The winter ate my forks

The spoon theory is a disability metaphor and neologism used to explain the reduced amount of mental and physical energy available for activities of living and productive tasks that may result from disability or chronic illness. -Wikipedia

I have had periods of my life where I’ve lived with severe chronic pain. I spent a year leaning on a cane and a week unable to straighten my hips relative to my torso. My winter depression is so much more uncomfortable than my pain ever was… Or maybe it just feels like that, because it’s now.

I also have a poor sense of time, but that’s a different story.

I have plenty of spoons.

Today I went into work, did everything I was supposed to do, filled prescriptions, fed myself, my ability to “do the things” is completely intact. But my capacity to care about any of it is gone.

This is what I call forks. I use spoons to do things. I use forks to care about them. It feels good to care. When I’m out of forks my soul feels numb. My face feels like a floppy, ill fitting mask.

I’ve been completely out of forks for three days now. And I’ve found an exciting conversion!

5 spoons for 1 fork.

Of course a forks’ worth of caring doesn’t change how depressed I am, so I spent all of yesterday morning crying because I was debilitatingly grateful to my support system for loving me, so… perhaps dissociation is wiser and more functional?

I feel complicated deciding that ignoring my feelings is better than processing them but, like, I have shit to do!

There is no easy fix to winter depression. It’s not something you can treat with SSRIs because they take a couple months to kick in and then the winter’s over. I just need to survive it. Grit and bare it. Put one foot in front of the other.

Take every fork of hate and resentment and frustration and turn them into spoons.

Because future Abi will care.

I need to trust that.

#depression #dissociation #spoons