EXHAUSTION | 2007-05-02
In the spirit what I said below in "Standing Together," I want to tell you something about the resource we call Bob.
My Federal Disability Report gave me a financial boost better than winning the lottery. It listed me as not only disability-level ADD, overly concerned with "offensive concerns" and an endless list of other things. Damn, that thing was LONG. It would have been MUCH shorter if it just listed what I DIDN'T have.
But I am almost legendary for giving good personal advice. As long as this old nutcase does THAT, none of this bothers me. It may be that what "offensive concerns" makes me give advice entirely to help OTHER people.
Mixed into almost everybody else's advice, including psychiatrists' is:
1) A desire to show how good THEY are, worthy of being put on the pedestal of Advisor;
and
2) Their pet obsessions. In other words, PREACHING.
I just want to help.
Anyway, one of the endless array of my problems was "borderline schizophrenic."
I think this "two minds" bit showed up when my last team decided they could no longer support me. They did NOT just drop out on me and leave me high and dry in a snit the way the coat-and-tie types I discussed did. They are honorable people. The honor that made them leave me on principle was REAL. It would not let them just walk out.
People love to TALK abut honor. Damned few PRACTICE it.
Anyway back to my favorite subject, me.
My first reaction when they informed me of their decision was, to my surprise, RELIEF.
I have worked myself into two nervous breakdowns. My breakdowns were the opposite of what that word conjures up. I had pushed myself through hundred-hour, high-pressure weeks, year after year. It hurt more as I got older, but I just soldiered on. One day, something in me just QUIT.
I am NOT exaggerating when I say that if my bed had caught fire, I might have been willing to roll to roll out of it. I called my ex-wife. She got into action for me, but her first reaction was, "I was wondering when this would happen."
I then made my second and last call to my doctor brother. He said he would get in touch with my ex, NOT "Bob why don't YOU call her and SAY ..."
But my brother's first reaction sounded like an echo, "I was wondering when this would happen." Everybody saw it coming and had warned me, but if I had been sensible I wouldn't have worked myself into TWO, count 'em, TWO breakdowns.
So when my team did their honorable withdrawal I bemoaned the end of the promotion of my book and all we were doing together, so the relief surprised me. It came from a part of my mind, a SEPARATE part I had not been listening to.
AGAIN.
Here I had gotten some top-notch people to go at things I had been desperately wanting. So I drove on with their genius, their dedication, and their ENERGY.
Do you know how hard it is to tell your Dream Team that you are DANGEROUSLY exhausted? Do you realize how hard it is, when you have worked for YEARS to GET that Dream Team, to tell YOURSELF that you are dangerously exhausted?
When the final news came, a part of my brain said tome, clear as a bell, "Dammit, Bob, you promised me a REST when you were mustered out. Now GIVE it to me!" I had always kept going by telling myself "Just ONE more thing." I "one more thinged" myself into TWO breakdowns and was working on a third.
If this is that hard for me to understand, think how impossible it is to explain to OTHERS. And the energy to explain that to others comes out of the same desperately diminishing energy account I am trying to explain.
If it was just a matter of WILL, I wouldn't slow down. When I feel the exhaustion, I get SCARED now. I find myself not doing things a decent man would routinely do. I get your names mixed up. I leave people dangling who are working their hearts out for us. This, combined with my "offensive worries," makes a miserable combination.
I am sure I have said this before. I am writing it here, once and for all, so I can copy and paste it.
SysOps can explain this better than I can. She has a LOT of experience with the Care and Feeding of Bob.
I don't just WANT you to take the ball and run with it. I NEED that. If you want to tell somebody something or DO something, just CLEAR it with me. DON'T make ME the go-between. If it's by e-mail, I will, in a couple of days, get your go-ahead and theirs, then give you their address.
I am still your devoted leader, perfessor, and coach. If you need me to LISTEN, that puts no strain on me. If you need a clearance or advice, you using my energy right.
People keep explaining to me that THEY have a LIFE, so they can't do things. They explain this to me as if I were a person with an inexhaustible supply of energy and nothing else to do. So am I supposed to explain this to them?
No, I just smile very sadly and put their standard statement in the Round File.