My brain is a weird place, and sometimes I do not like how it works.

Early yesterday, I realized that on the 27th I broke a two month long streak in logging my vitals. I missed my evening blood pressure, the first time I had failed to log a reading since late September. I brushed that off like it was no big deal – just time to start a new streak.

Last night at about 11:40, I realized that I hadn’t blogged yet, nor had I done my learning exercises. I got the blog post done, I managed to complete my Duolingo, which actually tracks the number of consecutive days you meet your learning goal, but I failed to complete my three exercises in Elevate before midnight, and it reset my progress to start over with two done.

And as midnight started getting closer and closer, I started getting sloppy with my answers, as I was rushing through to meet this self-imposed deadline. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to make it in time, I became furious with myself, yelling and slamming my phone down on the couch (it’s fine). I finally got calmed down after my wife ran through the old centering exercise that I hadn’t needed in weeks. Satisfied, I went to bed.

I’d like to take a moment to stress that the most important parts of these activities were completed. I blogged in time to count for day 28, and my streak on Duolingo is still active.

Now, normally, sleeping will reset my brain and have me waking up thinking about fresh starts and optimism. Not this time.

I woke up furious with myself that I had lost my cool the night before and dove straight into an irrational argument with my wife over anything I could to demonize myself and turn myself into evil incarnate. Finally I got calmed down and we went to go brave the throng of shoppers at Bed Bath and Beyond to go pick up another set of cheap but effective filter cups for our Keurig. (Two of ours have broken through overuse. They’re reusable, but not quite permanent.)

Failure to reset after a night’s rest is a recent and disconcerting trend. used to be, there was nothing more effective at getting me to stop the downward spiral. Now it seems like I’m waking up remembering what an idiot I was the night before and it starts all over again, thoughts of fresh starts completely gone from my mind.

The impetus seems to be the belief that I’m in trouble, despite no one telling me that I am and nothing to outwardly show that I am. “I was such an asshole last night,” my brain seems to be telling me, “so of course I must be in trouble, because who could possibly forgive the outward manifestation of the symptoms of a chronic illness that I sometimes have little to no control over?” Even confirmation by my wife – the one I usually believe I’m in trouble with – that I’ve done nothing wrong doesn’t dissuade me from my errant belief. The more she tries to convince me, the harder and deeper I dig in my heels.

There are times that I really, really dislike having a mental illness. (I’m never crazy about it, but I mean a passionate hatred of my symptoms and how they affect me and those around me.) This morning was one of those times.

I’m doing better now, but even recanting that episode is putting the seeds of doubt in my head, that now that I’m TALKING about what happened, NOW I’ll be in trouble for sure. I’m fighting it as best as I can, but my evening is starting to go south and I’m not sure what I can do about it except go find a distraction.