(no subject)

[altarflame]

So, I can't really tell if I'm depressed, or profoundly disabled, or just bad at life.




I'm not teaching my kids very much. But I teach them sometimes, and they do a lot of independent learning and use educational websites, and I can just order Annie to go do work on her own, and Elise goes to preschool, and I still take them to their activities?

I don't really clean anything. But I've never been very good at that.

It adds up to a lot of just hanging around in a messy house 0_o

I have really, REALLY low energy. I mean I just want to take a nap, like, all day every day. A clear and likely explanation for this is that I'm recovering from a pervasive illness that has dropped everyone I know for long periods of time and am still on antibiotics and cough medicine, BUT - how can I deal with that, and be ok with it, when:
-I was sick for like, weeks following Christmas
-then I got whiplash in a car accident
-and now I've been ill since mid March
-all the while with this chronic back pain and weird stomach discomfort from major hernia, which I was just in the ER for again not long ago
-and with my deblitating periods still happening monthly
I mean wtf?

I'm slacking off bigtime in school this semester. I'm always making something up or turning it in at the last minute, spotty attendance, or being like "Well a 50 averages in far better than a zero, mission accomplished". And it's like, well, this semester I've been sick as hell twice, I've had my bike (i.e. transporation to and from school) stolen, and I had a crazy lot of stuff to deal with re: Isaac. Or, maybe I just got a bunch of As and a couple of Bs in summer and fall and now I'm burnt out. Or, maybe I'm self sabotaging because I don't know how to be successful at things. Or, blah blah blah.

I'm also doing this stupid shit where I don't cook anything and I'm starving and the kids are like, spilling cinnamon sugar everywhere making too much toast and leaving milk out on the counter after they get cereal and taking two bites out of apples that turn brown on the table after that, all day long, and I feel progressively worse and worse from not eating until eventually I end up having, like, a can of black olives for lunch.

This afternoon the phone rang, and when I found it on my bed I flopped down and answered it and it was just a recording, and then it felt so hard to get up that I just stayed there and took a nap. Sometimes, I feel profoundly hassled just because one of my kids is talking to me, and I find myself squinting more and more until I say something like, "I really need some space right now. Go find something to do."

I might just be a selfish person, because I still get a whole lot of enjoyment out of little things like flowers and phone conversations I choose, and funny things on tumblr. I was, dareIsay, enchanted by this AMAZING park we went to yesterday, and I still have a lot of fun doing things like staying out til 4 am with Jess two nights in one week. I sat on a couch at Cybele's excitedly raving about my writing career for half an hour last night and that was great. On the other hand, that's what I do when I'm sick, or depressed, or stressed or whatever - I try hard to be nice to myself so it doesn't spiral into something worse. I indulge and tread gently until I come out of it.

I'm most successful, lately, when I find ways to combine productivity with self indulgence. For instance, if I can watch a show or movie I also dig with my kids, or lay in the hammock looking at clouds/stars with one of them, and they feel like they're getting quality interaction, everybody wins. I love congratulating them lavishly on art, projects, schoolwork or cooperation they accomplish totally autonomously and telling myself that it's because I've invested so much effort in the past.

Sometimes, I can trick myself into going to school by making eating something really good or putting on makeup and painting my nails part of getting ready.

Hopefully I'll be rich and famous soon so I just come off as eccentric, and can hire staff. Or, more likely and possibly even more immediate, I could GET BETTER and BE HEALTHY.

Seriously though it sounds like some kind of miraculous parting of the clouds to me to just be healthy and well and not hurt anywhere or have any kind of ailment. I vacillate all day long between thinking I need to fling myself headlong into some sort of exercise regimen to jumpstart my metabolism and thinking I just have to give myself time to get better and eventually I'll come out of it.

Bleh.

Comments

[the-leh.livejournal.com]

That's what my whole life is like (except to an even more intense degree). But I have fibro and bipolar and shit.

It *could* be depression. Or maybe you're just tired. I mean, you are doing a *lot* of stuff. Five kids is intense! Homeschooling them all (or most of them) is doubly so. And then going to school yourself on top of it? That's about 100x what most people do in their average lives.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking about you and wondering how you freaking deal. I saw this on tumblr the other day and meant to send it to you:

“Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”
-sherunsfromdarkness.tumblr.com

[the-leh.livejournal.com]

That's a very accurate picture of what depression is. Thank you for that :)

I really don't know how I deal. I think I just have no other choice.

[ecosopher.livejournal.com]

I have days like this. I don't think it's depression (for me) although I know I do suffer a bit of it due to hormones and so I'm kind of aware of it now and for after the baby is born. But you know, I think to some degree, it's also just being overwhelmed. I mean, as the above comment said, look at all the stuff you're doing - homeschooling and running Elise to preschool and the extra curricular activites that the children do, and publishing your book, and EVERYTHING.

Being ill can really knock you about for a while. Is there a way of getting a couple of days 'off' where you just do almost-nothing? I know that's probably difficult.

I hope you're feeling better, in all aspects, really soon. And I totally empathise with the eating a jar of olives for lunch scenario :D

You're not alone, in any case.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is a lot. And although I've been in a stupor for a couple of weeks now, I have been in a long stint of doing way way too much for quite awhile previously...

:)

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

I think it sounds like you've got a lot going on right now and you're really looking for some time for yourself. Maybe something new and different. Are you still trying to get the kids into school for next year? Maybe some time during the day to rest and relax and do your schoolwork would make you feel more energized and ready to have actual quality time with them when they get home, instead of being with them all day but never having real quality time because you're just around each other all the time.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I am waiting to see if the younger 3 get in, but we might be moving away from that particular school, and in many ways I'm more invested in homeschooling than ever...it's actually much, much easier than it used to be because none of them require baby care or toddler level supervision anymore, but. Ugh. I don't know man.

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

Maybe a routine or schedule would help a little...with time in it for enough sleep, cooking, school, your own schoolwork...instead of trying to squeeze everything in and being tired all the time. But I should talk, I'm always tired too. And my to-do list never seems to shrink.

If you move, will you be closer to counseling/the other things that you guys are driving an hour to get to? Maybe easier access to those things will lighten the load a bit. It's a great area, I go every year for vacation-which is so not the same as living there in any way, but still! Wouldn't be a bad place to live. Especially when you're all doing all that driving all the time anyway.