The Bare Minimum
I’ve been wearing the same clothes every day. I mean, different socks, underwear, and T-shirt, but the same Adidas sneakers, men’s Levi’s, black belt, and oatmeal cotton sweater. I usually keep the sweater in my bag to wear at the cafe when it gets cold, and that has worked well for summer with it being cotton and all. The jeans have replaced the every-single-day-of-summer linen pants, and the sneakers are purely out of laziness, i.e. I don’t have to lace them up like I do with my boots. I feel kind of like I’m “saving” my other clothes (for what I don’t know). Or maybe it’s laundry-related. I’ve been strictly rotating through my T-shirt collection and only doing laundry when I run out of underwear or once I’ve worn the last sports bra for the week. I guess I’m saving a little room in the washer by not washing pants? Maybe it keeps them slightly less worn out? Or maybe I just can’t be bothered to wear different pants. I guess I’m just doing the bare minimum to get dressed, much the same way I’m doing the bare minimum at everything else.
I tried to amp up my gym workout a little bit, but paid for it dearly with leg cramps the following night, so today it was back to the usual. I thought about shaving in the shower today, but instantly decided against it and just soaped up and toweled off. I went on Facebook to post a blog and thought about checking messages, but logged off immediately instead.
Maybe part of this attitude is that I’m still recovering from the most recent medication dosage experiment. Having your brain chemistry shifted for 10 days can easily take a toll. But another part of it is that I miss the highs among the lows. Back when I was on Adderall, about 2 years ago now, I was full of energy and there were a lot of highs. I’d get amped up to go thrifting, looking for stuff to sell on Ebay. I’d grab a KIND bar and a Starbucks coffee and not have to eat for the rest of the day. I’d excitedly (and obsessively) log the items into my spreadsheets, pricing them, washing them, coming up with the best search-friendly titles. At night, while watching Netflix with Matt, I’d have to keep my hands busy doing Sudoku or little sewing projects. And in the 2 years since that time, shopping has always been a surefire dopamine rush for me- hitting TJ Maxx with my mom or tooling around Homegoods looking at every single thing. But today Matt suggested we pick up a couple things at Job Lot, our local discount store where I used to love searching endlessly for deals, and I didn’t even get the least bit excited. It was just too overwhelming to think about, and didn’t seem worth the effort. I told him, “I can’t,” which is my code for “I am not well enough to do that.” I feel like I say it a lot. I feel like I’m more passive, less decisive, more dependent on Matt than I’ve ever been. I thought I was supposed to be getting better, but somehow it doesn’t seem that way at all right now.
Matt and I have always had an understanding about my energy: I try to reserve it for the most important things and not waste it on things he could easily do for me. Sometimes we question whether this eats away at my confidence, and I’ll start pitching in a bit more. But within a day or so, our routine resumes and I’m back to doing- you guessed it- the bare minimum. So while it seems like there’s progress in certain areas (going to the cafe, writing, exercising, meditating), there are always missing pieces that I neglect (grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, painting) that inevitably fall on Matt’s shoulders. I rarely drive, take out the trash, or even squeegee the shower when I’m done. And I certainly don’t socialize. I don’t talk to my best friend on the phone. I rarely even visit with my immediate family who live 5 minutes away. So when is all this going to start happening for me? Is this as capable as I’ll ever be? Am I only leaning on Matt because he lets me? Am I just hiding from a world that seems to constantly disappoint me? (Yes to that last one.) But where do I even start? I’m so far from “functioning” and people don’t even realize it. Matt covers for me. He shouldn’t have to, but life isn’t fair, and he does.
In terms of those “more important” tasks that I save my energy for, one of them has been to have a YouTube channel. It’s been 2 years since I first decided I wanted to start a Youtube channel, and this blog is as far as I’ve gotten. There are so many steps involved, so many things I have yet to learn to do. It seems like it’ll never happen. And even then, it’s still not exactly art. It’s still just a guilty pleasure, not the serious work I’m really supposed to be doing. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. And do I continue on, letting Matt pick up my slack, aiming for the loftier goals and ignoring the rest? Or does it start with taking out the trash? Does that get me closer to the bigger things? I really don’t know. Today it all sounds daunting and hopeless. Today I’m ashamed of my inadequacies and self-obsession. I miss making money from Ebay and scoring us deals on Craigslist. I at least felt like I was helping out. Now I’m just drowning in my own self-pity. And I don’t know how to get out.