I was really doing good, all thanks to me being on the upswing of my “issues”. I’ve been getting out of the house for a few hours at least two days a week, taking my medication and really keeping busy…

Until this past week when a cold front hit.

Aaaanndd…..SLUMP.

There is nothing worse for a person with depression than bad weather.

I know there are people who suffer from depression and not seasonal depression as well but I’ve never met them.

I had been dealing with the cold by going out in quick spurts to feed the birds and make sure the stray cat (Mr. Darcy) had a warm place to sleep. Going outdoors is my self-therapy I have discovered over the past few months (though I’m sure I’ve also sort of known that). Every time I felt overwhelmed I would go for a walk with the dog or just in the woods around the house.

I even put out some seeds and nuts and berries for the other animals that have seemed to congregate around the house. I’m sure this is completely against what you’re supposed to do but I figure if it’s already out for the birds then the possum that sleeps under the porch should be fine. I’m not sure if it’s a boy or a girl.

I just know that she’s (because I just have that feeling it’s a her ya’ know) gotten so used to seeing me come out that the last time I walked out and caught her eating Mr. Darcy’s cat food (while he watched from a cozy spot on the chair just above the food bowl), I’m pretty sure she rolled her eyes at me.

Like, “Oh you again.”

I told her that she could’ve at least waited until I was gone before pigging out on Meow Mix, to which she begrudging shuffled back under the porch.

I like her. She makes me happy.

Which isn’t easy to do in the winter when the days aren’t just cold but dark and often rainy. To me if it’s going to be this cold it should just fucking snow so there’s at least something to do.

Then I remember a few years ago when it snowed for almost a month. Not blizzard like in any way but it was definitely the longest I can remember seeing snow built up on the sides of the roads. It would start to melt and then snow again. A normal winter for a place like Maine or somewhere but in Kentucky it was kind of a nightmare.

Southerners do really dumb stuff in the snow. Like shouting in restaurants about how “this is proof of no such thing as that global warmin’ stuff”, and trying to climb the snow mountains in the Walmart parking lots in poorly maintained trucks. It’s entertaining for short amounts of time I admit but it becomes annoying almost getting sideswiped by a jacked up Ford sliding across the grocery parking lot every time you need milk.

A weekend snow or maybe, at most, a week and that’s all anyone around here needs. If you need more than that move farther from the equator.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy being lazy. Of course I do. Let’s be really honest here, I’m pretty sure almost everyone does. But we live in a world that makes constant productivity feel necessary and admitting to being unproductive feels a lot like a criminal act.

It’s also terrifying to have a really good upswing thrown off by something as simple as the weather, especially as a person overcoming a pretty intensely depressive episode. It’s scary because it feels like you’re almost out of the hole you buried yourself in but suddenly you start slipping.

I’m going to start the remodel on the laundry room next week so fingers crossed this gets me back on course.

It’s January and I’m already thinking about spring. My seed catalogs are coming in the mail and I’m planning out where things will be planted as well as what kind of chickens I want and what I want to name them. Loretta Hen, a chicken for every member of the Fellowship of the Ring, or something more violent. Chickens are small dinosaurs after all. 

I don’t know if I should get four more Orpingtons and rename them the Golden Girls or if that would be disrespectful to the original Golden Girls, our first set of chickens.

Hen Solo, otherwise known as the fifth Golden Girl, was a favorite of mine. She refused to sleep in the coop with the others and instead roosted next to the back door. It didn’t matter what we did.  She even tried several times to come inside. She often pecked  and scratched your toes until  she was  picked up and petted. 

I love thinking about chickens, but also thinking about my chickens makes me really sad because I miss my chickens. My tiny fluffy velociraptors. 

From what we could tell she was picked up by a hawk and carried off. There were feathers that lead into the woods but no signs of a body or mess. One of the downsides to living in the woods is having to learn how to live with the woods. 

We may be adding an outdoor farm dog or a rooster for safety to this springs mix. Stay tuned…

As usual my plans are going 5 million directions. I want chickens, a garden, to remodel the house, to maintain this blog, to get healthier mentally and physically, get my family recycling, I want to make time for my fiction writing, as well as a hundred other things that I’m keeping kinda personal for now.

What’s different this year is that I’m forcing myself to map everything out in a more realistic way. I also have about fifteen planners and calendars around the house.

Since it’s cold here now I’m focusing on indoor activities first.

I’ll be honest, when it comes to the remodeling I’m pretty far behind. When we moved here I was finishing up college and the kids were still in that messy play stage. The trailer (I think she needs a name, don’t you) is not in the best of conditions. It wasn’t when we bought it but it wasn’t easy to tell. Trailers aren’t usually made of the best materials to begin with and it doesn’t take much living to wear them out.

I had big ideas on what we could do when we first looked at it but life happened and depression and anxiety and agoraphobia and (TaDa!) here we are!

To get myself to actually accomplish this step on my list of “How To Accomplish Things When You Have Paralyzing Anxiety” I’ve broken it down into steps. Instead of thinking about the entire house, getting overwhelmed and anxious, then depressed and thus giving up entirely before even getting started, I’m focusing on one room at a time.

For now it’s the laundry room. After that I can think about the kitchen. But I’m not letting myself plan the living room until then. 

Planning is so much more fun for me than the actual doing. 

Does that mean I’m lazy?

Probably. 

I’m also putting myself on a work schedule that allows time for walks with the dog which I’ve found are good at getting ideas flowing for writing, not to mention good for that whole physical thing too. 

I’m also medicated which is different than last year. Baby steps.

*It should be noted that even with fifteen planners and calendars I wrote down the wrong date for the kids doctors appointment on all EVERY SINGLE ONE and missed the appointment.

*Cue the chorus to Tubthumping by Chumbawamba 

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

 One of my new year’s resolutions was to start a blog. It’s not a very interesting beginning is it?

It doesn’t pull you in the way some people do with promises to show you how to have a better life” because if I can you can too!” . 

No, this isn’t that kind of “lifestyle blog”.

I can’t teach you how to do anything in order to make money and be a stay at home parent at the same time. I can’t teach you how to blog. 

I can’t make any promises to anyone right now. 

Promises and wisdom are things that people who’ve made it to the other side of some pit, some dark tunnel,or some great lessons have to offer.

I’m not there. Yet.

My sister has been telling me for years that I should start a blog. I really couldn’t understand why. I thought that it was just something that younger, more confident, more accomplished sisters say to their older, tireder, less confident sisters to make them feel hopeful. 

I’ve had others, suggest that I start blogging after some of my anxiety driven facebook rants (that I often regret making, and then don’t, and then do again). Of course I sometimes wonder if they think I should blog because I managed a rant without making a grammatical/spelling/nonsensical error every other line, or if they just want me  to take my crazy self somewhere else. 

Maybe both. Maybe neither. 

Maybe I’m just an overly anxious person who overthinks everything until I’m a total depressed mess that someone has to begrudgingly clean up off the floor. 

Thus we have come to the reason I am finally starting the blog that people told me I should start for their own unknown reasons. 

I have noticed an influx of anxious people lately. Every day at least five friends share an article or meme regarding anxiety. Though it’s usually this so called high functioning type. Evidently everyone I know is anxious but really damn good at hiding it. 

I’m jealous. 

Like really fucking jealous.

Oh sure, I “like” or “love” or “lol” your posts. I wonder if you see this as a “hey, me too, you had no idea right?” 

Or, I wonder if you, like some close family members, have noticed that I’m not really around much anymore. I’m not texting or calling or anything anymore.

That I often can’t make full sentences in public. That I look anywhere but at you, not because I hate you, but because I literally CAN’T talk right now. 

Like, I’m having a panic attack because I’m afraid you’re going to speak to me and the thought of what I’m going to say is causing the attack which is getting worse because I know that I’m having one and I also know that there is no way that I can run out of this building because Walmart has those stupid gates up now that yell at you like a criminal for trying to escape and damn it I’m almost done getting groceries which I was so proud of myself for doing this week…

So I decided to write about it. 

I decided to write about what it’s like to not have high functioning anxiety, but to have low to no functioning anxiety. 

About how I reached the point where I often couldn’t leave my own yard, my own house, or even make necessary phone calls. 

Because maybe someone else is scrolling through funny memes about being a person who secretly has anxiety, and thinking that they wish they had those super cool ninja secrets to keeping anxiety on the DL. 

But they don’t. Because they’re having a panic attack about thinking about leaving their bedroom. They’re even way over thinking about what response to click on because someone might take it the wrong way and think something…just something awful. (I’m going to stop myself there because the rabbit hole to what I think people think about me is deep, dark and too scary for a first post)

My resolutions were to get better mentally, to hike more, and to make a more sustainable life for me and my family. All of which I have decided to blog about here. 

The blog is part of getting better mentally. Writing has always been my go to outlet. But I have seemingly punished myself by hiding my writing away because my anxiety reached an agoraphobic level. I have notebooks filled with stories, both fiction and non, hidden away because I was too scared to put it out there. 

My greatest fear is what others think. I hate it. I want to be one of those “Fuck it!” people. I don’t WANT to care what others think.

 But I do, and it has caused a ridiculous amount of anxiety and depression. 

So if you’re interested in one weird, nerdy, crazy woman’s journey through depression and anxiety, then maybe this blog is for you. 

I should warn you though.

 I say fuck.  A lot. 

I’m a planner. I love to plan things. I have notebooks filled with lists of the way I want my days, months, and even years to go. All the things I want to accomplish. 

The bitter truth however is that almost the only thing ever accomplished is the large stack of notebooks themselves. 

My plans have almost never worked out the way I wanted them to. At some point this series of disappointments got the better of me and led me to be the kind of person who gives up quite easily. The only thing it seems I haven’t given up on is the lists I make regarding the things I want to do. 

When we moved here, to this small corner of the woods, my husband and I were extremely stressed and felt much older than two people in their late 20’s. We had no idea what we really wanted anymore. All of our plans had fallen apart. We’d had a baby young, gotten married young, and purchased a 3-bed 2-bath brick house in a small suburb, way too young. 

Our plan had been to fix the house, resell, and use the profit we made to build our dream off-the-grid (as much as we could comfortably stand) home. It seemed like a relatively easy task (hahahaha). The house had been built in the mid 60’s, and was well under the budget we had assumed we had through our completely miscalculated math, as well as some of those mortgage calculators on the realty sites. It appeared well maintained and seemed to only need up to date decor and paint.

The next few steps in the process are, in my memory, a blur. As if by going to just look at the house we had gotten on to a roller coaster. When we made an offer we topped the first hill and…away we went.

It passed it’s home inspection with flying colors. 

We qualified for some really crazy amazing first time home buyers loan. 

My husband was 24 and I was 21. Our daughter was one and a half.

We realized all too late that the house payment itself was more than we’d been prepared for. There were all sorts of things added in that I’d never heard of. Words that sounded like tie breakers in a champion spelling bee. People in business suits smiled and passed us pens. 

We were idiots. We should have said no and ran like hell. But we just looked at each other, pale and nauseous, stupidly signing away like automatons. 

I think deep down we both knew that we’d just shit on all our “plans”. 

After all a big part of the plan was me at home raising our daughter, fixing up the house, finishing up my college degree, which meant we needed to be able to make it on one paycheck. 

We were only in the house a few months when I discovered that I was pregnant with our second child. During the months of my second pregnancy the house began to show its age. There had been no repairs, or changes to the house other than carpet and paint since it had been built in the 60’s, and now things were falling apart in bits and pieces almost weekly. 

I compare the stress I felt at this time in my life to throwing a child into the deep end of the pool in order to “teach” them to swim. All I could do was keep my head above water, but it was an exhausting process only fueled by the fear of what would happen when I could no longer physically (and mentally) do so. 

We spent almost eight years in that house and it never felt like home. Not only was the stress of the upkeep and mortgage enough to keep us awake at night but as two kids who’d spent the majority of their lives in the country, we never adjusted to street lights and constant noise. Cars, semis from the nearby highway, and a variety of sirens were the background soundtrack that played at all hours. 

We didn’t give up though. We put a lot of work into that house. We redid the floors and repainted every room. Tore down rotted Sheetrock and replaced it. Re bricked, added a deck, redid the piping under the house, remodeled the kitchen and dining room. Remodeled the living room. What was supposed to be simple cosmetics that I could do alone was really in depth construction work my husband had to do after work while I tried to help in the little ways I could, which was mostly keeping small hands and fingers off of tools.

 It never felt like ours. 

While many of our friends were graduating college, getting married, and beginning to think about having kids, my husband and I were pouring blood, sweat, tears, and every extra penny into a small brick house on a (slightly) quiet street in town. On the outside it must have looked like we were doing really well for ourselves. But on the inside all we ever talked about was getting out of that damn house. 

We jumped at the chance to move back into the woods. Even though we were moving from a cute brick home in the suburbs to an aging mobile home in the middle of nowhere, the reverse of the ideal American Dream, we knew it was the right thing to do. We wanted the woods, I wanted chickens, and the kids needed a place where they could run and yell and not be watched by unknown neighbors. 

*It should be noted that for all our trials and tribulations on that house, that brick ranch American Dream, we only profited a grand total of $1,100. 

It was not an easy adjustment. From a family of four in a house with large rooms to a mobile home where everything was adjusted to fit just right into a 16 by 80 rectangle, we had to do a lot of rethinking. For starters, there was no way all of our things would fit. One of the kids bedrooms was the size of the laundry room in the old house, and there was no attic, only a rundown storage building with no door. We quickly discovered that any ideas we may or may not have had about going the tiny house path (okay, it was just me) were quickly squashed like fat dog ticks.

But we had chickens. We had trees. A tree house, and a more peaceful quiet than I could’ve hoped for. The night sky was clearer than we’d seen in a long time. 

The first few years here were tough. We all, all four of us the kids included, went through a lot of personal things. Health, both mental and physical, was not in good standing for my husband and I, and our stress had carried over to the kids. The guilt of which compounded the issue, and all of it was multiplied by lack of health insurance.

Our new home was also falling apart in ways that felt like some deja vu nightmare. We seemed to be constantly finding things that we hadn’t noticed before, and with no profit from the old house, not everything could be fixed. I was trying to finish my last year of school as quickly as possible in order to help, which is probably a contributing factor to my current nervous issues. 

I would like to say that the last two years were complete upswings. I would like to be more Sunshine Sally than Debbie Downer. I would looove to tell you how we fixed everything and then sell you some $300 two week course on how you too can be happy, healthy, environmentally sustainable and financially stable. But this isn’t that. 

My chickens were murdered. We had to kill an angry raccoon who had literally ripped them open for eggs. Our gardens have been mostly hit or miss. Our stresses are fewer, thanks mostly to medication, but we’re still fixing and building. We’re still trying.

We’ll get more chickens soon and I’ll keep writing. I’m doing every I can to check things off those lists.