This guest post is by poet Sabrina Benaim, author of the poetry collection I Love You, Call Me Back, published by Plume. You can read several of her insightful poems from the book here.
You wake up & it’s still dark outside. You check the clock—5:36am. You’re not ready to be awake, but here you are, wide eyed & mind racing. What do I have to do today? What didn’t I get done yesterday? I should get out of bed. I should seize the day, or whatever. You roll over. The next thing you know, your alarm is going off, the dog is licking your face, the light is streaming in & yet, you are still not ready to be awake. It doesn’t matter. Up you get. Coffee. You know you should drink a glass of water, but you don’t. You do the bare minimum, wash face, brush teeth, feed dog, take dog for walk. Before you had a dog, you could stay in bed for hours, convince yourself working from bed was okay because at least you were still getting work done, but look at you now, you’ve been outside & it’s barely 9 o’clock. Back inside, you do what you usually do first thing in the morning, you write your to-do list. You check your emails. You get to work. Outside, the sky has clouded to grey. Inside, & I mean, inside-inside, you are grey too. Yes, you have been productive & you should be proud of yourself, but something is off. You don’t feel good. In fact, maybe you feel bad. Like even though you’ve done all the things you are supposed to do, none of it matters, none of it worked. It’s 11am and all you can think about is going back to bed. Why do I feel like this? Maybe because I haven’t had any water yet today? Maybe because I haven’t eaten anything? You know the answer to both of those questions is Yes. So, you fill your water bottle. You make some peanut butter toast. It’s not much but it’s something. Your therapist would be proud of you. You get through the workday. Around 3pm, you take a break to take the dog outside, you throw some laundry in the machine. Look at you, being productive on your break. You finish work. After both you & the dog are fed, you go for a walk to the park. On the walk, a song comes up on shuffle, an old comfort, & you remember how bad the bad days used to be. The week you didn’t leave the house, the months you only ate takeout, life pre-therapy, pre-medication. You take out your phone, dial a number you know by heart & say Hey, remember the first time I called you sobbing & asked you to take me to the doctor? That was six years ago. Can you believe it? What’s even wilder is I think I’m getting better at this depression thing. This anxiety thing. This panic thing. Maybe my mental illnesses are maturing with me. I mean, on Tuesday I was so sad I went to a workout class?! It’s like all the self-care & self-work I’ve been doing is starting to… work? It’s almost like I care about myself again. Doesn’t that sound like growth?