This recovery process is truly one of the strangest, most bizarre, out-of-control states of reality I've yet to find myself.
And that's saying something.
I have had a very steady-state reality for a good three decades now.
My reality has been something like this: Almost no true sense of identity coupled with a deep desire to be engaged in life and to be helpful. This leaves you busy and endlessly empty. Nothing feels like enough because you aren't connected to yourself. I feel confused most of the time. I feel lost. I don't have the confidence to set a course and pursue it. I defer to other's projects because it gives me something to do (I've ended up on three non-profit boards just for this very reason). It appears I have my life together.
Little I've attempted over the years has altered this pattern in any meaningful way. In fact, especially after our children left, the sense of hopelessness has only increased.
That's why some of these new blips of desire and motivation, happiness even, are so surprising. They seem to be coming out of nowhere and I'm just a curious observer watching it unfold. The effects of the therapy appear to be happening at a deep level with the results slowly revealing themselves with me being the observer, less the initiator.
For one, it feels an awful lot like the description of recovering from depression that Allie Bosh aptly described in her blog. For the first time, she gave many of us images and language (funny even!) for the bizarre minefield of depression, not just for ourselves, but with the world around us as well.
I'm realizing that nothing right now is linear with recovery, and I'm not in control. I'm in control of whether progress continues by behaving myself, but that's it. Emotions are showing up in fits and starts.
The biggest change is I feel less flat. It feels like my personality is returning, albeit muted. It's less of a strain to be around people, mainly due to the draining energy to appear more happy or emotional than I am.
Today I had a random urge to take a class. To take a real class, a hard one, that would be a challenge. I was like, Huh? Where'd this come from? I haven't had much desire for anything for a few years now. That's what has scared me the most, honestly. Will I care about anything again?
Listening to Kay (and to myself), I've known that the phase I'm in has been one of maintenance and rest. When the adrenal fatigue kicked in, I resisted the reality of what that meant and for how long. I kept trying to take classes and maintain a regular schedule. I finally started listening to my body, to myself, trusting what I was hearing and the instinctiveness of how it felt, the rightness.
I realized to really recover, I needed to focus only on recovery. (Haha! I think I might have been the last one to figure this out.) I decided recovery was my part-time job and maintaining my own life was the other part. That's it. No other projects, no goals, and the toughest part, not knowing if this is the new normal or if things will ever change or get better.
So maintenance only has been going on for about three months now starting in early August. I've stopped napping. I've started running a little bit, doing all the main chores, and some work for the company. I've added in writing as my 'job'. That's it. I have no other ambitions currently and I don't know what's next. It's possible this is it, this is my new life. I asked Kay about that recently: is this it? Will I ever be motivated or have desire again? I think so she said, but it will be a while.
It's felt good honestly to actually know for once that this is all I can do and I can embrace it, embrace this as a recovery stage, not feel like I'm letting anyone down. I don't know what's next but I know I won't get there unless I do this right.