It's not a competition.

I have a hard time reminding myself that what I am doing is enough. It is more than enough. When I see other people running businesses and looking like they've got everything so put together, I get struck by this feeling of inferiority. It is really awful, to be honest. I am trying not to get sucked into that train of thought, but it is pretty hard.

My therapist says I shouldn't compare my days to someone else's highlight reel. Freyr tells me that it is not a competition. That I'm not in a race with anyone but myself. It is hard to keep that in mind. I look around the apartment and I find myself feeling like I don't do enough. I have bags of laundry sitting in the living room, one from last week, that are waiting to be folded up and put away. Most days, my kitchen is a mess until about four o'clock. Then I clean everything up, make dinner, and it stays a mess until about that time the next day.

I think about how rough things are with the boys and their behavioral issues. I find myself short tempered and waspish. Then I feel guilty because my boys are just being themselves. And a significant amount of their behavioral issues is a function of their brains working differently from mine. And I ask myself why can't I manage to be more patient with them, why can't I just let it roll off my back. I look back to my life before bipolar and see how I wasn't so hair trigger with my temper. I feel like there is some failing on my part that I am like this.

I have a whole heap of evidence (medical studies and the like) that tells me that my issues with my temper are due, in part, because of the bipolar. I have legitimate reasons for my problems having enough mental fortitude to do stuff. I have a ton of things that I'm trying to stay on top of, which puts me in the position of having some stuff fall through the cracks. All of these sane, rational arguments that my difficulties are not due to a lack of diligence on my part.

And still, that voice in the back of my head tells me that I'm a terrible housewife because my home isn't showroom clean all the time; that I'm a bad mother because I get short tempered with the kids and they don't behave all the time; that my problems doing stuff is because I'm lazy, not my illness; and that my illnesses are just a ploy for attention. It tells me that my lack of immediate financial success with my writing is a function of how 'bad' I am at it and that I'm a fraud. It tells me that my lack of success in running two businesses by myself (online) was because I didn't try hard enough.

It discredits all the legitimate reasons why I can't do things. It tells me that every rational rebuttal is a lie. It is really awful and I wish I could just rip that part out of my head and throw it away. I know that I'm working on this through therapy. I know that using my coping skills will make it easier to handle this. But right now, I feel horrible. I had an ok day. I got a bunch of stuff done.

But at this moment, I feel like everything I've done was worthless, done poorly, and that I'm not good enough.

I hate when this happens.