Sunday eve is upon me. Things were a little blue this weekend. With Covid ramping up again and I knew it would, it is just feeling pretty isolating like in March and April. I thought I did pretty good through the beginning and now that it is in full force again, I am convinced I did well. I was doing face masks and all kinds of journaling and music and me time. Now though, for whatever reason, oh the holidays I guess, I feel really alone and sad. I am not sure sad is the right feeling. I am just now realizing the importance of learning all the words that express feeling and emotion. It is 100 times easier to deal with something when you can express yourself clearly and really pinpoint what is going on. For years and years, I would use the phrase, ‘in my head’ and I still do sometimes. That was just a quick way for me to say that I have so many bad thoughts, over analyzed thoughts, negative thoughts that I did not even know where to begin so I said that I was, ‘in my head.’ I laugh now at how long it took my family and friends to understand what that meant. Ha-ha, it makes me giggle. God love them all. I cannot imagine how hard I was to deal with when I was still teaching me. I am still learning but using my real words and confronting those real feelings and emotions and breaking down the why I feel that way and what lead me to it. Whew, that sounds like a whole lot of therapy right there. It takes work to work my mental illness. It is like its own task that I must deal with like cleaning my home and doing chores and going to work. I must work on me daily. Back to today and now though. I slept a lot this weekend, but I think it was from allergies and me not feeling 100%. My body needed rest, but it is hard for me to admit that because most of my early adult life when I was depressed, I would call in sick to work. I would have the worst work guilt about it. So, when I actually am feeling a little under the weather it brings back the doubts if I am actually sick or depressed. I believe I have sorted through that. This weekend has layers that start with me feeling a little under the weather and my body knowing it, so I got 10-12 hours of sleep Friday and Saturday night.
My sister also cancelled her trip to drive her son with my dad and come stay with us for a week. I knew it was going to happen with Covid though, but it still blows. Then my other sister has this maybe soon to be stepson and it was his birthday Saturday and she had all that to do. My mom was doing decorations with her husband and my Dad was getting their new rehabbed house finished, my friends have kids and my friends without kids could not really come over because it was raining and we could not sit outside. So then Sunday came, and I had all these plans I wanted to do but did not do. Do you know why I did not do them? Because I did not want to do them alone. What is the purpose? I can do them anytime this week and no one would know the difference. So today I started feeling extremely alone and now that thanksgiving will be weird this year I need to gear up for a blah week and figure out how to overcome it or just roll with it. Whew, again, so much in my head. I am trying not to let the big stuff creep in and take over and really put me in a depression. I am scared to even write it because I do not want it changing me and making things worse. Does that mean I will never get passed it though? Does that mean I can never talk about it? I do not know- honestly. I just know that right now is not the time.
One thing I have been doing for awhile now is washings my sheets and taking long showers on Sundays. If I do not do anything else with the day, I feel so good that I did the bare minimum of self-care. This is a depression trick I learned when I would make all of these big plans for self-care days and then I realized on my really bad depression days I would not even wash my face, brush my teeth or get out of the clothes I wore to bed. Those days still happen, but for sure a LOT less than before. But this Sunday sheet wash and then me washed getting into clean sheets makes me feel like I won the day of depression. I did not let that fucking evil pest win.
It is a weird thing being alone. I have friends and family but being alone has been 12 years now since my divorce. Well since we separated, and I moved back home. I have been okay and grown and learned and been happy for sure, but 12 years is a long time. And part of the shit I must work through is getting in another relationship and explaining that I have a mental illness. How in the hell do you do that? And frankly I do not think I have met anyone of interest- well at least when my heart finally healed. It is something I think of though, how awkward it will be. Or will he just open my kitchen cabinet looking for glasses and see all my meds there. You see I cannot hide my meds somewhere so no one can find them because then I do not take them routinely. Another trick I have learned through the years of growth. My mental illness is why I told my ex-husband I did not want to have any kids. I was not going to pass down what is ‘in my head’ to another soul to have to struggle through. What if I gave the baby something worse than what I have, or the baby/kid just could not deal? It seemed selfish to have a child. Plus, when I was pregnant what the fuck would that look like. I mean I cannot take any of the meds I am on because I would kill the baby or deform it. It was just easier to give up that part of my life to spare so many around me having to help in all kinds of terrible ways and then again, the fear of passing on whatever mental illnesses would be passed.
Well I started to ramble. I guess just writing can work through some depressed thoughts. This is another quick one so I can share my down in the dumps me too. I am okay. I will be okay tomorrow for work. I am a strong woman. I am a strong woman that has learned to ride the waves of mental illness. I will come back and link some good resources tomorrow; I just want to get this posted. I need to feel like I am helping someone by sharing and I need to share more to do that. The lesson learned from this Sunday eve post, wash your sheets and you every Sunday, it works wonders.
Layers 