I suppose it boils down to this:
People think I'm smart. That may once have been somewhat inherently true. They also think I'm nice, and helpful, and compassionate, and stuff. That's never really been inherent to me. It's something I've trained myself into rigorously.
Mostly, though I push myself. And everything's been slipping, and I've been pushing harder to hold it together. I've been in the red since halfway through February.
Then I started dropping balls. It doesn't help that my definition of 'dropping the ball' is set quite a bit higher than I guess most people's. So guilt about feeling guilty. And self-hatred for dropping the ball.
And I know I don't work as hard as a lot of people. I feel like I constantly need to work harder to catch all the balls I'm dropping, and I know that there are people who at least seem to work harder than me. So I feel guilty about that too.
Then I feel like I'm wallowing in self-pity, which I have no idea if I'm actually doing. I also end up trying not to deal with people, which tends to be difficult in a family of six. So I end up snubbing people, which doesn't help anything, so guess what, I end up with more guilt and self hatred.
I also don't refuse to help anyone who asks me. I have no idea how that changes anything except that I feel terrible if I end up snubbing them as mentioned before.
Basically for the last couple of months I've been a melting pot of guilt, exhaustion, and self-hatred. And academically knowing that only makes the gnawing emptiness worse, because I can't fix it, only push it away.
Sorry if this isn't very coherent. It's quite stream-of-consciousness and my stream of consciousness is not glassy right now.