Category Archives: self care

October 8, 2017 · 9:09 AM

Making Peace With Self-Care (Again)

Last night, someone was mean to me on the internet.

And when I say someone was mean to me, what I really mean is:  I got my feelings hurt.  In a big way.  Because they were not “mean.”  Incredibly condescending, but not mean.    I’ve (mostly) learned to deal with it when people actually are mean.  When they swear at me, I can laugh it off.   Tell me I should I die?  Cool.  Tell me that my kids are going to grow up to be ax murderers and drunk drivers and rapists because I don’t spank them?  Whatever.

But admonish me, however politely, for not being a good enough human?  To use patronizing language to call my character into question?  To tell me, as a stranger, that I need to do better, to be better, no matter how well intentioned… holy hell.  HOLY HELL, does that cut deep.  I’m pretty sure that I have the years of damage from my fundamental Christian upbringing to thank for that.  The great irony (because my life is one big example of irony) is that I was being chastised for not having enough grace for people.  That I never knew what someone else was going through – which, of course, is absolutely 100% true – so I shouldn’t judge them based on one unkind and nasty snippet on the internet.  What I wonder is if this person would have shown me more grace if they knew more of my story?  Because yeah, I overreacted.  But there was a reason.  It doesn’t excuse it … but there was a reason.

I haven’t been sleeping lately.

It’s only been 3, 4 weeks now I think.  Usually it takes a couple of months before it causes a complete mental break, which means if I can get on top of things, there’s still time to catch it before I end up where I was in July: suicidal and threatened with involuntary hospitalization.

Anyway, I haven’t been sleeping.  First because of mania, then because of anxiety, then … I don’t know.  And I’ve learned that nothing, nothing, unravels me faster than lack of sleep.  I could eat nothing but junk food for months on end, sit on my couch like a sloth, ignore everyone and everything and still manage to function (relatively) normally.  But take away my sleep?  I start to slip.  Like rapidly, rapidly, down-the-rabbit-hole free-fall.  If I’ve learned nothing in this past year and half, it’s that I need to watch my sleep.  You’d think that I would have learned that sooner, having been a chronic insomniac on and off since my early twenties, but… sometimes I’m a slow learner.

So I haven’t been sleeping, and I got my feelings hurt on the internet, and last night I found myself rather violently cleaning the kitchen at 9:00 PM, just to give myself something to do with my angst.  It was the second night in a row that I’d gotten swept up (Swept up.  Ha.  See what I did there?) swept up in the act of rage-cleaning before bed.   Second night in a row that I’d gotten into bed depressed, and anxious, and jumping out of my skin.  I’d deleted the offending post and all its comments on my Facebook page, but I still felt gross about it.  And I realized as I was slamming the sixth plate into the dishwasher that it was at least the fourth time this week that I’d deleted something because I’d gotten my feelings hurt.  Or felt shamed, or embarrassed, or angry.  Which made major alarm bells go off, because I only start doing that when I Am Not Okay.  Or at a very minimum, on the verge of Not Okay.

And rather than trying to push through – which never works.  Which never, ever works – today I’m sitting with my not-okay-ness.  I’m admitting it; I’m saying it out loud.  And I’m breathing, and I’m being gentle with myself, and I’m working out what has to change in order for me to start sleeping again, in order for me to start interacting like a reasonable human again.  Letting go of my own self-care, letting myself get swallowed by the Big Black Hole, and then couching it in, “It’s not my fault; it’s the bipolar!” helps no one, least of all myself.  Or my kids.  Or my husband.  Or anyone who has the (mis)fortune of being within a 50 foot radius when I am as jacked-up as I am right now.   Whenever I feel myself starting to slip, self-care is the very first thing to go…. and the very first thing that I should turn to.  I know this.  I know this.  And yet, here I am, once again.

It’s time to make peace with self-care.  If I can’t do it for myself, I can at least do it for my kids.

And so, to the person who (rightly) reminded me of the importance of giving people grace last night:  Thank you.  You were right.  I absolutely do need to give people more grace.

But today I have to start with myself.

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Filed under about me, anxiety, depression, mania, mental health, self care

May 8, 2017 · 7:48 PM

Lost (And Found) In The Forest

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I’ve never been alone.  Is that weird?  I mean, yes, I’ve been alone in my house of course, and my car, and a million and one other little ways, but it was always within the context of my other responsibilities.  I went from my parents’ house, to having a roommate in college, to getting married at 19, to being a stay-at-home parent for 20 years (20 YEARS.  Is that right?)

 

Which brings us to now.  I’m 43 years old, and I’d never been alone.

 

Earlier this year, I decided that it was really important that I get away.  Just for a couple of days, all by myself.  It was almost painfully difficult to describe why I needed to do it, but I just knew it was something that had to be done.  And it specifically had to be done around April or May, as the pièce de ré·sis·tance to my year of self-care and self-discovery.

I had to be alone.

I had to give myself total space… to think, to feel, to grieve, to celebrate.  I had to know, beneath the mom and the wife and the homemaker and the blogger, I WAS ALSO STILL ME.

I went into it with no expectations, other than to let it teach me what I needed to learn.  I brought books (but it was okay if I didn’t read).  I brought my laptop (but it was okay if I didn’t write).  I brought journals and crafty things and sketch books (but it was okay if it all remained untouched.)  I brought hiking shoes (but it was okay if they never made it out of my suitcase.)  If I needed to cry, that was okay.  If I needed to sit outside and drink coffee and watch the squirrels, that was okay.

As it turned out, I needed all of the above.  I had no phone, no internet, and no outward distractions.  It was just me… alone with nature and alone with myself.  It was intense, and it was scary, and it was important.


From my journal, on the first night:

I’m sitting alone, in my little cabin.  I feel… I don’t even know what I feel.  I feel overwhelmed, and yet relieved at the same time.  Broken, but so strong.  Lonely, but empowered.  I am crying, and don’t remember when I started.  Crying for the girl that so badly needed this, crying for the girl that was so, so broken for so long.  Crying for the woman, who needs to know, perhaps more than she’s ever known anything, that she is enough.  Not enough as a mom, or a wife, or a daughter, or a sister, or a friend, but just ENOUGH.  As a person.  Stripped of all those other labels.  I’m enough and I’m crying and uncomfortable and I needed this.

I’m not sure what made me think to do it, but I decided that first night (in the midst of a rather severe mental health crisis) to make a little video diary to chronicle the experience.

The rest of my story will be told through those short videos.   They’re self-explanatory, but a couple of notes on the first one:  It’s real and raw and not especially pretty.  Also, notice how I have trouble catching my breath?  That’s what the end of a panic attack sounds like.  Or the beginning.  I don’t even remember.  To be honest, most of the first evening was one long panic attack.

So..

Did I learn something new?  Am I a new person because of my little 48 hour excursion?  Well, no.  The thing with life is that it keeps going, no matter how much we’d like to stop it sometimes.   No sooner had I arrived back home, I was thrust back into responsibility and errands and obligations.  Real life called.  But I lost myself in those woods, and then I found myself again.  And what I did realize is that that momentary peace I felt, that brief grasp of ataraxia (look it up) is something that I can work on feeling in the midst of the busy.  In the midst of the chaos.  In the midst of LIFE.  And if I’ve learned anything in the past year – anything at all – it’s that life and relationships, even (or especially) relationships with yourself are not something that you can just anoint with a 48 hour balm and expect to be successful.  They need constant, mindful, attentive care if you expect them to thrive, and expect them to be healthy and rich and fulfilling and worthwhile.

And as for myself?  My little trip reminded me, more than I’ve ever been reminded before, that no matter how much I fight it, no matter how many times and how many ways I keep having to tell myself…  no matter what society says or anyone says:

I am me.

And that’s enough.

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Filed under about me, life, mental health, self care, vacation