This is the story of a Scumbag Brain.

I fumble around the nightstand and hit “snooze” on my alarm while barely opening my eyes. I press it a few too many times more before I find my flip-flops and basically stumble from the bedroom, where Nico chirps, trills, and mews the entire time I’m getting his breakfast. What I don’t know yet is that this is the happiest I will be throughout the day.

The shower is usually turned on before the bathroom door closes and this is where the best of the mood starts to flicker. It’s Monday, or a day back after a long weekend, or a morning after a bad night of sleep, and all I can think about is that by the time Friday gets here, this moment will not even be a memory. I won’t even remember what outfit I’m going to put on, and I probably haven’t even figured that part out yet.

Everything takes such a long time. My hair needs to be mostly dry by the time I leave, or it’ll just stay damp and flat in the wrong places. I never feel like putting makeup on. By the time I’m finished, I will be scrubbing curl cream and cover cream and eyeshadow off my hands and scrambling to pack breakfast and coffee. I promise Nico I’ll be back and I remind him to be good, even though he always is.

I think of how many times I will have to do this drive by the time it’s Friday. I might not be paying attention to the podcast I found so interesting twenty minutes ago. The walk into work isn’t memorable, but it’s usually windy. If I’m alone in the elevator, sometimes I slump against the wall and hope the ride takes a little longer.

I start my to-do list. I sort emails. I check my personal email and my Facebook notifications. And I start on whatever project is the most pressing. Add comma. Delete hyphen. Hyphenate here. Cut ordinal.

I think about how tired I am. Sip coffee.

Cap headline. I’m really bad at writing headlines.

Change format to match other emails in set. This content is so repetitive. I would drag my feet so hard if I had to write this set. Our team does a great job. But I wouldn’t.

I’m so tired. Sip coffee. It’s still super hot, which I love, but sometimes the roof of my mouth suffers.

Initial page. No edits. Which is great. Maybe. Unless I didn’t catch something huge. Did I check the subheads? Factoids? Do I remember proofing this page at all? Should I check it again or should I just drop it off and worry a little more?

There’s chatter behind me. I’m glad they’re laughing with each other and enjoying themselves. But writing and editing are solitary, and I’ll be lucky if I have one conversation throughout the day. It’s okay. I don’t think I have anything good to talk about today, anyway.

If I close my eyes, I will sleep. So let’s go walk up and down the stairs a few times and maybe that tiny burst of energy will get me through to lunch.

In the afternoon, I’ll go visit Nico again. I eat something at my kitchen table and then stare at my bed, wishing I could crawl in and take a nap for the rest of the day. I am so tired. I probably haven’t had enough water. I never really do. It’s just another thing I can’t remember to do. Or I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to go back to work. I don’t want to figure out dinner. I don’t want to go to therapy later. I don’t want to go to the gym. I don’t want to go do laundry. Does Nico have enough food? I don’t want to go to the grocery store.

I’m so tired. I can’t think about staring at any more words on any pages. Forget about writing my own. I’m not even sure why I leave the tabs open for the two stories I’m working on. I probably won’t ever finish them. I get excited when I write one paragraph. Yeah. Really big accomplishment. I’m embarrassed to tell anyone that my dream will be realized the day I see a book with my name on it on a shelf in Barnes and Noble. I’m embarrassed because I can’t make it happen.

I’m so tired. So tired. But it’s too early to go to bed, because then I have to get up and do it again. All of it. But isn’t this the kind of job I wanted? I’m lucky, right, that I get to spend all day proofing, since I love it? Didn’t I work really hard for this? And I’m going to be tired anyway, so what does it matter what time I go to bed?

Crawl into bed. Why do the pillows not feel like my own? Why is it only Monday? How come I can’t formulate a specific plotline? What else do I have to do this week after work? What can I get away with not doing? Why am I awake again after two hours? How much longer until my alarm goes off?

Just recently, I explained to someone that I go through these bouts. Sometimes, it lasts a day. Or the whole week. Or multiple weeks. This, my fellow quasi-adults, is Scumbag Brain. It’s when everything shiny turns tarnished. It’s doubt, and deceit, and horrendous grumpiness, an overwhelming sense of unfulfillment, and a loud, loud echo of uselessness and negativity, topped off by inescapable fatigue. And it’s my own brain doing it, like my ultimate foe is locked in there and just ceaselessly rattling the bars on his cage.

My brain hates me. Whether it’s genetic, or environmental factors, or situational, or a combination of a million things, it is a freakin’ fight every day. This is one of the first things I’ve said to people when we talk about mental illness. It isn’t just therapy or meds–both of which can be unbelievably helpful; don’t get me wrong–it’s something you have to be cognizant of, every single minute of the day. And sometimes, I am just so tired.

Sometimes, my brain has run the track so many times that I don’t even want to talk about how I feel. “I don’t know what to talk about today, Dr. Psychologist.” I’m not sure how to answer the question ‘how are you?’ — to be honest, I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk about my feelings or how I’m going to distract myself from them for now. Because that’ll work, sure, until the next time my brain-foe decides he’s bored. I don’t want to decide whether or not this is just situational, because I’ve been thinking about bad things all day/week, and it’s just one big damn unperfect circle.

I don’t want to think about all the things I should be doing differently. The ways in which my life is changing seemingly without my input. The echoes and the distractions and the sense of coming up short, and the inevitable “what the hell are you even complaining about?”

This is the story of my Scumbag Brain. And I’m not writing it to garner sympathy or attention. I’m writing it because, more often than not, when I explain the concept of Scumbag Brain, eyes widen and voices raise an octave and there it is: “That happens to me, too.”

And so, I’ll read a chapter. I’ll find some crazy question under the “Ask Reddit” subreddit and waste half an hour. I’ll swallow my three pills and my vitamins, carry my water bottle as a reminder to drink more, hug Nico because he knows when I need it. Maybe write a note or two in my phone and remind myself that it might only be Monday, but Friday will get here. It will. And maybe my brain won’t be so scummy tomorrow.