Today I feel normal. Or at least what I think is normal. I didn’t feel bad. Well, actually I started the day feeling quite anxious, but then I had a good conversation with an insurance agent (right?) and went on a long walk with my husband and then I just felt like, kinda good.
I feel like my executive function is better than most days, though still quite scattered, and I just feel happy. I enjoyed having friends over somewhat unexpectedly tonight. It was nice. I cleaned the living room and kitchen and didn’t resent it or have to use all my effort to force myself to do it. I just knew it needed to be done, so I just did it and it was even a bit enjoyable.
I feel like I have the space to breath and be introspective for the first time in….months. I’ve been going so hard and my mental health has not been good. I took some time off work for Christmas, 4 whole days in a row that I didn’t work. It was amazing. But it wasn’t until now, a week later, that I started to feel lighter, more whole, able to work on things other than survival.
Being working poor is fucking awful. It really is. It’s so hard to struggle every week to just barely get by, everything else falls away except work work work. You find meaningful moments here and there to connect with your spouse and your child, but there is no room for so much of what makes life worth living, because you can’t afford to not work on the weekends. 2018 was a fucking slog. It was really hard.
The skatepark was a roller coaster and still is. I wish I was certain about that spring opening date, but that easily could get pushed back again. There was a time I was certain we would be open in October, then it became December, then January, now I’m cautiously optimistic for April.
I’m constantly scared I’m doing too much, or too little regarding Stronger. But I’m constantly aiming at a moving target.
Delivery driving is now the longest single job I’ve ever held, well over 2 years now. It was never supposed to be this way. It’s not a terrible job, that’s why I keep doing it, but it’s not terribly rewarding either and some days can be quite stressful with traffic and parking and restaurants running behind.
Again, I’m struck by how clear-headed I am today. It’s just so abnormal that it makes me grieve the 99% of days that I don’t feel like this. The last time I kind of felt like this was when I took that long hard walk in Ladd’s Addition, but it didn’t last, it was just during the walk and directly afterwards that I felt so clear.
For some reason I was feeling good tonight that I put on Carrie and Lowell. “The Only Thing” just started and it’s so much closer to how I usually feel. “The only thing that keeps me from cutting my arm….” is often much closer to how I feel. I’ve never been a cutter. I self harm in other ways. I’ve even felt like a failure at harming myself, because I don’t “do it right.” I smack myself in the head or the face, sometimes hard, sometimes over and over. I bite myself. I pinch myself. I bash my head on the wall. I don’t do these things often, but when things get too hard it’s all there is left. My brain shuts down, or gets caught on one negative word or statement, “BAD BAD BAD”, “HATE HATE HATE” and doesn’t go away until I go through the cycle of a full meltdown.
That didn’t happen today.
Today I got up, played an hour of “Pokemon: Let’s Go Eevee” while I waited till I could eat. Then I made tea and bacon, realized I needed some carbs with the bacon and had a piece of chocolate (made toast for my child, forgot I actually had some GF bread around, because I usually don’t). I was getting ready to do some yoga when I got a text from a friend saying her son wanted to play with my son. My son had asked just a few minutes earlier if he could play with said friend, so I changed my plans and took him over. When I got home I had the phone call that I had been anxiously awaiting, they have a quote for insurance for me! Excellent!
I asked Ace if he wanted to go on a walk and he said yes so we went on a long slow walk that eventually had us up on Woodstock where we made a few quick stops before walking home. We bought tamales from a man on the street and they were amazingly good. When I got home I quickly cleaned the living room, still covered in confetti from New Years Eve, wanting to get it done before the kids came to my house. I picked up my son and his friend and made plans to hang out with the friend’s mom later that night. We got back to the house and I cleaned the kitchen and got a text from another friend saying he was in the neighborhood with his girlfriend and I told them to come on by.
I was able to clean the kitchen, make myself dinner, make dinner for my family, and eat, all before anyone showed up. I hung out and socialized, mostly successfully, and just enjoyed being around other people. At one point I caught myself making the conversation about myself, after I had asked my friend to tell me her story, I stopped, and didn’t beat myself up too much about it. Friends left and I rushed to get Mark to bed. He freaked out because his bunny was missing, and I calmly helped him find it.
Then I did some laundry and turned on some music, got some wine, and sat down to write. Something I’ve barely done over the past two months.
Today was just so beautifully normal, and I felt so wonderfully sane and happy.
I need days like this, and I’m not entirely sure how to get them. They come at a financial cost, which can weigh heavily on my mental health at times.
I’m debating if this is worthy or ok to post on my blog. Is it too real? That’s the only way I know how to write. It’s the only way WORTH writing.
I haven’t blogged in a long time because someone was hurt by one of my posts. Hurt is too strong a word, they were made slightly uncomfortable, and they brought it to me.
It was hard because it was over a post I was extremely proud of. I took it down. I haven’t had the strength to go back and look at it. I don’t know how to make the changes I need to to make everyone comfortable. I don’t know how to change the way I experience things for writing. I write things as I experienced them and that didn’t work, I made someone uncomfortable.
So I stopped writing.
I even stopped journaling.
I told everyone I was fine, it was fine. But I wasn’t fine. But I should be fine. People should be able to tell me those things without me breaking. But I’m already broken it doesn’t take much for those broken parts to fall apart again. This conflict on top of the financial problems, on top of the continued delays for the skatepark just really stopped me dead in my tracks.
Like I said at the top it’s been months, months since I’ve felt normal, since I’ve felt happy for almost an entire day. It’s a foreign feeling. Today I feel safe, connected, peaceful, loved, I feel all these things that I should feel most of the time. I don’t know when I will feel them again. It could be tomorrow and I want so badly for it to be tomorrow. If I felt this way even half of my days I would be a different person. I would be a more whole person, I would be able to do so much more for those around me.
But I don’t. Most days I am anxious. Most days I am tired. Most days I’m lonely. Most days I’m working. Most days I am struggling to feel anything at all.
But today wasn’t most days.