Hey, everyone. This is Lazarus, once again. As I write this, I’m sitting on my apartment’s balcony space so that I can get a bit of fresh air. At Emerson’s suggestion, I took today largely away from the Internet to clear my head, but it seems to have made me sadder, albeit less anxious. I’ve spent a great portion of today deep in my head strategizing and things, but I feel disconnected from the world in a not so pleasant way, sort of like I’m lost in space and time. So if I am going to go all in on disconnecting, I think I need to make a better plan so that it doesn’t make me feel worse and adrift. So now I’m drafting a blog post in my notes app that I will post when I come back online again.
I shuffled through a deck of prompts that Emerson has, and found one that is going to be a doozy to contemplate and write about, but I think ought to be addressed head on anyway. It goes a bit like this: “Wonderland: You always have your imagination. What is something that you want to achieve, but probably never will?” I know I’m probably not quoting the prompt verbatim, as usual, but it gets the point across, I think. I’m also probably going to cry as I write this, in all honesty.
I would love to be abled, or at least accommodated to such an extent that I could function enough that I could do a great deal more. I know that’s probably the remainder of my hyper independence talking, but I grieve what I used to be able to do every day. I hold my need for rest and greater peace and my fervent wishes for greater independence, to contribute more, to push past what is holding me back, and to build bigger and greater things simultaneously and I try every day to let the peace and rest win because I know that ultimately that is the only way I will be able to contribute more.
I can’t do anything meaningful if I’m running on fumes and pushing myself to the point where I’m very nearly dead. It’s a strange paradox that I tend to ignore when I’m anxious, angry, and/or craving movement and release. I can only really see the nuance and appreciate the paradoxical nature of healing and the true way forward when I’m calm and able to recharge myself. But still, I grieve. I miss what I was able to do before illnesses, trauma, and injuries took all of my independence away from me, however unhealthy and against true human nature it actually was.
I keep having to remind myself through all of this that my rest and the creative work I’m doing is still an action, that even though it looks like I am doing nothing, it’s still an action, it’s still a choice. I’m still doing something.
Even when I’m doing research, writing, or art from bed or sitting down, I’m still doing something. I’m never doing nothing. Reframing my perspective around rest, art, and leisure from doing nothing to doing something has helped improve my quality of life and mental health a great deal.
And when I keep that perspective in mind, it has helped me relax a great deal more and make rest and leisure a much easier and less anxiety inducing choice to make, as I often have to fight my anxiety, which paralyzes me when it comes time to rest because I feel as though I have done nothing all day even when that simply isn’t true. I’m resting, an action. I’m making art, an action. I’m watching TV, an action. I’m talking to my partners and friends, an action. I am cuddling my cats, an action. I’m blogging, an action. I’m doing medical research, an action. When I think about my behavior that way, it becomes far less paralyzing to do…anything because in my mind, all actions start to carry equal weight, no matter what they are, because they all carry an element of conscious choice and autonomy, and none of them are nothing.
They may have different impacts and implications on the people and situations around me, and I can change my behavior accordingly based on what I observe, but none of it is meaningless. It also does wonders for my perfectionism when I keep that in mind, which is also rooted in anxiety. I just need to work on keeping that in mind…
Speaking of research, I may have made a breakthrough last night. I have been experiencing a great deal of numbness in my right hand and on the sides of my face particularly the right side, as well as fatigue, which drinking saltwater or eating salty food almost immediately resolves. I’ve also had shitty circulation for most of my life. So I started wondering due to a longtime suspicion that I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or POTS, that my blood pressure might be low running low regardless of how my body is positioned due to severe and prolonged stress and heart damage.
So I did a bit of research last night that tentatively confirms that theory. It also gave me a new theory that my blood pressure dipping especially low in the mid to late afternoons into the nighttime is causing severe fatigue that’s gotten worse as the temperature has started falling as winter approaches. Time for new experiments!
That being said, the vitamin B is still massively improving my mental health at a baseline, and likely keeping my blood pressure at a lower level than it would be normally since it is normalizing my mental health and keeping me more stable than I would be without it. So I wonder if I need to start making feta cheese a staple of my diet like I did when I was younger. Feta is about the saltiest thing known to man, second only to a rock of salt itself or possibly brine. I love feta cheese. So let this be a public service announcement to any suitors or partners looking to win my heart or make our relationship even better – load me up with that good shit. It’s my favorite, and it may literally improve my health in the process 💛
Yay for doing health shit myself! I think that’s enough pondering the mysteries of the universe or at least the human body for the day. Stay tuned for more magic, y’all. I’ll be around.
Your (not salty enough) sorcerer, Lazarus