Just having to get up, get them breakfast, get them to school, and then 6 hours later drag myself out of the house and get them home or to whatever after school stuff is happening. It needs to happen, so I do it. It has kept me, on some days, from becoming a shut in. The simple fact is, without the girls, I probably would have stayed in bed for a decent portion of the past few months. The days where I woke up and felt truly capable to handle whatever was thrown at me were few and far between.
At the end of my first session with Dr. B, he told me to do three things, 1) do something kind for myself to help counteract all of the guilt I feel 2) journal, write with a pen and paper because it’s different than typing 3) exercise, 20 minutes a day, if possible, it’s better than the escitalopram I’m on, clinically, in helping brain chemistry.
So I did the kind thing first, I went to Barrington Books (high end local indy bookstore) and bought myself a pretty pretty journal. I tried not to feel guilty about buying myself something. Not working, I feel guilty about spending money on myself -- which is not to say I don’t do it, just that I wade through some uncomfortable feelings to do it. This was for my health. It’s a kindness to put myself first, if sacrifice = love, I need to sacrifice for myself, right?
Journaling at first, was really awkward. I’m used to writing, like this, for an audience. Blogs, facebook, whatever, I’m used to sharing it with people. Writing for myself is a little odd. I’m still getting used to being completely honest in my journal. Is that weird, that I try to soften my edges? But it’s been enormously useful. It’s almost like washing the dishes at night and coming downstairs to a clean kitchen, except in my head. Dr. B said I should try to do it an hour before I go to sleep, so I generally journal in bed, and then chill and play stupid games on my phone until I’m feeling sleepy. Josh likes to play video games in bed and it’s a quiet time we enjoy together. Journaling is so useful that on those nights when I’ve forgotten to write I wake up feeling kind of shitty. I seem to sleep better and longer, and have fewer anxiety dreams when I journal, so it’s become an essential part of my day.
One of the things that drives me nuts about myself and that I do feel shame about is my inability to maintain a routine. I have a hard time doing the things, every day, that adults do to maintain their health and wellbeing. I can do something, mindfully, every day for a year and then just straight up forget to do it for weeks. And then there are times where I get up and go to the bathroom and look at my toothbrush and I just can’t. There are weeks. This most recent wave of depression I had a hard time getting into the shower and once i was there I just stared at my razor. I couldn’t bring myself to shave my legs and armpits, which I do, normally, all the damn time. But I couldn’t do it. I’m not sure why the depression makes me actively neglect myself. But it does. It’s not that I don’t see these things, I see them and I choose not to do them. It’s like a passive aggression towards myself.
Once I started to journal, and I realized how much I benefited from it, and it became -- much like taking my antidepressants daily -- a super non-negotiable, I do it when I can do nothing else task, even if it’s just one sentence! I realized that those other tasks that I want to do but can’t seem to bring myself to do were on the same spectrum. I had an appointment with my family doctor, my physical, and I didn’t want to be gross, so I showered. When I changed into the horrid paper outfit they give you I realized I hadn’t shaved my legs in literally 6 weeks and had full on hairy legs.
I was so surprised, I’m not sure why, but I guess I didn’t realize how long I hadn’t been able to do it. I get a social pass, because in roller derby, there is a lot of intentional body hair, and it could totally just be a thing I’m doing -- but I knew it wasn’t, and I was shocked by it. The next day I had my second session with Dr. B and I talked about this goal of just taking care of myself. Just starting with the bare minimum, teeth, showering, meds, journal. Not to get too ahead of myself but to feel like I can rely on myself to take care of me.
Honestly, sometimes all I need is just the goal. Deciding that it was important helped me do it. Like the neglect, the self-care has a tendency to spiral for me. I shaved, and made the commitment to dental care and my daily inhaler (which I had been letting slide, another chronic condition to manage) I know I will stumble, but being able to do this feels like an enormous accomplishment. Being able to look at a task and say, “If I do this, I will feel good for having done it.” and then to give myself the gift of doing it, is pretty amazing.
When I am spiraling, Josh will often recommend that I do a small task that is easy to accomplish and will make me feel a sense of productivity (and therefore, for me, a sense of self-worth). For the most part it’s usually little chores around the house that have been lovingly neglected for other things. I’ll be able to look at it and be proud that I did it, and enjoy it being done. I was so beyond that, so immediately with this recent wave of depression, that there wasn’t really anything small enough. But the knitting helped, making those socks for Clara helped so much that I kept knitting. Socks were like the gateway, and then my mind started to be filled with patterns, and ideas, and words that I wanted to share.
The second thing that I knit after a couple of pairs of socks was this dishcloth. I had a concept for a scarf or a shawl that I wanted to make based on short row wedges that would form a kind of wave pattern. I mocked something up in fingering weight to see how it would look and I wasn’t satisfied, but then I thought it would be awesome to do a swatch as a dishcloth. I had purchased a few skeins of dishcloth cotton on a recent trip to Joann’s after Christmas. I love dishcloths and it seemed like the perfect thing to knit in my depression. I knit a lot of dishcloths a couple of years ago when I was recovering from a concussion and they were great, mostly mindless, projects. And I use them all the time in my somewhat sporadic cleaning of my house.
When I was cleaning up my sewing room after the holidays (a project that would make me feel happy having finished it) I found a skein of cotton yarn I sent down to my grandmother, Mee-Maw to knit a dishcloth when she moved to the nursing home. I think it was the first nursing home, but it was a blurry time in my life. She was bored and agitated and I was still running the store and I mailed it and a pattern and some needles to her like a love package. She never knit it, I wasn’t surprised, her health was so poor and it was a stretch, but seeing that ball of yarn in my sewing room made me think about her, about depression and death, about the things we accept as reasons for depression and my imposter syndrome about my depression.
My life is literally as I would have made it. I’m truly happy, but I’m also depressed. How is it possible that I could be this broken? Also this contradictory? Can I be happy and depressed at the same time? Is that allowed? The depression/anxiety voice tells me I don’t deserve to be depressed. That I don’t deserve the support and care from my friends and family because I have no legitimate reason to be depressed. For people without anxiety, challenges happen, they move on. People without anxiety are this level depressed when someone dies, not when you have an argument with a friend, or miss an appointment. But I do have this, and as much as I may resent it, as much as I may struggle against the darkness with my own cheerfulness, it will come bite me in the ass if I don’t do the work.
I realize now that I had become complacent in my mental health, relying only on the joys of the day to manage the darkness without actively trying to manage it myself. Much like when you have a physical chronic illness when you don’t manage it, the symptoms return, when I don’t actively manage my anxiety, it manifests itself more fully in my life. Those symptoms of my anxious mind prevent me from enjoying this life that I have crafted, it holds me back from being my best self, and fundamentally I don't want to live like that. I want to live fully engaged in this life that I love.
The other day, when I was taking glam pictures of this little dishcloth, I had a kitchen full of dirty dishes from a good 5 days of neglect, and as I cleaned up I felt my control growing. I had my knitting group coming over to knit socks and I wanted the house to look OK, so I cleaned vigorously most of the day, and enjoyed it when they came over. The next morning the kitchen was kind of trashed again, because I had enjoyed it! I had made treats, and dinner, and blew off cleaning up the night before. But when I looked at the sink I believed I could do it. I knew if I cleaned up I would feel better for having done it. So instead of actively ignoring it, I dug in, got the dishwasher going and did the rest by hand. I felt a sense of accomplishment and pride that day that I took care of myself and I took care of my family, and it felt good.
This dishcloth is a love letter to those small things that I can do to manage. The small tasks, that when taken individually don’t feel big, but the doing them makes me feel like I’m in control. I don’t trust it yet, those glimmers of control, those feelings of joy and peace, but I am trying to enjoy them in the moment as much as I can.
You can download the pattern for Whatever You Need Me To Do at this link.
***I highly recommend knitting a dishcloth if you never have. They are a fun way to test new stitch patterns, the yarn is cheapo at a big box store (or leftover machine washable yarns from your stash), they are good for the environment, and they are darn good at washing anything that needs washing. You can turn almost any stitch pattern swatch into a dishcloth if you adjust the scale -- who cares if it rolls, or curls, or looks weird without a border, you’re just going to clean up baked on foods off pans, or whatever the hell is stuck to my dining room table right now. But if it looks intimidatingly fancy, knit a different one. There are loads of good patterns on ravelry, like this one, this one, or this one.
1 comment:
I wanted to thank you for this pattern (which I am going to do tonight)and to send you hugs and a "high five" for your efforts in your everyday life. I don't suffer from depression, some down days once in a while, but I do have family members that suffer. My son battled mental health issues and at 29 he ended his life. My grief comes and goes in waves. It has been 16 years. After his death I made myself continue through the days for my family and especially for my grandchildren. My granddaughter (now 19) also suffers with anxiety and depression. She is doing good and getting the help she needs but I know she has days where it is certainly a struggle.
I think you are doing a lot of things that will help you get through your days. Giving yourself the push, even if it is for your family, is certainly the step in the right direction.
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