Mental Health

Nihilism is almost never a good idea – an off-the-cuff joint.

I have no plan.

I don’t think much about the future. Not about next week, or next month, or next year. I used to, many, many years ago. When I was a child and wanted to be an aerospace engineer. Or a biochemist. Or a surgeon. Back when I had plans for the future. But an eating disorder, though it taunts you with ideas of a perfect future where you’re happy, and life is good, keeps you centred in the now, and forces you to put all those dream aside.

You don’t have time for the future. You barely have time for the present. You’re busy.

I do visit the future occasionally, but in a dissociation kind of way, not a “hopes and dreams” kind of way, and dissociations are almost never a good time. Even if they start out fine, things go sideways quickly. The future in those imaginings is less happy place and more Blade Runner.

But I digress.

You can’t get there without a map.

I think not having a plan for the future is stagnating. I think it’s stultifying. I think my inability to see a future for myself, and to take steps to get there, causes harm. It’s paralyzing. It leads to despair. What’s the point of anything if now is all there is, and now kind of sucks?

An active eating disorder distracts you from the despair of nihilism that one or more of my neuroses seems to embrace, but I didn’t fill the hole it left when it went – or haven’t as yet – and that’s a bit of a problem. An eating disorder is many things, and is always trying to kill you, but it arises as a coping mechanism, and for me, it helped keep the demons at bay.

I did not purposefully fill the space it left, and that’s a problem. I didn’t purposefully think about what I would do with my life, and that’s a problem too.

No plans for the future leads to no hope, and hopelessness is not something people do well with. It’s also sort of a requirement of disability pensions. They’re very restrictive. They’re very much rock and hard place.

But I digress. That’s a rant for a different time and place.

Time for a plan.

My house sale has fallen through. This whole process has been a roller coaster of emotions and events. I decided to sell. I made the necessary cosmetic home repairs. I packed up almost everything up per agent recommendations leaving me agitated. My environment is important to my stability.

Then there’s the listing. The leaving for the open houses. For the showings. The there are offers and negotiations. Finally – one week – you sell.

Remorse, remorse, remorse, but you keep your word, so you say nothing, but then the sale is cancelled, and now I have a leaking foundation. Which, ironically, I’d not have discovered it I hadn’t packed up to move, and had boxes all over the storage room in the basement. Which got wet. Luckily no books were damaged. I’d have been hella distressed.

This promises to be an expensive fix, and that doesn’t excite me. A big part about going was the idea of having a bit of extra cash from the sale – being on disability keeps you poor, and that makes excitement about the future hard too. This smells of debt, and a long repayment. And more of a life lived on the edge of poverty, which is less exciting than television makes out.

But I’m excited to talk to my realtor today. I’m going to delist the house, and I’m glad I have a concrete – no crack-in-the-foundation pun intended – reason to do so. I hate looking like a flake. I think that’s perhaps why I don’t stand my ground and speak up more often. I overcompensate for the fact that I live with mental illness. I assume that’s the metric by which others are judging me.

It’s actually the metric I’m using to judge myself, and I find myself wanting, apparently.

I hate insight.

Plan or wish?

But look at me, still hustling to show that I’ve earned my air. I feel quite circular in my recovery progress of late. Perhaps concrete plans are the way forward. I need to figure out who I am and what I want now that I’m starting to feel free of my eating disorder. I need less knee-jerk impulsiveness, and more in the way of planning.

Grief doesn’t help either. Grief over the death of my mother has turned me into the marble in a pinball machine, bouncing me here and there without rhyme or reason. I don’t like the instability an unpredictability that comes with grief. I think I’d prefer the movie version to the reality. It seems easier, and of shorter durations.

In the real world, “grief” is shorthand. It’s the word we use to describe the complete rewriting of our world and our lives. It takes time to get used to the changes. And, I’ve never been patient.

But a plan for moving forward is a good thing. A plan is forward-looking with scaffolding. Now comes the hard part for me – creating one. I resist, and always have, concrete planning. Especially if I have to write it down. I have only ever allowed it for my eating disorder. That’s something I should look at too. I will include it.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it well: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Now, off to shop for a notebook.

Sort of, but I’d argue the lows take you lower,
confusing you as to if there’s any progress at all.
Daily writing prompt
What are you most excited about for the future?
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13 thoughts on “Nihilism is almost never a good idea – an off-the-cuff joint.”

  1. We hear stuckness, unmet needs for progress. The strategy we hear to meet the need is looking at future goal-setting.

    We hear frustration and concern over the foundation leak: repairs and costs. Unmet needs for stability and choice and ease.

    We are learning more about your ED here, too, continuing our perfectionism conversation from another comment.

    We felt resonance when you wrote that disability schemes require us to be hopeless, formless puddles of drooping chaos. We feel deep sadness about our own reflection in that puddle.

    We hear some relief the house won’t be sold.

    We read today about transformational learning theory and the last step was integrating the new learning into your life.

    WHAT LIFE???? lol

    We feel mightily depressed and will try to allow that and look for unmet needs and strategies to meet them. We will reply to you also on the other thread we have going

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  4. I’m pleased to see that at least one good thing (the notebook) came out of this.

    As much of a planner as I can be, I don’t think much about the future. Haven’t for a while. It’s easier that way when things don’t work out. Your dreams don’t crumble. You just remind yourself that you didn’t really care that much about it anyway. That’s my way of coping.

    Had no idea you were trying to move. Sorry to hear your sale fell through, but I trust that it will work out in the end somehow.

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  5. I’m sorry, and not sorry, that the sale of your house fell through. On one hand, it sounds as though you relieved that it did, even though on the other hand, the repairs you’ll need to make will put you in further debt and make your everyday life more difficult. I think we all have decision, fatigue, so when things happen that make decisions for us, particularly large ones, it’s a relief, even if it’s not what we might have chosen ourselves. We can blame karma, bad luck, or whatever else instead. It’s not our fault, after all.

    Grief has been kicking my ass. I feel very unstable emotionally, which is extremely foreign and uncomfortable for me. I am usually very strong, sure, indecisive about nearly everything… but that “me“ seems to have fallen by the wayside. Hopefully, it’s temporary and I’ll find “me” again at some point. I have always known that I was going to be a wreck when my mom died. I just never, in my wildest dreams, thought she would die before her 90s. But, here we are.

    I am usually pretty good about creating a plan for my future, but right now I’m just trying to get through each day. Looking too much further ahead overwhelms me. So, I suggest taking stock. You are not too far ahead of me in this grief journey, and now may not be the time for you to make major decisions or map out your future. mapping out your future is something that you do solely for you. If it seems overwhelming, or if you are disconnected to it, what would be the point in going through the exercise of it? Is this just some thing you feel you have to do?

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    1. Grief is an underestimated thing, I think. I have found that it is also kicking my ass, and that of a friend here whose father died four months before mom.

      We live in this world where the expectation is that you grieve for a bit – a month perhaps – and then it’s back to ‘normal’ to not put lie to the way we’ve built our relationship with death.

      One of the frustrations I have now with grief is I’ve suddenly become so less competent. The first months there is stuff to do. You are grieving and busy. And then I wasn’t busy.

      I abandoned planning, or it abandoned me, so I totally feel that. Like you, I’d always expected a lot more time with my mom.

      It’s funny. I remember now, just after mom died, saying to someone that I needed to just pause, just be calm and hold off on decisions for at least six months. And then I threw myself into decision and change.

      Thank you. I need a bit of structure. Being on disability and living alone, I don’t external demands imposed, and so I drift.

      I think all this was perhaps a kind of avoidance. But, as you say, here we are.

      Sending big hugs.

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  6. I wonder how my children will grieve after my demise.

    At 73 one could pop off at any time. I honestly thought life would have killed me by now, but here we are.
    I am way ready, and I keep telling God, now would be good, but clearly, He doesn’t agree.
    I know my girls are not ready for me to die.

    I sat at my mother’s bedside for three weeks where she was in a care facility – she had Alzheimer’s. Every few minutes she’d open her eyes and say, “Hello! Thanks for coming.” She had no idea who I was and the day my dad died she shouted at me in the street in front of the house so the neighbours(new) came out. “ I never loved you!” She shouted. Then, “ Help! She’s trying to steal my house!”
    I was unloved, she was cruel, but her lying there without a single familiar thing broke my heart for her.
    I don’t remember the date of her death. I talk to her often as I notice how much like her I am now, down to my iffy knee and the need for a hot water bottle under my arm in winter.
    I don’t mourn her death. I had no grief. I feel like she was put out of her misery. I have wept over having our dog put down, over an Irish 98 yr old lady I cared for, for only two years. I couldn’t cry for my mom. She, like our beloved dog has gone to happy hunting grounds.
    My condolences for your loss.
    I am contemplating selling my house. It costs me money and … but it’s my only income and I am afraid I may have to live in it again one day instead of renting it out.
    Every time the wind blows I wonder if the roof will hold. I’ve never worried about that before.
    Good luck with your house.
    Nice post. As you can see it generated a story from me.
    Best wishes.

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    1. Your kids will grieve, and it will rewrite their world. It just does. It’s funny – when I was a child, fifty seemed old, and now seventy-three doesn’t seem that old to me at all.

      I’m sorry that your mother treated you badly. It shows your grace that you felt such sympathy for the indignity that is Alzheimer’s.

      My grandmother was unkind to my mother – it makes the grief process harder and more complicated.

      Yes, the finances around a house are tricky. Being cash-poor was one of my motivations as well.

      Thank for reading, and for the thoughtful comment.

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