This is my third or fourth attempt coming back to this Draft but I’m determined to get it posted before June ends!
Hello!
I was supposed to write this in May
but May turned into June whilst I wasn’t looking
and now I’m on a different planet-sphere because that’s what happens when I leave it too long – everything shifts, it’s constantly moving
The rest of May… what happened there? I can’t really remember. I think it’s mainly been me wanting to learn how to read properly again, because I have reading to do for assignments (plus there’s stuff I want to read). It’s become difficult and I need to get better at it – I know how to read but my attention-span/focus needs improving, and an odd anxiety thing happens when I try and read books, it makes the letters go all jumbly, which is really annoying because there are so many books I really WANT to read. Things that usually helps when this happens is finding books that I can open on any page and read a small section of it, and to close it and open it again on another page. Watching things helps too, I need to make myself watch some things. as in, a film or a programme or something, not just watching things out the window or on the street.
The rest of May was also trying to deal with a load of brain things – irritating noise, irritating voices, annoying emotions. Surges of panic. I’ve been trying to get on a new routine but I’ve had to be easy and hard on myself at the same time because of the brain-things. Once those things are settled, I can work on better routine-building. and they are more settled, so I’m getting there. I did a lot of walking, which helped – walking new routes, walking along the bus route – I love that I can walk all the way down this giant straight road for a couple of hours without worrying about getting lost, following all of the familiar-number buses that are going the same way, ending up in these different areas with different things in them, looking at the bus stops along the way and finding out where the buses are all going… and then walking all the way back whilst the sky changes colour.
I’ve been back at the gym a lot, which is always the thing that helps me the most. I love it, but I wish I knew how to do more when I’m there. I was very focused on it before, but when I began making my IndoorGoblin show the hyperfocus switched to that instead and everything else just stopped because all of my energy was on the show, I didn’t know how to work anything else around that. Going back to the gym after a break was as difficult as it always is. I knew I had to get back there because eating was getting difficult again and I didn’t want that to escalate. The gym really helps me with food-related brain-voices. (“and with brain-related food voices,” says a SugarClown)
Disordered eating can take you by surprise because you think you’re doing fine and are like ‘la la la just eating this thing’ – and then all of a sudden you spit it out because a stupid non-existent creature-thing makes you, before you’ve even processed what’s going on. and then you’re like, oh, that was weird, why did I do that… and then you carry on like ‘la la la carry on eating this thing’ and then the creature is like SWALLOW THAT AND SOMEONE OVER THERE WILL DIE – and so begins the comic-strip-style fight between you and these stupid things in your head, when all you want to do is eat the sandwich, drink the drink and carry on with your day! and I laugh at it, because I do find it funny, maybe because I have to find it funny, but when I remember particular moments when it’s not been the easiest it’s suddenly not funny anymore and makes me determined not to let it escalate. ‘How much are you willing to let it escalate?‘ – that’s a thing my brain started repeating this year.
There are so many factors to disordered eating, it’s not just nutrition and body image related things, there are other things like routine and associations and voices and irrational imagination-things, supermarket-hell or ordering-food difficulty, electricity-fear leading to not being able to cook… social anxiety can make you not eat things you want to eat in public, and social anxiety can make you eat things you don’t want to eat in public too. I wonder if there are people in the world for which food doesn’t require much thinking about. Anyway, the gym really helps because I want to be better at the exercises; eating helps me to get better at the stuff, and going the gym reminds me to eat and drink – and allows me to eat. The last few weeks of gym-going I’ve been able to eat without these stupid things in my head interrupting me, which has been a relief, and I’m improving at exercising too which I find rewarding and exciting. It’s funny when I realise I am still learning to remember that eating and sleeping helps general functioning and improvement of the mind and body… it seems like such a basic human thing to understand, it almost feels like it should be an automatically-known robotly-installed thing… but I guess when I remember that if a person finds it difficult to sort out the eating and sleeping thing, it’s no surprise that all of the other factors become even harder than it already was before – and then those things in turn affect the eating and sleeping. (‘THE CYCLE OF ENTRAPMENT’, says a Sugarclown).
Talking of ENTRAPMENT… haha, no, I’m only joking, I’m so not ready to go into that yet!
It’s a constant game of balancing with my brain – like it probably is for most people, I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t be. Keeping above the surface, maintaining one bit then maintaining another bit then maintaining a different bit – I wish I knew how to maintain all of these things at the same time, like having loads of tiny builders constantly in motion – but when I look away the decorators go back to sleep, and then when the decorators wake up they REALLY wake up and want a decorating party and want to decorate for the decorating party, with shiny things and sparkly things and squidgy tubes of icing, even though the rest of the tiny builders are all either asleep, want to be asleep or really absolutely do not want to go to, have, or be any way involved in a party. More on that kind of thing another time – but for now, there are things to be done. Step one: Try and do the things. Wait – No – enough is Enough (*I’ve been kicked in the jellybody by a tumbling SugarClown*) – Step one: DO THE THINGS.
Thanks for reading, if you’re reading. (I think).
Sumita +.+
Sumita: Unjumbled 