Bad dick game - mind over matter in getting shit done (part 2)
When I was seventeen, my canoeing partner at Outward Bound at Pulau Ubin had this to say about me: I didn't have mych physical strength, but I had a lot of mental strength. I believed it to be true, coming from him. He scored full-marks in physical fitness - five points in every category, from the 2.4km run and chin-ups to shuttle-run and standing broad jump. He wasn't a very big sized guy; he wasn't much taller than me, and was not one of the boys whose muscle definition was secretly the talk of the school.
It is even more true for me today, because now I am trying to get things done in a disabled, chronically ill body, and one that also has depression obstructing my mental strength.
I can barely do the simplest of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) such as shower, brush my teeth and do my skincare. I am trying to mental push this gigantic boulder that is my mind and body, with no luck. The more I try, the longer the time that has lapsed while trying, the longer the period of failure, the more demoralised I become. It just spirals downwards out of my control, at least it seems that way.
I am continuing my examination of this matter using the analogy of impotence and performance anxiety. Because I am frustrated at the time wasted while I accomplish nothing: not unpacking, not organising the new home. Time is running out. That aside, the way I feel is possibly making my physiological ability to care for my home worse.
Recently I had some success on the home organisation front by telling myself to do better, be better, for myself because I deserve it, and for Sayang too. But last week that mantra stopped working, whrn my body just had a long week-long bout of fatigue, and I was sleeping day and night. I am more awake now, but it has become a different hurdle now, a mental one: inertia and apathy, lack of motivation, and basically no drive. Being the Type A personality I am, I hate myself for it. Months could go by this way if I just allow this. The failure to be productive makes me frustrated, and the stress of not knowing how to solve it, and without pain and suffering that yet yields too little, probably make it worse. I am not easily motivated by negative means. I have to love something to do it well, I need to be affirmed not torn down. I lack the self-compassion to motivate myself in that way right now.
And I don't want to give in and simply blame my chronic illnesses even when it turns our to be a valid reason. So I just continue to be frustrated, and hate myself.
I suppose my self-love tank, and love tank in general, is empty. I need words of affirmation to break out of this inertia. When you think pleasure not performance, when you esteem yourself enough, the impotence melts away. I need to get to that stage. I need positive words.