The Missing Ingredients

Ability isn't my biggest hurdle right now. My health is actually holding kind of steady. I'm functioning at about 50% of the capacity of a healthy person. Considering that during the worst of my relapse I was around 20%, things are looking up in that department. My biggest issue isn't my mental state, either. Undoubtedly I suffered from a severe depressive relapse in 2016. While the experience of being haunted by the most damaged parts of my psyche has left me forever altered, as it has every time prior, the acute pain of the condition has vacated my present state. So basically I don't spend every day sobbing for hours on end wishing I wasn't alive. It's a relief I forget to adulate as often as I should.

I don't spend six hours in the kitchen every day any more, either, using my precious energy to facilitate the necessities of life. And while I still do more care-taking than I'd envisioned for my future, my days aren't bogged down with the non-stop frenzy of barely getting everyone else's needs met. Please don't misconstrue, I'm well aware of how fortunate this makes me.

So it would only make sense that I'm taking full advantage of my abatement in suffering. Moving on my life goals like a bitch. Regaining everything I've lost like a conqueror settling a known land. But no. My life is not that linear. Instead I'm floating around in the strangest psychological abyss I can remember. My productivity is shit, and desire to improve it even worse. I could be getting so much more done than I am. But I only got a handle on my flares when I decided to put my health before my output and started listening to my body when it told me to slow down. Which means I sit around a lot investing in the notion that if I do, I can avoid not being able to get out of bed for days. It also means not much gets done because I basically justify everything as not worth relapsing for.

This whole thing is screwing me up royally. My mind NEEDS to do. My body NEEDS to chill. Like every other time I've started to get a handle on this illness, the two parts of me are not lined up. There's no tandem. No coalescence. And it's driving me insane! I should be getting so much more done than I am. I should be respecting my limitations way more than I am. But I don't know when to push and when to pull. So I sit here waiting for that magic day when I'm flooded with my missing ingredients: equal parts motivation and discipline. Sitting. Waiting. And wondering if that day will ever come.

Thanks for joining,

Leah