I Still Have It Bookmarked

Well, it sure has been some time, huh?

I reached out to a friend I haven’t spoken to since 2019. Not because I don’t like her or there was some spat. Simply because time escaped us and we both dance with the belief that reaching out would be a bother to the other. Brains are ridiculous sometimes. This blog came up and she told me “I still have it bookmarked.”

I don’t know what about that one little sentence managed to break through so many barriers between me and simply…writing. Maybe it was realizing how much has happened in my life that I had to catch her up on. A divorce, moving to Chicago on my own to attend university. Taking a sledgehammer to the bookshelf I’d shelved all my old passions on, picking up the pieces I didn’t realize I’d been missing. Not walking, but running into a new life for myself.

Oh, hey, you guys didn’t know a lot of that either.

Only a few months after my last post here, the day after our anniversary, Nikki and I sat in our new living room, in deafening quiet as she asked for a divorce. It hurt, but things were amicable and thankfully it wasn’t a messy process. We worked together through it until it was finalized fall of last year.

The same week the divorce was agreed upon, I went to Chicago with Pam to tour a university there. I applied to attend immediately after the tour and was accepted a couple of weeks later. I started in January of 2022 and 4.0’d my first semester. I stayed in Chicago over the summer on my own and learned so much about myself, who I am as an individual.

Turns out, that’s a really hard process.

There were a lot of tears and fears. A lot of moments I thought I couldn’t do it.

In fall of 2022, I managed a 3.5 for the semester amidst several tragic events and personal crises. In spring of 2023, another tragic event, covid, and I tried to take my own life. I came home feeling defeated and lost all over again.

But along the way, I got back into theatre, singing, and writing, including writing for the school paper. I found my faith as a pagan again. I spent a night working in a haunted house. I made new friends with college kids ten years younger than me, but who held so much wisdom, conviction, humor, love, and kindness. Faculty and staff who held so much room in their hearts for me as a student and an individual and were willing to work with me and my lemon and spoonie self that I could actually experience success. My friends and family cheered me on, visited, kept me moving forward when my brain lied to me and said I couldn’t and caught me when I fell. I could go on forever in the ways that they changed me and supported me but I’ll spare you from my rambling gratitude.

I met a pretty amazing guy that is so full of life, it’s infectious. He encourages me to embrace the fact that I just might be brave, bold, and important after all. He’s dazzling. I can’t wait to see what life has in store for us.

There you have it, the cliffnotes of my life since I last posted.

So much has changed, but thankfully, I still had quite a bit of myself bookmarked.

Thanks, Bri. This one’s for you.

Remember Me?

Hi.

…

…..

So… it’s been a bit. Long enough that I considered abandoning this poor, neglected thing. Long enough that this feels like a first post of a brand new blog. Long enough that I considered starting an all new blog just to avoid seeing this one, like a mournful ex trying to escape the date night hot spots and favorite haunts of the relationship. Every time I said “I’ll get it done today/tomorrow/within the week/sometime soon”…well, you get the picture.

That’s the exact reason I decided not to do any of those things, though. If ever there is an example of how I can communicate certain topics using this blog, this is probably one I could only truly illustrate simply by acknowledging that it happened. Life didn’t really “get in the way”. I’ve managed a consistent post schedule with way more going on in my life. I’ve talked about humorous things, serious things, morbid things. I don’t spend much time on things that seem normal or straightforward, but are actually pretty complicated. Like comorbidities and mental health. The way a lot of mental illnesses and psychological reactions or disorders seem to come in packages.

The reason I was gone so long is because of exactly that. A tangled knot of disorders, illnesses, and reactions that make the chain of events and results almost impossible to make out. Thankfully, I’ve had almost a year to figure it out.

I’ve talked about my depression before and it’s pretty well known how much it can impact my day to day life. My anxiety, I’ve touched on. My struggle with Impostor Syndrome was one of the most successful and most shared posts to date (not that that’s a particularly noteworthy fact, considering how few posts I’ve made). I’ve discussed trauma and stress, my psychogenic seizures. Even my ADHD and sensory issues have made brief appearances here and there. But here’s where things get complicated. This whole time has been because of all of those things working in such perfect harmony, it truly is impossible to determine exactly how this got started.

Even the healthiest, most neurotypical individual on this planet can tell you that motivation can be a struggle. For some, it’s a struggle easily overcome with a quick pep talk or “in five minutes, I’ll do this”. A reward at the end or doing the hardest task first or the simplest task first is all it takes to get things moving along and out of that unmotivated fog. For those of us dealing with any of these issues (or let’s face it, probably at least a couple of these issues), it takes on another level. You’re not just picking up a fight against a lack of motivation or an unpleasant task or responsibility.

Oh no, you’re picking up a fight with all that and yourself.

Before you can even begin to tackle whatever it is that needs your attention, you have to get your own attention. I recently saw a Tiktok video (shut up, don’t judge me, I love it) where someone asked “what’s something really important that you didn’t do because of anxiety or ADD/ADHD?”

Her own answer? She moved to China for a job. And told no one.

I’m going to state this right now. There are three reactions to this, based on comments she got, reactions I’ve seen, heard, felt, or even experienced personally, and from data (don’t make me cite this, I can, but I just want to make a post, give me this one) about how anxiety and ADD/ADHD brains work.

Reaction 1. “How?! How do you do something like that?! That’s got to be fake. There’s no way.” Going to generalize a little bit here and say if you’re responding this way, you’re probably neurotypical OR your anxiety and ADD/ADHD lean the other direction and doing something like this would actually prove to be aggravating to the way your mind works. That’s fine, nothing wrong with either of these things.

Reaction 2. Relative apathy or understanding. You could still be a part of the first two groups listed with this reaction, but it’s even more likely that you’ve experienced something like this, maybe just on a smaller scale. Admittedly, not many people can say they moved to a different country without telling anyone. That’s not a statement with any amount of shaming attached to it.

Reaction 3. You have absolutely done something like this before and feel absolute relief that you’re not alone. I fell into this reaction. Moving is a big deal in and of itself. Nikki and I are going to be moving literally a few blocks away from where we’re staying now and my brain is going absolutely nuts with excitement, nerves, and ever changing lists of things, tasks, and to-dos. Since it’s coming on the heels of a move just a few months ago, making this the second move in six months, it’s even more nebulous in my brain.

Oh, by the way, Nikki and I moved six months ago.

This wasn’t intentional information left out. But it does prove the point rather nicely. When dealing with mental illnesses all mixed together until you can’t really make out what’s what, all sorts of things get lost in the chaos. For some, none of this is news. For others, this upcoming move is news. For others again, all of this is news.

Long post short, I’m going to make my best effort to be posting more, with a special focus for a bit on mental illness and what the past year has looked like while I’ve been gone.

Now, I wait for the inevitable typo finding rituals to begin.

Thanks for sticking around. I’ll do my best to make it worth it.

Ticking

So quarantine….

I know, how original, a health blog writing about the viral apocalypse. But here me out: the only difference in my life currently is that I’m watching other people freak out over the prospect of how I live pretty much all the time.

I am, for the most part, stuck at home due to my illnesses and it does a number on your brain. Everyone is panicking and anxious and depressed and angry. I’ve just reverted to not knowing what day it is and losing track of time in general now that church isn’t meeting. Everyone else freaking out is the new thing, not being stuck in one place. Not being alone at home is the new thing for me.

Maybe that’s worth considering as you move forward. This is definitely a stressful, difficult, and unique situation. I’m not trying to suggest it isn’t. But if you’re sitting there, going mad because you can’t go where you want and do what you want without excessive care and precaution, immediate and serious need, or at all, think about the fact that you probably know half a dozen people, minimum, who live like this every. Single. Day. Who have been living like this and will continue to live like this. Shoot them a message, send a letter, reach out. You don’t suddenly know exactly what it’s like, but you are getting a small glimpse and so far? No one is a big fan.

Yes, I Know

There seems to be a trend lately.

“You have to eat, you know.”

“You can’t just sit at home doing nothing, you know.”

“You really should (insert activity/required for survival action).”

Yes. Thank you. I wouldn’t be aware of the fact that I need to do a lot of things. Do you know that I know that?

Do you know I want to?

Do you know I cry all the time out of sheer frustration with myself because “Why can’t I just do it?”

The past few months have been rough. I’m dealing with the discomfort of being misgendered pretty much every time I leave the house, but feel like I can’t spend every second correcting people. I still don’t have health insurance and my body is definitely feeling the lack of proper care from that. I’m down to 95 pounds with no evidence that’s going to improve. My Cleveland Clinic trip resulted in a general prognosis of “not good” and “there’s nothing more we can do for you, we’ll refer you to Mayo Clinic.” If you think we couldn’t afford to go to Ohio and pay for Cleveland Clinic, let me tell you how much we can’t afford going to one of Mayo Clinic’s campuses. I ended up in the emergency room after a strange and uncomfortable feeling in my chest finally became too much for me to handle and I was diagnosed with an arrhythmia and referred to a cardiologist I can’t afford to see and can’t afford not to. It’s also not a great sign when you live with something that’s slowly killing me by making things that are supposed to work stop working. You know, like my heart. My appetite. My metabolism.

At first, it was fine. Then, not so much. Anger and grief have started to creep in, making it hard to make some important distinctions and choices about my day to day life. I’m crippled by my body and my brain, and can’t find the means to break out of it. There’s no help available to me.

So yes, I know I need to eat. I know I can’t sit here forever. It’s not good to not want to be around anymore.

I promise I’m much more aware of things than anyone else is.

I know.

Reframing Resolutions

“I’m going to stop spending money on things I don’t need!”

“I’m going to go to the gym every day and get fit!”

“I’m gonna lose X pounds and stop eating junk food!”

Tried and true New Year’s Resolutions, these and their brethren are everywhere.

I have a love/hate relationship with New Year’s Resolutions. Ending the year with reflection and contemplation on what you did, how you behaved, things that happened is a great thing! That kind of self-awareness helps us grow and is obviously the starting point for change within yourself and changing your circumstances and the world around you. If we can’t look backwards and find the things we did beautifully and the things that need a little extra polish or maybe just thrown out entirely, we’ll never get anywhere.

But…

Resolutions don’t work. That’s not my pessimism talking, that’s scientific fact: resolutions don’t stick! That article from Psychology Today explains why, but I thought I’d explain a bit more about what they’re talking about.

The reason resolutions don’t work is because we think big and we don’t think about the process of what we’re doing. As stated in the article, most (if not all) resolutions are changing habits. That means the promises of change that we make need to start small and stay positive. “I’m going to watch what I eat and go to the gym” is a pretty tall order and a big change. When (notice I said when, not if), that doesn’t happen, your brain swoops in and starts telling you how you failed so you may as well give up.

This is where reframing becomes more than just a therapy technique for depression, but a process that should be in everyone’s arsenal.

Reframing is the act of shifting your inner dialogue to or with yourself. If you have depression or anxiety, you know some of the crazy things our brains convince us is true about ourselves. That same dialogue and stream of thoughts impact our goal-setting. We strive for success and we don’t want some puny victories! No! We want Big Wins! We want to end the year with bodies like deities, a perfectly managed schedule, an account balance that would leave an A-list celebrity drooling, and no longer reliant on our technology, living that sweet, unplugged life.

Reframe. Let’s scale this back and remember how much something small can impact things overall. Make sure your resolutions are phrased in a positive and affirming way. Instead of “I’m going to unplug from my devices and technology”, which contains a lot of restrictive and negative wording, try “I’m going to try to set aside X amount of time where I put my phone down and let myself exist in the moment”. Meditate, write down how you’re feeling in a journal (y’all are going to be getting a post soon about journaling and it’s mighty power, but not yet). Anything that grounds you to the here and now. Schedule that into your day with reminders. Then slowly begin to extend that time spent and throw in different activities to fill the time. This goes for every resolution: small, repetitive changes in habit that grow into something bigger have a much better chance of surviving the year ahead.

Reframing also involves practicing some serious self-care. If you get mad at yourself for skipping a day at the gym and your inner dialogue is filled with you being mean to yourself, are you going to feel inclined to go again? Who would?! I know I wouldn’t! Try to work it into something you enjoy and, if you miss a day, remind yourself that life happens and we can’t always get what we want, how we want it, but we can change how we react to those setbacks. Didn’t make it to the gym? Spend some time at home running through some stretches and basic exercises and try again tomorrow. No big deal. Trying to eat healthier but devour half a cake at a birthday party? Enjoy that cake and have your goal instead to add healthy foods to your existing diet, not take away from your everyday lifestyle.

Give yourself the opportunity to say “yes” instead of having to constantly tell yourself “no”. Because who likes being told “no”?

Regardless of what you choose this year, if you choose anything at all, I think every single person should aim for one new habit: being kind. Kinder to others and kinder to yourself. Things look and feel pretty bleak right now. Love yourself and others fiercely, engage in radical generosity, be curious and mindful, live with the intent of being proud of yourself. You do tiny, yet extraordinary things every day. Kevin Cloud says “Our actions and words cause ripples. You may not see what that ripple does, but it happens and it impacts everything it comes in contact with.”

Make waves in 2020. See you next year, lovely lemons and spectacular spoonies.

The Grim Reality

My depression rules my success. The two, for me, are a package deal. I cannot experience one without the other.

I thought I had broken that link. I went for a couple of months in which I was able to do so much, to experience, for the first time, the joy and pride of doing well, of achieving goals and actually seeing progress in my life. I discovered that the dedication, determination, and drive that I thought had died when I began to lose my health in high school, the feeling of being trapped in a world where I would never, ever thrive, only ever able to just barely survive, was actually just dormant; put in stasis from a life of being placed in a box where I wasn’t able or allowed to thrive.

And then this month hit. Trigger/content warning for intrusive thoughts, abuse, and suicidal ideation ahead.

I’m preaching next to my pastor next weekend, closing a series about gratitude in a season of my life where I have been given the gift of space to soar under the guidance and support of the friends, family, and faith community that surrounds me.

I found out loved ones feel unsafe and neglected by me, that I am doing them harm and didn’t even notice.

I am assuming leadership in my church that will allow me to help others the way I have always wanted to and become a bridge for people to discover a safe and welcoming environment for exploration and growth.

Hate was once again left on our door, mocking our sense of safety. “Ha”, it boasted five times in all too familiar scrawled lettering. We called the police with rage and resignation.

I found medications that worked for me and was making astonishing progress in my therapy. Walking to and from therapy each week.

I lost my health insurance, making needed medical treatment and, if not for the generosity of others, we would be dead in the water simply trying to absorb the costs. I went to the emergency room a week after losing insurance.

I gained a disability attorney and am the closest I’ve ever been to being able to contribute financially to my family.

My family seems riddled with resentment and fragmentation and I’m left with the urge to simply walk away. I give up and I delete my daily reminder for all of us to express gratitude for one another from our shared calendar. I seem to be the only one who bothered to try. I’m looking at cheap studio apartments daily.

I am overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of others.

I am left reeling by a betrayal in the same breath.

I spend a day working hard and feeling the love and appreciation of my faith community, my found family. We discuss a bright and happy future. I feel proud.

I come home and sob and think about taking enough of my medications to send me to sleep and climbing into a bath full enough that, when I fall asleep, I don’t wake up again.

I truly, deeply believe in the love of a higher power.

I truly, deeply believe that I was created to suffer and to make others suffer alongside me. I know these words will hurt so many as they’re read, but I write them anyways. I promised you truth and you won’t like my honesty here.

My depression and my success are a pair that refuse to part.

Changing what I see in the mirror means I will be cut and bleed.

The death and the rebirth of your self seem less positive if you don’t know if you’re going to survive it.

;

A Very Loud Silence

I haven’t written since June. I kept promising, in various ways, to various people, that the next post was coming. Soon. Hopefully. Maybe.

I could lie and say I was just too busy. I was, I’ll admit, but not enough to prevent continuing from writing.

I could say it was because life got in the way. It sure tried. Health not only suffered a major backslide, but just this past week I was subjected to a very traumatic event that resulted in physical injury, nightmares, anxiety and depression, and may end with a lawsuit.

I made a few promises, to myself and here on the blog. One promise I made to myself was that I wasn’t going to be another blog that dragged politics or religion into my writing. The promise I made here, in writing, was that I was never going to sugarcoat or lie about what was happening. No bullshit.

I’m on the path to become a minister at least, most likely a pastor, so keeping church and religion is out of the question. It’s taking a front seat as the thing I want to do with my life. That doesn’t mean I’m going to become some kind of crazed, bible thumping Evangelist, shoving my beliefs down your throat or in your face, but it will mean, inevitably, that I will discuss things that happen or relate to things here while on that path.

Political topics? It’s a bit hard to avoid politics right now when talking about living incurable. Disability and chronic illness, mental illness, all these things are inextricably linked to our current deadlock with healthcare and the horrible systems that punish people for being poor and sick; two things we largely have no control over.

So this stands as both a warning and a redrawing of expectations. This is still a place of total honesty and a sugar free look into one perspective of living with a lot of things wrong with me (and a lot of things right). That included, however, the guts to admit that this transparency means seeing stuff I didn’t originally intend to include. If it bothers you, I will do my best to remember tags so that you can just not see those posts. If it really bothers you? Well, no one’s making you read this, so I guess we’ll see what you decide to do.

Thanks for your patience, your support, and for accompanying me on this wild ride. Hopefully, with my head a little more sorted and my intentions clearly stated, my writing will pick back up with more adventures, misadventures, and a few shenanigans thrown in for sport.

Passion and Practicality

I used to dance. Every opportunity I had, I would dance. I knew every step, every word, every note of CATS, A Chorus Line, Chicago, White Christmas. I was more than a dancer: I thrived to perform and that’s what I was going to do with my life.

At the beginning of high school, my joints began to give out. Dance and theater became harder, though it did nothing to stop me from auditioning for shows, committing to marching band, performing in choir, band, talent shows, piano competitions. I thrived on the pressure, the thrill, the demand of not just my body or abilities, but of giving up my very soul to every single performance.

By the end of high school, I was skipping classes as my depression and physical pain began to call the shots. I did two more shows after high school and one college course for singing and acting, and that was the end. A quiet, painful death of what had always been my greatest love.

I didn’t know then what state I would be in over a decade later. I lost more than the physical capabilities, but my mental health stole away the pieces of me that had begun to starve when I had to stop and, finally, starved to death, were consumed and replaced by depression’s lethargy and anxiety’s standstill.

Now things are looking so much better, physically and mentally. I’m accomplishing more, but there’s an unfortunate mentality, the Impostor’s presence, the pull towards doubt that tugs at my sleeves, an impatient child wondering why I won’t pay attention to it’s demands.

“You’re still sick, who are you fooling with this?”

“You’re still depressed, who are you fooling with this?”

“You’re still the same person, who are you fooling with this?“

I’m still walking to therapy each week, about three miles round trip. I’ve been able to regularly attend church. Spearhead my church’s presence at our community’s Pride event, for the first time ever! Take part in what looks to be a very promising event that could help take away the stigma and bad reputation of an area and replace it with art and peace. I’m not fooling anyone, this is me. This is what I am capable of, this is me acknowledging that, while I may be disabled, sick, and all these other things that make my life a lot more difficult, I am still a person worthy of love and happiness. I can still be the person that brings good into the world, no matter how hard my limitations can make that.

I’m not one to sugarcoat my trials. I’m not suggesting that, even as I work, learn, and act, that I’m not aware of the anniversary of my attempt on my own life looming. That I’m not feeling the sting of past pains, still fighting.

But I’m fighting and learning what my new normal looks like and what it can look like in the future. I’m waking up with purpose each day, even if I can’t get out of bed.

I guess passion and practicality aren’t so far out of reach after all.

Picking Up the Phone

Yesterday, I took my first real step into ministry.

Cue the record scratch, right? Let me back up a little.

About six years ago, I was invited to attend a church Pam attended. This was big, since Pam was firmly agnostic, but they insisted this place was different. I looked at my queer, cane dependent self and braced for impact, but agreed. The Michigan State University ballroom dance club was going to be attending after the message and performing/teaching people to swing dance.

I sat through the message, uncomfortable and feeling so out of place. I had tried the church thing before and didn’t enjoy it. The only religion at all I had any kind of comfort in was Wicca/Pagan leaning faith. I prayed in the sense that I believed in a higher, universal power, but I’d found organized religion to be a harsh world of guilt, shaming, and exclusion; the worst offense, of course, being that they claimed to love and accept all…except for anyone that wasn’t a white, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied Christian.

Then the pastor invited me to swing dance upon learning that I used to live to dance and sing and perform. I must have looked at him like he was from another planet. I remember looking at him, then at my cane, then back to him and saying “how is that going to work?”

“We’ll figure it out.” He smiled back.

So we tried. And it worked. Cane and all, I was swing dancing with a pastor in a Christian school gymnasium.

About a year later, I joined the “worship arts team” and, for the first time in nearly five years, I stepped onto a stage again. I sang songs about God and Jesus and I felt so, so out of place. I felt as though, at any moment, someone would notice I didn’t fit in and call me out.

That moment never came. Something else started happening instead. I started attending more, serving more. And every time I did, what was being said in that day’s message spoke to something in my life that I needed to hear. It would, as if by fate’s designs, force me to look at things I wanted to ignore, assure me of facts I didn’t believe could be true, and encourage me to keep going, despite every instinct of giving up.

I chose to be baptized and officially become a partner of the church in 2015, the day of my 25th birthday.

Then, about a year ago, I met with the worship leader and told him I was considering ministry. He was encouraging, told me he believed in me, but I hesitated. It felt like a lie. That couldn’t possibly be what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was everything a church had always told me I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be. Even though my church had welcomed me with open arms.

Fast forward to this year. In fact, zoom in on the past month. I was finally going to see Hamilton! The show that saved my life, that forever put the notion of dying before my time firmly out of the question. My church decided to do a series based on a book called “God and Hamilton” by Kevin Cloud and the first day of the series would be a celebration of “faith and arts in the mix”. We would start with a message delivered by Kevin himself. I felt the tug I had been decidedly ignoring for a while, the demand for my attention to be turned towards ministry.

Following the message, Kevin hosted a workshop about how Faith and Creating were intended to be one thing. That we were meant to create, that it was no coincidence that we call God “The Creator” and were created in his image. I had a pen in hand and a poem scrawled on a napkin in an instant. The first time I had ever simply written with no inner voice telling me it wasn’t worth it or trying to edit as I wrote.

The small tug became an impatient push.

The day concluded with a panel of artists of all kinds; authors, singers and songwriters, musicians, poets, and people of faith. They spoke of how faith and their craft worked together, how it shaped their lives.

The push became a shove.

Then we saw Hamilton.

Seeing this show, this experience that had not just saved my life, but become a part of my experience, it’s lyrics weaving through my day to day, my thoughts and actions, became something more.

The shoving ceased. Instead, I felt peace.

I recognized what I had been experiencing was so much more than I had thought. Not an unfortunate string of events with moments of happiness or celebration thrown in for my sanity.

This was a calling.

This was everything in my life, every single experience culminating into a force beyond my understanding or comprehension, showing me that this was what I was supposed to do.

I gave in. Despite terror at the idea of pursuing something so much bigger than myself, fear that brought me to tears when I spoke of it, I knew this was it. That creating was my passion and my purpose, but that I was being told that my calling was to minister with grace and compassion to help heal others, just as I’ve always tried to do, but in a way I had never imagined. I could become a force for change and guidance and leave a legacy of creation, compassion, and inclusion so that others could find a place they felt they could belong. Where faith wouldn’t be a condemning or exclusive experience.

Am I still just as anxious about my purpose and my future? You bet. Am I terrified of messing up or getting it wrong? Absolutely.

Am I sure this is really a call I’m ready to accept?

I already answered.

Find Kevin Cloud’s book, “God and Hamiton: Spiritual Themes from the Life of Alexander Hamilton and the Broadway Musical He Inspired”, here and learn more about Kevin’s workshops and story and read Pam’s perspective of the same series and the experience that it inspired featured in their blog, found here.

What Does Failure Look Like?

This question was posed to me a few times throughout the last couple of weeks. Depression, for so many of us, myself included, means having a constant presence in our minds that spends all day every day mimicking our own voice or the voices of other people and lying to us.

Those lies sound different for each person. They are tailored to what our depression knows will do the most damage. For some, it says they have to achieve something tangible to be deserving of love or kindness. Others, it whispers that all their success is a lie. Others yet are told the are worthless or a burden.

Mine has three things it says more than anything else: I am a bad person, I am a useless burden to the people around me, and that I am a failure and will never achieve any kind of success.

After explaining my depressed mindset a couple of times, those things came up quite a bit and each time and led to the same questions. “What does “succeeding” even mean?” “What does failure mean?”

I had to explain that success, to me, means helping people and making an impact on people outside of my direct influence and leaving a positive legacy. I feel as though I am failing because despite the work I have put into my endeavors to do those two things, I’m not seeing any progress.

Now we were getting somewhere. Having it all spelled out meant those lies have to pass under the scrutiny of logic and facts. This is a common technique in many kinds of therapy. When you put your depressed thoughts under the microscope or pit them against real facts, they will almost always wither.

The first thing I had to do was downsize. “Help people and have a positive impact on people outside my direct scope of influence and leaving a legacy” is quite a lofty goal with lots of room for interpretation. For someone with depression, you can pretty much immediately replace “lots of room for interpretation” with how your depression will spin it: lots of room for failure.

So downsizing begins. You create smaller goals. Between my physical and mental health, I’ll be the first to admit that, with the obvious exceptions of bodily functions, I pretty much never get out of bed anymore. I don’t even move to the living room or front porch anymore. The solution? Have my only goal, for even just a week, be to get out of bed. If I only manage to get to the couch or the front porch, that’s great. It means I still got out of bed. Put on clothes? Bonus goal! Go for a walk? Holy shit, that’s so much more than usual. Little goals that help you feel like you accomplished anything starts dismantling the idea that you can’t do anything, that you’re failing.

I hope that helps some of you the way it helped me. I’m obviously not the first to think of it, but having someone point out how high up I had placed my goals and how much room that gave my depression to work with slowed my swan dive into hopelessness. If it can do that for even just one person that reads this, it also helps with those big goals, whether I know it or not.

That is kind of the purpose of this whole adventure into blogging and writing, after all.