Yesterday began Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and I thought this would be a good time for a couple of reminders.
Mental Health Monday begins next Monday.
As I’ve done for previous Mental Health Mondays, this Monday got away from me. And a day late doesn’t end the world. I think that is an important lesson to remember when things in our days get out of hand. I had three things to do yesterday and realized early on that one of them would need to be abandoned. That came with some regret, but I cannot bi-locate (yet) so choices were made. The day was still a time crunch and a lot of driving, but while I didn’t’ get something posted for yesterday, I did remain steadfast in my awareness of my mental health. I knew that I’d need to eat throughout the day. I knew that I’d need to sort out what was for dinner and get the groceries. I knew I needed to plan for the rest of the week, both at home and at work since we’re all “losing” a day to my son’s college commencement. My brother is taking the day off from work to be there, and my daughter is splitting her shift so she can be there and stay for lunch. I should get a cake, but if not, it will be okay since he’s already planning on going to the movies that night with friends. The point is, we all have stuff that comes up in the middle of our carefully laid plans, and how we adapt to them is the basis for how our mental health goes that day and possibly some of the days that follow.
It’s okay to take a break.
We watched Rogue One last night after finishing the Andor series last week, and I only spent time at the very beginning thinking about all the work I needed to be doing on my computer including this post, but I let it go.
Sometimes you can let it go.
And it’s also okay to not be okay.
Take a break.
Read a book.
Watch a movie.
Listen to music.
Stare into space.
It’s all good. Or it will be.
Yesterday was a challenge for many of us: those that have challenging mothers, challenging children, mothers who are absent whether by a choice or by death, and everyone, I mean everyone is wishing any woman in sight a ‘happy mother’s day,’ whether they need to or not. It is the society we live in where every day must mean something extra – Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo, Bosses’ Day, Nurses’ Week, Wednesday is Hump Day. Each day has a bit more to include and sometimes exclude.
So how do we cope when we are challenged by these days?
I try to go with the flow. It’s not always easy. My family asks what I want to do on my day. Where do I want to eat? What do I want them to get me? What do I want to do, all day, every minute of this special, special day?
And I’m grateful, I truly am that they want to actually spend time with me, but on the other hand, I’m the cruise director all year. Every day. I’d like a day off. You know what I like. Just pick a place. Just get a token thing. Sign a card. I really don’t have any requirements. I mean, we like cake, so I’d like a cake. A cupcake is good, too. I love cupcakes. Vanilla cupcake. Vanilla frosting. Rainbow sprinkles. Seriously, I’m boring and easy.
And if you’re not boring, your family knows that too.
If you’re not into the whole eating out thing, order in. Get a pizza.
If you’re not into celebrating, stay home and read a book.
Whatever it is that makes you happy or at least content, make your wishes known.
And if it’s not perfect, they tried…take yourself out on Monday…and don’t tell anyone.
I had an enjoyable Mother’s Day, and when I got irritated, I removed myself from the situation. I walked away. Not in a tantrum, not in a snit, I just left and let the rest of them communicate.
No one’s fault, but my Monday, this morning, was not great. I had a misstep on the last step, the one I fell off two years ago and broke two ribs. I stayed upright this time and slammed myself into the front door. That was actually the plan to keep me upright, and it worked. I did twist my knee, but it’s feeling better as the day goes on.
Then I set up a pickup order at Starbucks. I like their blackberry sage refresher, and I’d like it before they get rid of it for the season. I also got my boss a cherry chai that she had been admiring. I went to pick it up. They didn’t have it. It turned out that I put the order in at a different Starbucks about seven miles away, and in the opposite direction from work.
I texted my boss, apologizing, and saying I’d be late.
Picked up the order, a lovely woman held the door open for me (kudos to her kindness), and I get to work…and my boss can’t have caffeine.
I was then told it is a full moon.
And a Monday.
I always think of Adam West’s Batman on days like this: Sometimes, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.
*shrug*
Let’s hope the rest of the day floats along happily or at least doesn’t sink messily.
At least once a week, I’ve sat myself down and wanted to write and publish here, and more than once a week, I’ve failed. I checked online to see my last publication, and it was way back in July.
Where has August gone?
I stopped subscribing to more is better, so while I do track my writing and word counts, it’s for my own accountability, but I still do not like when plans go by the wayside.
Although last week was a bit of a dip for things.
My priest died nine months ago. My oldest moved after some personal stuff that we’ll call a setback. My middle son is moving out when he starts college. My daughter hates me. Fall memoir workshop was cancelled. And my therapist is retiring.
Okay, let’s be fair: My daughter doesn’t hate me. It’s really just the normal teenage daughter – mother tension, and I did tell her that I’d be writing this, so we’re good. But everything else? I guess I’d say I’m coping.
All our money went to car repairs, house repairs, gas, and groceries. At some point, we know that our kids are not going to want to continue going on vacation with us, but until that day comes, I’m here for it. We’re just doing an overnight in the Finger Lakes and making memories.
I’ve got a master list that I’m working through, and one (or twelve) of those items is publishing a few pieces before we go away, instagramming for the two days that we are away, preparing for the class that I’m teaching in the fall, and reorganizing myself. Not my stuff. Not my writing. Not my clutter, but myself. Where do I want to be in six weeks?
I will let you know sometime in the next week or so, but I am here to also remind you that there is no right way, there is only the way you choose to move forward.
Onward!
The last prompt for this season’s memoir writing class was Count Me Out. I have finally had enough inspiration to attempt to write something. I am, however afraid that it will only be a list of grievances, but October has been a shitshow, sometimes literally, so please bear with me.
It has been a long time since I’ve felt so overwhelmingly despaired. I’m not in an emergency depressive state, but I am at the point where I can’t actively wonder what’s next in fear that the powers that be will take that as a challenge.
My response?
Count me out.
We began the month with the first two days having my daughter home sick from school. By October 1st and 2nd, she was finishing a week at home despite being better and except for lacking a negative covid test (which came on Friday) could have gone back to school.
Continue readingI’ve kind of put this off for most of the day. I didn’t intentionally procrastinate. I did need to get groceries, and I suppose I could have not bribed my son to come with my by promising him a trip to the bagel shop and Starbucks for a frappechino, but I did. And while I do really need to sit down and finish my lesson plan for RCIA next Sunday and contact the printer for the handouts (that need to be mailed since we’re meeting by Zoom), I still really did not intentionally put this off. There were also people WRONG ON THE INTERNET that I needed to take care of.
It is true that this Mental Health Monday comes at the beginning of the last week for us in New York for NY Pause. While the entire state won’t be opening up, and the emergency orders are still in effect, the formal Pause expires on Friday, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about that. It gives me stress just thinking about it. That is partly because I will continue to isolate at home, as will my family; I will continue to wear a mask when I go out, and I will stay six feet away from you, and I will expect you to stay six feet away from me. Being cautious doesn’t make me paranoid. After all, sometimes they really are out to get you.
Seriously though, the stress associated with opening up the states is almost as viscerally debilitating as closing them down was in the first place.
My main advice to you is the same that I’m giving myself: Take it slow. If you’re not ready to go to the store when everyone else is there, don’t go. I can tell you that there is food on the shelves. Today when we went they didn’t have everything I wanted but I just picked alternatives, like in pasta – cavatappi instead of penne, thin spaghetti instead of angel hair. They didn’t have Bertolli’s pasta sauce but they did have Prego. Meats were all on sale and we got everything we came for. The only thing we didn’t get that was on our long list was Alfredo sauce.
My church is still livestreaming on Facebook Live four times a week. If they came back on Sunday, I would still not attend. If you’re not comfortable, there is no reason for you to go to the building for your worship service. There are appropriate alternatives.
If you’re working from home, see if you can extend that.
If you’re in a house, get outside once a day. You don’t have to go anywhere – just breathe in the fresh air. Of course, if it’s snowing, like it was here in New York on Saturday, maybe avoid that. If you’re in an apartment, go for a drive. I will take a drive at least once a week (and not go through a drive through) just for a change of pace.
Go to bed earlier than usual. Turn off the electronics, get away from the internet and social media, take a quiet half an hour before sleeping. I may have mentioned that I’ve been sleeping with an eye mask. The light pressure of it has a way of calming me down for sleep, which surprised me, but it seems to work for me; maybe it will work for you.
Share some of your coping and stress relievers in the comments so we can all benefit from each other. We are all in this together.
What have I done today? Today, being a reflection of one day last week, April 2, 2020 to be precise. It is (was) day 18 of self-isolation/”quarantine” for our family. That is the official count since we last went out to dinner and our kids last had in-person school, which is not a phrase that comes readily from fingertips to keyboard or off the tongue. In that time, we have managed to come to some sort of happy (?) medium between the four of us who live in this house. Some days have blended into others, some pjs were worn a bit too long, too many video games, streaming services, and DVDs were played and watched, not enough fresh air, and way, way, way too many emails were received from every single email list I’ve been on for the last ten years telling me how they are addressing the COVID-19 situation in their establishments as well as many, many restaurants offering me free delivery or curbside pick up despite the fact that I am very much not in their delivery area.
But we’re all handling this in our own ways; some better than others.
As every day becomes some version of it’s Friday again as well as a Groundhog Day reboot, I thought I’d spend one day listing all of my activities or the less than active happenings as it were.
I decided to would share it here for others to see that we’re almost all coping with the same issues: limited resources, homeschooling our kids, working from home, trying to be useful, and often not succeeding, and then feeling guilty about that. Why haven’t I cleaned out my closets? Why haven’t I planted my garden? How can we possibly use that much toilet paper in a week?! No, I don’t know what’s for dinner; what are you making?
I absolutely recognize my privilege and am ever grateful in that I have a home, my children are safe, and my husband continues to work from our home. He had already been working from home for a number of years, initially requesting it because of some medical limitations for me after my third child was born. Eventually, it became his regular job to work from home. I do know how lucky we are despite having the worry that this may situation may stop or change before the quarantine is over. Time will tell.
For all of us.
I began that Thursday as I begin every day, by waking up. I have an alarm set for 8:30 from Sunday to Thursday. I set the alarm so I can “attend” Mass online. It’s hard to have an excuse not to be there when the commute is literally sitting up in bed and turning on my Kindle. In addition to masses four days a week, my parish priest is also doing FB Live storytime for the younger parishioners (but I tune in every week, and enjoy every minute of it!), our office manager is offering a weekly reflection on FB Live as well, and we’ve had soup deliveries on Wednesday for the last three weeks. Sadly, they end when Lent does. I couldn’t be more proud of my church and how they’ve handled this pandemic from the beginning in March, keeping everyone informed and faith filled, keeping our community despite the physical distance.
So, my alarm goes off at 8:30, and my day begins.
8:30am – Wake up.
8:30 – 9am – Checked email, Facebook, Twitter. Saved screenshots and links for COVID-19 information posts to get to later.
I take my morning medicine.
9am – Facebook Live. Since this is Thursday, there is no daily mass, but my friend and godmother who is the office manager for my church gave a wonderfully lovely Lenten reflection. She’s doing another one this week as well.
About 9:45/10am – I begin listening to my podcasts: What a Day from Crooked Media and Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara.
After that it’s time for breakfast, which sadly won’t come to me: a French toast bagel, toasted with melted butter.
I began reading a new book – The Boston Massacre (because clearly this is a lighter subject than what we’re living through right now.)
I went back on Facebook until …
11:30am – I watched New York’s Governor Cuomo’s daily briefing. I find his briefings calming and informative; also honest. I watch it every day that I am able to, and no, I do not watch the President’s daily briefing because those are the exact opposite of calming, informative, and honest. I screenshot many of the Governor’s slides to post on Facebook.
I cooked the meat and sauce and layered the lasagna in my crock pot for dinner.
When dinner was set up to cook for the rest of the day, I cropped the slides from the governor’s briefing and posted them on my Facebook page. (Several people have told me that they appreciate it, and it makes me feel as though I am doing something productive, something of a public service, even if it’s only in my mind.)
I then had Lunch with a Diet Coke followed by a snack. On my notes page that I kept the running diary, I didn’t write down what I had for lunch and snack, so I have no idea what it was. We’ve had sliced turkey and cheese in the house for sandwiches, we have ramen, macaroni & cheese, and often leftovers to have for lunch, so really it’s anybody’s guess what it might have been.
About now, I’ve begun to flag. I’m always tired since this situation has begun, not always physically, but I feel a constant level of worn out. My brain is going a mile a minute, but I am also paralyzed with uselessness.
I go back on my Kindle: Facebook, Twitter, some games. Things that I don’t need to think about because my brain just won’t slow down.
Clearly, I’m not writing. 😦
Emails.
My daughter was on Facetime with her friends and I heard her giggling and laughing hysterically. It resounded down from her room, and I stood at the bottom of the stairs, and just enjoyed it. It was a welcome sound; one that I haven’t heard for what seems like a long time, and I relished in it.
When the lasagna was ready, my son and I made homemade garlic bread. It was delicious.
We ate our dinner, which was also delicious. We’ve been cooking a lot!
After dinner, I had some yummy Mango Dragonfruit sherbet that my husband picked up for me as a surprise when he went out to get milk.
I read Governor Cuomo’s email that he sends nightly, which caught me up since his morning briefing. Again, positive and reassuring.
9pm – The Rachel Maddow Show. She is visibly upset with the federal government’s response. I am also upset. Disappointed. Embarrassed.
I don’t know if I just realized it while watching Maddow but I did not get dressed today. PJs feel almost like business casual as quarantine time ticks by. It’s quite nearly another universe.
After dinner, I clean up the dishes. I didn’t wash them though, just got them scraped and into (or near) the sink. At the moment, there’s too many for me to get started emotionally. I don’t mind doing the dishes, but I need to really feel it.
I went to bed; not to sleep, but to read.
Then I promptly fell asleep.
I woke up at 1am and went on Twitter where Alt_Immi‘s post set my teeth on edge. He had retweeted a 9 minute video of Russel Honore’, who commanded federal troops in New Orleans after Katrina, and who had a lot to say about the Defense Production Act and the “leadership” of Jared Kushner.
I became enraged, which kept me from sleeping.
I took my nightly medicine (which I’m really supposed to take around 11pm), and then I went to bed for real. Mostly.
I know that tomorrow will probably go about the same except with the addition of a shower and minus meat (since [as of this diary’s writing] tomorrow is Friday!)
This whole thing is horrifying and demoralizing.
As the following Tweet says, this is why we cried when he won. No lie.
We will get through this. Together.
Sometimes you just need a mindless break in order to become mindful. Or just to take a breather. I began to color during an art-slash-spiritual retreat, and sitting with a group of people listening to music, lights dimmed, but enough to see the papers and the colors of the pencils was transcendental. It was soothing and calming, and there is no such thing as a mistake on a coloring sheet. You can find a variety in the dollar section at Target or the Dollar store. My most recent acquisition – the Celtic coloring book – was from a bargain store for $1.99. Well worth it.
Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you. Please add any other suggestions in the comments below.
As much as I love the idea of traveling, and the actual visiting places, the anxiety associated with the anticipation of planning is one of the most debilitating and horrible things to deal with. It’s something that needs to get done, or the trip itself is a no-go, but starting the planning…
And it isn’t even the actual planning. I love the listmaking, and the reading the tour books, researching what i want to do when I get there. It’s the starting. The monumental decision of putting the money into non-refundable tickets. Hitting that send or buy or submit button takes three times as long as filling out the information on the forms.
In the case of our Ireland trip this summer, it isn’t just buying plane tickets; it’s renting a car. There’s the anxiety of finalizing the search with a credit card number, but there is also the shortness of breath and shaking hands just thinking about driving in the UK again.
After eight years back, I thought I was ready. The memory a cry in the distance, but the closer it gets to reserving a car and planning a route from the airport to the cousins and the cities, and the ferry to Wales, my stomach jumps up into my throat and I feel a choking sensation. I can’t imagine what it will be like to get on the plane with this feeling gnawing at me.
It’s almost unbearable, and there is no earthly reason to feel this way at this moment, weeks in advance of actually having to do it.
My kids are coming, so compiled in all of that stress is the stress of pretending that there is nothing to be anxious about to soothe their own normal, rational fears, so I must hide my own, some irrational fears, but fears all the same.
I feel quite sick writing about it right now.
I vividly remember the white knuckles, the terror of every intersection, every roundabout, reminding myself to breathe, the post-it note on the dashboard telling me to turn into the left lane, always the left lane, thanking G-d at every church passed, the slight sound of scraping as I inched too close to the town wall.
It’s all coming back to me.
Not the feelings a few years later that maybe I could do it again; I got through it once, and it wasn’t that bad, but the anxious screaming IT WAS THAT BAD, PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME!!!
But as with all things, it will be okay.
Between that time and now, I have received many tools to get me through this one little hitch that seems so overwhelming, but I can get through it; I know it.
One of those is a diagnosis and treatment for the elevated anxiety that falls into the not quite normal range of emotion and brain chemistry as well as the same for depression, not entirely unrelated, but the destination will assist in alleviating any extra. I have a therapy session planned for a week prior as well as reconciliation with my priest. Not for anything specific, but you know…anxiety and such.
Another thing was something I heard at one of my first masses, actually it was at my first healing mass, the anointing of the sick. My entire life, no matter how severe, no matter how stressful, no matter how bad, I would tell myself that it would be okay. I didn’t necessarily believe it, but just saying it to myself did have a calming affect.
At that first anointing, my priest quoted St. Julian of Norwich, subseequently a new found favorite of mine.
All will be well.
All will be well.
In all manner of things,
all will be well.
How perfect, and how needed, then and now.
Yes, I’m still anxious, and som of it will be debilitating, but all will be well.
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 