Tag: Depression

11..., Lifestyle

11… Ways Life is Being Difficult Right Now

RaeAnna
Gotta love the help I have at all times.

Life is always difficult. I would like to meet the person who says it isn’t and learn their secret. Until that person makes themselves known, I’m going to continue operating under the premise: life is hard, and there is always that obstacle, that health issue, that person, that work project, that special something that makes life a little less pleasant than I’d like it to be. Sometimes all of those somethings at once, which is a total bugger of a situation. 

In so many ways my life is really lovely right now. Next week’s 11… will be a post about the lovely things in my life, but right now. Nope. I’m going to complain. 

  1. I pooped my pants today. That is correct. You read that correctly. No typo. I would love to tell you this is an isolated incident. It’s not. Since I was 24 and went through quite a major health incident, my body does not always work properly—rarely ever. I go through particularly bad periods where I can’t stray too far away from the bathroom, which is a real problem for any kind of social life, plan making, trip taking, or work doing. It could be a lot worse, but it was just an incentive to do some laundry.  
  2. My Anxiety Demon is stalking me. Anxiety is no joke. It’s been making my life difficult for as long as I can remember, but over the last few months, it’s been making itself known excessively. Currently contemplating life without sleep or responsibility as a solution. So far not working. 
  3. Sedated Tess. Tessa is my angel baby. She came to me and brought responsibilities of enormous proportion at a time when the distraction and love was everything I needed with the bills, everything I did not. She permanently brought me Knight, Makeda, Duke, and Bear and let me take care of nine other babies until their furever families could take them home. Tess is on the tail end of her heartworm journey. YAY! But she still has six months until we get the all clear. And another month of restricted activity, which means sedation. She’s a nightmare on sedation. Grumpy, ass bitch (in the most literal of terms). I get it, she’s frustrated, but it is hard when we have a houseful of dogs wanting to play, and Tess wants to eat them because they get to play and she doesn’t. 
  4. One of our air conditioning units and the furnace needs to be replaced. Living in Houston, air conditioning is as necessary as food. I need it to function. Ours is on its last leg. So fun. 
  5. Depression. My Depression Demon and Anxiety Sadist are currently skipping hand in hand around my brain. It’s great. Quite the houseparty they’ve got going on. I’m just waiting on them to invite Insecurity Fiend and Nervous Nelly over for some real fun. 
  6. Duke has a SEVERE overbite. We’ve been monitoring it since we first noticed a hint of overbite. He had a check up with the vet last month, and we were told he would be fine until his next check in at eight months old to see how it’s doing. Well, we noticed some holes in the upper palate of his mouth from his teeth being misaligned from the overbite. We took him in immediately. Well, he (and all the other puppies) are growing so fast, their little bodies are changing like crazy. He needs to be seen like yesterday by a dental specialist/orthodontist to correct the damage that’s already been done and make adjustments to his mouth to prevent further damage. Yikes. 
  7. Money seems to be flowing out of my pocket like it’s air. Between buying a house, all the issues that come with that, and my dogs’ issues, I am broke. I mean, I have enough money to eat, but the savings are depleted, and credit cards are tired. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade them for the world, and I am so glad they found a home with me because I know they will be taken care of and their needs will be met. But it does take a toll on the emotions and the wallet. No regrets. They are worth it, and I’m truly grateful I have a partner as committed to giving up and cutting back where we can so that we can put that money towards the needs of our babies’ health. 
  8. I rolled my ankle today. There’s a running joke in my family that I can dance beautifully, but that walking really trips me up. Literally. I now have the added obstacle of a step down into my living room and hardwood floors that need to be replaced because they buckle, popping up randomly in the middle of rooms.
  9. I have hardwood floors that buckle, popping up randomly in the middle of rooms. This is a problem. It’s because when the floors were installed by the previous owners, they were done super wrong. It’s going to be expensive to redo the whole first floor, and right now the money is going to make sure the doggos are healthy. 
  10. Motivation. What is that? I have lost pretty much all motivation to hunt down writing gigs or even write the bare minimum for the blog. Most days, I feel a great sense of accomplishment that all six dogs and the man-friend are fed and alive. Part of it is a mental thing. I’m out of the habit and out of the mindset of working eight to fourteen hours a day. The other part is the lack of time. I have time, but I don’t have unencumbered time. It is really, really, really, really hard to read more than two pages without having to get up and referee a disagreement or figure out why the house is so quiet or let the dogs out so no one pees in the house or feed them or any number of things that come up. Imagine trying to sit down and actually write a book review or blog post or anything! It’s hard. I’ve had to start going to Starbucks to write for an hour before/after yoga. Which is really saying something, since I’m notorious for hating to work anywhere except my [home] office. 
  11. I don’t get to travel! Traveling is the way I decompress. It is my way of getting to breathe. I’m lucky that I can take my job with me wherever I go, and that my boyfriend is a live-in doggy daddy who can and does take care of the dogs when I leave. With the pandemic, there is no leaving. There’s staying. Nothing but staying. I love my home. I love my life. But I’m ready to get back on the road again. 

Like everyone on the planet, I’m actually dealing with even more things than this right now, some more serious, some less, but this is a really good highlight reel of life being life. I’m complaining because I can, but I genuinely love my life and appreciate it. And, truly, it could be a gazillion times worse.

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Blog + Dog, In My Own Words, Lifestyle

Isolation Creation

RaeAnna
I love being surrounded by my new rescue babies.

One of my favorite people to follow on instagram is Jamick Beck. She’s a brilliant photographer and a lovely human to watch live her life through my phone screen. She lives in the South of France. During quarantine she worked on an Isolation Creation project, where she created a beautiful photograph every day and documented it on social media with the hashtag #isolationcreation. It was so inspiring, and I loved following along. 

Social media has been flooded with all these amazing people creating amazing things with their newfound freetime. They are really living out #isolationcreation. I love it. My quarantine feels like the opposite: A vacuum where creativity and productivity have ceased to exist. I have been in quarantine (to the best of my ability) since the middle of March. 

Now is not the time to be trapped inside my house with me, myself, and my multiple internal narratives of doom for company. My anxiety is having anxiety over how much anxiety I have over being anxious about everything. On top of it, my depression has been a raging ball of sadness and defeat. It’s an excellent combination for sustaining minimal productivity and an endless drowning sensation. 

My sweet Duke wasn’t supposed to stay, but here he is furever.

On the surface, my everyday life has not drastically changed. I work from home and don’t have tons of reasons to leave the house. I used to travel a few times a month, and I was always bopping out to have lunch with friends or grab a coffee with someone or something in the world. None of that has happened, which is good for health reasons. 

My quarantine has not included any of the things I would have liked it to include. Considering I can’t travel or leave the house and work has substantially slowed down, I should have time to do so many things. But not true. I have not written my book or even a short story. I’ve not even tended to my blog, which is my job. I don’t read the way I should be. Nothing that needs to be done is getting done. Nothing I want done is getting done. I’m existing in this space of doing the bare minimum. Here’s what the bare minimum has consisted of for me over the last few months:

  • Finding a dog, helping her have thirteen puppies, bottle feeding them, making sure they go to the vet every few weeks, emergency vet trips, finding them REALLY good furever homes, keeping them safe, and sending them to their furever homes. (I’m exhausted just thinking about it all again.)
  • Finding and buying a house. (The literal worst.)
  • Moving cross-country with all the dogs because the house situation took longer because of COVID and we were trying to… 
  • Not be homeless.
  • Working on the few projects that came my way. (So slow… who needs a writer?)
  • Sleeping whenever I could, which was hardly never.
  • Moving back across the country with the dogs to…
  • Finally move into the house.
  • Unpacking the house… Unpacking the necessary things; still working on the unnecessary bits. 
  • Battling my anxiety and depression. 
  • Fixing the house because it was NOT in the shape it was supposed to be in.  
Makeda front and center where she likes to be. They loved laying in the laundry basket. Don’t ask me why.

Productivity and efficiency are my main modes of existing. I hate doing nothing. I hate inefficiency. I hate wasting time. In my mind, nothing has been productive or efficient during quarantine. It’s wrong. I know I have been productive and as efficient as one can be with puppies considering the circumstances of COVID-19, fifteen dogs, moving, and not living in my own house for two and a half months. There’s this anxiety/depression monster that lives in my stomach (head but I feel it in my stomach) telling me I’m the fucking worst and I could do more and be better and why is nothing done the way it could be??? The last four months have not been my ideal version of productivity. When I see time where I’m just sitting, that’s time I could have been working, unpacking, or doing something with my life to achieve my dreams in any and all the ways. I could have done more during quarantine, but I also couldn’t have. I’m dealing with life, puppies, work being slow, COVID, anxiety, depression, and that’s my version of #isolationcreation. 

This was my cue they were done playing and wanted to go in for a nap.

Instead of creating art or finding my love of needle point (I’m actually already not bad at that) or getting in shape or learning how to speak Urdu, I’ve been creating fourteen healthy lives. My #isolationcreation is the puppies and their mama. I took her and the thirteen puppies in during a really difficult time. I made sure she had everything she needed before, during, and after the birth. We almost lost her, but we didn’t. I’m working on getting her healthy – she has already come such a long way. We were told to only expect eight puppies to live, but all thirteen are alive, happy, and healthy. There were several puppies who needed extra attention because they were small, weak, and/or sick. They made it through and are living their best lives. Nine found their perfect homes. Four are stuck with me, two of which have special needs (I call them my miracle boys), but I know they’ll be taken care of. They are almost potty trained. They know how to sit and stay. They’re well behaved and wonderful to be around. They’re the image of health, and they’re growing like crazy. They bring me joy and keep me busy. Life is never dull.

I’m hard on myself, but I always have been. Struggling is my main form of existing right now [always], but I’ve created good where there was sadness during quarantine. I didn’t create beautiful artwork for the world to enjoy like Jamie Beck, but I created something intangibly beautiful for the puppies and their furever families. I did what I could, and I hope it was enough.  

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

I did my very best for them, and I loved watching them grow and change.
#isolationcreation
Books

The Bell Jar

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 244
Quick Review A young woman’s coming of age story as she grapples with working, the big city, friendship, sexuality, mental illness, and growing up female.

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Literally anyone who has any knowledge of remarkable literary works knows about Sylvia Plath’s oven incident, as well as her writing. The Bell Jar is such a widely referenced book, it’s surprising how few people have actually read it. I, myself, thought it would an incredibly dense and arduous book to work through. It always seems the shorter the book the more wearisome the syntax. I am ashamed to say I made it to 25 without having ever attempted to read it. It has sat on my must read list for a decade without once glancing at a copy in a bookstore. With pen in hand, a quiet room, a cup of tea, I sat down with the most serious of intentions to delve into this onerous work.

Never have I been so wrong.

I read it in a day, an afternoon actually.

Esther Greenwood is a young and talented girl exploring the world around her as well as herself. The Bell Jar is known as a book about depression, but it is more than that. It is a book about self discovery and coming of age. It is intrinsically feminist without meaning to be. Though many decades ago, the trials Esther experiences are so in tune with the trials girls go through today: self confidence, body image, boys, sex, dating, career, education, and mental health.

The female version of The Catcher in the Rye, I’m beyond disappointed this novel has not made it onto the required reading lists for high schoolers. Though complexly nuanced, it is no more taboo than a swearing, hormonal teenage boy.

Plath is an incredible talent (Ariel at a later date; I must read it first), who has been turned into a compounded punch line of the crazy writer. She is best remembered for her clinical depression and infamous suicide than her startling talent as a poet and novelist.

Memorable Quotes
“If you expect nothing from somebody, you are never disappointed.”
“The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.”
“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Barnes & Noble | Buy on Book Depository

Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Copyright: 2006
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN: 9780061148514