One problem I've had to balance lately (it's a problem I love to have) is that when I'm feeling up, I have to manage actual side effects.
When I have a good day, I tend to have insomnia. I can also tend to overextend. And I'm not sure what to do with this buzz. I get pretty fidgety and then wear myself out fast.
I expect I'll level off as this becomes more common.
Everybody was really impressed with me on an important call today.
I can be pretty fire when I'm not super sick and exhausted all the time. I have skills and laurels now that I didn't have in my previous life when I was well.
I just need the spaciousness to use them.
I've had some spaciousness the last week.
I'm kind of looking forward to going across the street to my family's this thanksgiving.
While pol can still be a little tense, this side of my family has done some changing, especially religiously, and we've thusfar learned to navigate pol discussions reasonably and with listening and empathy. We just haven't had enough of them yet to be exactly on the same page.
I'm actually starting to like this side of my family, and I think they like me now somewhat too. We have united on hating my mother. I have wanted to see more of them and the slog has kept me from it. I'm socially very isolated and would love to see people.
On the other hand...
Today's a really big day for me. After a steady slog and related series of burnouts for idk how long to count it (x years?), I finally think I've done enough to be settled here in a safe place at last, ready as I'll ever be for a hard winter, and am finally letting myself of the hook of pressure and keeping pace.
I just... don't want to go anywhere today.
This day specifically.
I just want one day to fuck off and do nothing.
But time is a rigid resource, and the grid of a calendar is bars on my prison.
Time to put my pants!!
I finally have a little excess energy to spend on fun work outside.
YES, the insulation needs to be (re)done, and YES that will be miserable to do once it freezes, and YES, there's laundry to do, etc. The backlog is still there, but it's finally getting smaller and manageable.
What's left to be done that isn't fun can wait.
Meanwhile, instead of a rest day plus two high pressure days spent on tasks I'm behind on that HAVE to be done, instead I sat around each day playing iPad until I felt antsy, then went out and did lower priority heavy labor stuff I WANTED to do.
I got some things finished, large and small, and it feels great to finally have autonomy and to do physical work on low-risk tasks that are fun and possible to complete.
My needs are simple. This is what I've wanted for so, so long, but caretaking a toxic person who quells any fun she sniffs out (including fun work) made even those simple needs impossible to fulfill. I've been away from her almost a year now, but the rest of the year was digging myself out of severe backlog and moving to a new state and new tougher lifestyle. Enough pressure to create another burnout this year and remain sick. I start to think I'm deluding myself and it's always going to be more of the same.
I can't say I'm fully ready for winter, but I'm better off than I was last winter (well ok I had insulation then, and I'm told it was an easy winter so we'll see), and I have some choice over how I spend my energy now. That feels really good.
We'll find out if not taking a full rest day this weekend will bite me when the week starts tomorrow. But right now I'm feeling physically exhausted and emotionally / mentally restored.
Wow, this is the first time in YEARS I feel caught up.
Sure, there's stuff to do. But no pending emergencies, and no major looming deadlines (except a work one, but that manageable on its own). I'm in a safe place and not being actively abused. I can pace comfortably now.
Now the trick is to not get myself into any new trouble.
Yes I have Björk on my shoegaze playlist. (Billie Eilish, too.)
Also, SomaFM doesn't seem to have a shoegaze channel? What's with that?
Shoegaze hits different when I'm not in deep pain.
It's still really good, just different. I feel guarded against being triggered.
This stuff was possibly my #2 coping mechanism for years, second only to plant medicine. A sound louder than my pain yet gentle in its cacophony. That's shoegaze.
#music #DarkSojourn #Recovery2025 #shoegaze
(I know. I'm looking into alternatives to Spotify and have mostly just been streaming SomaFM lately. But I still haven't found another viable way to share these playlists. Curating public playlists was maybe my #3 top cope. And this one is very important to me.)
Now I just gotta get the reflectix cut into window shades, weatherize the seams, finish building the compost toilet properly, and move under the snowshed that's currently being built. Then I'll be set for winter.
(The French drain is not happening this year, so daily outside pee-bottle emptying adventures await. But I'm still better off than I was this time last year. By a long shot.)
I went to bed early and slept twelve hours!!
September is my favorite month and it always goes too quickly. I look back at my last several Septembers and sure did make a pillow out of a sow's ear each time. Best September in a long time. I wasn't in severe pain for most of the days!
I know that part of my problem now is that when I get any spare energy, I tend to misuse it. I post long things here, which drains me faster than I realize. I obsessively play "harder" games on my iPad (they are not actually that hard), which is really fun because I've only been able to play easy games for so long, so self-restraint goes out the window, but they drain me. I watch more engaging shows and think really hard about them, which drains me.
The only way I got this far after the summer burnout was self-restraint on the fun things as well as the hard-work things.
So I probably need to go back to boredom as a goal again.
Not liking it, but it's the only way I prevent getting sicker, and how I heal.
"Self-denial, such a beautiful, wonderful thing." -- The Killers
I got through the gauntlet of September better off than I was when I started the thing. It required pushing at the right times, and pacing at the right times, but never letting up. I finished yesterday in flow, with many thoughts and feelings about how living with a toxic person all that time took me so long to heal from, but was, in fact, the core problem.
I woke up today in pain with brain fog and sad feels.
Back to the pushing and pacing.
Winter is still coming.
Then there's all the cognitive overhead of managing all that. That's a huge drain, too.
So I set that down, too.
I'm going to be letting a lot of things slide. Like, not just until I rest up enough to get back on the gauntlet. But for reals. As the new way of doing business.
If I've got food in my belly and the room is dry and warm today, then I've met my goal. Everything else is a stretch goal. If that.
I do this with "getting stuff done" as well. I go for the hardest thing I can stand to do. Lots of reasons, ADHD executive function reasons. But with constraints like chronic illness, that means I never, ever, ever get to spend energy on the fun things, or the easy things, or the things that might improve my mood, because I flog myself over all the shitty things I still haven't gotten to. I thought I'd grown more gentle on myself in this area, and I had, but it was still the same mindset. Eat dessert last.
And I'm just so done with that. With being motivated by energy scarcity and fear of disaster.
I have what I need.
I've always been the kind of person who saves dessert for last. Even as a kid I noticed that meant I often didn't get dessert.
But I turn 50 this week and I still do it for some reason. It's like self-denial becomes a compulsion, a thing of its own. It has its perks and conveniences, safety nets, but I take it to an unhealthy level.
This summer I've been focused on how, when my body is communicating that need to lay down, or eat, or rest, I make it about how far I can push that. And stopping. Because I had to. Because there wasn't any room left to get any sicker.
Since leaving my abuser, self-denial turned into a compulsive routine in my very long downtimes, to cycle through the games and shows, in a certain order, as long as I could, "fun" and distracting though they may be, I had to complete it and push it, regardless of how much my body screamed at me for its needs.
It was absolutely a trauma cope, as the trauma never really stopped after the abuser.
But it's not serving me well, and I don't need it anymore.
Recovery is still going well, but it can be discouraging.
I started today with quite a bit of energy – my mornings before work can be like that. It's the first day in a very, very long time where I've felt excited about work and confident about myself as a professional. Really feeling like yeah, I can do this!
Then, as is typical lately, as soon as I clocked in, my energy levels plummeted.
At this point, I think work itself has become a trigger for me. Which makes sense, given that for years of being anxious, sick, and exhausted, I pushed myself through the pain and brain fog to produce work and clock hours.
It's upsetting to me, because this is my dream job, and this project is my dream project. I'm frustrated that I'd hoped to really enjoy every step of the way. Instead, it's been quite the opposite, mostly because I started this project the month my dad died, and mom became a stress and trauma producing machine when I was already trying to recover. Even though she's been out of the picture for many months, it's taking so long to dump the associated baggage.
To the point where I can wake up energized and excited, and instantly discharge my battery the moment I log in.
I've not been pushing through the pain and brain fog for close to a month now. I clock out as soon as I feel I can't give it my best. Which has resulted in a lot of 15 minute days (goal is 2.5 hours). I'm not going to make much money this month. Since I got myself into debt to move away from mom, it's hard, but I really need to just pay the interest on those credit cards as the cost of getting well.
But today I figured it's time to start pushing again, just a little bit. I'm well enough to do that.
After about 30 minutes I hit a wall, so I clocked out and laid down for ten minutes. That helped me get another half hour done.
I do show huge signs of improvement. I just need to shake out these triggers so I can enjoy work again.
If I can keep improving, I'll have lots of time and energy to myself.
I've been stuffing down the yearning to write for myself, especially creative writing, because that's been so far out of reach for so long. I can't remember the last time I worked on fiction. My mind is offering up ideas for new stories again, tentatively. And I've done what I usually do, which is to tell it I'll never get to it and to forget it. And anyway, I've got way too many stories to finish, and even more finished that I could try to sell.
But it's something to hope for. I don't like hoping for things I can't have, because deep-down I learn to never trust myself.
/🧵
My major reset is a good 2+ weeks in the past.
My brain and body are working much better, though I find myself slipping back into old habits. I'm trying to be very aware of how much those habits may or may not be costing me, now that I've got a good baseline back.
Today as I start up a work week, I'm finding myself productive in some ways, and hopelessly broken in others. Yet another day of billing only 15 minutes, but I got some paperwork done and some clean-up done in the trailer. I am no longer using the whip of anxiety and pressure to keep myself going, in the hopes that I can create a new normal. I do believe it is coming, but I'm just not going to make much money this month.
Just as when I started this reset, I find myself feeling random feelings. I got to the point where that wasn't happening much in my downtime, but now that I'm trying to get back to a "normal work week," I'm having feelings again. Just, really strong sadness today. Not attached to anything. Without the anxiety and pressure to mask it, or without the pressure of having to put off any feels due to the chaos that needed ordering.
Part of me is afraid this ability to make peace for myself won't last. I still feel beholden to outside forces which have given me a reprieve but surely they will soon return. Even though I've worked very hard and suffered much to create this peace. Part of me is afraid this is just another brief rest so I can charge up for the next horrible gauntlet. I hope that isn't so. I feel like I've paid my dues.
🧵
And also, in the spirit of the reset, it's probably ok to just let myself feel bad and process things.
🧵
