One Day At A Time (Kate)

Laying on my left side curled into a ball with my knees up to my chin and both hands tucked under my head, I pretend to ignore the increasing need to pee. I don’t know what day of the week it is, not that it matters much, the only thing I know is if it’s a weekend or not by whether the kids get up to login to their computers for their online schooling. 

Early during the pandemic, this was often how my days started.   I was in a deep depression that kept me unwell for months.  Only my teenage kids knew because I didn’t talk to anyone outside of our home, not really anyway. I did attend the occasional support group meeting, but never revealed the reality of my emotional world or how badly depression was kicking my ass at the time. 

I watched endless streams of Netflix and played hours upon hours of Candy Crush and Master Chef; I did the bare minimum to survive which often, but not always, included paying bills, showering, doing laundry and making and eating food. Somehow my little family survived and when 8 months later I was called back to work, I realized there were some things I needed to do differently if I was going to manage a full-time job while managing my depression. 

I was first diagnosed with depression in my teens after a suicide attempt. I have been managing suicidal thoughts ever since, which is just one of the more severe symptoms of depression that I experience.  More commonly I lack sufficient sleep, because I stay up too late binge watching a series. I tend to spend most of my time alone and smoking has been a major coping strategy since I was about 16.  Alcoholic drinking was once the best way to shake the blues during my twenties.  

How one might experience and manage symptoms of depression can be as different as there are people, even my own symptoms change depending on the day. Most of my symptoms have varied and morphed over the years, varying in intensity, duration and impact. However there have been a few that have given me the worst problems, and many that I still struggle with to this day.  But over the last 30 years or so I’ve developed a variety of coping strategies that have helped me manage, survive and occasionally thrive while living with depression. 

It’s important to me that you know that I am a person with lived experience of depression and a variety of other mental health diagnosis. I do not hold a doctorate or any clinical expertise; I am a woman who has lived with depression for over 30 years and who isn’t dead yet. The only thing I am an expert in, is my own experience, and that is what I will share here. 

The most prevalent and difficult symptom of depression that I live with is the low mood which in turn brings a lack of motivation. When the depression sets in, (like it did early in the pandemic) I can barely move from my couch to my bed.   

Getting up and doing things that I feel are useless and unimportant makes them even more difficult to do. While watching the world deal with a pandemic and while witnessing the mistreatment of fellow human beings, particularly during an international crisis, makes it almost impossible to see the benefit of brushing my teeth or going for a walk. How is getting out of bed and potentially feeling the wind and sun on my face really going to help? 

Well, I don’t know the science, I am not an expert on the chemistry of the human brain and why humans are basically house plants, that need water, sunlight, purpose and care to thrive, but we do. 

So, how do I get myself out of that funk? The one where I can barely lift my weighted legs over the side of the bed.  How do I get my legs onto the floor when all my instincts tell me to flop my head back down on the pillow and disappear into oblivion, since there is no reason to get up and put pants on?

The answer for me on most days is a strategy I learned 20 years ago, in the basements of churches while attending 12 step meetings, where I was inundated with benign sayings that people would toss around that sounded too simple to help. They were trite and dripped of what I would now identify as toxic positivity; as though any of the things people were dealing with could be solved that simply. 

But for some reason one of them made sense to me; perhaps it was my desperation, but I needed to try something and living One Day at a Time seemed doable. It gave me permission to not have to think too far past today. 

Getting sober, made facing problems very overwhelming and daunting and I could barely wrap my head around how to deal with life.  These simple 5 words: ONE DAY AT A TIME helped me learn how to manage.   I just had to deal with right now, today.  If the whole day felt like too much to handle, then cool, I could break it down into more manageable pieces. An hour, or a half an hour. Maybe that’s too much then make it 15, 10 or just the next 5 minutes was all I really had to deal with. I didn’t have to deal with anything past what was right in front of me. 

That meant, while in early recovery from my alcoholism, when I woke up in the mornings and I felt over whelmed by…well something, or nothing or whatever, and all I wanted to do was glide right back into bed, I would stop and take a deep breath (as well as a haul off a cigarette) and I would look at my day ahead. I would make a list of things I “wanted” to get done in the day, and then I would take another deep breath and ask the universe to direct my day, to show me the priorities. I’d ask for help in just doing the next right thing.  It helped, as I am still without my drug of choice today. 

It helped during the pandemic too, when I didn’t know what to do with myself, and my low mood was taking over my life. It still helps today when I get hit and my mood turns low; I lose interest in doing things and my motivation is practically non existent.  These are the days that I wake up with what I call the toddler anthem playing on repeat in my head “I don’t wanna’! I don’t wanna’…so I’m not gonna’!” (For reference, picture a toddler with folded arms across their puffy chest, legs apart, chin down and eyes narrowed screaming this at the top of their little lungs.) These are the days that I try to remember that all I gotta’ do is the next right thing. 

It can be hard to determine, what exactly that ‘right’ thing is but I’ve learned, when in the middle of a depressive episode, what it is doesn’t matter as long as I do something; and in my experience, I really do mean just something, anything. 

Sometimes it’s looking at my coffee table and noticing the garbage and full ashtrays and the dust and ash strewn across it’s top when I decide I can at least tidy it up a bit.  Then I notice I have the energy to throw out the garbage and wipe down the table. 

Maybe instead I notice the cat laying next to me and she needs a few pets, then she purrs and her brush is right there so I’ll just sit there for a bit and brush her. I’ve been lying on the couch staring at my phone noticing the sun poking through the window and I think I should go outside, but I don’t feel I can bring myself to get dressed and go outside, but I could go open the window and the curtains and stand there for a moment and might actually get spurred to put my shoes on and go outside.

It has happened that when I get up to go to the bathroom and the overflowing dishes in the sink catch my eye and I realize I can at least fill the sink with water to let them soak so when I do have the energy to wash them, they’ll be a little easier to clean.  For me, now, it’s not about the size of the action, but just that I take some sort of action. 

Sometimes the universe does not expect nor need me to complete anything so concrete, sometimes it’s popcorn and Netflix for the weekend. Or sometimes it’s picking up a new or old craft or hobby.

I learned to knit as a preteen from my aunt Lou. I will forever be grateful, because I’ve been knitting dish clothes ever since. I love that I can make something practical in less then 2 episodes of Schits Creek, or one 12 step meeting. I’ve given many dish clothes away to new friends in 12 step meetings, reminding them that all we have is “One Day at a Time” and when you feel like you can’t go on, but you have to go on, then maybe all you can do is the dishes, and now when you do them you’ll know you’re not alone.  

For some odd reason when I get up to do the dishes, I then feel like I might be able to do one more thing like take out the garbage or wipe down the counter, and since I’m there anyway I might as well wipe out the spill at the back of the fridge. 

Having learned this trick in early recovery from alcoholism, helped keep me alive during the early days of the pandemic, and still helps me today when my life feels overwhelming. I’ve come to accept that the low moods and lack of motivation are just part of what I’ll live with; but their frequency and level of impact can be minimized with some strategies. Doing the next right thing is only one of the tools in my toolbox, that has helped to decrease some of the negative impact of living with depression. 

If you enjoyed this little piece of my experience, hopefully in a few weeks you’ll get to hear my experience with self inflicted solitude and how I can still get trapped by the belief that the only cure for loneliness is isolation. 

Be well my friends. <3