Step by Step

Many, many thanks to everyone who responded to my last post. What a burden I have been to you and to myself. I'm getting better, three steps forward and one back. It's been fascinating [to me] to watch myself.

How did I start to pull out of the tailspin? I think that by the time I wrote my last post I was already pulling out -- I have no words when I'm in the depths. I was able to cry by last weekend. I have no tears in the depths. I confessed to a few people what had been building, including my mother. I hide my self when I'm in the depths.

I had a simpler week than usual, which helped because I'm tired when I'm coming out of the woods. It's like a long bad flu. The old energy takes a while to come back. I had little writing assignments to do. A brief review of a friend's book, an AFG post (the awfulness of which nearly knocked me back into the woods), a Lab Lady post, some overdue emails. I cleaned the bathroom sink, swept thoroughly, finished some reading, took clothes to the thrift shop. Such small things but such normal things and triumphs over the comparative catatonia of depression.

Now I need to get my food truly in order. I need to get started on the next chapter of my novel. I need to get out of the house without a dog and without a shopping list. I need to work on my apartment, a fact which is out of my hands until one of two men I've asked fixes the wall my air conditioner crisis crashed in.

Mostly I need to tell you I'm seeing more light than dark. I heard from one more old friend this week who wrote that I should come back to her town for a long visit. "Or maybe longer." It made me cry again; she was inspired to write because she'd had a dream about an adventure we had when we were 18. A lot of my past seems to want to reclaim me. Someplace early in the week I thought, hey. Frances. You matter to these people you've envied for thirty years. I missed SO much...but I was there in some way that some of these old friends haven't forgotten. I watched while they acted but in doing so, I can pinpoint their motivations and spin them. Watchers don't forget much. Thirty years of synthesis has its own merit badge.

I couldn't see two sides a week ago. I needed light. I've begun to get it. I've got to be careful. I'm reading a lot about schizophrenia right now but need to parse it out. I need to sleep. I'm going out to Arizona for five days but I'm collecting little projects to do out there and I'm taking a big Harry Potter book.

I ate junk last night. It could unglue me. I have THIS day to pull it around. I have dogs to take care of. I have Klonopin to get me to sleep. I took a very long nap this morning with no regrets, and I just had some yogurt and half a too-ripe pear. I can do this; I can invest in the next step, the next day, the next ray of light.