I Can’t Fix This

As someone who has been Very Online™ for the majority of their life, I’ve hesitated to blog again. I did it back when fashion blogging was a new, cool thing to do. I ran a beauty blog and YouTube series for an exhaustingly long time. While an editor in New York for the now-defunct Gurl.com, I shared a lot about my personal life and served as a sex and relationship “expert” (lol) in another YouTube show.

For the past three years, my social media presence has become less regular. Maybe it’s a result of being a very busy adult. Maybe it’s getting injured and having multiple surgeries — no one should be Instagramming on painkillers. Maybe it’s the fact that *gestures wildly at everything* is happening. A pandemic that’s still going on. A postponed wedding. Work. Anxiety. Depression. Insomnia. Rinse. Repeat.

I’m fresh off a slight breakdown with an itch to just get everything on paper. I don’t keep a journal for myself. Contrary to popular belief, writers don’t write everything down. But I have a strange starvation for attention (hello issues from childhood, nice to see you) and subsequent inability to accept attention in its good forms. And I feel some kind of responsibility as a person with mental health issues to talk about it and share my experiences because it could help someone else. It could also be that if I’m helping other people, I feel needed and valuable, and that keeps me busy, which means it’s less time I have to deal with fixing my own shit.

And that brings me to WandaVision.

I’m not really going to spoil anything, but if you haven’t seen WandaVision yet, what are you even doing? Go watch it. In episode 7, “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” our girl Wanda is depressed. Like pull the covers over your head, eat nothing but cereal, and have zero desire to do anything depressed. At one point she comes to the realization, “I can’t fix this.”

Wanda is a character who’s typically in control at all times. She’s strong-willed and manages to plaster a smile on her face in the midst of chaos and destruction, forcing out an “I’m fine!” when things are very not fine. She has a solution for everything. Until she doesn’t.

Now, I wish I had powers like Wanda. But I’ve never related to a Marvel character more than her in this episode. She’s taken the “I’m fine” illusion to the next level by manipulating her own reality, which is essentially what I do on a daily basis. If you say you’re fine enough, eventually you’ll start to believe it. Until you don’t.

I had a hard week. I was extremely down. Between work, house stuff, pandemic stuff, general life, I just wanted to hide. I wanted to be absolved from all of my responsibilities. I didn’t want to be needed. I didn’t want to be the person who has the solutions for everything. I wanted it to be quiet.

I broke down. I laid in bed for a while. I ate cereal. I felt nothing toward anything.

And I couldn’t fix it.

Unlike Wanda, I can’t create an alternate reality. But she’s learning the hard way that she has to sit in her trauma and grief and drown in being overwhelmed.

I guess that’s all to say… the only way out is through. I have a bit of an emotional hangover, but I’m feeling mildly better. I’m sure everyone is feeling some type of way, since we’ve been doing pandemic things for a year. It’s exhausting.

There’s a lesson here that I continue to face: you don’t have to do everything.

I do too much on a regular basis and come to that conclusion often. But this is the first time I’ve exhausted myself beyond what’s healthy. I didn’t like it, and I don’t want to do it again. Like Wanda, I can’t fix this. And I don’t have to. And that has to be okay.

Originally published at https://www.caitlincorsetti.com on February 22, 2021.