For many of us, keeping our mental health stabilized is a challenge under the best of times. When you throw in a pandemic, social justice protests, an attempt to overthrow the government, increased murder and violence, many of us are lucky if we can just get out of bed in the morning. Speaking for myself, there were a lot of days over the past year when I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue living on this planet. And yet, it’s currently the only planet we have to live on, so I had to figure our a way to get through each day.

To give you an idea of where I’m coming from, I suffer from depression and anxiety, with a dash of OCD and ADHD thrown in for good measure. I am also an extreme introvert and would much rather stay home completely alone than go out to a social setting. It’s been suggested that I may also suffer from a mild form of agoraphobia, but I don’t know if that’s the case. (It’s no wonder I struggle to adult at times, even though I’m at the mid-life point).

Based on all of that, it should come as no surprise that the actual lockdown portion of the last year did not bother me. In fact, I wish it were acceptable for me never have to leave the house again, aside from essential errands and work. For the past year, I have only left the house to go to work (4 days per week), go to the grocery store, and take mom to the doctors. If I lived in an area where I could get groceries delivered, I wouldn’t even leave the house for that.

There is a downside to this though. While I haven’t gone anywhere over the last year, neither has mom. That means I have not been completely alone for a time greater than 3 hours over the entirety of the last year. And most days… weeks… months, I have no alone time whatsoever except when I’m sleeping. So essentially for the last year, I have been running on fumes because I don’t have the opportunity to refill my batteries in solitude. And mom is the complete opposite of me, so she hates being alone and wants me to hang out with her as soon as I get home from work. Needless to say, I am exhausted.

My anxiety, however, has been all over the place over the past year. Between COVID-19, the protests against police brutality and systemic racism, the election, the violence at the Capital, the violence against the Asian community, the shootings, the violence against the Trans community, the giant asteroid passing the Earth, I’ve been on a state of high-alert for most of the year. Thankfully changing jobs helped eliminate a significant portion of my anxiety that was work related (I used to work in customer service and people are not nice), but my concern about the rest has kept me amped and contributes to my exhaustion because I don’t sleep well.

Because of the anxiety and mostly, I think, the fact that I’m really run-down, my focus has really taken a huge hit. And the thing that it has affected most of all is my reading. I’ve gone from reading 13+ books a month to reading 2-4 books per month. My brain just can’t seem to settle and focus on a story and just keeps running in circles. Over the last couple of months I’ve decided to just stop fighting it, in the hopes that it will work itself out as things start to settle a bit.

As for my depression, I’ve been up and down over the last year, no more than normal, and certainly less after I left a job I really hated. I continue to have good days and bad days, but I think overall, my depression has been the least of my mental health worries lately.

I really think that I am just doing the best I can to get through each day. I have tried to find different self-care activities that will distract me for at least a little while so that I can decompress. Currently it’s a coloring app on my phone, plus a couple of mindless match games. Hopefully soon it will be reading again.

How has your mental health been throughout this experience?