the above photo is of my best friend and I on the day of my brother's graduation. I had slept only a few hours the night before because a musical artist within my favorite genre of music was killed and I couldn't stop getting news updates long enough to sleep. After spending most of the morning emotional, I had fallen asleep, only to wake up and see Hayley asleep behind me. My uncle snapped this picture unbeknownst to us, and this is the one time I remember feeling truly supported and loved in my need for rest. that's why this is the header picture. continue on.
Nights like this one are difficult because I know what my body needs and I'm apparently not in the business of listening. I have inherited from my father that whatever you're doing has to be worth your time and energy and it almost always needs to be productive in some sort of way. Seeing that as a way of living as I've grown up has become like a second skin I can't shed. If I'm not being productive or making money or exerting some sort of energy, the day is unfinished. It has taken me breaking my body down from stress to understand that I can be productive but in a relaxing way. And... for my anxiety... if I'm not productive, sometimes that has to be okay, too.
I'm coming to understand that I'm not built for a retail 40 hours a week. This is the first year in the almost 6 years I've been with the same company that I haven't felt sick to the core, either from stress or a post-Christmas rush cold. I always get sick this time of year, and go figure, the one year I'm feeling relatively okay is the year a worldwide pandemic is running amok through our streets. For years I never understood how to cope with stress, I just sort of assumed this is how you feel when you're an adult. This was while being sweltered with anxiety, having stress dreams about work even on my days off, and before I decided I needed to enlist the help of a professional to get my checks and balances in order.
Therapy has helped my ability to function tremendously. I will never stop recommending therapy, even to those who don't have traumas to take by the horns. Though I went into therapy already having thought of every scenario I could possibly think of on how to help myself on a detailed level, to be able to speak to someone relatively unbiased and trained to handle these types of things was a breath of fresh air. Is part of it the medication? Absolutely. Did I want to be on medication? So badly not that I'd cry worrying about it. Recently I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affect Disorder and was put on a mood booster, as well as having my antidepressant dosage upped, and when my doctor said "we're going up 10 mg" I almost started crying. I don't have control over this and unlike my entire life, this isn't something I can fix or deal with independently. It took me considering my medication as a sort of supplement to get my anxieties to calm down.
Days like today are strange. I'm not physically drained, although I barely stopped moving all day. Even on my lunch break, my legs were bouncing and my hands were typing or scrolling or drawing. Mentally I'm drained from a culmination of the literal past 3 months being (what feels like) nonstop. So I understand nights like tonight I need to relax. I need to roll out my new yoga mat and treat myself to a calming movement practice. I need to take another shower and wash my hair even though I showered this morning. I need to climb into bed and put my weighted blanket on top of me to make my chest stop hurting. My body holds stress in a way I've never realized until this year.
For once I'm beginning to notice the change in the day. For a while, I'd wake up and feel like I didn't sleep. Go about my day on autopilot, put on enough of a facade to get me through the day, come home and do yoga, and go to sleep feeling like I hadn't done anything except lay in bed all day. I was tired, but never felt rested. That's what my depressive episodes look like, and after struggling with that and involuntary thoughts of isolation for years on end, I have come to understand that these are, in fact, symptoms of depression, and that was a hard pill for me to metaphorically and literally swallow.
This has been a long year and December has been an even longer month. With no end in sight, I'm trying my best to find what it is that brings me peace, and in a positive way. There's plenty of peace in removing the negativity from your life at the root, but there's a lot of weeds to go through to get to the dirt. The most relieving part of all of this is truly understanding when I need to rest and allowing myself to do so. Carving time out for myself has become a habit I've continuously tried to enforce upon myself and not in a negative way, either. No bullying myself, no nasty talking to myself, no ultimatum. Genuine, caring, comforting conversations I'm having with myself about what my body needs, what my heart needs, what my soul needs, and how to effectively get myself to enjoy what I can do for myself.
This is a total turn around from this time last year, and a significant character development story from the beginning of the year to now. My biggest opportunity in all of this is allowing myself to keep the conversation going even when I have a long to-do list, even when I've got people relying on me, even when I'm relying on myself. For years I used to say, in retrospect, that you cannot fill a cup from an empty tap. This year I'm understanding what that means to me when I say it to myself, not for someone else to hear it.
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