the context for this: school and how it is so much of a trigger for depression, especially during spring.
sometimes you have to go into preservation mode when your mental health deteriorates a bit. this can mean or manifest itself as different things. it’s very much tailored to the person, by the person.
for me, it means setting absolute bare minimums and striving towards them to keep myself in check. even if it means turning things in late, missing or being late to classes or what have you. as long as an effort is made *at all*, that’s what matters in *my* preservation mode.
my mental health used to take a much worse hit when i was in school several years ago. with me going back to school again this past year and having to relive nearly all of the emotions and experiences from past semesters, it has not been at all easy. but if there’s one thing i learned from all of it, it was that your own physical and mental health should come first before anything else.
merely being in school during the spring semester will set off the spiral of emotions and stuff from what happened so many years ago. as a result, spring semesters especially are not easy for me. where going through these would nearly cause me to crumble entirely before, im now making it through one step at a time. mind you, the semester has not been AT ALL perfect, but as far as learning how to manage and care for myself is concerned, it’s been a solid step in the right direction.
just the act of setting bare minimums has reminded me that, even if I do slip up or if something bad happens, it’s not the end of the world. that even during these bad slumps, if I do turn something in late, it’s better than not turning in anything at all. that if I do show up to class late, I can at least acknowledge that I’m *trying* to go to class. that if I don’t give something my all due to low motivation, it isn’t indicative of my self-worth. and, on top of this, just further acknowledging that I *don’t have* the same energy I used to have when I was in my early 20s. especially now with a condition I didn’t have then which makes doing even simple things hard.
Thankfully, I’m not crumbling. I’m just doing the bare minimum until the semester ends, and will continue to do so until these feelings pass. I’m not going to work myself more than I need to. and that’s ok.
Because to me, not crumbling is progress enough.
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