The last few weeks have had circumstances that individually
would have made life challenging. But these were not nicely lining up and
waiting their turn, no, these circumstances were all punching at once. One
friend asked how I was doing and I replied with “slowly losing the will to
survive.” It was dramatic, of course, but I just could not get above the hits.
Because I struggle with chronic depression, I am very careful about becoming
overwhelmed. I have a lot of built in stops and self-care to manage my mental
health. I couldn’t even access a good number of those given the circumstances.
One thing that I know about myself is that my first reaction
to struggle is to try harder. This is almost a part of my DNA. I was raised by
people with this attitude and I was raised in a culture of this attitude. Not
only do I try harder on whatever is going on, if that isn’t possible, I try
harder in other areas to hope to compensate in the area where I feel stuck. My
most recent example of this was actually during the last week. I was literally
stuck at home (too much snow to leave) with a sick baby and two other kids and
I was sick myself. So what did I do? I finished painting Isaac’s room. No joke.
I figured that even if everything else fell apart, I would have one thing
accomplished. Truthfully, it did feel good and it helped me later in the week
to have that done. So I won’t say I shouldn’t have done it, but it does sound
funny to say I did that in the midst of all that was going on.
Sometimes when I am in these places, though, I end up
creating extra work or anxiety just to feel like I am “doing something”. Last
week, I tried a different approach to see if it would help with anxiety and
mental health. I gave up.
I came up with the idea when I was thinking about the military
term “embrace the suck”. The idea there is that you can’t change your
circumstances, so embrace them and get through them, rather than fighting
against it as you go. I couldn’t change the snow. I couldn’t change my child
being sick. I couldn’t change myself being sick. I couldn’t change being “on”
all the time. I couldn’t change my husband being out of town. And, really,
there wasn’t much to do.
Normally in that time I would find something to do, and I
did in the painting, but that didn’t take long. So I would turn to “well I can
read and study for work I have coming up”. But this time I didn’t do that. I
decided to give up on it all and read a novel. Just lose myself in a book as
much as I could. Let the kids watch TV and sit next to them and read.
I started to think maybe I needed to give up to make it
through. I had a mental picture of Devil’s Snare from Harry Potter….that
struggling could actually make it worse. That I just needed to relax everything
to get out of this space. I stopped reading non-fiction and finished 3 books
last week. I didn’t make a real planned dinner for over a week. And this season
of circumstances is still not over, but I do feel like I am making it. I can do
this. Our routine will reemerge in the coming weeks. All the tasks will get done.
My kids will eat regular dinners again. I will get my work and study done. But
for now I am going to go read a book.
