After the Storm

Image by Abu-Edrees via Flickr

I don’t think it matters whether you’ve had a hurricane, or just been depressed for a while, but after the storm is over, there’s a lot of picking up to do. Some of the debris is physical (dishes to wash, laundry to fold, clutter to be cleared), and some of it is mental (apologizing, making amends, trying to get people to trust you…). I’m not sure which is worse.

My regular depressive cycles are troublesome enough, since I have almost one week of despondency, and then a week of sheer coma-like inactivity. Every month! But when I have a particularly bad spell, like this most recent one, where I’m really bad when I’m “scheduled” to be good, it’s even worse.

It continues to amaze me how bad things can get when I’m depressed, and how incredibly difficult it is to make a lot of headway when I’m feeling better. After all, no matter how bad I’m feeling, I still manage to wear clothes and eat something, so the dishes and laundry just keep piling up, regardless of how I’m feeling. (Note to self: Investigate eating off paper plates in the nude!) And I don’t like to do dishes even when I’m feeling good, so you can imagine how bad it is. Frankly, I’m still wading through a slough of housework that’s months old. It really does make the phrase “two steps forward, one step back” come vividly to life, in 3-D (with Smell-O-Rama!) Except there are definitely some months where things are “two steps forward, two steps back,” and this month is more like “coming from a few steps back, will she ever make it forward?”

I’d just love a maid for two weeks a month! Any takers?

Housework is not easy at the best of times, but if I can make it through the next couple of weeks, I’ll be way ahead of the game.