Dealing with chronic mental illness is hard.  A few months ago I finished TMS to treat my depression and anxiety and it helped but I still struggle.  I have a friend who is in AA who talks about working the program…doing the steps you continually need to do to stay healthy…and I realized how much I relate to that right now.

TMS gave me a reset button but I still have bad days.  I still feel myself dip back into that dark place.  I have more tools now than ever and that helps but sometimes the only thing that I accomplish in a day is just surviving.  It’s both an amazing achievement while also tinged with shame as you see others who seem to whiz past you as you barely tread water.  Maybe they’re treading water too.  You can’t tell.  You’re just trying to breathe.

Today is one of those days for me.  I think it’s the weather.  It’s dreary and rainy and my joints hurt and it makes me not want to get out even though my doctor prescribed walking 30 minutes a day to keep my depression at bay.  It’s part of my program.  Today I took Hailey to school and then I went back to bed and stayed there until noon.  I didn’t enjoy it.  People without depression won’t understand that, but the fatigue of mental illness makes your very body a prison.  The bed smelled sour.  I couldn’t concentrate on reading.  Victor is out of town so I have no one to make me get up.

But I have to work the program.  So I got up.  I walked in the cold for 10 minutes.  Then I did another 10.  Then I hit 30.  I brushed my teeth and took a shower.  I brought my light therapy lamp out of storage.  I wrote this post.

This is a good day.  As far as mental illness is concerned, that is.  I got out of bed.  That in itself is pretty amazing.  It doesn’t always happen.  But today it did and I’m proud of that.  I will continue to work my program.

It’s a program I add to all the time, finding tools that work for me.  I share them with others.  Others share them with me.  We get along.  Together.  And alone.

So today I’m sharing some of my steps.  I’m not sharp enough to think of them all but for now I’m writing them down to remind myself that I’m worth following them.  If you have steps that help you please share them.

1.  Follow your doctors orders.  For me that means antidepressants and behavioral therapy.
2. Exercise 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week.
3. Get sunlight, or if you can’t, use light therapy.  Do not over use even though you want to.
4. Treat yourself like you would your favorite pet.  Plenty of fresh water, lots of rest, snuggles as needed, allow yourself naps.
5. Avoid negativity.  That means the news, people, movies.  It will all be there when you’re healthy again.  The world will get on without you seeing it.
6. Forgive yourself.  For being broken.  For being you.  For thinking those are thing that you need forgiveness for.
7. Those terrible things you tell yourself?  Can you imagine if the person you love most was telling themselves those things?  You’d think they were crazy.  And wrong.  They think the same about you.  Those negative things you are thinking are not rational.  Remember that depression lies and your brain is not trustworthy.
8. Give yourself permission to recover.  I’m lucky that I can work odd hours and take mental health days but I still feel shitty for taking them.  Realize that sometimes these slow days are necessary and healthy and utterly responsible.
9. Watch Doctor Who.
10. Love on an animal.  Go adopt a rescue or if you can’t go to the shelter and just snuggle a kitten.  Then realize that that same little kitten that you’re cradling isn’t going to accomplish shit but is still wonderful and lovely and so important.  You are that kitten.
11. Get up.  Go brush your teeth.  Go take a hot shower.  If you do nothing else today just change into a new pair of pajamas.  It helps.
12. Remember that you are not alone.  There are crisis lines filled with people who want to help.  There are people who love you more than you know.  There are people who can’t wait to meet you because you will teach them how unalone they are.  You are so worthy of happiness and it will come.

One day when I’m in a better place I will come back to this and fix the typos and add all the things I’ve forgotten but today I know that if I don’t publish it I will delete it and hate myself for not finishing it.  So I’m publishing it.  And I suppose that’s another step.  Trust in your words, even when you second-guess them.

Sorry this is so rambly.  It’s the best I can do.

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I taught my cat how to fist bump because I need encouragement and don’t like to leave the house.

A post shared by Jenny Lawson (@thebloggess) on Oct 12, 2018 at 12:03pm PDT

Also, I sent this video to my friend by text and she was like, “OMG what” and then I realized that the video didn’t go through but I still thought it was pretty impressive and then I realized that I’d texted “I taught my cat how to fist because I need encouragement and don’t like to leave the house” and I had to explain that I did not teach my cat how to fist because ew, and also this whole thing explains why I never leave the house.

I was just taking Dorothy Barker for a walk while checking Facebook and I got sucked in because everything in the news is terrible and I ran right into a low-hanging branch so hard I fell down and Dottie jumped on my stomach and looked at me like I was an idiot and a guy driving by stopped and was like, “Jesus, are you okay?” and I explained that I was fine and was just training my papillon to be a seeing eye dog and that she’d failed miserably (because I was too embarrassed to admit that a tree hit me because of the internet) and then I thought that maybe it was a sign from God that I should stop focusing on negative things but then I remembered that really it’s druids who speak through trees and if this is a sign it’s probably one telling me to become a witch and BURN THE WORLD DOWN so I came inside and told Victor that a tree just made me into a witch and that I need to learn more about arson and he told me to lay down because probably I have a concussion and a nap does sound good but you’re not supposed to sleep if you have a concussion so I’m pretty sure that Victor is trying to kill me and I told him I was totally onto him and I may have screamed “DESTROY THE PATRIARCHY!  I SPEAK FOR THE TREES!” and then he was like, “You don’t have a concussion and you aren’t a witch.  You just bumped your noggin and you need to get off Facebook” and he might be right but it’s just as likely that a tree made me a witch and that I now have secret powers, like the power to write an entire post in a single run-on sentence and Victor disagreed and said that lack of proper punctuation isn’t really a gift but I’m pretty sure he’s just jealous that an abusive tree made me magical.

Anyway, I’m going to go lay down now.  If you’d like to join my secret coven of witches with questionable powers you are totally welcome.

Hey.  See those people on the right side of my blog?  Those are the special angels who keep this blog going and their advertising pays for the server costs that would make this blog a total money pit if they weren’t here.  They are awesome and brilliant and you should go visit them right now.

A few times a year I open up new spots for ads but I usually do it on twitter and they fill up super quickly and then people get frustrated that they didn’t see it on time so today I’m announcing openings here.  Text ads start at $100 a month.  Weekly wrap-up sponsorships are $350.    Click here for all the details.

Click on the link above to reserve a spot.  They’re first come, first served.  And thank you to everyone who has ever advertised here and everyone who has clicked through to visit to make it worth advertising here.  Jesus and I love you.

It’s October 1st which means that if you’re reading this you survived September, a month that historically wants to eat people.

October is my favorite month because I love horror…books and movies.  It seems counterintuitive since I have an anxiety disorder but with horror I can exercise my nervous energy with things that are mostly unlikely to happen to me as long as the zombie apocalypse doesn’t actually break out.

This month I’m going to try to watch a horror movie every day of October so that means I need suggestions.

Tell me a movie I need to add to my list.  My personal favorites are creepy supernatural, character-driven weirdness, psychological horror, zombies.  Bonus points if it’s on netflix or hulu.

I’ll update this as I add to my list if you want to watch along with me this month.

October 1 – Burnt Offerings (1976)

October 2 – The Witch (2015)

October 3 – Get Out (2017)

October 4 – Carnival of Souls (1962)

October 5 – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

October 6 – Shaun of the Dead (2004)

October 7 – I am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

October 8 – Babadook (2014)

October 9 – A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

October 10 – The Host – (2006)

October 11 – A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

What next?

ADDED:

October 12 – Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010)

October 12b – Let The Right One In

October 14 – What We Do In The Shadows

October 15 – We Are What We Are

October 16 – Train to Busan

October 17 – Cloverfield Lane

 

This week was hard, right?

Yeah. It was. All the stuff on the news is exhausting and it was a full moon and that girl at work was a bitch and your uncle was posting crazy bullshit on Facebook again and you didn’t finish that thing and you want to punch someone but you can’t because it’s illegal and you’re the better person and also you can’t go back to jail again.

But.

You’re not alone.

And that’s good because pissed off people make good changes in the world and that’s necessary.

But it’s hard.  And slow.

So it’s important to take care of yourself and remind yourself that the world is never as bleak as we think and that’s it’s okay (AND NECESSARY) to love and laugh and be silly and reground yourself with friends or family or books or binge-watching something awesome.  Surround yourself with good people because there are so many out there.  ENJOY YOUR LIFE IN SPITE OF THE ASSHOLES.

Or just go watch gifs of people in infomercials doing normal things so incredibly badly.  That’s what I’m going to do.

Feel better?  Me too.  Now go and make your life the good place that you deserve it to be.

 

My mom just called me and was like, “I JUST SAW YOU ON TV!” and I considered that she’d lost her mind or accidentally called me instead of my sister but she insisted that she’d just seen me on a commercial on the National Geographic channel and then she was like, “Well, heard you, I guess.  I didn’t see you.  But I saw your dead mouse friend” and then I was pretty sure that she just missed me and was hallucinating but she was totally right because I WAS JUST ON TV.

Well, my voice was.  And my taxidermied mouse.

It’s a weird day.

UPDATED: So last night my commercial was on during Dancing With the Stars and The Voice so technically that means that I was on The Voice and Dancing With the Stars and since I wasn’t cut from either one I think that means I won.  WHAT A WEEK.

Also, I’ve had a lot people mention that they couldn’t tell what the book was.  It was my first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.  Specifically it was the chapter about becoming goth and getting my arm stuck in a cow’s vagina in high school.  The full quote from the commercial:

…pretty much everyone hates high school. It’s a measure of your humanity, I suspect. If you enjoyed high school, you were probably a psychopath or a cheerleader. Or possibly both. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive, you know. I’ve tried to block out the memory of my high school years, but no matter how hard you try, it’s always with you, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Or herpes. I assume…

Now if you’ll excuse me, the cat just vomited and I have to clean it up.  Ah, the glamorous life of fame.