the lies your mind tells you

Let me tell you, the brain can make you believe some pretty ugly things about yourself. It tells you you're not pretty enough, not thin enough, not interesting enough. So when someone else tells you you don't work hard enough, you have to believe them because you've been telling yourself that for so long. And it gets even worse when you walk into a dressing room and stand in front of that awful full length mirror and try on endless articles of clothing that remind you just how much work you still have to do. By the time my mom and I left the mall yesterday, even though I'd walked out with two pairs of pants, a sweater dress, and a sweater, I pretty much wanted to walk into traffic. Here I am in the middle of the lowest low I have had in several years. While the physical symptoms of withdrawal are gone and the panic attacks and anxiety have gone way down, I still feel like I might as well be taking sugar pills for all of the good it's doing my depression. I have a boss that constantly treats me like an idiot, a liar, and incompetent even though I almost never get a lunch break, I've worked hundreds of hours of overtime I never got paid for, I have been covering work from several other positions that have either changed or disappeared without a promotion, and I am literally the only person who knows how to perform a great number of our office tasks. I am struggling through some really difficult weight issues and extreme loathing of my body and it's current capabilities or lack their of. I haven't spoken to my father since Labor Day weekend and I really don't know if I ever will again. It's been a horrid shit storm of a year and every time I tell myself "It can't get any worse", I get a new nightmare stacked on my plate. I'm exhausted and I'm angry. I can barely look at facebook these days because I see so many happy posts and I wonder if I will ever get a break from the awful. And still, through all of that, even though some of these problems would be big enough to shut down even the strongest of humans, I keep going. I clean the house, I walk the dog, I go to work and class and do homework and make dinner and pay the bills and owned the GRE and managed to complete three applications for grad school. Because no one else is going to do it. I'm tired and in desperate need of a win and still I'll get up at 5am and walk the dog and make coffee and eat breakfast and shower and go to work and do all of the things that have to be done because no one else is here to help and the truth is I wouldn't let them even if they offered. So the things that my mind tells me are lies, I just gave myself all of that proof that I'm no slacker. Even so, the next time I see myself in a mirror or am left alone with my thoughts too long, I still can't make myself believe that any of it really makes a difference and that I will always be not good enough.