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[breathinglife55]

Towel found. Now what can I fret about?

Yes, indeed the towel has been found. Okay it is not yet in my hands, but my son inadvertently packed it after visiting this summer and it is currently in the province one over from mine. I will retrieve it when next I visit him, or vice versa. To mail it would be silly - it would probably cost around 20 bucks. I don't miss my towel that much.

So yes, what can I fret about now? Someone with chronic anxiety finds the answer to this question pretty easy, and I could list them all here but that wouldn't be good because then I would just fret there was something I missed off the list.

I did drop a plastic back to my earring at the beach yesterday and fretted somewhat about trying to keep looking and finding it. Something that would cost me mere pennies to replace. Sigh. Life inside my brain is a thing to behold at times.

Mostly though my psychiatrist has increased my ssri, and added something at bedtime to help with the anxiety and although I don't like to be on medication it is clear I need it and damn if it isn't working. If I were diabetic I would take insulin, right? I have chronic depression and anxiety and I am healthier in the long run taking the medication the doctor prescribes. I know lots of people don't agree with this, but hey, I am not asking them or wanting any advice from the peanut gallery.

What has been helping too is 'wild' ocean swimming. The ocean temps are dipping as fall approaches and I have been going in for a swim. I plan to keep doing this at least five times a week if not seven.

Yesterday the temp was 16 degrees celsius and I swam for 25 minutes. The day before I swam for 17 minutes at a different location and it was 14 degrees. Today I will head out and see what the ocean has to offer me.

My mental health is improving slowly and daily I can see small signs of it. I phoned a friend on Sunday I hadn't talked to for quite a few weeks. Today I called my brother for a long chat. I reach out more often to friends on fb messenger or whatsapp. I am more content.

So yes, what can I fret about now? Someone with chronic anxiety finds the answer to this question pretty easy, and I could list them all here but that wouldn't be good because then I would just fret there was something I missed off the list.

I did drop a plastic back to my earring at the beach yesterday and fretted somewhat about trying to keep looking and finding it. Something that would cost me mere pennies to replace. Sigh. Life inside my brain is a thing to behold at times.

Mostly though my psychiatrist has increased my ssri, and added something at bedtime to help with the anxiety and although I don't like to be on medication it is clear I need it and damn if it isn't working. If I were diabetic I would take insulin, right? I have chronic depression and anxiety and I am healthier in the long run taking the medication the doctor prescribes. I know lots of people don't agree with this, but hey, I am not asking them or wanting any advice from the peanut gallery.

Today though I will head for the ocean. The sun is shining, and yes I could fret about the cost of my upcoming car repairs but in the big scheme of things that is just a drop in the ocean (see what I did there).

There is two more days left of Summer and I am going to wring every last drop out of these warm days.

[breathinglife55]

If I could just find that f^&*ing towel

I can't find my favourite towel. It is a beach towel, or in my case a swimming pool towel. It is big. It wraps ALL the way around me.

My sister found it in the freestore on her little island and it has a lovely big cat on it, and on the bottom it has my name. Okay, technically it isn't MY name because it is mis-spelled, but phonetically it is my name.

I hadn't been to the pool since the end of November 2021 as the Omicron version of CoVid took off. I started back in the pool this July and it has been going swimmingly. I swim about four times a week between 1300 and 1600 meters each swim.

About a week ago I realized I didn't have my favourite towel and to be frank the one I was using had some bad memories locked into its weave so I wanted to change it out.

Off I went to my towel cupboard which is surprisingly well organized since I Marie Kondo'd the shit out of it and every other cupboard/drawer in my house the winter of 2018.

Anyways, it wasn't there.

I headed out to my camper and looked everywhere I would keep a swimming towel.

Nope.

I checked the back seat of the truck.

Twice.

Nope.

I took everything out of the linen closet and looked again.

Nope.

I went into the basement guest room to see if for some reason it was there.

Nope.

I went back to the camper again thinking that perhaps there was a cupboard I hadn't remembered having.

Nope.

I checked the trunk of my car.

Nope.

Was I obsessing?

Yes.

That is what I do when the rest of my life is going to shit and I believe, incorrectly I might add, that if I find the fucking towel then all will be right with the world.

I went through every closet and cloth tote bag I have realizing that I was also missing a large tote I got at a sand castle competetion five years ago.

Hmmmm. Maybe the towel is inside the bag somewhere in my wee tiny house, or camper, or....

This post does not have a happy ending. I still cannot find the towel. I know that one day it will be found in the last place I look.

Although now I imagine someone stole it off the laundry line last time we were camping (August 2021) or off my back porch. Or perhaps somehow it blew out the door of the camper.

I have a lot of theories one of which involves the person I believe came into my house and stole my anti-depressants that I am also missing and then that person knowing that I swim to calm my depression also stole my favourite towel to ensure I end up committed to the top floor of the Psychiatric ward at the hospital.

(I don't really believe that theory I just posited....well maybe a tiny bit)

Anyways, still no towel.

And this is what it is like to live inside my head. If I could just find the towel all will be put to right.

Magical thinking.

Depression lies. I know this.

Well, most of the time I do.

Today?

Not so much.

And as my friend said "Don't go into your head alone. It is a bad neighbourhood."

Truth.

[breathinglife55]

Purl 15, Knit 1

My anxiety has been bad for six weeks. Really bad, and although I do have medication for it, I try not to take it daily, because - well because I don't like having to rely on medication to be normal. Whatever normal is.

Some people drink to help with anxiety but drinking has never worked for me. I feel sick after one glass of wine, and the ensuing headache the next day is no picnic either.

So I knit. I knit and if the knitting is easy then I listen to crime dramas on Netflix, or Crave or Prime or Shawtv or whatever streaming service has my current obsession. Lately it is a Canadian series call Transplant, which is actually a medical drame, but I digress.

Yesterday was not a good day. I did end up taking 1/4 of a pill in the mid morning, which ends up in my needing a nap in the mid afternoon. When I nap in the afternoon I wake up feeling yucky, so I headed out to the back porch with a cool drink. We are in the middle of a heat wave so the back porch wasn't all that cool, but it was cooler than the house (small mercies).

One of the things that calms my mind is counting. Knitting and counting go hand in hand. So I cast on 347 stitches to begin a summery tunic.

I counted to fifty as I cast on the stitches, placing a stitch marker and recounting to make sure there were in fact fifty stitches. I did this six times, which means twelve times counting to fifty. And then twice counting to forty-seven. Oh and then once more counting them all over.

And then I started to knit. After the five stitches on each side for the buttonband I had twenty-one repeats of a 16 stitch lace pattern.

So I sat on the porch counting to myself as I recited "Purl 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15. Knit 1," placed a stitch marker (I have LOTS of stitch markers) and starting again. It was oddly soothing.

Even for the lace repeats, it is repetitive twenty-one times.

So ya, I knit and count to calm my anxiety. It helps. It helps like

swimming helps and when I swim I count. I count the strokes to swim a lap. I count the strokes before each breath. My usual pattern is seven strokes and breathe, then five strokes and breathe. It is a weird pattern but it works for me.

So that is how I am spending my days. Counting.

And in the end I will have a new top to wear once I feel like re-joining the world.

It is something.

Some days it is everything.

[breathinglife55]

The 10% solution

I am awake. Again. Or finally. It is 9:13 am and I suppose I should be awake. Which wasn't the case at 1am, or 3am or 5am. But here I am awake for what I imagine is the rest of the day.

I am shakey. I have been shakey for six weeks now. Everything seemed fine up until then, and now it feels like it has all gone to shit. As I said to my husband a couple of days ago "I don't think I will ever feel happy again".

I see a therapist twice a month. My doctor has upped my Effexor and given me something for times like this when I am shakey.

But still and all at this point I am not doing very well.

I have lived with depression and anxiety since my late teens although I wasn't diagnosed until I was forty. I had a maternal aunt on Lithium all of her life. My mother was hospitalised for three weeks after almost driving herself and her three young children over an embankment. One of my brothers also takes medication for depression. My mother self-medicated with alcohol.

I guess that is all to say that their is a family history of mental illness on my side of the family, and on my husband's side too.

And anger. Yes, anger is also a multi-generational issue in my family. My grandfather, my father, his brother, two of my siblings and my daughter. Anger has always terrified me, and I avoid confrontation and angry people as much as I can. It is said that depression is anger turned inside onto yourself, and although I rejected this idea many years ago, more and more I think there is some truth to it.

My daughter is angry with me. She says I abandoned her as a child. I believe she is struggling with her own mental health and has to blame someone, and that someone is me. She is accusing me of doing things I didn't do, and being addicted to opiods which I wasn't, and taking anti-depressants and sedatives while I was pregnant with her, which I didn't. The truth doesn't matter to her - not at this point - and she is lashing out and it hurts so very much. I cannot change her perception of her childhood or of her belief that I did things I did not do. It is made even harder that she lives far, far away in another country - a country where she is not adequately fluent in the dominant language - and besides her husband and his family does not really have any support. And at the moment she is living apart from her husband while they work out issues in their relationship.

She has her 3 1/2 year old daughter with her and I am worried for both of them as my daughter juggles being a single, working parent.

So why the title to this post?

Because my therapist said that if I can find some things that give me 10% relief from how I am feeling, and if I can do a few of those things a day then I can add up all the 10 percents to settle my system down.

So I knit. I go for a swim. I do puzzles. I listen to podcasts. I watch/listen to series on Prime or Crave or some such streaming platform. I watch the birds come to the feeder and flowers on my back deck. I go for a walk. I phone a friend. And by the evening I can usually have gotten myself to perhaps 40 or 50 percent improvement.

And then I go to bed and have a restless sleep, and upsetting dreams until I get out of bed in the morning and start it all over again.

I know, or I think I know, that this won't last forever.

It just feels like it right now.

#mentalhealth

[breathinglife55]

Going dark to shed some light

I am looking at trying to find a new blog site.  I have been using blogger, but due to unforeseen, or perhaps foreseen, family drama I need to start posting somewhere I feel safe.  Maybe Tumblr is the place.  I looked at Wordpress and it just seems so confusing.  Let me see where this goes. 

[breathinglife55]