I'm having a sick-in-the-head weekend. It started yesterday morning at yoga, I put my mat down next to a self-important couple who talked about watching videos of people doing difficult yoga sequences at 3 a.m., and then showed off their headstands. I could have ignored them. I could have gone inside and gotten my Zen on. But instead I hated them. And that hatred then transformed into judgment of myself and all the other perfectly nice women and men who were there to enjoy yoga on the dock.
I reaped no benefits from that class. In fact, I kept my eyes closed most of the time so as not to look at the self-important assholes. And in the process I deprived myself of the gorgeous view. I was so annoyed by the sound of construction going on about 500 feet away that I couldn't even focus on the physical practice. I essentially did aggro yoga. Might as well have had a Linkin Park playlist running in the background.
I arrived home, wolfed down my leftovers from spontaneous North Hampton dinner, and decided to take a nap. I told myself that it was my boyfriend's mattress' fault. The springs dig into my rib cage. So I settled in for a 10 a.m. nap. I slept til 2. Got up, stared blankly at the TV, and conked out for another two hours. That was entire day and evening. Napping like a cat, In and out of consciousness. Telling myself my body must need the insane amount of sleep I was allowing it. Then, worried that I wouldn't sleep through the night, I took a quarter of a trazadone (since that's all my body can handle) and went to bed for real.
I woke up Sunday morning just as tired. I meditated. I finished re-reading The Four Agreements. I read the terrible news about another mass shooting. I went back to sleep at 10:30 am. When I woke up again at noon, I had the weird sparkles in my field of vision that are indicative of an ocular migraine. It was then that I realized that this Snow White act was most likely hormone induced. What I was experiencing was not just exhaustion...it was PMS. It was depression.
I've dealt with this combo since I was 12. But as I've gotten older and more self-aware, it's ironically become harder to decipher. It used to come with extreme sadness and lack of rationality so it was hard to miss. I'm a grown-ass woman now with almost 20 years of therapy under her belt, so those extremes happen less often. It's amusing to me that without them I just think: Those mattress springs really did a number on me. It took nearly 24 hours for me to be all: DUDE, THIS IS WHAT YOUR DEPRESSION LOOKS LIKE NOW.
The good news is that instead of judging myself for all the things I planned to do this weekend but didn't, I accepted it. A couple of hours ago I took a shower. I did it to feel better, in hopes that maybe it would motivate me to be productive. I did feel better, but still not productive. And that's ok. Instead of getting mad at myself, I put on a nightgown, grabbed a book and sat on the porch where, after reading for 45 minutes, I decided that the most helpful thing for me to do was blog it out.
Because I allowed myself this space, I will feel better tomorrow. I know this from experience. These lows are time limited. When I process them and understand what is going on with my body and mind, I can move forward with clarity. And I have this in writing so when it happens again next month, I'll have proof.
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