time to call a spade a spade...

So, uh, the Photo Challenge?  A nice thought, but I don't do routine/habit so well, duh.  Even when I've put myself out there in hopes of accountability, when it comes to bailing, I seem to have no qualms doing so, and I positively hate that about myself.

So add that to the ever-increasing pile of empty commitments and undone tasks I have going for me, add to it that I'm looking down the barrel of depression again, and I'm a pretty sad mess right now.

Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy or just keen awareness of my broken mind, but I knew it was coming.  About a month ago, I bought a bottle of St. John's Wort, wrote out a daily regimen that involved sunshine and physical activity, and told myself, "I will warrior on through this and get by.  It will be different this time."

But I've done exactly none of the things on my preventive checklist, my St. John's wort only got consumed regularly for a week and then haphazardly afterwards.  I'm sleeping an average of 6 hrs/night because I want to get up and get Kelsey off with a good breakfast in her belly, yet Christopher is wired like me and stays up way too late leaving me with less than 30 minutes of self-time each day*.

*Except that I've been so checked out lately that one could say I'm getting plenty of self-time while my kid watches umpteen million episodes of Handy Manny each day.  Cognitive dissonance only exacerbates the whole seasonal affective situation and yet I'm just so good at feeding into it.

In a misguided hopeful attempt to steer the fam toward more order and structure, I've recently made up some chore charts, a ticket system for the kids' allowance, and have tried to be more consistent with meal planning.  Each day they have the opportunity to do all of their chores, and if they do, they get a blue ticket, worth $0.50; orange and green tickets are awarded at random and are also worth $0.50 each.  Screen time tickets are given each day {barring any loss of privilege incurred for bad behavior} and can be banked or used within the same day.  The result has been a mixed bag, probably due in large part to my miserable lack of consistency in years past.  Some days it has been a great tool, and others, the cause for sullenness and attitude.  I know that behavior charts and the like do not get the heart of the matter; a person's desires, and am not so naive to think that this will make my kids into the people I wish for them to be in the future.  But, from a practical standpoint, it is helping to get things done more frequently than they were.  We are having lots of good talks to talk about helping each other carry the domestic burdens for the family, and hopefully someday that will take root.  For now, this is helping me keep my head above water {most days, anyway}.

Anyway, so the other night I talked with my mom, after a lengthy and unintended hiatus, and it felt really good to have someone who understood my personal crazy that is this time of year.  She knew about the checklist, the not accomplishing any of the items, because she does it too.

I didn't tell her that sometimes, sometimes the self-talk is so deafeningly loud that it's incredibly hard to tune into the things that are True. the One who is True.  That increasingly I am having to refute so much of what I tell myself, rationalize how those negative feelings are simply Not All There Is to Me.  Those days are so hard, and they sometimes scare me because what if there comes a day when the inner voice is simply too loud, too persuasive?  Of course, and I'm not trying to minimize this here, the worst days often tend to coincide with the beginning of my cycle....like clockwork, and yet I fail to recognize it until the day after the Terrible Horrible Days, when there is an ache in my wombish area, followed by that telltale gush of warmth that announces its arrival.

I didn't tell her all of that, but somehow, I'm pretty sure she knows.

Yesterday I saw this Note to Self on Facebook and knew it was totally for me: