Wednesday April 6, 2011

Please do not leave feedback or advice.  Thank you.  Prayers welcome. I highly recommend you don't read this.  I do not want to know that you relate; I know many procrastinators relate to this.  It doesn't help me.  What I need is recovery.  Not solidarity.

I know it says "help," but that's really for my Higher Power.  I am not asking for help from anyone else.  I am terrified about my life.  I am freaked out beyond belief.  I ... am having difficulty just forming sentences.  I don't want to talk to my counselor b/c they'll prolly just recommend drugs, which is not what I need.

I am barely well already.

I am freaking out.  Freaking out.  I am destitute.  I have put myself here.  I am the cause of this, and yet, I cannot do anything about it, I feel like.  I'm freaking out, and it's not a good use of my time, but I can't help it.  I am finally realizing that nothing matters, nothing I've done the past two years of my life matters.  I feel like a total slave.  A slave! ...to marching orders I've taken from nobody but my own inability to face up to reality, do anything about my situation, et cetera, et cetera.  This sometimes feels like one long binge of cruising.  It's like I paid 6000 USD just to binge and cruise and not really do anything with the best years of my life.  I feel like I've totally wasted the past seven years of my life.  I mean --  I have had some good points, but most of it has been a waste, and I've f*cked up.  So so much.  It's like I really have no self-esteem whatsoever.  I treat myself with no respect.  I cannot sleep at night.  Well, I do treat myself with SOME respect.  But I feel like I've gone completely crazy.  I've gone to the complete extreme of this addiction in terms of the seventh sign of compulsive procrastination ("We are acutely aware of what we should be doing, or think we
should be doing, and oddly out of touch with what we actually want
and need.").  But I need to have a healing.  It's like I don't know what to do in order to get it.  I feel like there is no help out there for me, no real sponsorship available.  I have told people in my twelve step programs about this addiction and they have the same problem and have NO idea what to do about it or don't wish to work the program of PA (which is perfectly fine by me), because it's just too difficult an issue for them to work with right now, and that's fine, totally fine, OR they just stare at me as if I'm a crazy person, like, "WTH is wrong with you?  Why wouldn't you just do what you need to do?   You're a logical person; why wouldn't you do what is logically recommended to you?"  As if "doing," were a matter of "knowing," or as if I even "knew" what to do.  I am constantly in the position, as a result of my addiciton to procrastination, of not knowing what to do, and isn't just that ...  I've lost track of reality to the point that --

My addiction has set in so much that I no longer know what's important anymore.  I don't know if I set my standards for myself too high or what, but I feel like I am unable to cope with reality.  There are only certain things I feel like I can do.  Some people drink alcohol in order to get through grad school in math.  I felt like that at one point, but now math is easy for me, and writing is hard.  I feel like I have to act out in this addiction and my sex addiction in order to get by.  (Yet here I am writing a freaking page about how I can't write a freaking page.)  I'm perfectly capable.  "I just don't want to," they say.  They don't know what procrastination is about.

I was at another twelve step program meeting yesterday and I got MASSIVELY triggered b/c the format of the meeting talked about how procrastination is "fear of failure."  Procrastination is not fear of failure, it's much, much, much more.  Procrastination can be caused by many fears: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being imperfect, or fear of being overwhelmed due to supposed impossible expectations.  It does not even have to be a fear.  Procrastination can be a mechanism of passive aggressive exertion.  Procrastination can be just an addiction to relieve stress and pressure.  Procrastination can be a learned habit that one participates in for no other reason than because she is oriented to it.  Procrastination can be social avoidance: e.g. "If I avoid these tasks, then I can avoid ever dating or being in a relationship, because I am eternally unready for one," et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.  Procrastination is a way of retaining a lifestyle.  And it isn't always a negative thing.  What matters is how I use the addiction.  I use the addiction to perpetuate & facilitate self shame.

And I can't deal with it anymore.  I cannot deal with feeling inept.  I cannot deal with not wearing any decent clothes.  I can't deal with not having money to buy food.  I can't deal with feeling like I'm at everyone's whim for where my food and clothing is coming from simply because I'm too afraid to go against other people's anger.  It's an utter disappointment for me that I've worked so hard in my life to not quite do things (I know that's a split infinitive).  It's like I know all sorts of things about literature and words, but I cannot get into a grad program in English, b/c I f*cked up my transcript beyond belief.  Or maybe I didn't. Who knows?  Maybe some English department someday will believe me that Procrastination is a real addiction and that I'm not just lazy and that I am bipolar/borderline/dissociative/socially anxious, etc.  I'm certainly not going to write *that* in an essay.  I have tried the prescription drugs, and the drugs haven't helped me, and yet, I would gladly take them and abuse them, because I'm an addict.  It's an unfortunate and disturbing paradox.  I realize my anger toward my counselor is really part of my overall resentment toward the mental health industry that the way to resolve issues is to drug people.  Drugs don't cure procrastination.  They don't make you do everything you have to do.  I've tried them.  They can't change me into being the person I want to be.  The only way I've changed is through faith, action, working a program, taking one day or one hour at a time, having fellowship with other people, and exchanging recovery, personal choice, personal decision-making, and having other people in my life.  Drugs are not part of my recovery.  Drugs are part of my dependency.