It’s difficult to write this — not only because my brain is shattered but because I am here to admit faults and failings and I am rather sensitive to criticism. I am emotional, and easily tugged into the undertow of strong feelings.
I don’t think I can work, I don’t think I can go to school, and I don’t believe I should have to do either of these things to be worthy of life. So why do I feel like I do?
To my knowledge I have never been formally diagnosed with anything other than dysthymia, an obsolescent term for a chronic low-grade form of depression. Basically, I have been fatigued and low on motivation for the past two decades. Several times over the course of my life this has morphed into the almost comical-sounding “double depression”, which is when a major depressive episode layers atop the chronic low-grade depression.
For as long as I can remember I have been an anxious person, prone to worrying and fixating on unpleasant potentials. Socializing has never been easy for me as I am painfully sensitive to interpersonal conflict. And I have always struggled with self-consciousness and dysphoria. I am familiar with the strange and confusing sadness of growing up trans in a deeply transphobic world. I am only now in my late 20s learning how to live in my own body.
For a couple of years I ran a blog where I posted what I referred to as ‘vignettes’. These were small fragments of stories that would never be written. Many of them were just strong emotions that I was trying to banish from my body by giving them the shape of words and casting them out into the void of the internet.
After a while even the overarching project of producing the story fragments became too much. I couldn’t sustain my motivation, and so I quit.
I have never been good at following through on any one thing. I am easily distracted, easily overwhelmed, easily frightened, and easily discouraged.
“Executive functioning” is a term which covers a wide range of regular cognitive processes that we all use on a daily basis. Executive functioning is necessary for organizing and implementing plans and for seeing projects through to completion. When you wake up in a bad mood but you put on clothes and eat breakfast and start facing the tasks on your to-do list anyway, this is an example of healthy executive functioning. You accept your emotional state and then you recommit to your responsibilities. You prioritize and you regulate your emotions accordingly.
I have never been good at this. I am often quite bad at it.
Executive dysfunction is associated with a number of conditions, including mood disorders like depression. It’s also a common component of ADHD. It’s an invisible series of hurdles that overcomplicate what often seem like the simplest of tasks.
On a daily basis, executive dysfunction can look like this for me: I know I need to make muffins and finally I get a burst of energy that pushes me into the kitchen. I have given myself the directive “make muffins” and I must now organize and order all the subtasks required to achieve this goal. I notice the sink has a pile of dirty dishes in it, so I decide that I must first wash these because experience has taught me that trying to cook in anything but the cleanest of kitchens is a recipe for frustration. Frustration and negative emotions are a recurring theme for me as I navigate the twisting, splitting hallways of executive functioning, otherwise known as the basic decisions and actions of everyday life.
In cleaning and putting away the dishes, I have also rinsed out some jars and cans. The small recycling bin next to the stove is already overflowing so I take everything down to the basement. In the basement I notice there is a puddle next to the washing machine — I should mop it up. I look at the mop and think of how I need to mop the kitchen floor, another task I’ve been struggling to initiate. I think of how I will need to bleach clean the mop — it’s been used to clean up a couple water spills in the unfinished basement and is looking rather dirty. But I have to stay focused on the task at hand: Make Muffins. I will put these other things on my to-do list. I will have to remember to put these items on my to-do list when I get upstairs. I am already feeling annoyed.
I go upstairs and wash my hands. The hand towel is feeling damp and needs to be changed out. I see that we are running out of clean towels. I must do laundry. I must remember to do laundry by writing it on my to-do list. I start to feel more annoyed that these tasks are crowding out my focus on Making Muffins. I wish I had dealt with these other tasks earlier but I had been using my limited time and energy working my content writing job which pays around $5 an hour. I feel like I have to be making some money, somehow.
But if I make $30 a day and then I’m too exhausted to cook dinner and so I order delivery, am I really making any money? It all feels like walking on a treadmill that’s going too fast — I keep trying to move forwards but I’m only ever creeping back. And I’m tired. I have been tired for the past two decades.
I realize I have spaced out in the bathroom, weirdly frozen in place. I have been holding my breath and clenching my jaw. I do that a lot. I try to shake out some of the tension in a noisy sigh.
I return to the kitchen and look at my muffin recipe. Fortunately I have made this recipe many times before so it is fairly easy for my brain to organize and carry out the required steps. I am capable of taking genuine pleasure in baking, and so I try my best to focus on that and channel those positive emotions. Even so, I might sometimes struggle with small decisions and setbacks (i.e. a utensil breaks and so I have to choose an adequate alternative (if I have one)). During these moments, I physically pause to recentre and recalibrate. Like a prey animal that needs to be alert to potential danger, when anything seems ‘off’ I freeze and become capable of little more than observation.
In culinary school, I remember that a classmate saw me doing this and laughed. In an environment where everyone is on the move and task-oriented, I guess I would look pretty funny staring out the window like a fool. Inside my broken brain, the rusty gears of executive function are grinding away. I am often consciously self-soothing, my inner dialogue sounding like a conglomeration of past therapists. But my behaviour appears as inaction, and that is unacceptable.
I had one potential employer tell me “that’s how you make enemies in a kitchen” when he caught me staring out the window, trying to recentre myself in reality during a stressful trial job. They never called me back after that, of course.
I was staring out the window like a fool because I am one. I was a fool to think I could work as a baker or a cook or even a writer or whatever it is I think I want to be. The truth is, it’s foolish for me to work a job like a ‘regular’ person and I’m weary of pretending otherwise. I’m weary of the sisyphean task of living under capitalism. I feel intense waves of resentment sometimes. I resent that, unless things change drastically and soon, the only thing that will ever free me from this is death. Like every other human, I desperately need to be free.
By the time the muffins are out of the oven, I am irritable and almost out of energy. That task is just one of many that has been sitting on my to-do list for days, sometimes weeks.
There are more influences on my mood than just these immediate frustrations, of course. It is possible I forgot to take my antidepressants that morning because even after years of being on them I still sometimes struggle to take them on time. There is also the permanent underlying dread that I feel about our ongoing climate catastrophe and the rise of fascism. Our reality is horrifying. It has triggered a double depressive episode in me more than once.
Haha.
I instinctively subvert, dampen, and repress emotions in order not to be overwhelmed by them. But sometimes I crack. I have before and I will again. I have pushed myself to the point where I have screamed and thrown things and cried and wanted to kill myself, wanted to die so badly, because my hypersensitivity coupled with my inability to emotionally regulate while under even moderate stress has made me feel suffocatingly trapped. And let me tell you, when you already struggle with low self-esteem, having a temper tantrum like a giant toddler does not make you feel any better about yourself.
That’s what executive dysfunction looks like for me. It looks like dropping out of a PhD because I didn’t know how to manage such a large project and it all began to seem so pointless. It looks like quitting jobs because I couldn’t emotionally regulate around bosses and coworkers. It looks like ghosting friends and like waves of suicidal ideation. It looks like always trying to be someone who doesn’t have mental illness and then hurting myself and the people around me because yes, I do have mental illness, and managing it is often a fulltime job.
I just want to take care of myself and I want that to be enough. The ethos of late-stage capitalism would have me feel so much guilt about this — and I do. I feel guilty when I see people with far more obstacles in their lives (and those just the ones visible to me in the moment) who achieve so much more.
In a culture that idolizes people who stretch themselves to the limit with jobs and hobbies, I inarguably come across as lazy. I am slow, and I will always be slow.
What would I do if I could remove myself from the vicious cycle of foolish aspiration, burnout, and guilt? What would I do if I accepted my slowness and my smallness? What if all I did with my life was manage to take my meds on time, wash the dishes, and tell my husband I love him every day? What if it were enough that I write my gratitude for life in journals and poems that will never be seen by another living soul, probably not even long after I’m dead? What if it were enough that I am simply rowan, like any other rowan tree, as natural and as unremarkable? What if I just quietly grew in place, my roots intertwining with the mycelium of the forest soil?
In a world overwhelmed with trans pain, am I not allowed to just live my simple trans joys?
—
“Suicidal thoughts are like a fire alarm,” one of my therapists once told me. “They let you know when something is wrong, when there is a danger that needs to be tended to.”
In the building that is my body, something is always setting off the fire alarms. What do they signify? Am I miswired, or am I merely reacting to a reality that is on fire?
I pray most days that I may live in my small home in peace. I pray to be allowed to be a slow and unremarkable man. I pray to stop feeling overwhelmed, whether that is through the whole world slowing down or through me magically speeding up — the two impossible options become intertwined in my mind and create a chasm-like ache of desire.
Desire certainly is the root of suffering. Yet still I desire not to suffer.
I often feel like I was born to be a monk for a religion that never existed and never will. I desire the simplicity of just being allowed to live each day grateful for Creation. My calling, my career, is to be grateful. What would life be like if I could move as slowly and as contemplatively I needed to? What would life be like if I could live with patience and compassion for myself?
What would life be like if I could simply be?
—
I am not a very good gardener, which is why I love to grow beans. Where I live, several varieties of bush and pole beans grow remarkably well with little assistance.
When the beans are young and tender the whole pods are good to eat, but it’s okay if you forget to harvest them at this stage. I often do.
Soon the beans become fibrous and tough and the best thing to do with them is leave them be. As the season draws to a close, the beans will dry on the plant — when they feel light, almost weightless, and crinkly to the touch, you know that it is time to harvest. You must be careful when you open the papery husks because sometimes the action is enough to propel the beans out into the world. They eagerly launch themselves, seeking a place to take root.
Once shelled, the beans are ready to store. That’s it. All the preservation work has been done on the plant, by time and by weather. At any point you can cook the beans and eat them, or just keep them all through the winter and plant them again next spring, beginning the cycle once more.
Beans are a low maintenance food to grow, and that satisfies my craving for simplicity — it is easy on my limited executive functioning skills.
“Is it bad that this is actually how I want to be spending the apocalypse?” My husband poses this question to me across the bowl of shelled beans between us. The early autumn sun is beaming down on us. The breeze is cool. The day is good and beautiful.
I know what he means. I know how grateful I am to be able to spend my time savoring moments like these. I am grateful for each smooth hardened bean as it falls from my fingers and into the bowl with a satisfying clink.
Yet the savoring is always tainted with guilt, with the gnawing belief that I should be doing more, that I am not doing enough — the belief that I am inadequate and undeserving.
Shouldn’t I be working a full-time job, earning money to pay the ever-rising costs of living? Shouldn’t I be stretching myself thin to earn another degree, another diploma? Shouldn’t I show some self-discipline and finally write that novel? Shouldn’t I at the very least be out in the streets, agitating every day? The few rallies I find the energy to show up to never feel like enough. Shouldn’t I be putting my body on the line and using every ounce of power and privilege I have to protect and help whomever I can?
It takes a fool with a saviour complex to think they can fix the world. But as we have already established, I am a fool. I know I alone can’t right what is wrong with the entire system, but I feel a responsibility to do whatever I can, whatever I am supposed to do.
Am I supposed to do anything? If there is fate and destiny, who’s to say mine is anything special? I sometimes like to imagine I have been put on this earth to blow dandelions, to simply supply the warm animal breath that disperses seeds. Nothing more. The thought fills me with a great sense of peace.
Self-compassion is a skill my therapist introduced me to a couple years ago and I’m still developing it. Like most things in life, it requires executive functioning, specifically emotional regulation, and so it does not come easily to me. But I try.
Looking at my husband fills my heart with love, and I let a little of that love be for me as well as for him. I also can think of nowhere else I would rather be at the end of the world than right here, nothing else I would rather be doing than slowly shelling beans with my beloved.
To fulfil one’s purpose in life is just to live in moments like these.
“We deserve this, don’t we?” I respond at last.
Bees Birthed by Bugonia 