The Big Sad

 I'm starting to get really scared.

I wanted this blog to be quippy and charming and fun - a mix of vulnerability and humor. But that's not really, technically, the agreement I made with myself. My intention in creating this blog was to chronicle. Just chronicle. Whatever is going on, whatever I'm feeling, however it wants to come out. Just write. And the reason I haven't told anyone I know about it is that I want to it remain as unfiltered as possible.

But the problem is that... writing an unfiltered chronicle of my life is going to be... messy.

Right after I created this account, like literally within two or three days or something, the Black Lives Matter protests exploded. I started having nightmares, stopped sleeping, started freaking out pretty much morning noon and night. I dove headfirst into activist work. I was watching City Council meetings, making donations, joining anti-racist organizations - and above all, I was sharing information nonstop on social media. I mean seriously, just about 24/7. And I like... lost it. I threw myself into a hypomanic episode, and I was pretty much just running around obsessing over everything I thought I could do or control, at the expense of daily tasks, food, sleep, etc.

So fortunately, I was able to force myself to rest for a few days. At the urging of my therapist and psychiatrist. It was extremely challenging but I learned to just turn off the phone. To tell people hey, thank you so much for thinking about me and I would love to help you with this, but I need to wait until next week. It was a great skill to develop and it helped a lot.

I ended up getting pretty re-regulated which was great. But I don't think I ever really got all the way back to baseline, in terms of my mental health... the hypomania mostly subsided, with a few little spikes here and there. But I feel like I've just like... lost time. Like the period between then and now feels like a big haze... what have I even been doing?? I know I've worked on my grad school applications here and there. I know I've hung out with John. I know I've fed Noodle every morning. But other than that... it just feels like a blur.

And I think the difficulty locating myself in place and time, and the general haze, has made it difficult to contextualize why I've been feeling so shitty. But over the last couple of weeks, I feel like I've really just started to decline. In a very noticeable way, honestly. Not just to me, either. John has continued to check in with me lately and he keeps asking me if I'm okay, because I think it really is visible on my face. Last night we were having a talk and I thought I was navigating it okay, but he looked up at me and was like "Are you okay? You look like you're about to cry." And I was like don't say that because then I will definitely cry!! (Spoiler alert: I did.)

And it's just really creeping into a lot of different areas of my life. I'm obsessed with how much I hate my body right now, which is so exhausting and scary and awful. I'm feeling lonely and shitty all the time even when John is one room away, which sends me down a spiral of obsessing about whether we're gonna make it long term. I'm fixated on how much I'm not doing, how I should be doing more - with school, with activism, with grad school applications, with everyday tasks... everything. It's just so easy right now for my brain to find any little thing to grab and latch onto, and to just infect it with black ink and make it bad and scary.

I really don't have like... a way to tie this up and a bow and to say "I'm fine." The scary and upsetting truth right now is that... I'm sort of not. Like I've gotten through a zillion depressive episodes in my life, and I know logically that this one won't be any different. I'll make it through this and come out on the other side saying oh, look at that. Made it through another one.

But it's just hard to be in it. Because as much empirical evidence as I have to the contrary, as much as there's a part of me that knows this isn't true... it feels like it won't end. It feels like I will get so sad that I'll stop doing everything from school work to eating food to leaving my bed to talking. It feels like this Big Sadness is going to sweep me under its waves and I'm going to get trapped in the undertow and I'm going to drown. It's just an incredibly deep fear that comes up when I experience this... and I feel like I just can't quell the fear as effectively as I want to. It has no regard for the fact that it's just fear. It doesn't care that it's been proven wrong a million times already. It just shows up, and it's like I'm right and there's nothing you can do about it, and this time it's going to turn out exactly how I say it will. And I'm like shit... what if it really is right this time?? 

Anyway. It's just hard. Quarantine is insane and human beings are not wired to live this way. It just all feels so overwhelming and I feel incredibly alone, even though I know I'm not. So. I guess next steps are therapy, and continuing to reach out to friends... being vulnerable fucking sucks, but. I have to just do it anyway. And asking for help. Ugh. Kill me.

I'm also gonna keep trying to write, pull a card, or check in some other way in the mornings, though. I want to create space for myself to really be able to just sleep and cry and feel like shit... but I also want to encourage myself gently, compassionately, to engage in some activities that help. Even for just five minutes at a time. And coughing up my emotional guts on this blog is part of that. And there are still moments when I look at Noodle sleeping on the couch, or I catch a glimpse of the blue sky and fluffy white clouds above the back fence, or John wraps me up in his arms and attacks me with kisses, and I feel just a moment of relief and I think oh... there we go. That felt okay. There are still some things that are okay.

Ultimately, as much as there's some part of me, on some level, that does want to just drown - because it feels easier, and sounds like a relief - there is more of me that wants to fight. There has always been more of me that wants to fight. So at the end of the day, that's what I'm gonna do. Because I'm worth fighting for.