work.

I want a vacation. The destination is unimportant; the only requirement I have is that I get to leave myself behind. I’m tired of finding myself wherever I go.

I know the things I have to do. I live my life according to those requirements every day. Get up. Get dressed. Make the bed. Meditate. Practice cognitive skills to fight back against the inside voice that promises that you’re a failure, pathetic, and hopeless. That reminds you that life is pointless and that you’ll probably never achieve anything of note. That tells you that everything you do is a waste of time because it comes from you and you’re less than. The whole thing gets old. I’m exceptionally sick of my inside voice.

I want to be better. I’m tired of living with the process. I want to wake up fixed. I want a fairy godmother who will show up, wave her wand, and grant me peace of mind. I want to not hear the dark voices in my head anymore. I want to not obsess over everything that might go wrong. I want to stop thinking about the shape and size of my body every waking moment. I want to enjoy life, not struggle through it.

I want life to be fair.

It isn’t of course, and no fairy godmother is coming. Regardless of how much I might wish otherwise, I have to fix myself and therein lies the rub. I’m tired of doing it. I want someone else to carry my load for a while. I want someone to take me out of myself and give me a tune up before putting me back in the shell that carries the essence of me around.

I want to not hate the shell.

I want a pony, because why not? Because if I’m wishing for things to be not as they are, I might as well shoot for the moon.

I want to give up. The only thing I want more than that is to not give up but those moments of wanting to try are being challenged of late.

The only thing I know is that I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the hope that it matters. In the hope that I will learn to peacefully co-exist with my neuroses in a way that doesn’t make me want to shove my head through a wall.

Mental health issues are a struggle. They make things hard. It would be nice if we could take a break from them for a minute, just to give ourselves some ease, just to catch our breath.

Like my wish for a pony, however, that will not come to pass.

The only options on the table are give up or keep fighting.

I’m tired but once more I’m going to choose to keep going. To keep trying to get better. To keep living. It’s hard, it’s miserable, and it pisses me off but I’m not ready to abandon the game.