What is Wrong with me?

I have asked myself that question in various permutations since I was about five years old, maybe younger. Sometimes the focus is health related. Sometimes it is relationship problems that prompt the question. Often it has to do with school or, more specifically, grades. Currently, it has to do with my mood.

I just can’t seem to break myself out of this funk. I’m not sure what it is and I don’t know how to fix it. Everything bothers me and I’m on edge all the time. I feel overly burdened by even the smallest responsibility, so the large responsibilities that I have recently agreed to are burrowing their way into my brain and tickling my subconscious at all hours. It has been weeks now that it has been this way and while I keep waiting for it to go away, this little black rain cloud seems to have made a permanent home circling my head.

It doesn’t feel like depression exactly. I know depression and the demons that accompany it, sadly, but that doesn’t seem to be my uninvited guest. And it doesn’t feel like true anxiety either. It’s not just stress, I don’t think, because not a lot has changed in that department, just continued. Whatever it is, it is bothersome and makes me ache and whine and be altogether unpleasant. I would like it to please go away.

Why won’t it? Why can’t I go back to being carefree and smiling? Why can’t I see patients without having to give myself a pep talk first? They deserve more than that, but I can’t seem to find that reserve in myself just now. Instead, they have to make do with superficial small talk and fake smiles so as not to reveal this deep exhaustion, this unclaimed guilt, this aversion to everything that has pervaded my thoughts lately. Not only do my patients deserve better, but I deserve better. Colin and Patrick and my mother and my friends and my family deserve better.

I want to always be my best. But right now, I see a scowl and dark circles in the mirror and hear crass, rude comments pass between my lips. I feel the pinpricks behind my eyes and the throbbing in my temples telling me to either take a nap or grab a coffee. As I wait in line at Starbucks, I again think of the long, long miles to go before I sleep and consider just camping out in the woods for a while. Never mind the snow.