Shocking Opinion: Winter is lousy and dark, cold, and endless. Winter is an insidious bastard that seeps his misery into the firmament of every single day. Now, this may seem rather bleak and as if I’ve given up. Sure, I complain a whole lot, and my complaints are hyperbolic beyond measure. Yet I remain resolute in my dedication to making this winter livable.

Sigh. This post was going to be a boastful, cheerful description of all my little winter projects, like improv and craft night planning, that make my days tolerable. I was going to share my self-care and brag about how well it was working. I was going to add a few clever tips for snapping your brain out of the winter doldrums. But I’m sorry to report that it doesn’t always work that way.

Sometimes nothing really helps and then you feel awful for a while. I’ve studied this in MY brain, and I’ve seen it in so many others…You cannot completely avoid the effects of mental disorders by willpower alone. It’s an impossible goal and one that I imagine has ruined more than a few confident people’s days. Setting yourself up to believe that you must wage brain on brain war to shut down any ‘bad’ feelings is a surefire way to have a complete meltdown. Believe me, I’ve been there. In fact, I’m pretty sure I am there.

Here’s the thing: all the study and all the experience in the world doesn’t prepare me for the little, numerous, subtle ways that my brain can trick me and hurt me. My brain may be a bully, but she’s also quite clever. A goddamn velociraptor in my head. She now me better than anyone, too, and is shameless in using my weaknesses against me.

A sensible person may ask why I discuss my brain as a separate entity than myself, and I agree, it’s strange. It’s a way I’ve found of sorting my thoughts and feeling into reasonable versus unreasonable. It makes me feel agency and a bit of control over at least one portion of my whole. I’m no stranger to psychosis, which I’d most simply describe as a non optional separation of the brain, body and soul…although writing that down, I don’t think that’s a ‘simple’ description at all. Consider this: The brain, the body, and the soul are three musicians in an ensemble. Usually they’re in synch, mostly, on tempo and working together on one defined performance. When fully psychotic, they’re still musicians but there’s no synchronicity, no teamwork. One part is blasting out a solo riff while the other two are reading their sheet music in dismay, not knowing that each is attempting to play a different song from the others. Oh, and sometimes the entire gang stops to contemplate horrific trauma in my past and just fixate, all together, on that cruel memory for a while. It’s a mess.

I’ve been struggling, my dear loyal readers. Those of you who know me, by way of Oakland, Chicago, Sheffield or Salt Lake, for long enough, know that I’ve been in dangerous levels of psychosis, and I’m glad to say that this is NOT a danger scenario*. It’s a Tornado watch, not warning. However, also definitely not a drill. I’m going to be frank: I have literally been on disability for this bullshit and while I’m VERY happy I can work and function without SSDI anymore, work is exhausting and so, so hard. I do not miss waiting on my teeny disability check, and I certainly don’t miss living the way I had been; deep into drinking and smoking a pack a day, hanging out with cokeheads and abusers. However, working full time and managing being an independent adult is a huge task for me, and I don’t always do very well. It’s ironic that I’ve technically been disabled since birth, but it was only really when the psychosis came to visit that I felt truly incapacitated**.

Now, the really funny part about all of this is that I can -describe- what is going on in detail and with fair insight, but that does very little to settle my nerves. Knowing a thing and Handling a thing are two very different skill sets. Do I know what I’d say to my client in a similar state? Sure. But it doesn’t always work on clients, and it sure as hell doesn’t always work on me. Shrug and sigh.

Short story, it hurts and it’s hard and I feel a few kinds of ways about that. Well….glad I avoided that whole ‘complaining’ thing, THAT would have been a grim few paragraphs, eh? Sigh again.

* Psychosis is a spectrum. We’ll discuss THAT can of worms one day when I’m feeling better.

**We did include my limb difference on the disability application and I think it did help to have an irrefutable physical ‘disability’, although it’s weird to think of it that way. Honestly, it has rarely felt disabling at all but I guess that’s what happens when you’re both this way.