Things happen. I sunk into a funk. The toxic thoughts got the best of me. I stopped going to OA meetings because even they seemed toxic to me. I got too deeply enmeshed with some people without even trying, but by being unable to say "no". Tried a new antidepressant which initially REALLY knocked the stuffing out of me. The depression itself didn't get worse, but I slept a LOT. And I had the cold that would never end, so I wasn't able to exercise much, which was the loss of a major mood elevator. But after a month I finally started to feel better.
The most amazing thing then happened: In early January I got back into the studio. Recovery sometimes is so subtle, you don't even notice it's happening, and in this case it was nothing dramatic. A couple of days after New Years', I got Fuzz to help me put up some blinds in the studio and I unpacked a few boxes that had been sitting in the basement. Then it was just a few hours a day, working on a Van Dyck copy I had started years ago when I was studying in New York. Before I knew it, I had spent more time in the studio in January than I had during the whole fall!
Unfortunately, some old habits resurfaced: The toxic thinking, the isolation, and last to come, I had a food issue. Aka, a binge. It happened in the first week of the New Year, and my eating had gotten kind of sloppy over Christmas, you know, the usual, a little bit of this and that, a bite of that and the other thing, more dessert more often, and it got harder and harder to stop with a healthy portion. Then there was one night when I just didn't want to stop eating. So, I didn't. I ate until my stomach felt like I had swallowed a bowling ball.
Luckily, it only lasted one day, and I was back to sane eating again, but I have some emotional work to do.
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