Green tea and rhodiola. Meditate every night or morning. Get up and go to bed at the same time every day. See your therapist. Exercise at least thirty minutes daily. Go running. Lift weights. Don’t drink any caffeine after 2 PM and limit it to a cup or two of tea. Drink 135 ounces of water. Write. Avoid carbohydrates. Don’t smoke. Stay clean. Stay sober. Take your vitamins and thyroid medication. Practice talking about the things that are going on in your head. Make a conscious effort to not follow all those negative thought patterns to their disastrous ends. Stay busy. Connect with old friends. Take walks and talk about how desperate and empty everything can seem. Find comfort in the idea that they’ve felt like you do. Convince yourself that a lot of this is a choice. That you can do it different.

I have running lists of all the things I have to stay on top of if I want to feel moderately okay. A balancing act between keeping my sanity intact and getting so strict that I swing the other way so far I lose it again. I work hard to make sure that I’m doing everything anyone can think of to keep from plummeting into the dark and I’m still never sure it’s enough. Some people just need more help than others. So we start talking about medication for the first time since I was eighteen.  Continue reading →