Recovery

June 30th

Boy, am I looking forward to therapy today! It is much needed after a couple weeks of some pretty intense nightmares and daytime stress.

I have about an hour before my session, and had an appointment about a half hour earlier, so rather than drive home only to head out again right away, I stopped by a local lake to write for a while and maybe walk barefoot through the sand on the beach. It's summer, and two things that have been lacking from my summer life could be addressed if I started coming here more often: tanning and swimming. I tan ridiculously easily and rarely burn, and I will always look for an excuse to get some more vitamin D (really can't sing its praises enough), so long as it's even and not only my arms that show it. And swimming. Swimming. I'm by no means a great swimmer, but there is something so freeing about being in the water and playing like a kid. I want to stop by the beach before I go, and plan on writing more after my session, so I'll have to check out the spot that's watched by the lifeguard and see what it's like.

Something I've noticed after long or heavy bouts of/with depression is when they start to recede, and I feel like myself again, it strongly resembles the recovery time after a cold. I feel tired from tearing myself apart for some time, I forget how to do simple things (with a cold, it's usally breathing without a stuffed nose or a wicked cough; with depression, it's working out or enjoying some down time), and I feel like there's a chance I could pass it along to someone else if I'm not careful. I find it amazing that people have been around me without catching it, or at least without catching it to the same severity I had. Say what you will about most communicable diseases, but in my experience, depression is the worst unofficial one. Think about it: the symptoms of it affect its subject so completely that it distorts their reality and everyone connected to it; long-term exposure to it wears down the immune system, usually leading to more dis-ease, especially in the physical body; and mostly, a person in a funk can so quickly taint a room or a space that is shared with others.

I'm going to take a break for now and wander over to the beach before my session. Write more later.

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July 1st

Well. Guess the day got away from me!

Turns out the swimming section of the lake is mostly for little kids, and is so small that I could stand at its deepest section and have half my body still above water. Eh. Not worth it.

Good session with my therapist. With so much happening in the over the last two weeks, it was a relief to get the emotional residue out of my system. I'm heading over to a temp agency that I've worked with before later this morning, and will hopefully have a placement soon so I can get money coming back in. That will free up a lot for me, and may help me figure out what my next step is when it comes to getting what I want. I also have to finish my resume and headshot for my agency in Denver, because I've put that off for about a month now, and the sooner I finish it and send it in, the better.

For fun, I saw "Jurassic World" last night. Nothing like a blockbuster to take your mind off things! It's pretty hard to be stressed about your daily life when you're burying your face into the crook of your arm to protect you from squealing at the dinosaur that is about to eat a crouched security tech.

Part of the EMDR technique is a tool called Light Stream, which was something that I was coached through yesterday. I'm going to write more about it later, but for now I'll say that it's brought up emotion regarding a theme that has been present in my life for a long time now: where I fit in in the grand scheme of things. Like I said, that's for another entry.