Category: Action

People think I'm an organized person. I'm not really sure how I give them this impression, unless it's by constantly taking notes, setting reminders, marking things on my calendar. Why they don't know is that I don't always re-read my notes; I don't always check my calendar; and worst of all, when a task reminder comes up, I hit the snooze option. I've known for years that it's in my best interests to cut up carrots and celery on a Sunday so that they'll be ready to grab for lunches each workday morning. But I so often act against my best interests. I hit the snooze option: I really don't feel like cutting up vegetables, I'd rather be reading, I'd rather be sleeping, I can just do it in the…

I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts lately. So many things I'm thinking about, ideas to test, words to be spoken, but they seem to swirling around in my brain, with no one thought rising to the top long enough for me to capture it. This worries me a little. I've had five good days in a row, after weeks of feeling like I was spiralling downwards. I've been hyper; I've been interrupting myself in the middle of sentences to get out other thoughts; I've been unable to hold conversations while doing menial tasks. It feels like a crash is coming. Hyperactivity leads me to hysteria; hysteria leads me to unstoppable tears. Unstoppable tears lead me to self-harm, anything to make the feeling stop. I don't want to crash again. I…

Today I had to fight very hard to get past Can’t. My primary goal this morning was to spend some time with my mother in her sewing room. Her primary goal was to teach me a clever new way to make a pillowcase. In the past, I have been quick to pick up new sewing techniques and ideas. I have a great history of transferring learning, of picking up an idea from one project and adapting it to fit another. Lately, say the last three or four years, during this most recent bout of depression, learning has been very difficult for me. Because I am so used to being able to learn, this sudden inability to learn easily feels like an unforgivable sin that I am committing against myself. This…

My aforementioned friend, JDS, has this theory that women carry around a purse full of ammunition that they can pull out and use at any time, usually without warning. Not literal ammunition, of course; emotional ammunition. The things people have done or not done to them, said or forgotten to say to them. Past slights or hurts, major and minor: they all go into the ammunition purse. And you never know when you're going to walk into an ambush, and have all that ammo rain down on your head. I didn't think I was that kind of woman, until I brought up an opinion JDS had expressed about eight months ago, and asked him whether he still felt the same way. What he felt was ambushed. He no longer had…