hard to hear

I used to work in a psychiatric genetics lab, and sometimes we'd have clinicians in our lab meetings, describing what it was like to be depressed, to be a binge eater. I had a friend in the lab, and we would give ourselves faux-appalled looks, because, who hasn't eaten an entire bag of cheetos in one sitting, or woke up one morning and just pulled the covers back over your head, deciding that the world just isn't worth it today.

The distinction of course, is that these blips do not disrupt our daily life. They are not harmful to us or to those around us. They do not prevent us from holding a job, from functioning day to day. But it always gave us something to think about. That we were maybe always on the edge, one step away from, well, something.

Today, this is how I feel about anxiety.

I get anxious, I get overwhelmed. It's not bad enough that I've never gotten out of bed. It doesn't prevent me from feeding Lena, getting her to school. It doesn't affect me showing up in lab, it doesn't affect me getting any work done. But...it's there. And I can't ignore in completely, and it does not go away.

I don't really know how to describe it. Maybe it's like a college dorm roommate, this anxiety. We're living in close quarters. She has a different agenda than I do. She sometimes thinks the way I do something is silly, and in these moments she likes to stand over my shoulder and hiss, no, don't dirty so many dishes! Don't pick up the phone, it might be toxic! Why are you going to bed so early, get more work done!

I'm figuring out little ways to deal with this. Sometimes I remind myself, you don't have to get things done in the most efficient way, you just have to get it done.

I tell myself when I'm looking at a mounding pile of dinner dishes. This roommate of mine, anxiety, says almost comically, --you can't do this all--, and my eyes widen, my heart starts to beat a little bit faster, Lena-bless-her-heart needs me to come to the bathroom and wipe my bum, mom! and I know I'm about to freeze, to give up, to be overwhelmed, and I just have to put one foot in front of the other.

Anne Lamott echos this sentiment in Bird by Bird.  She shares the story of her brother procrastinating on a school project about birds, and she says that he is crying at the kitchen table, surrounded by books on birds, asking their father how on earth this is going to get done, and their father replies, bird by bird.

And this is my mantra. Dish by dish. Day by day. Book by book. Dyeterm sequencing reaction by dyeterm sequencing reaction.

The funny thing is, and this is something that is so hard to explain to people unfamiliar with anxiety, or depression, or whatever, is that I make it through, dish by dish, and the kitchen is clean again. It always is. I always do it. It always ends up ok, and yet, every time it does I am so surprised by it. These things, getting done, this never ceases to amaze me.

My body can't seem to remember that, so it's something I have to relearn, reteach myself every time. Dish by dish. Day by day. Bird by bird.





(Every now and then I want to throw my hands up and say, fuck you dishes! fuck you birds! but I feel like that's a good sign too. It's better than just wanting to crawl back in bed and giving up on everything. I'm not quite ready to give up yet.)