Hyper Awareness as a Superpower or Albatross?

I’m sitting at home on a Tuesday night, wearing my comfy gray sweatpants and eating some pre-Halloween candy. I’m pretending like Boof reffing a football game is the reason I didn’t go to yoga, even though I cancelled the childcare I had lined up. I’ve wanted to stay in, play legos with Potamus, and watch all the shows that have been sitting on my DVR. With November rapidly approaching I am feeling this prickly feeling inside, which I’m trying to ignore. Part of living with depression and anxiety is treading the very fine line of hyper-awareness and making a mountain out of a molehill.

My anxious mind starts to spin, asking the questions “why am I not going to yoga? Am I depressed? Do I want to sleep more because I’m depressed? Am I angry at work because I’m depressed? It’s only October and I’m not doing things I normally do, am I going to fall into a deep dark depression and become a crazy person who can’t take care of her child and ends up being committed into a hospital, and thus losing my job, and getting a divorce, and living in a box in pioneer square shooting heroin?”

You can see, the spiraling anxious thoughts actually contribute to depression, though this hyper awareness has saved my life before. It’s prompted me to notice when my exhaustion has become depression without falling into the deep hole I used to get into as a teenager. It has prompted me to go on medication less than 24 hours after having homicidal/suicidal thoughts postpartum. It has helped me make the decision to every year go on antidepressants in November and self-wean in the spring. Hyper awareness has been a super power that I have harnessed.

And yet, here I am, snuggled in my house wearing sweats and having no motivation to brave the rainstorm outside. I’m not apathetic, I’m quiet. I’m not depressed, I’m introspective. My hyper awareness is rearing it’s head because in the past these have been warning signs. That fine line between being overly tired from working/parenting and the tiredness from biological brain chemistry tricking me into wanting to sleep for days and days. I wake up every day excited to go to work, despite the dramas that happen by noon. I might leave every day frustrated and in a mood to co-ruminate with coworkers, but every morning I look forward to going back. I feel spontaneous, cancelling childcare and taking a trip to Target to indulge in the new Tay Swift CD and a bucket of legos for Potamus. Rather than isolation, I’m craving connection, but in a quiet autumn way.

I’m sleeping so fucking fantastically that I want to stay sleeping. Not because depression has taken over, but because for three years I haven’t gotten more than two-three hours in a row. Thanks to Potamus wanting to sleep in his own bed (for SEVEN HOURS last night!) and the marijuana that keeps my body from revolting from restful sleep (by having to pee all the time or having midnight anxiety thoughts), I am getting 8+ hours a night. It feels so glorious that it’s no wonder I want to repeat it again and again and again every night because who knows how many night sleeps I’ve lost (and who knows when I might lose them again!). It all makes me wonder, is this how normal people feel when the Fall comes around? The desire to stay inside, eat chilli and drink cider, and gossip with friends around the fire.

I want the sensitivity to my ‘symptoms’ to be used for good, and not as an albatross around my neck. I don’t want to rush headlong into depression because I’ve misread the signs along the way. I don’t want to treat myself as depressed when I’m not. And yet I don’t want to let myself get away with depressed thoughts/behavior that might come up, because I know how to take care of myself. It’s such a fine line of redefining and deciphering what is ‘normal’ behavior and what is a problem. Living with mental illness is such a delicate dance.

Potty Training & Pot Tea training

Potamus had five pee accidents on Friday. I was at my wits end. Because the three weeks of potty training had been going so well. At school he’s seen as a competent potty trained kid, one of their shining stars. “He doesn’t even ask us, he just goes to the bathroom and does it himself, no accidents!” At home it’s a different story. At home, like with everything else, my tiny little (perfectionist?) doesn’t hold his pee in. He screams “no potty! no potty!” when I suggest he should try. We bribe with episodes of Justin Time and chocolate chips and Daddy’s strong voice counting to 10. The poop accidents are to be expected at this stage, I feel, so while they’re quite gross (smearing on the walls while also coloring on the walls with markers?), I don’t get upset. But the pee accidents. Oh how it makes me sad and annoyed all at the same time. Not wanting to feel alone, I found comfort in Uncomfortably Honest’s Account of their No Good, Very Bad Day, which shows the shit show that is parenting sometimes (a lot).

I try to be zen about it. I try to not let it bother me, and remember that even though he’s almost 3, it is his own body. That he was a part of my body, but he is in charge of his own body now. And that he hasn’t mastered it yet. He isn’t bothered by the pee sometimes, and that’s not my fault, it’s just where he is. It’s hard to not want it all to just be better, or easy.

And in a similar vein, about wanting things to be better, or easier, or different, I have stepped outside my box and am trying a new way of managing my ailments (depression, anxiety, sometimes insomnia, sometimes nausea, chronic pain) with marijuana. It feels weird to even write that.

I grew up in a very conservative Christian household. I didn’t drink until I was 21, and I wouldn’t know pot if it was smoked under my nose (or grown in my house, by my brother, in the next room. True story). But yes, I am one of Washington’s newest medical marijuana patients. Which, was a very weird experience to get, I might add. Where I went to this doctor office that seemed to border on super-professional and like it could pack up the office and move locations in 3 hours. And then, with my newly printed (on tamper proof paper I might add), I drove my heiney to the equivalent of a weed farmer’s market. The guy at the front desk assumed I was a kindergarten teacher, despite my microdermals in my wrists, because of how I lacked any sort of knowledge about pot. As in…I had smoked 1 time, at 29, with my sister, and didn’t feel anything.

So far I’ve been surprised at the results. The better sleep. The not having to pee 5 times in one night (who knew, that’s a symptom that can be managed with cannabis?!). A general feeling of relaxation. I’m doing it all as an experiment, to see if I can control or manage my body in a way I haven’t tried before. I don’t know how it’ll go, it took me some instruction by Boof to even figure out how to smoke it (and I want to transition to a vaporizer or drops under the tongue), but thought I’d see if it even helped with my symptoms before I invested in any more paraphernalia.

I don’t know how these two things relate, except they both have the word pot in them. Which is a loose connection at best. I swear I’m not high writing this, which sounds so very high, doesn’t it?