What's Working in a Broken Time

There's a dumpster fire t-shirt that keeps popping up in my Facebook ads, and if I was more sure of the sizing, I'd buy it instantly. The dumpster is green with big white numbers: 2016. Indeed.

Honestly, this year is important. So important. We're living through some pretty terrifying history. We're being called to action in a way that I don't think has happened in recent memory. Although, I could be very wrong about that, because if I've learned anything in 2016, it's that I'm very ignorant. What I don't know could fill libraries of mythical proportion. I'm trying to catch up on 30 years of lost wisdom as quickly as I possibly can.

Good things happened this year, too. I'm going to spend some time before 2017 really looking over the year and putting things into perspective for myself. This article from Gala Darling has me thinking, but there are guidelines everywhere. Going back through 12 months of social media accounts can be incredibly eye opening. You might forget how you were feeling in March, but Facebook doesn't. Facebook never forgets. 

I have wanted to share some things that are working for me right now. None of them are life changing, but in a time where I am constantly vacillating between upset and numb, recognizing little positives is healthy. And fun. And maybe something can be helpful to you, which would mean that even though I AM currently Sadness from Inside Out, I am contributing to an upswing in someone's life, and that would be just lovely.

1. Syncing Google Calendars with my husband

Oh my GOD I am the lamest but...this has been huge. One thing I'm truly grateful for is that Ben and I both have hobbies that fulfill us and take up a lot of our time. Ben shot a movie this fall that required a bunch of production meetings and two very full weekends of round-the-clock commitment. I take a writing class every other weekend and meet up with friends as often as I can manage. We have two kids who like to go to birthday parties and pick apples and see Santa Claus and do all the Northeast US activities that finish off a year, not to mention doctors' appointments and parent teacher conferences and all that jazz. Basically, with four schedules to coordinate, we were constantly texting each other (because we are rarely home at the same time) "What's happening on the 14th?" or "What time do I need to take off next Thursday?" It was super annoying to get those questions, sometimes because "I ALREADY TOLD YOU" and sometimes because "I HAVE NO IDEA!" and the paper calendar was at home. On the wall. With the fish. The rest of us were out in the world.

So at some point in the fall my sister was watching the boys and we went on a romantic date and we sat down and synced our calendars. Oh Google, you siren. We have a Master Calendar and any time one of us enters an event, it automatically pops up on the other's calendar. We also both use Gmail, so if we get a confirmation of anything via email, the calendar asks us if we would like to add it. I bought plane tickets near Thanksgiving, and when I went to enter the info, my flight times AND FLIGHT NUMBERS were already in the calendar, waiting patiently for approval. So while synced calendars does nothing about my dread of what is going to happen to women's health rights in this new regime, it makes me on-the-level life so much easier, and oddly, I feel much more connected to Ben. We're synced. 

2. DATA

I'm not a numbers girl. I am a dreamer. Cold hard facts are shitty and wake up me to reality and I don't like knowing the truth. I like living in my head. This is why I need- and am starting to love- data. It started with Fitbit a few years ago. The facts about when I actually was getting in most of my steps surprised me (Working in an elementary school= tons of steps. Chasing toddlers= surprisingly, not as many steps!) and I became obsessed. When I upgraded to the Charge, I started getting my sleep data and guess what? I sleep a lot more than I thought I did. Who knew?  For a few years I've been very careful to track my reading in Goodreads. Sometimes I find that I read a lot more than I thought I had. Sometimes I find that my "diverse reading streak" includes only one author of color, and I have more work to do than I thought.  I got a new app that helps me track my period (It's Clue and it's cool). I guess I'm just sick of guessing. I like keeping track of things. At Thanksgiving, I lost my Fitbit charger, and I've gone without for about a month. I hate it. I like having metrics with which to track my days. I want to be free-spirited and intuitive, but I suck at knowing myself without external structure. Give me data.

3. Lists

I've only made about three lists in 2016. It's a practice I've strayed from, and it pisses me off. It's like drinking water, eating vegetables, getting lots of sleep. It's SO freaking good for you, and the contrarian in me loves to reject that which I know it healthy and pure. When I make a list, and I on fire.I have realistic plans for my time, I know what I expect of myself, and I know how to order my days to be productive. Why do I fight this so hard? Why does three extra minutes of scrolling through Twitter seem so much more lucrative? Lists work and I push them away so often, It's stupid.

I really love this list pad from Etsy. It sits on top of a teetering pile of planners that I've used for an average of 3 days each. But this pad is dateless, so you can pick it up and return to the land of planned at any time. And it has the things I actually need to do. It's a single page that gently promises me that I can have the kind of day I imagine, and that I don't need to do it again tomorrow unless I absolutely want to. Thanks, notepad. You get me.

Right now, living well isn't very sexy. It's being organized and managing family schedules and keeping track of things. But it's working- these are the little things that are working. I have BIG plans for 2017. I know I need to make some very big changes. List pads and Fitbits won't be enough to carry me on this trajectory much longer. But for now, it's checking boxes and making lists and gearing up for even greater things.  

(image via pinterest) 

Thoughts After 3 Weeks on Medication

It's been a little quiet here. It's been a little quiet in my reading life. It's been a very quiet in my Scrivener document, where I write my novel. I have been laying low, for many reasons. One big one? I started medication for generalized anxiety disorder, and I've been sleeping. A lot.

I had a physical three weeks ago, and it happened to fall right in the middle of a Very Stressful Time. We had just accepted an offer on our house, and we had a small window of time to find a new home. You know, the home we expected to meet our family's needs for the next thirty years? That one. We needed to find it in a matter of weeks, while working full time with little to no childcare for ANY non work hours. Our family rhythms had also shifted in January, with Ben home during the day and working nights and Saturdays, and it was hard. Hard on the (bored) kids, hard on Ben and I. Add in evenings and weekends being dragged to look at houses where you weren't allowed to touch anything, and our family was...raw. Snapping at each other. We were in survival mode.

What a beautiful problem to have, right? Touring potential new homes? I don't fail to recognize that only privilege of a special kind can turn this opportunity into something to be endured. House worries were not my only anxiety, though. Over a stretch of several months, I had found myself getting into something that I would describe as "thought loops." I would say something at work or write something on the internet and then obsess over my wording, terrified that I had offended someone or that my words would be taken the wrong way. I would think of a possible worse-case scenario involving one of my students, and then perseverate on it until I had to hide my phone so I wouldn't call and check with parents at three in the morning. For all my talking about myself, I'm a terrible self-reflector, but I'm fairly certain these were recent personality developments. I used to be good at shrugging things off, or at least as good as the average citizen. These new worrying behaviors were making me miserable.

So at this well-timed physical, I checked off "nervousness" on the form where you talk about recent symptoms. The chatty nurse came back to the room with another mental health form, rolling her eyes. "Sorry, but you checked off one of the no nos, so you have to fill this one out. Circle all zeros and they'll leave you alone." Yeesh. I answered honestly, marking off how many times in the last month my nervousness had made me feel sad or unmotivated, how often I was unable to stop thinking about something upsetting, how often I had mood swings. When my doctor came in, she read the form, checked her schedule, and said that because she had no appointments after me, we were tackling this today. We talked about coping strategies, meditation, regular physical exercise, and therapy, all things that I have tried and some of which had been extremely helpful to me in the past. Very quickly, though, we arrived at medication, and I was surprised at how easily it was brought up an how much it was encouraged. I thought she would push other methods of handling my anxiety and ask me to come back. The thing that really got me was her description of it as a tool that could get you through tough times (house buying, legal paperwork, moving with toddlers?) and her insistence that we could constantly revisit whether I wanted to stay on it.

I left with a birth control renewal, a directive to take a women's one-a-day, and a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication.

This was about a month ago, and things have changed. In fact, it is a whole new world in our family. This new medication has altered our home life in a way that I could not predict. See, I knew my worries were making me upset, but I had no idea how much they affected my moods. Whenever I am scared or unsure, my knee jerk reaction is to get mad- I've been this way my whole life. So when I was worried a lot, I was mad a lot. When I am mad in public, I tamp it down. I am a Libra, a diplomat, and I make sure everyone is happy. When I am mad at home, my anger is loud and quick and huge. No one outside of my family is privy to the way I can fall apart when I lose my temper. It's big. Big decisions make me fight or shut down altogether. Until now.

A week or so into my new med, Ben and I had to decide what offer to put in on a house that we were fairly certain was The One and The Only One For Us. Ben wanted to offer low, very low, figuring that the house needed a lot of work and it was the opening of negotiations. I felt that we were buying someone's family home and I didn't want to insult the owners. We went back and forth, explaining our sides. I was nervous, but Ben insisted, "They'll just counteroffer! This is the right move."  I nodded. "Okay." He looked at me weird. It took him three more cautious days to admit it, but he told me, "I've known you for 12 years, and you have never stopped in the middle of an disagreement with an 'okay.' In fact, the entire process of putting in that offer would have caused huge blowouts a month ago." I realized he was right. Moving into our first home had been incredibly stressful, resulting in huge fights that I am humiliated to recall. My fear and worry about the big changes in our lives had translated into little microbursts of rage. I was blamed "my temper." I never ever realized that medicine could affect these unpleasant emotions that I just figured were an unwelcome part of my personality.

In the past month, I cannot recall one single outburst that felt like a loss of control. I have been able to face challenges and stressful scheduling and minor family emergencies without spiralling and taking out on my husband or berating myself mentally. It has been truly life changing.

I don't want to sugarcoat this experience. There have definitely been drawbacks. As the medicine builds up in my system, I can feel myself getting more and more sleepy during daytime hours. I'm a person who has always loved waking up early, but in the past month, that has gotten harder and harder. Sometimes my eyelids flutter shut even as I'm drinking my coffee. I've had an incredibly difficult time getting to the gym in the evening, which used to happen at least three times a week- these days, I'm just too tired, even with extra sleep in the morning. The gym is my number one reading time, so as that time has dropped away, so has my interaction with books, something that greatly improves my mental health. I've had trouble getting into any book lately, and I can't tell if that's because of the medicine or just where I'm at right now. And my writing has taken a huge hit. I can usually sit and have a post come flying out of my fingertips, edit it up and have it published within an hour. This post has taken me three days four days a solid week to write, not because I'm unsure about sharing, but...sentences are harder to find. Words are more jumbled. And it's easier to just save what I have and drift away, where leaving a post unfinished used to really bother me.

The best way I can describe it is that everything feels like it's turned down. Like before I was at eleven, and someone clicked me back to five. 

There are ways to tweak this. I have an appointment tomorrow to discuss my progress on the drug and I am going to ask if I can try a lower dosage. I can also flex my willpower muscles a little more for the things that are truly important to me. I used to use my willpower to try and keep from blowing up over little things. If I failed, I yelled at my family. If this new normal means I exercise willpower to keep my hobbies in my life, and failure means a missed day of writing or one less chapter of a book, my more pleasant home life is worth it. For my husband and my kids and myself.

I want to make sure to stress that I am not a doctor and I am SURE that this course is not the best for everyone. This is definitely not a tacit endorsement of medication for all. It's a little spooky to realize that a small pill has so much control over my life and my emotions, but for me, it's also comforting to have help quieting a part of me that keeps me from feeling like the woman I want to be. I may not feel this way forever, but my doctor assured me that the conversation about whether this is the best for me is always open, and that, too, is comforting. 

I've always shared about my health on this blog, mostly because I overshare and talking about myself is one of my favorite hobbies. I also felt drawn to write this down after reading this great piece by Veronica Roth, a popular YA author who shared her story to encourage others who are struggling with mental health. Nothing is too small or silly to go unnoted- talk to your doctor about how you're feeling. If they dismiss your concerns, find another doctor. I have built a really special relationship with my primary care provider by being blunt even when it's uncomfortable, and she, in turn, listens to me and guides me. I trust her.  If your doctor doesn't make you feel safe and cared for, find another. You deserve a positive health care experience, no matter who you are or what symptoms you're struggling with. 

I would be happy to answer any questions you have about my personal situation, building a relationship with a health care provider, or anything at all that crosses your mind. Take care of yourselves as best you can, accept help whenever you want to, and never let anyone question the way you choose to live in your glorious body.

Some links for further reading:

http://fatfriendlydocs.com/ A list of fat friendly doctors listed by state and region, a great starting point for finding an open minded health care professional.

https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/  Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator- completely anonymous, let's you find the help you need in your area.

Both of the above links are from the indispensable resources page put together by The Militant Baker.