inkskinned:

something that has usually worked for me in the Bad Times is just. Giving myself an hour. no i don’t want to wake up. but i tell myself. get up. and if in an hour we feel worse, we’ll go back to bed. i say to myself: you don’t have to like it. you just have to do it. sometimes i get to the end of the hour and go back to bed. but a lot of times after a shower and water and maybe doing some jumping jacks or stretching i feel better. there’s a lot to do in an hour that makes it a little less oppressive to breathe. picking out good clothes, putting on good music, doing your makeup so tight it forms a blade, texting a friend, making tea, trying a new hairstyle, making an omelette. it’s gotta be up though, nothing in bed, nothing still, nothing just sitting and staring into the void. it’s got to be moving. creating things helps. journalling helps. but not in bed. 

i think we who are mentally ill kind of got. a double dose of inertia. and sometimes the push it takes to overcome that inertia keeps us in bed. but i have found a lot that just. starting to move. helps. even a little. because if you’re up you might as well make the bed. and you might as well go to one class – you can skip the second if the tired gets worse. and once you’re at that one class, you make it to the second because why not. 

it doesn’t always work. but give yourself an hour. sixty minutes. say: okay. it’s gonna suck and that first push might take all of our effort and we might sit on the floor for an hour and if that happens, fine, we’ll go back to bed. but then you tried. you got up and tried. and something about that makes the guilt a little less harsh and makes you feel a little bit more powerful and the next time you wake up and your body wants to sit on the floor, you say: no, thanks, we did that yesterday and my hips still hurt. let’s see if i can shower. and maybe you sit in the shower instead but you did take a shower so it probably counts. there’s a lot of power in baby steps. i believe in you. and i think you can do a lot with those sixty minutes.