Moving Forward

I’m alive… When I typed that, I accidentally typed “alone”… Freudian slip? Nah, I’m very much not alone, that I can say for sure. 

Photo taken by me.

I have to be honest with you, I’m writing this without any sort of real direction. Usually, when I start one of these blog posts, I have a topic in mind, maybe an outline to follow, but this is not one of those cases. The only preparation I’ve come here with is the intention to get something out. Not for the sake of production or content, but because I feel like I need to expel something out of my brain, like a purification ritual to help clear the block so the other thoughts can be freed.

It’s no secret that I’ve been radio silent lately. This whole year, in fact… At the time of writing this, it is 8/8, a day that is both lovingly and unlovingly viewed as a “Manifestation Portal” in our collective weirdo communities. I’m not here to argue about whether it’s real or not; I don’t care either way. This is just the day I’ve ended up finally able to come to my favorite coffee shop and take time to write in this way. 

So, you may be wondering where the hell I’ve been. Well, in short:

I’ve. been. Depressed.

Not very glamorous, I know, but I have to be honest, this hit me like a ton of bricks about a month ago. A mixture of circumstances, exacerbated by a wave of hormones due to being back on hormonal birth control for the first time in almost ten years, has not harbored the best environment for growth and creativity for me. You may have read my past blog post “The Long Road Here,” where I shared how I have been experiencing bouts of depression since I was young, and how the two diagnoses I’ve had since childhood made it so it would be very unlikely that I would go through life unscathed by depression. I’m well aware of that predisposition to depression I’ve been blessed with. But life, both personal and the world at large, has been hitting hard. 

I know it’s not just me. This morning, I was watching a YouTube video from an influencer I’ve followed for a while, who’s known for successfully paying off a large debt years ago, and how one perceived bad decision has made her feel paralyzed to do anything for a while. This may sound trivial while we live in a time of fascism, watching community members get kidnapped by government-contracted white supremacists in masks, while we’re closing in on year two of a livestreamed genocide in Gaza. Babies are being starved to death abroad by our tax dollars, while food here is taken out of children’s mouths to fund the starvation and murder there. Meanwhile, most of the population at home is struggling in some way or another, a lot of that due to financial loss and stress. It almost feels disgusting to put our struggles in any sort of adjacent categories, but the suffering is real. It affects our whole being. It paralyzes us. It has paralyzed me. 

Danté Stewart, shared by IG Post by @drblackdeer

I was thinking about this on my drive to the coffee shop. The stripping of rights, the defunding of access to healthcare, and the hunt for everyday citizens who are just trying to live their lives and raise their families; the intentionality behind it is so sinister. Recently, I feel like I don’t have control over anything, and I have felt so powerless, as if I don’t have control over my time, motivation, circumstances, or my life. Fascism is being used as a tool to subdue us as a population into feeling defeated and disillusioned, so we have no will to fight back. I see people online asking, “How is it that people aren’t speaking up?! How can people not fight back?!” I used to wonder this too. Working with the general public over the last nine months has made me understand how. Most people are overwhelmed with rising costs, stagnant wages, loss of jobs, inaccessible housing, skyrocketing groceries, and mounting credit card debts. All of which creates the dark cloud looming overhead, blocking many of our abilities to see past ourselves and our own perceived suffering. I’m not sharing that as a judgment, but an observation.   

Last November, I had to get a part-time job when things started to slow down for me. I was very grateful for it in the beginning, and I enjoyed being around other humans after being self-employed and working from home for so long. This temporary position turned permanent, and then I was promoted. Again, I was grateful. But then… What was supposed to be part-time quickly turned into hours that were closer to full-time. I was being frantically called in on almost all of my days off. I’d say, “No,” but then would receive a series of texts, begging me to reconsider. For the first several months, I gave in out of guilt. I didn’t want my co-workers to bear the load alone, but it affected me and my relationships. I couldn’t see my friends and family. I cancelled get-togethers for a job I came to hate, for a job that felt no remorse for constantly extracting my time, energy, and motivation. I would probably feel justified in giving in if I were saving lives or something, but it’s not that urgent, I assure you. 

I tried so hard to plan out days ahead of time to come here and tend to The Astral Priory, so that I could actively give to the work that I know is important and can genuinely benefit those who choose to engage with it. But I couldn’t. My nervous system was shot. I would get into the headspace of doing work I had been putting off, and soon be followed by another frantic call from my job. I didn’t have to answer it before my heart would start racing. I had immediate anxiety due to the constant impeding of my boundaries. To add insult to injury, because of a lack of time, I wasn’t able to see my therapist for eight months. Thankfully, I’ve been able to see her again recently, which is partially why I’m finally able to show up. 

My depression felt like a free fall through a downward spiral. The hopelessness was so all-encompassing. I felt like there was nothing to grasp onto to pull myself out of the pit, and it had me questioning the good things and people I have in my life. And the love that I’m fortunate enough to have, what if that was wrong, too? My reasoning came to be, “Well, if all these other bad things are happening, that must mean I’m wrong about the good things I have, too.” Because it made more sense to me that everything was wrong, rather than the possibility that both “bad” and “good” can and do co-exist at the same time. Depression and trauma took hold and made sure I stayed unable to do the one thing I planned to focus on this year, which is written at the heart of my vision board: Moving Forward. 

Artwork by Maybell Eequay, from @maybell.eequay's IG

In a beautiful show of divine timing, I decided to randomly put on a podcast episode that one of my besties, Rachel (wonderful writer and podcast host of The Crush Chronicles), had sent me the day before. It was an episode called “How to Quit Financial Catastrophizing” from the Unfuck Your Money podcast. She had sent it to me while I was at work, and I felt like I might as well give it a listen as I drove home from my therapy lesson that had just ended. When I tell you it was like a thirteen-minute recap of what my therapist had just been going over with me… I listened in awe at how insanely succinct the timing was. And though the discussion focused on financial catastrophizing, which I do as well, I was more interested in having a name for the very thing I was experiencing. All of the trauma responses and distorted thinking, wrapped up in a messy blanket, which is catastrophizing. I felt relief. Ok, I’m not crazy and losing my shit, there is a reason for this mental chaos.

One of the helpful tips I remember from that episode was a recommendation to give your catastrophizing a name. They gave some examples that people used, and I thought about what I would call mine if I had to. Immediately, the name “Hurricane Nellie” popped into my head. Hurricane Nellie thinks she’s a category 5 hurricane, but in reality, she’s more of a tropical disturbance. An accumulation of some thunderstorm clouds, but nothing more. But man, does she really want to grow into that Cat 5… 

I’m not going to end this with a false claim that I feel out of the woods yet, I don’t. But I do feel like the motivation is slowly creeping its way back in. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is my attempt at a purification ritual. For most of this year, I’ve felt barriers fall in front of me any time I tried to get work done for The Astral Priory. I will have little glimpses of ideas or possibilities, but then they get consumed by everything else that’s been going on, and I don’t have a chance to see those develop. I’ve felt a need to get all of this off my chest, to be honest about how I’ve been feeling, rather than just pop back in as if several months haven’t passed without a word from me. So my hope is that if I can finally expel this from my mind, my energy field, my heart, then I can finally Move Forward.