A Hannukah Miracle: A Glimpse of Mental Health Stability

Hello Friends.

Thank you for being so patient. With me. With my antics. With my depression. With my very grown-up tendencies to wear a panda snuggie and slippers to a movie theatre. I am a proud Hufflepuff, suck it Gryffindor.

As we plug along in the festival of “Keep the Drapes Far from the Menorah!!” some Jews reflect on past miracles. I’d much rather reflect on present ones and let others rehash tales of bygone sieges.

My current miracle is that I feel well. Not 100%, but maybe like… 75-80%. I’ve been coasting and bumping along between 20-40% for the past months and 10% since the fiasco at work two weeks ago. So 75% is passing like a boss.  There are several contributing factors so I will document them because maybe they will help bring me back to this when I’m back at 10%.

Physical Activities

By far, the most successful thing that’s made me feel better overall has been increasing the amount of physical activity. However, this is also probably the most difficult thing for me to do. I have so many mental obstacles before I actually do something; I think that’s part of the appeal of derby. There are established times for me to show up and that’s all I have to do. At practice on Friday I skated 27 laps as one of the first things I did back on skates. But it was so worth it to receive praise from everyone afterward! I freaking love praise. It’s the shit.

My bike is operational again (yay!) so I tried biking to work. Mostly successful! I wore my pajamas over my skinnyjeans-which was probably not a great decision since the Midget Mafia (those responsible for all bike-related bruises in the shin area) tore them up. But they kept my legs warm-ish. I wore some leather work-gloves and a bandana under my helmet. It was still 25 degrees so I was pretty cold. But I biked to work and back. Next time: tights under not skinnyjeans.

On Saturday I texted a work acquaintance to see if she’d like to go ice-skating with me. She said no but would I like to go for a short hike instead. I know the law of improv is “Yes, and…” but sometimes the law of making someone struggling with making friends is “No, but let’s do this instead.” The thing I was most proud about this hike is that it was completely dark before we got back to the road and I didn’t have a panic attack. Yay! Then she made soba soup and we bemoaned the lack of dim sum in this state. Seriously, if you live in a place that has dim sum, go eat some for me. Oh damnit now I’m hungry.

Side note: I have this co-worker who I eat lunch with almost every day. She has this really amazing knack of making me hungry while I’m eating. Like, I have a perfectly lovely meal in front of me. I’m enjoying it immensely. And then she tells me about something fondu-ed in cheese or schnitzeled and I’m more hungry that I was when I started. It’s impressive.

Ok…where was I. Oh yes. I miss food I don’t have to cook.

After soup I went home and got ready for the first (that I’d heard about) DJ’d party in TLoTH. There is a little bar/co-op deal with beers that are stronger than they ought to be. I started going there more often during my play because a cast-mate and I usually grabbed drinks after rehearsals. But they entered into the big-leagues this weekend by actually locating and booking a real DJ! Ok, so it was a 19-year-old kid with rich parents, but honestly I didn’t care. He was pretty decent. And shockingly... people danced! Initially there was just me and some other women on the floor. Then this one really charismatic dude broke it down and BAM! Dance floor full.

Everyone is always more attractive when they dance (even badly) but I have to pause for a moment and acknowledge that there was a man who looked EXACTLY like Captain America. He had the chiseled Chris Evans face with the leather jacket. I really wanted to go over to him and say “I’m team Cap, 100%” but finally decided that would be too creepy so I didn’t. On another bright side, I now know who my co-workers are dating (spoiler alert, it’s not quite each other). I love dancing and someone made sure I drank beer so I danced without inhibitions. Also, I wore my new(ish) corset because I don’t wear it enough and I was feelin’ it on Saturday. It was remarkably comfortable to dance in! Now I remember that I bought it for back support, not just to be sexy. But being sexier is an added bonus. Contemplating wearing it to work, loosely tied.

Speaking of backs…

Medical

I saw a chiropractor today. Turns out the chiro I’d seen before was a fru-fru kind of chiro and this lady was all business. She cracked me a lot. Except my hips. My hips are crooked and stubborn. Though she made me remember that fru-fru-chiro once replaced my femur in my hip socket because it had been chillin’ outside of the socket for a while. Who knows how long. WHY BODY? A friend recently likened my body to the city of Kuwait: beautiful on the outside but the infrastructure sucks.

Relationship

Without going into the content, PartnerPenguin and I have been having a series of remarkably difficult conversations. I super applaud and love him for allowing himself moments of complete honesty and true vulnerability. In my opinion, there is nothing more sexy than a man I love being honest emotionally with me. We have an excellent relationship, but the distance has shown light into some of the holes and they are rather larger than I originally thought. That in and of itself it painful to acknowledge, but mending the holes is more painful. But that’s why we’re so creative. Feeling optimistic and grounded about my relationship is a major contributor to my increased mental health.

Work

I have been inventing a new thing at work. I have been working with a new team for this project. The scientists on this team are letting me pretty creative with how we approach the problem. I got to sew at work. The thing I sewed didn’t work, but that’s OK! It was just an idea. But then I had a couple more ideas. Combined with the ideas of other team members, we are working towards a solution.

Ironically, I’m doing mechanical engineering. Lol. Geologists, what will you come up with next.

Of everything I’ve done at the TLoTH, I hope this eventually comes out to the world at large. If it works, it will become scaled industrially and that would be hella cool if my name was on a manufacturing procedure. It’s also OK if it doesn’t, it’s been a fun project.

In other work news: I used our X-Ray machine so much I burnt out the tube. This happens in science.

Social

I think one of the proudest thing I did this week was I had guests over for Light Candelabra Festival. Due to some hilarious miscommunication, the original friend who asked me to make latkes never showed up on Sunday. But I was really glad I’d invited the two friend-moms that I had. I felt for one of the few time in this town that I could let go if I needed to. I clearly communicated that I was not feeling well mental health-wise (this was hours after the difficult discussion with ParterPenguin) and they respected it. We talked about it, in a productive manner. I felt like they cared and I mattered. It was beautiful.

Monday was also latke night, with the friend who originally requested it. She’s pretty awesome and radically accepting too.

FRY POTATOES AND EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ALL AROUND!!

The following were brought to you by the letter hey. The friendliest, but most shy of all letters because it’s usually silent but says “ha” when it decides to talk.

So this exists: 

And so does this: