The Good Fight

I don't understand how today can have started so much better than yesterday, and I don't feel like I need to right now. Yesterday morning was one of the worst I've had in months, and today, in comparison, has so far been one of the best.

I woke up yesterday determined to take a bike ride to cheer myself up and feel like I had gotten something done, but after Kevin sat down and talked at me for forty-five minutes about how I'm procrastinating and I need to get my life together etcetera etcetera, I was too down on myself to consider being useful anymore. He has a way of making what should be a pep talk into something guilt-inducing, not that I'm blaming him for my own mental insecurities.

When I'm having a particularly harsh down moment like that, I have a tendency to take out my frustrations with self-body-mods. Some, probably most, people would tell me that's a terrible habit that needs to be curbed. It amazes me how many people can look down on someone else's method of dealing with pain and basically tell them they're a bad person for it. Alocoholism is an accepted method of drowning your sorrows; self-modification is not.

Never mind that my mods don't last, I don't seriously hurt myself, and I'm very careful to be safe and clean about it.

Not sure where that little rant popped up from. Anyway, I dressed to cover the marks yesterday, since I've never been one to show off my self-inflicted scars, and I didn't want Kevin to feel guilty, since he would find a way to. We went out to dinner with Wren and her new boyfriend last night and had a bunch of fun. I really like him, better than her last one. I hope things work out for her this time.

So I got up this morning and cleaned the kitchen, something I haven't done with any joy in quite a while. Cleaning is symbolic of different things for different people; for me, it means I'm feeling cheerful and productive. My OCD manifests in a slightly unusual form. For many people with OCD, they clean when they're depressed or experiencing anxiety, because it's a way to help them gain control of their surroundings. I'm the opposite; when I get depressed, the major manifestations of my OCD disappear. I don't clean, I don't organize, and I don't give a shit what order I eat my food in.

This is why I'm so ecstatic I was back to a normal cleaning attack this morning. I put away the clean dishes, washed the dirty ones, took out the trash, cleaned the cats bowls, fed the cats, put away the recycles, and I'm eyeing the fridge as being in need of a drastic reorganization. The weather is nice, I have the window and the doors open, and I feel GOOD in a way that I haven't felt in a long time. I didn't realize it had been so long until just now. It's scary that you can start falling into depression for a significant length of time and not even know.

I'm off to keep fighting the good fight.