In the midst of a rough patch with my OCD, it has been helpful to remember that emotions are always going to come and go.
At one point last week, I journaled a bit in my free writing notebook.
Today I feel so much better. This is an interesting phenomenon. It’s not enough data to go on or make any decisions. But it is a good reminder of why we ride the wave. It doesn’t last forever. Now, I don’t expect this means that my problems are over. But I do know that I can make it through. Whatever else happens today, I don’t want to die right now, and that is a great feeling.
A few days later, I came back to my notebook to write some more, and saw where I had left off.
I am laughing a little reading that above. It was from Thursday morning. I took my daughter to the dentist and then had a chat with a client that day. So I was able to do some things. But it was still a rough day. I watched the rest of Ted Lasso and read a full book. I think I went home and just went to bed. Good reminder that days are going to have ups and downs as well as weeks and months and years.
I told my therapist on Friday that my relationship to sleep varies greatly. At times, I just hate that I need it. I don’t want to stop, and I resent the fact that sleep is required. At other times, sleep is like candy, and I constantly crave it and try snatch little bits of it whenever I can.
Lately, sleep feels like a legal drug. While I am sleeping, I don’t want to die, and my back is not in pain. On Friday night, I remember thinking to myself as soon as I got the littles down, “Now I can indulge in socially acceptable, sanctioned oblivion.”
When I am so low like I have been, I find myself trying to make it through each day and just do whatever I can to get the time to pass. That will be punctuated by bursts of actually getting some work done, and then back to simultaneously dreading and craving the passage of time.
Like I wrote in my notebook, this is a good reminder that even when things are rough, there will still be respites.