Stuff I'm Doing Lately: Trying to Be Kind to Myself
Among other things
The other day I sat in therapy, trying to find something of worth to talk about.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you say your anxiety is at these days?” My therapist asked. It had been a few weeks since we had a session, which was a considerably long time in the history of our three years of working together.
I thought for a moment. “Probably a one or a two, to be honest,” I responded. It was the truth; part of the reason we hadn’t had a session for a few weeks was because I simply didn’t need one. Life was chill; my new job was going well, I was working on specific issues centering around self love, and I was having a lot of fun with friends in my downtime. There just wasn’t anything to be anxious about (aside from, well, the general state of the world).
“Look at you!” my therapist responded, excitedly. We had a moment of celebration and then moved on to other topics, searching for something to focus the session on.
Four days later, I lay on my couch, anxiously scrolling through Instagram and willing my nervous system to calm down.
It’s always like that, isn’t it? The moment you address that hey, everything is pretty okay, something has to happen to knock you off balance. In this case, it was issues with insurance that had me feeling stressed; after weeks of back and forth between my patient care rep, insurance, and my doctor, the official explanation of benefits rolled in saying they were denying coverage for my very expensive medication (that I need to live normally) for not meeting my plan’s criteria. What was that criteria? Insurance wouldn’t tell me, instead instructing me to call my doctor to explore other treatment options.
Fun.
Deep down, it wasn’t even the denial of coverage that had me in a tailspin; there are other coverage options, I hadn’t yet spoken to my HR department, and I still had a whole appeal process to consider. But it was all of the paperwork I had submitted and all of the paperwork that would have to be submitted again. It was that it had derailed my entire evening; I had plans to make a nice dinner and go to a restorative yoga class. Instead, I ordered McDonalds and late cancelled the class, saddling myself with a $13 cancellation fee. It was that my back hurt and had been hurting, causing almost a week’s worth of disjointed sleep as I tried to find a comfortable position to rest. It was that although I loved my new job, I still was so new, wondering if I said the right thing, did the right thing, made the right impression, and if I was good at it. It was that while getting ready that morning, I noticed that my left shoulder was raised slightly higher than my left one. What was that a sign of? It couldn’t be good.
I was so tired.
Most of the time, I try to push past any fatigue or anxiety to maintain a specific standard. So what if I was tired? Do the dishes anyway. Who cared if I barely slept? Go to pilates. A lot of the time, this ‘follow the plan, not the mood’ mentality has served me well; I very rarely regret doing the thing I’ve pushed myself to do. But every once in a while, the opposite is more fulfilling: just saying, ‘fuck it’, and taking the easy route.
Which is what I did. Clearly, I had been ignoring the stresses I was feeling, pushing aside how busy I was, and not processing all of the recent change in my life, and now it was bubbling up in me being near-tears mid-conversation with the insurance rep. Maybe this was a sign to just take a break and be kind to myself about it and let it go.
It’s obvious this was not without a mental struggle. Not doing the thing is somehow much harder for me than doing the thing — I just worry about how much I’ll screw over future me. But I still did it, in the name of just being nice to myself, just this once. Or twice.
Here’s a short list of some other things I’ve been doing lately, in the name of kindness to myself and otherwise.
Rewatching Princess Tutu: I recently rewatched ‘Princess Tutu’ after falling down a nostalgia rabbit hole that reminded me of its existence and that I loved it when I was 17. So, naturally, I had to find out if it was actually good or if I was just 17 when I watched it. If you haven’t heard of ‘Princess Tutu’ (which I imagine most of you have not), the simplest way to describe it is that it is a fairytale anime. It centers around a duck who turns into a human girl equipped with powers that help a Prince in great danger. As the tale comes to a close, it becomes apparent that the duck, who has cultivated a life for herself as a human girl, complete with people who love her, must sacrifice her newfound humanity to save the Prince. As she laments over this, her new found and unexpected friend (and love interest, if you ask me!) vows to stay by her side forever, even if is she is a duck. Romantic, right? Anyway, I can confirm that this series is good, so much so that I brought it up in therapy and said, “Like, what is it like to be so loved that someone would love you even if you were a duck?” to which my therapist said, “but would you love them if they were a duck? Actually, never mind, this conversation is getting weird.”
Indulging in Local Cinema: In March, Em, Cam, and I went to see ‘Project Hail Mary’. First of all, I’m pretty sure I cried through around 65% of the movie. Second of all, Cam did the math, and for the three of us to see the movie in IMAX and get snacks, it came to a whopping $140! $140! Which is why I continue to be a big fan of smaller, independent movie theatres and spend a good amount of time at them in April. Em and I saw ‘Forbidden Fruits’ at Imagine Cinema Carlton for $6.99; an incredible deal and honestly, a super fun movie. We also went to The Revue’s All You Can Eat Cereal Bar and Cartoon Party over Easter weekend, where we watched two hours of cartoons and ate six different kinds of cereal. Lastly, a group of us when to an interactive screening of ‘High School Musical 3’ at the TIFF Lightbox, which was a joy. That movie was a huge influence on me as a teen and I hadn’t watched it in years, so it was super fun to get to experience it once more on a big screen.
Couch Karaoke: Occasionally (and by that I mean about once a week), after a long day, I kick back and relax with couch karaoke. What is couch karaoke? It is a thing I do where I sit on the couch and sing along to karaoke songs from YouTube. Into my remote, I belt out hits like ‘A Cruel Angel’s Thesis’ from Neon Genesis Evangelion or Out of Touch by Hall & Oates. Sometimes, if I’m feeling like I need an extra challenge, I’ll try to sing along to the Cardcaptor Sakura theme song with the lyrics written in Japanese (I can get to mid-way through the chorus before I just completely start butchering it). It’s honestly one of my favourite ways to wind down as a result, I have to say I’m very sorry to my neighbours.
😊🌷