Tweaking the Crazy Recipe

According to the experts at WP, it has been 10 days since my last post.  Now, mind you, I have considered updating on several occasions, but have been extremely BUSY and IMPORTANT doing things like sleeping extra hours, watching copious amounts of basketball, doing everything I could to avoid getting dressed or showering, severely curtailing any limited contact I already had with the outside world, and backing out of every appointment and engagement possible.  BUSY, I tell you!  IMPORTANT, I’m saying!

Anytime something seemed remotely threatening to the tiny scrap of sanity I clutched in my sweaty palms this week, my answer was to retreat to my bed.  Phone ringing?  Bed.  Text message?  Bed.  Appointment?  Cancellation, then bed.  People wanting to swing by?  Ignore phone call, avoid with text message, go to bed.  Mess in the kitchen?  Bed.  Time to start thinking about a shower, or brushing my hair, or dragging a toothbrush across my mouth?  Bed.

Ok.  Apparently everything was threatening to my sanity.  Figuring out meals was terrible.  I wasn’t ever hungry, and I can’t just feed anything to LarBear (who has Crohn’s disease), and he can’t cook.  Stress multiplied by three!  Multiply that by one more, because I couldn’t conceptualize food because it was too difficult to think of when I could barely think of how I was going to keep myself alive, going into the next hour.

Up until late last night, I was having very intense self-harm thoughts and urges.  I hadn’t had self-harm thoughts or urges in years, although suicidal ideation is always hovering near the surface for me.  But self-harm, like harming myself just to harm myself, just for the release?  Wow, it has really been awhile, and for the past couple of weeks it has been intense and it has been SURPRISING and nasty and terrible.  I have spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to remember how I “got over that shit the last time.”  Hahahah!  Sorry, that’s funny, if you’ve been there, you know that.

And the answer to that — “how did I get over that shit the last time?” is, well…I don’t remember.  It’s a myriad of things, I have decided, that “gets one over” it.  Because you’re not really “getting over” it.  You’re more tamping it down, so that you don’t see it or hear it (until next time, right?) anymore.  I don’t think this stuff is every going to REALLY go away.  Like, AWAY, away.  It gets buried under other stuff, prettier stuff, healthier stuff, better stuff…you know, until next time.  And hopefully, the next time is a really, really long time away.  I think that’s really all I can hope for.  That the next time isn’t, ya know, tomorrow or next week or even, say, March.

What I do know is that the first thing I must personally do in order to “get over” this stuff, is to be ACTIVE in my pursuit of other feelings.  The passive push-away does not work for me, in ridding myself of these bad thoughts.  So, today I sought out good feelings, and actively pushed away bad feelings.

And today, January 31st, was a better day.

I went to church and sang very loudly.

LarBear and I went for a long drive.

I ate good food that was also healthy.

I talked to a friend.

I set boundaries with someone I have been meaning to set.

I made positive plans for the future, near and far.

I am blogging.

I have set my mind against taking other people’s crap into my own mind.

I have promised myself to try and stay out of bed, as a coping mechanism.

These are the things I did today.  I have many more plans for the start of February, and definitely do expect that I *may* have some success, just as I expect I *may* have some setbacks.  Part of getting better is making a conscious decision to get better, and that is something that I CAN do, that I HAVE done, that I AM doing.