January Doldrums

[cimorene]

We've been having some trouble eating properly since the New Year or so. My back feels better now - not 100%, but normal except for the occasional reminder. But Wax has come down with a spell of anxiety, several weeks of lack of appetite and a vaguely upset stomach, sleeplessness, fatigue, despair, and nebulous terror that forces her to turn back constantly to her new hyperfixation badfandom, Roswell, which she basically seized on when she needed something to distract her. The existential dread is paralyzing her like a hawk in the sky paralyzing a rabbit in the field every time she looks up, so whenever that happens she either goes back to thinking about, reading about or watching about her latest security hyperfixation to soothe the pain.

And hey, a counterphobic coping mechanism isn't a bad thing when it's working, it's only a bad thing for your wife who keeps reading the subtitles and witnessing the bad acting over your shoulder. Or when your compulsive counterphobic coping mechanism (reading in my case) is getting in the way of living the rest of your life functionally and overpowering your ability to resist that compulsion.

So anyway, Wax was feeling unlikely to enjoy meals and unlikely to make them. And meanwhile I'm having what I always have in January, the absolute nadir of my yearly mental and physical and emotional energy. Seasonal affective disorder, no doubt. I'm feeling a need to sleep like 13 hours out of every twenty-four and a complete lack of energy or motivation, including the executive function to plan and the immediate energy to prepare meals as well.

Sometimes we have bad periods, where we sort of backslide towards our 20s again and eat a lot of instant and frozen food. But this is worse than that, this is like, COMPLETELY not eating dinner, and just deciding we're both too tired to prepare more food, because we've run out of instant or frozen things or whatever, so we'll just eat some toast again.

We made a heroic effort to plan a week's worth of meals for this week that was going to include cooking today, but then we left it until 9 pm without going shopping or eating, so it'll be like midnight or something by the time we could start cooking dinner anyway and we both have to work early tomorrow; normally I would try to have gone to bed by now.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I am so sorry. Hope you both get some relief soon. Sending good thoughts.

[cimorene]

💜 At least we bought a lot of sandwich fillings so we won't starve...

[princessofgeeks]

It's all about the little things....

[laurenthemself]

This sounds absolutely awful and as such I'm very proud of you for thinking to buy sandwich fillings. I've had those days where even assembling the sandwich is too hard so I eat a slice of cheese and a piece of ham and a couple of celery sticks, and that's sustenance! And it's much much better than not eating!

[viggorlijah]

I eat cereal, toast, porridge with fruit, boiled eggs (make a lot and put them in the fridge) and microwave nachos during Low times. There is a sense that these are not Optimal Health Meals lovingly home cooked with organic blah blah - fuck it, it is cold and you are apes shivering and eating potatoes around a campfire, you just need to survive and get food that is filling and tasty, it can be snacks! Eat the noodles! Just like drink some Oj so you don’t get scurvy.

[aurumcalendula]

*hugs*