allow yourself…

It’s said that you should allow yourself grace to have a bad day, but what about when you can’t because life must go on?

“Give yourself grace” is something I say to my friends all the time. Let yourself have a bad day. Take it as a sign that you need a break, take some time to “refill your cup”. Here’s the problem though, life.

A few days ago I screwed up and missed a dose of my meds. Since then I have been battling high levels of anxiety, irritability and loss of complete motivation. Thankfully my husband is amazing and this means my kids are cared for and nothing has gone undone, BUT, today is rough. The weather isn’t helping and I’m fighting the urge to crawl under my covers and just cry until I fall asleep. Give yourself grace, Amanda. Maybe that’s what you need?

Yeah, it probably is. Here’s the problem: I have a meeting with some high ups from work at 3:45pm today and a 2,000+ page review and report to complete before that. After work there will be people that need feeding and caring so I really CAN’T take care of myself.

This happens to a lot of us, I think. It’s the thing that makes me irrationally angry when people say things like “Don’t worry about the dishes, they’ll be there tomorrow”. Yup. They sure will. Along with 23098453740958niner09348 other dishes that have been used and added to the pile leaving me nothing to serve breakfast on in the morning. So, we can’t just leave the dishes. Or the laundry. Or the mess. In a house with so many people you’d be amazed at how quickly it goes from “a little mess” to “JESUS WADLEIGHS!!! Have you never cleaned a thing since you bought this house almost 17 years ago? This place is disgusting”.

Here’s the real kick in the cooter: When you’re fighting off depression and anxiety, the fact that you can’t keep up makes it worse. It becomes this vicious cycle of suck. The mess feels like it will swallow you whole and your skin crawls from anxiety but depression makes you unmotivated to do anything about it. Also, the dictionary has underlined “cooter” trying to tell me its not a real word but I disagree.

On my lunch break I will take a shower. I will do my hair and I will put on make up and I will download a work approved background for my zoom meeting. I will smile and I will schmooze and I will nail it. Then I will cook dinner and pray that the little one is in the mood to watch TV instead of playing hide and seek because I just want to lay in bed, which makes me sad because he deserves the mom who will play hide and seek. Before closing my eyes, I will think about all the things I didn’t do today instead of all the things I did despite feeling like trash because depression is an asshole.

In a few days, hopefully, my chemicals will re-balance and I’ll enjoy being a human again. Until then, send snacks. And maybe a cleaning lady. And coffee. Definitely coffee.

How do you keep moving when your brain tries to hold you back? What lifts you or keeps you going?