It’s a super fucked up (and even vicious) cycle.
It goes like this:
- Start feeling a wee bit better
- Get vaguely happy & optimistic
- Begin scheduling coffee dates, chitchats and thinking about future plans
- Go for walks, write postcards, make scrapbooks, meditate, sign up for tai chi class etc.
- Somehow, amongst all these good healthy lifestyle growing healing activities, you managed to do too much and crash
- Spin & struggle for days – which often turn into weeks – trying to regain some sense of equilibrium and strength and brainpower
- This is difficult so you spend more time meditating, taking hot baths, buying more supplements, more medical appointments, more reading literature about these conditions….
- Then you feel lousy because you’ve had to cancel appointment, haven’t contributed anything meaningful to the human conversation for days, haven’t mail postcards, I haven’t written a damn poem or a story or crafted nothing…
- Wonder what it is like to sleep… Consider extreme measures… Realize you’ve tried all extreme measures… Flip and flop and twist and turn and get up and walk around and stretch and all of a sudden it’s 5 AM and you haven’t slept again
- Have a long cry, a long hot bath and try to shake out the negativity which comes from not “doing anything” because you remember that doing isn’t important it’s “being” but still you’re frustrated because just getting out of the apartment takes a Herculean effort
- Wonder what’s next and hope folks are patient with the shit you’re going through, question your own relevancy moving forward.