just like watercolors

...so why can't I?

For me, bad episodes mean no energy...loss of movement...loss of speech. Eventually someone finds me and half carries me to a bed. Then I lay there - often fully coherent inside my head, wishing I was normal.

It may seem like such a small thing, but I am ridiculously proud of my shower today. Some context: keeping a clean house is difficult when I only have enough energy for 2, maybe 3 normal functioning sets of half an hour in a day. Yes, I live with other people, but these other people also have full time jobs and varying degrees of mental illness, so even between all of us, maintaining is hard. I get easily overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning that needs to be done and this will often spiral me into not functioning and therefore not cleaning at all. The new plan: I started at the back of the house, and every day I make a plan to clean and organize one small section of the house. It doesn't have to be perfect but it has to look nice, with everything in its place. If something else takes the spoons allotted for it on a given day, I just move it to the next day. In this manner, I have finished two rooms and today I tackled the shower. I had to take a break last week, so being able to get back on my plan was a huge win for me. The result: Not only is my environment cleaner, which is really beneficial to my mental state, but I also feel accomplished and feel self-loved. I don't feel bad when I have to skip a day, and I feel absolutely great when I complete a task. :)