Magenta in the Dark Woods

When I don’t write… pressure and anxiety build up quickly. I get this sense of impostor syndrome that translates across every aspect of my life.

Sitting down to put thoughts to words helps me connect the dots and make meaning of the patterns that reveal themselves to me across days, weeks, months, and years.

I live at the intersection between contrasting ideas.

Today, the patterns I’m swimming between are magenta and green… They’re the contrast between small talk and the depth of meaning behind the phrase “thank you for inviting me into your beautiful home,” and the neurological impact of sugar in contrast with the potential benefits of an anti-inflammatory diet. They’re also dreaming, the color of the word “dreamer” in different peoples’ minds, and the homeless person I’ve been gifting fish to in Stardew Valley.

(Side note: Love this concept? Here’s a post where I talk a lot more about contrasting ideas… It’ll open in a new tab if you click, so you an keep reading here too.)

I’ve been feeling a little lost and overwhelmed all my life? this past year since a medication that was supposed to essentially cure my chronic lung disease (for as long as I continued to take it) did that, but also sort of ate my brain and zombified my identity.

I feel tired. Like depleted tired.
Shaking hands, blurry vision, and almost no ability to focus…

Tired like my mind and body are glitching, and months of rest and reducing stimulation haven’t been enough to revive me.

Tired like I get exhausted just trying to be present in the moment… like my attention span is gone and I’m not sure how to get it back.

A full recovery feels impossible, but part of me knows how to heal…

Beneath it all, there is this weary pulse of “yes, I do know… Rest, rest, rest… rest and let it be enough. No more. Say no to more. Not forever, just for a while. Rest, rest, rest.”

(Need more of that? Here’s another post all about learning to be more gentle with myself. It’ll open in a new tab so you can keep reading here, too.)

I miss my attention span.
I miss feeling strong and grounded.
I miss my hands not shaking and my body not feeling like I’m about to pass out all the time.
I miss not seeing the world around me through a lens littered with black and white specks and the sound like when someone gets hit with a grenade in a first-person-shooter video game.

(And wow do I miss not being flat broke all the time, but I can’t even think about that right now.)

I’m tired now… But I remember feeling passionately and urgently not so long ago.

I remember feeling desperate for hugs all the time.
I felt like a raw, open, oozing wound.

(Relatable? Read more about that here. And also about recovering from that here.)

Back then, everything was urgent and I couldn’t stop myself from taking action.

It all felt so important, so necessary.

Now, I’m afraid I couldn’t feel a hug if I got one.

In fact, I think I’ve been given quite a few lately, and I feel like somehow I wasn’t home when they were delivered.

Nothing feels particularly important and whatever thinks it is urgent simply isn’t urgent enough to make my eyes focus or my brain process any faster, so even the urgent has to wait.

It’s been like this for a while now.

My reality is overwhelming and fragmented pieces are all that make it from the tangible world into my mind. My senses feel unbearably overwhelmed. Not like a raw wound anymore, just like the scream of a grey-screened television in the early 2000’s when the cable wasn’t working properly.

(Last side-note: If you want to know more, I wrote about coping with resentment and feeling the loss of my identity here.)

It’s weird to say, but I’m grateful for the physical signs of the damage the medication did.

It’s been a dark few months like this in my head… and I am so glad to have some physical reminder that I’m not simply insane or imagining it all.

About 3 months ago, I quit taking the drug that I believe caused most of this weirdness.

My hair was falling out and I still have a patch of fuzz in my hairline, a physical piece of proof reminding me of how bad it really was. Sometimes the thin patch is a frustration that makes me want to scream or cry, but most of the time it is my companion lately. Trying to style my hair almost always involves holding back some tears

… Or giving myself a break and simply letting them fall.

The thin patch is a concrete reminder that I’ve been through something intense, that the extreme fatigue, overwhelm, and sensitivity I’m feeling are valid and that it makes sense to feel the way I feel. It’s a reminder that I’m in a period of recovery and to be kind to myself… and seeing it slowly fill in is reassurance that I won’t be like this forever… a reminder that my mind and body are healing.

Gently, glimmers have been coming back to me, and I’ve made a point to invite them to linger and to return with friends.

It might sound tempting to hold onto hope and glimmers of happiness with all my might, but honestly I haven’t had the energy to cling to them. I’m just grateful they’ve arrived. I have this picture in my mind of an emaciated, balding old woman opening the door to accept a heavy caserole dish from a well-meaning neighbor. I take it, trying not to buckle under the weight, and say a gracious thank you before I make the exhausting journey to the kitchen counter.

This experience has changed the way I approach work, the way I judge my financial wellness and income goals, the way I present myself to people (both strangers and lifelong relationships)…

I have been told again and again that I am someone with whom there is “always something.”

This hurts to think about and it’s scary to share, but it helps to write it, too.
I’ve heard from parents, siblings, employers, and lovers, always in a tone of exasperation, that there is “always something” with me… and it’s something I’ve felt ashamed of and am constantly trying to change… It’s a scarlet letter I can’t take off, and a quality I’ve punished myself for over and over again…

But lately, I haven’t had the capacity to feel much of the usual shame I tend to carry around.

I haven’t had the capacity for much of anything… Even if I have gone through the motions, it’s just been a state of getting through the day. I haven’t felt like a person at all, I’ve just been tired, overwhelmed, a stumbling, breathing short-circuit.

And without the shame as a primary color of the lens I experience life through, other things have come to light instead.

Part of me wanted (wants?) to just give up… to exit life, stage left, goodbye, the end.

And honestly, a couple weeks ago, no part of me wanted to have to get through this time…

No part of me didn’t want to give up, you know?

Some of the giving up parts were just louder than others, and some tiny little piece of me came up with the audacity and the courage to have the tiniest little spark of a very big, very scary question: what if there’s something else after this, though?

I wasn’t thrilled about that spark showing up and trying to keep me going.

I wanted to sleep.

I wanted to drown.

I was so sick of fighting physical and mental illnesses that don’t actually ever go away. I was also sick of the complications, the medications, the complications that come from the medications, and so very, very sick of being a guinea pig for new treatments and therapies and the pleathura of “somethings” that come with them.

And that’s when it hit me:

Chronic illness means an illness that comes and goes, that there are flare-ups, that it is ever-present in some way or another. It means that even when something is resolved, something else will generally come up. There will always be something!
And I have more than one chronic illness.

So, no wonder everyone says there’s always something with me.

And I don’t mean that in a way that should induce pity or in a way that implies I’m giving up doing my best or that I shouldn’t have to put intention and effort into my life. Far from it. I’m happy to rise to the occassion.

I simply mean that it’s a fact of life that there will likely always be something with me, and in acknowledging it, I’m agreeing to work with it instead of constantly feeling shamed by it and trying to hide it.

Hiding is exhausting. And it doesn’t help me any. It might make other people a little more comfortable, but it’s nothing but a labor and a burden on me, you know?

There is always something with me.

And there honestly always will be.

In part because I was born with a genetic disease of the pancreas that affects my lungs and stomach.

In part because my little forming brain was damaged by abuse and neglect that I will always be working with, healing, and doing my best to rewrite.

So yes there’s always something with me…

But those aren’t the only reasons.

There’s also always something with me because I am paying attention.

I am a living, breathing human being who is paying attention the best that she can, and that means there will always be something — something I notice, something I love, something that’s changing, something new, something old re-imagined, something I wish I could do more about, something I heard, something I learned, something I ached over, something I delight in, something I want to try. Always something.

When I think about that… I wouldn’t trust anyone who there wasn’t generally something with. Would you?

And that’s how, in the exhaustion and exasperation of yet another dark wood I found myself lost in, I shed the shame of what being a human being means to me.

There is always something with me… and I finally feel ready to honor that commitment.

Instead of fighting always something, I’m gently, slowly, curiously, and courageously finding ways to allow it to work with and for me.

My capacity feels pretty severely diminished right now; I can only do so much and it is so much less than I was able to do two years ago… but most of the limitation is temporary, I think… and the rest is part of the natural process of aging and growing as a person, I believe.

Let’s talk about the magenta and green…

I learned recently that the color magenta is complimentary to green and that, in nature, the contrast between the green of the plant and the pink of the flower helps pollinators to locate the flowers and keep that circle of life flowing…

Photographers can use magenta to make the green in a photograph look especially beautiful. Graphic designers can use magenta and green together to create something eye-catching and uplifting…

And while it’s hard to say freezing cold fingers, finicky blood sugar, and extreme sensory sensitivity and the disrupted emotional regulation that comes with it all are the magenta to my green, I would like to believe that there are things it will teach me that can become as powerful to me as magenta is to nature and visual artists…

There are things I appreciate more now than I ever could have before…

Things like being invited into a very warm, decluttered, intentionally anti-inflamatory and low-sensory home…

Animals. The promise of a furry friend in the near future…

Silence. (Oh, how I love silence. I never knew I could love it so much.)

Dreamers… and the different ways a single mind can see the same thing — and the miracle of finding others who see something the same way you do at the same time as you see it that way.

Belonging. To myself, in a home, to a community, with a person… Any sense of belonging or identity; it’s so precious, and I never knew that as well as I know now that I’ve experienced the feeling of believing it has gone from my life entirely.

There’s still a lot of recovering left to do…

And I can’t honestly say if I expect to ever feel truly recovered or not. I think there is a version of me that has recently died and a new version of me that has to recognize and experience the grief before she can fully come to light. That’s a conversation for another day, I suppose.

I really have no idea what is next, but I imagine it is a long journey and I am weary just leaving — so it’ll be important to rest, be mindful of what I add to my pack along the way, and to make sure I bring enough of the snacks and medications I’ll need along the way. Glimmers, fireside conversations, quiet time, a writing practice, professional support, sisters, and my heart, however bruised and weary it may feel.

I can’t think about rebuilding right now… but I can close my eyes and I can take a slow breath. And right this minute, that’s enough.

Maybe tomorrow I will start reducing the sugar in my diet and remove social media apps from my phone to start bringing back my attention span and making regulating emotions a little bit easier.

We’ll see.

But for now, a slow breath.

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you find healing of your own, in your own way and time. Don’t be scared to rest or to look very poor while doing it — and if you can’t help that, come say hello. We can belong in the mess together, if you like. I’m not afraid of the dark.