I’m doing great with the no coffee thing, I put the coffee maker in a place I won’t see it, all the coffee-related items too.  The exercise took a back seat to feeling under the weather a good bit of the weekend, but it’ll be back.  Doc says I’m doing well and thinks even with my family history I can avoid medication if I keep this up.

Monday hit and with it a sort of build-up of all kinds of things, lots of feelings surfaced that made me feel – really terrible.  Took me a long time over the course of the day to even articulate them.  Reaching out for support felt really scary because I felt so ashamed to feel so down.  It did help though, as did a nap.  I realized that I haven’t really had any down time since early August at least – and now that I think about it, probably since beginning of July.  So I’m really due some serious nap time!

At the same time, I realized I got stuck in a loop of believing I was responsible for – well, everything that happened in my world.  Sort of a funny and self-flagellating kind of megalomania, no?  LOL  But I think it comes from just not taking time to really do the things that mean the most to me.  I feel a little bit of a lump in my throat as I say that, thinking of all the sweet projects I didn’t do because some other thing called to me as more important.  And I realized that I was feeling isolated from those I care for most, and that was largely because I was withdrawing – and then wondering why no one was there.

Now, no one being there is fine.  Solitude is great.  But it’s nice to feel as if you CAN reach out and find support, help, caring.  I got myself into a situation where I felt very much like I was on my own and had to stay on my own and not reach out.

And with the kids being sick, on and off, since beginning of August, I was isolated at home too.  Yesterday I took them back to dance class, healthy again.  And the relief at just seeing the other kids, the moms, the teacher, hearing the music, seeing them at the barre doing their barre work – I was just so relieved, I felt like curling up happily and going to sleep right there in the dance studio.  This is not so odd as it sounds – I have a history and habit of using their dance class time as an impromptu nap time.  There’s a really comfy futon sofa over in the corner there…

So here I am, again, still tentatively reaching out, but wanting to say that I am looking for a way to offer care to those I care for, do things that matter to me, and find some downtime in each day.  And we’ll see how it goes.  I’d like to add this to my thirty-day plan, except that I feel a bit shaky still and so I’ll take it all a day at a time.

It was suggested to me that I take advantage of the horror elements of a Stephen King novel, in order to unclench my brain from this weird loop it’s been in.  That suggestion made me laugh, since Stephen King and the horror genre terrify me in a way that’s embarrassing to admit.  But I love the idea of stepping so far out of the internal mental loop that my real life suddenly looks ever so fine, thank you.  LOL  I’ll probably do that by reading detective mysteries and taking naps though.

I mean, what would this image do for your brain?

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