Two things can be true at the same time: I am doing well, and I am very depressed. It felt really good to admit that today and say it out loud. I have made a lot of progress in the last few weeks, even though it doesn’t feel like that in my day to day. Last night I slept the best I have in many weeks. I look forward to more sleep like that tonight, hopefully. Last night I had this crazy dream that I was dating this guy, I think his name was Dillion Francis. I just Googled him and I am not sure that I know who that is. I wish I could remember more details of the dream. It was pretty intricate and yet my recall fails me.

I woke up in good spirits, the first time in, I can’t even remember. A deep slumber. Checking my Apple Watch I got 8hrs and 40 mins of sleep with 2.5 hours REM and an hour of Deep sleep. Really not sure what my usual stats are, but I am impressed with those numbers.

I realised today that I have been rejected by my friend for my idea I had for us in my Ayahuasca experience. I didn’t even get the chance to ask him. I didn’t get a chance to ask him because he chose drinking over me. I was milling over the details of our last few interactions and getting increasingly worked up over his inability to choose to work on himself. Apparently he was gaslighting me in the exchange. It’s always hard for me to wrap my head around gaslighting. It doesn’t make sense to me. It feels like I am interacting with a child. So I understand a bit more about the reaction of parents to their children’s demands. It also doesn’t make sense to me to experience in raw form the constant negotiation tactics from kids. I digress, and I think that’s all I really have to say about that. It hurts me on many layers. You can lead a horse to water.

When I was milling over it, obsessing over it, my plant medicine caused me to sit very straight and said ‘that’s enough’, essentially. This lesson was one in boundaries. I struggle with boundaries. I give a lot of myself to others at the expense of myself. Another way to put that is I don’t respect myself enough to give myself the time of day. I enjoy getting involved in other people’s affairs. I want to help, I want to support. I love and care very deeply. This experience from the plant medicine is not the first attempt of them trying to see the way. It’s like I know the way and I try every other option except for choosing myself.

Today I went to the sauna and to do laps. There were lots of kids there today. Lots of people swimming their afternoon laps. Usually I do a rotation of sauna and then swim 10 laps, rinse (literally, a cold shower) and then repeat. I didn’t get to do that today. I put my name on the board and kept waiting until it was my turn for the pool. I wasn’t sure I would get it before it was time to leave. When it finally came, I had done my sauna rotations and all that was left was the laps. I wanted to swim 1000m. I didn’t think that I could do it all in one go. So I broke it down into smaller goals. I started with 10 laps. It felt good. I had only been swimming for 5 minutes. To reach my goal I needed to repeat my first attempt another 3 times. Is it just me, or is it hard to maintain counting for you too? For some reason I only said the odd numbers. I also like to count my breath strokes. Usually it’s seven per side. Today it was all over the shop.

I felt quite satisfied with my day. I had a good breakfast, chilled, took care of my body, good dinner, tidied the house so it is clean to wake up to. I am doing really well with these spurts of energy. What is weighing me down and what I want to work on this week is my financial tasks that I continually let fall to wayside. I didn’t use my planner as much as I would have liked to. My Depression Monster got hold of me towards the end of the week. I even missed a therapy session because of my absent-mindedness. That never happens. I also need to tidy my office. It looks like a bomb hit it. That messy and untidiness is how it feels in my mind. I think my resistance to doing my financial health tasks is… well, I don’t really know what the hold up there is. I’ll have to check in with myself tomorrow when I start the tasks I have been avoiding. So tidy the office first, make it clean enough, right. Make it a free flowing space. There’s a few furniture pieces that I want to get rid of. It’s a tiny room with not much space to breathe.

I know I am going to tantrum tomorrow when it comes to doing it. I think my strategy might be to put on a show or maybe a podcast and do it with the distraction of noise. Until the noise becomes too much and then I will turn it off. It’s kinda like body doubling but not.

Oh, also, I have noticed how much my phone addiction hinders my progress in real life. Maybe I can harness that boredom energy into something else. Even just looking at my week on my phone causes me to feel havoc. There’s so many little tasks that add extra time to my day that I just don’t have. Like 1 million emails. Why is that so chaotic. I removed myself from all the group chats last week which feels like such a relief. Truly. It also made me think that I have no friends. People don’t want to hang out with me. I can accept that. Maybe I don’t want to hang out with people either. I don’t know what I want. Is this my Depression Monster speaking instead of me? Maybe.

I do feel ready to face some of these uncomfortable parts of me. I kinda stopped my momentum with getting out of my own way for a while there. This feels like rambling. I am over tired. No nap today and it shows. I am really proud of myself for showing up for myself even when I don’t know which way is up. Bed is calling.

Lots of love,

Kate