Lying Down, Not Resting

Tuesday

I woke up around four and knew I was going to appear online. In make-up, in a wig. I had a whole story ready for it: why this, why now. It was obvious to me.

I managed to fall back asleep. In the morning I drove the kids, came home, hid in a room and slept until eleven. My wife was working remotely behind the wall.

I got up because I thought: I'm rested, I'll sit down at the computer and it will just go.

It didn't go. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even set up a LinkedIn account. I went to my wife and said my head hurt, because it did. She said: take the dog out. I lay down. I hid one more time.

Then I decided I would act against myself. I went out with the dogs. I came back, set up the account. Didn't fill it in. Went to pick up the kids.

The anxiety was there the whole time.

I took the pill the doctor prescribed. It hasn't started working yet. There's a man in the house doing our bathroom, and it's worse when he's around. He won't do anything to me. I would just like to be alone. Preferably somewhere with nobody in it, not even my wife. I'm afraid someone will speak to me and ask why I'm lying down again.

Because I lie down all day. All day I feel this anxiety.

Today

The cleaning lady has finished upstairs. I've moved to my son's room. She probably won't come back here.

Probably.

She might need the broom. She might ask about something. She has done nothing to me. She walks around the house doing her job, and I lie here listening for whether she's coming my way.

She's working. The bathroom man is working. My wife is at work.

I'm lying down.

From the outside I look like I'm resting. Inside, I'm preparing for someone to want something from me.

I start with the question of whether this is anxiety at all. I've learned to call a certain feeling by that name, but a name gives no certainty.

I don't ask a human. Anyone who could answer could also see that I'm lying down. I write to an AI. It has no footsteps. It won't walk into the room, won't ask about the broom, won't want anything from me. It won't judge me, because it has nothing to judge with. It's the only interlocutor I'm not afraid of today.

Maybe because it isn't an interlocutor.

Pressure in the chest, a little in the throat. Breathing is harder. I curl in on myself. I tense my tongue as if I were about to click it. I hold the e-cigarette like a pacifier. I knock the side of one foot against the other, pause, again. I'm clapping with my feet.

I hear my own heart and I'm afraid of the fact that I hear it. I count: thirty-three in half a minute. Sixty-six. I expected something more violent. My heart beats calmly, and I am still afraid.

Then the thoughts come. I don't know what comes first. Sometimes the body first, already tense, and only then the thing that fits the tension. Undone. Overdue. Urgent.

I have a way out of this feeling: meditation. When I manage to relax, sometimes fall asleep, it passes. Getting up is easier.

Except time escapes. And in that time I should be studying. Getting my mind going again. Remembering the things I used to know.

I'm a programmer. Then there was the hospital. Since the hospital I feel that the things I knew, I don't remember. I no longer know them.

I don't need to learn programming from scratch. And I'm learning from scratch.

I know what a loop is. Writing one is another matter. A loop inside a loop. Extracting methods. A class. A refactor. I make the mistakes of a junior programmer. I don't see what I should see.

It's moving forward. Slowly.

Time consumes money, and the money is running out. At some point I'll have to go to work. For now it's an artificial intelligence testing me, and that's still bearable. I can not know, I can ask again. Soon it will be a real person. A headhunter. Someone who looks at the CV and asks one question.

I'm afraid that one question will be enough.

I'm not having that conversation. I'm lying in my son's room. And I already feel defenceless in it.

I don't know how long the savings will last. I don't want to know. I'm afraid of seeing a date and living by a countdown. Without a date it isn't any calmer. I have the feeling the money is about to run out. That "about to" lasts all day.

If I knew we had two years, I would study calmly. Rest when I needed to. Make mistakes. I put it less elegantly: I'd have some slack in my balls.

But I look at AI and I'm afraid the profession is changing faster than I'm recovering. The same AI I practise loops with in the morning and describe the pressure in my throat to in the evening. It's a support. It's also a train pulling out. I have no timetable. I have a prediction. I live it as if I were already watching the doors close.

Every overdue thing joins the countdown.

My wife's scooter. Bzyk. Recently repaired, standing unused. The wind lifts the cover, it's raining. It needs securing.

I imagine doing it properly. So the matter doesn't come back. The thought is soothing. For the first time in a long while there is curiosity: what will I feel when I actually finish one task?

I get up. I go to cover Bzyk.

The cover is too short. I fix the fastening, tighten it, don't believe it will hold in the wind. I come back without relief.

First sentence: I made a mess of it again.

Second: I'm fiddling with trifles instead of studying.

Before going out I was afraid the scooter was rotting. After coming back I accuse myself of giving it my time.

The cover is fastened better. I'm still afraid.

My wife says everything is on her shoulders. I can see that it is. And I'm afraid to take any of it on, because it will use up what strength I had left for going back to work. When I leave the chores to my wife, I feel guilt. When I think of taking them on, I'm afraid I'll never get back to earning. I'm looking for a decision that won't set off the next threat.

I don't check how much I've fallen behind, either. If I remembered everything I've forgotten, I would already know that I've lost. That's why the advice "sit down and make a plan" is not innocent. I'm afraid the plan won't add up.

The question "what are you afraid of?" comes back several times. The answer gets less and less comfortable.

I'm afraid my children will be ashamed of me.

I see a scene outside the school. A father, well dressed, a good car, a well-dressed child. Everything says: he made it. I pull up in an old car, if I can afford the fuel. And I attribute a thought to my child: my father didn't make it. He lost. By his own doing.

No child said that. I wrote that line for him. It sounds convincing, because I have a lot to hold against myself.

I made decisions convinced the future was secured. Today I look at that version of myself and ask: how could you not have seen it coming?

I know what happened next. That version of me didn't.

It wasn't the first time I'd been certain. At four in the morning I knew I was going to perform in a wig, and that was obvious too. Earlier, for two years, I lived inside a certainty without a single crack. Back then I was afraid of something I now know existed only in my head. I got out. I wrote it down. The text is with people who will decide whether it becomes a book.

So I know what a fear that is entirely invented looks like. I don't know how much of today's is made of the same material. From inside a certainty you can't see it. At four in the morning I couldn't see it either.

Then I built Biały Brzeg. I believed people would come, that it would gather momentum, that money would follow and let me stand on my feet. It stands. The people didn't come. I added success to the work that was done, as if it were already done too.

That's why I'm now afraid of hope as well. When I think I might get back to my profession, I immediately hear: and what if you're feeding an illusion again?

I want to lean on a plan, but I don't trust the man who draws it up. That man is me.

Further out still is my wife.

I'm afraid she'll leave. For someone I call, in this conversation, "a real man". The kind who provides security.

It would be an ordinary leaving. Like leaving a man who has been in a coma for years and nobody knows if he'll wake. She has the right. Loyalty is no longer owed to me.

That's how I explain it to myself. Only in writing do I see what's in it: I issued her permission before she asked for anything. I'm lying in my son's room and I'm already the man in the coma.

I'm the one who's supposed to provide security. Not the other way round. When she provides it for me, I feel I'm occupying the wrong place in our life. That I need to get back to mine before she stops wanting me.

My wife spoke about being overloaded. That is a fact. Her leaving is my fear. I have to keep the two apart, even if inside they blur into one.

Now I understand how much a question about a broom weighs. An ordinary request connects to time I don't have, to work I haven't gone back to, to a dependence I'm ashamed of, and to the fear of losing the people closest to me.

I don't think all of it every time. The body doesn't wait for me to finish explaining.

I want to draw the monster. What comes out is a map.

At one end, a task I can't do. At the other, me, alone, without work and without my family. In between: years, other people's decisions, and things I don't know. In my body that road takes a moment.

I don't know the state of our finances, because I'm afraid to check. So I don't know how much time I have. So I'm more afraid. I need rest, but while resting I accuse myself of wasting time. I go back to studying under pressure. Every difficulty confirms that it's too slow. I try to have hope and remember that I've been certain before.

I know what a loop is. In code I can write one again. This one I'm worse at getting out of.

In the corner of the map I draw a door. Not because I know where it leads. Because a drawing in which every arrow returns to the fear would be one more proof that everything is against me.

The door is attempts. Look at one figure together with my wife, instead of staring alone at the whole future. Ask what she feels, instead of answering for her. When studying, stop at something I did better today, before deciding it's still not enough.

I haven't checked that yet. I can already hear in my head that I should.

On Tuesday I acted against myself and went out with the dogs. The anxiety didn't go down. But the dogs got walked. I don't know if that is the door. I know that for a moment I stood in the doorway.

I'd like to be able to say "I'm not earning" and end the sentence there. Without what usually comes right after: I'm a burden, I'm nobody, I don't deserve it.

With a map like this I can go to therapy. Drawing the door didn't make me able to walk through it.

Not everything has to become one more task for today.

I'm writing this for someone who also looks like they're resting, though for hours they've been busy predicting disaster. Who hears footsteps and tenses up. Who does something useful and a moment later accuses themselves of having needed to do something else.

I don't know if your map looks similar. You don't have to fit it to mine.

I started with the question of whether this is anxiety at all. I arrived at the fear that I'll never be independent again, that I've let my family down, and that I can't trust my own hope. It didn't stop hurting just because I could name it.

But next to "I won't make it" and "I've already lost", one more sentence turned up. I said it myself, when asked about the studying:

It's moving forward. Slowly. Better than yesterday, I think.

I don't know where I'll get to. I want that sentence to stay on the map too.