For those of you who have not read what I wrote back in 2016 & 2017: if you’re going to read this, I’d suggest you start back there.
On Depression (I’m severely depressed, here’s what that looks like, maybe you’re severely depressed too, we can both figure this out somehow)
On Depression, Part 2 (Oh hey can you believe I got even more depressed? No spoilers but it involves a construction dumpster.)
Nothing would make me happier than to never have to write one of these again, but if I’m going to be honest about what happened before (and a lot of people have told me that helped them), I’m going to be honest about what happened next.
At the end of 2017, I had a lot of hope. I had a clean house, my depression was still ever-present but very manageable. I’ve never liked housekeeping so I hired a friend to clean mine for extra cash, which was great. After a while she found what she called “a real job” and I was left with a decision. I could hire someone who would invariably charge me more and be a total stranger in my house or, hey I was feeling pretty good; why don’t I just do it? (If you have ever dragged your feet about refilling a depression med because you “felt pretty good” this thought process will sound familiar. It’s deeply stupid).
For the next several years I moved through various levels of depression ranging from the weight of a heavy cloak to the weight of a boulder and the condition of my house moved with it, everything from “I need a couple of hours notice” for company to “I need a couple of days notice”. Then maybe in early 2022 — I can never tell I’m in one of these until it’s too late — I slid into a pretty deep valley and my Lamictal / Latuda regimen (shoutout bipolar II) was not touching it. I didn’t realize how far I had slid until I was sitting in my psychiatrist’s office telling her I wasn’t going to do anything, but also if I just didn’t wake up one day that really wouldn’t be the worst thing that I could imagine.
I said this all very matter-of-factly but she was pretty concerned. So despite her worries about triggering a manic episode put me on a proper antidepressant — in this case 150mg of Wellbutrin. She paired it with a mood stabilizer and made me promise to temporarily take my credit card out of my Amazon account (manic women be shoppin’). For me the 150mg was the first time I’d felt my brain instantly react to a medication and so after a while of proving I could tolerate it, we went up to 300mg.
While all of this was happening, my home was in a spiral downwards. What depression does for me more than anything is completely zap my energy. I can generally find enough to function and interact with the outside world, but in a week where I perform well at work, maybe meet somebody for a drink, and show up to all of it reasonably well-groomed, that’s all I got. Zero gas in the tank for anything else. In what felt like no time at all (but was in retrospect, months) my house went from needing a couple hours or days notice to living in fear that somebody would need to come in for something. This ranged from housey things like plumbing problems going unfixed to people things like I wouldn’t accept rides home because they might want to come in and use the bathroom to inconsequential but pathetic things like I couldn’t post snapshots of cats or beers or whatever on social media because I couldn’t get an angle where there background wasn’t shameful. I couldn’t host friends to watch a game, I certainly couldn’t date (I’m not sure if I ever can, honestly because on what date do you tell people about ALL THIS?).
At one point a friend of mine had an emergency in their home, needed shelter, and had to go to a hotel for a few days just so I could get my house to where I would be willing to help a desperate friend) and after that work it was still so bad I cried when my friend first walked in. If you’re thinking this was when I realized I was at rock bottom and I parlayed those days of cleaning into moving in the right direction well you would be SO WRONG HAHAHA. I let that put me in an absolute shame spiral and when my friend left, it was almost immediately worse than it was before.
If I can say a little more about mental spirals, they come in many forms, but it’s so insidious when it’s your house. It’s this shameful gross place to come home to every day and you sit in it and feel shameful and gross which, if you’re shameful and gross why do you need a nice place to live, anyway? And it just gets a little bit worse every day and the day you don’t empty the kitchen trash and just leave your takeout containers in the living room feels like any other day. You don’t even notice.
Back in the world outside my house, I went back to the psychiatrist telling her that 300mg was noticeably helping and that I’d “only” not gotten out of bed at all maybe three days in the prior six months. I was showering almost every day, keeping my social plans. Still noticeably depressed, still “not keeping up with housework” (my psychiatrist would have been so kind about this, there was truly no excuse not to tell her) but very little dark thoughts, very little ideation. And she said “I think we can do better than that” and bumped me up to 450mg.
The effect of the bump was an immediate noticeable improvement. I tried to do better about taking it regularly and was hitting probably five of seven days though never remembering to refill my mood stabilizer. I started feeling joy in things again. I started being a little preoccupied with death again — which sounds bad, but it meant I actively wanted to live and we’re calling that a win. When depression is low, anxiety really gets it chance to shine.
Still, nothing in my house was budging. Looking back I realize what a mood / energy zap just walking in the door was. I was feeling pretty good when I was at work or socializing but immediately exhausted and despondent when I got home. I started thinking about cleaning but the idea of even choosing where to start seemed impossible.
Then came winter. In early December, my furnace stopped working and I could of course not even consider calling an HVAC guy. As my house got colder, the unsustainability of how I was living started to set in. I told people for the first time that my house was out of control again and one night I posted a photo of my thermostat showing 48 degrees. Very soon after that I got a text from a friend that said
That hit me very, very hard. I got a pill minder and I did some research to fix my own dang furnace because I really did deserve to be warm. I gave myself through the holidays and my early January birthday (a milestone that had me in a whole different spiral at the time) to take my meds and make plans and get mentally ready to take care of things.
I had two things going for me. One, as bad as it was I hadn’t let things get as bad this time. Two, ya girl was properly medicated. I made myself a deal that if I could get the trash out of the house myself, I would hire somebody to do the Big Scrub and that felt instantly more manageable. I also did something I’ve never done before which was not even attempt to make a plan. I would set fifteen minute timers during which I could do anything I wanted in any order I wanted as long as I kept working. For some reason, that was a total game changer because I never felt intimidated trying to figure out where to start. I was making very quick progress and after a couple weeks I decided to put a little pressure on myself by setting my deep clean appointment for one week away.
I’d like to tell you my house is top to bottom spic and span today but I cannot (I also still currently have two whole junk (not trash) rooms to clear out but let’s not get into that). Overzealous cleaning combined with a god awful cough from a respiratory infection left me with four fractured ribs and unable to fully get ready for my cleaning. But I did enough to get all the “public” areas (living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom) clean and the woman I hired was so supportive and kind that I only cried a little when she arrived that morning and looked around. Once my 60 days of limited activity are up, I’ll get the master bedroom and bath ready for the scrub. I’m not sleeping there right now because it’s gross (did I sleep in that room when it was like that for years? I did, but I deserve better now).
Right now I feel better than I have in more years than I remember. I’m calling it “depression remission” which is a reminder that it probably won’t be this good forever and I need to enjoy it. But if I can keep my house clean, I know I can keep myself from my lowest lows. So what is going to be different this time? Well, I did learn one lesson and so I have a couple of accountability buddies who at any time can ask if I have my next housekeeping appointment on the books and can at any point come in and look around. Just to keep me honest.
But as for now literally everything about my life is better. I’ve had friends over. I’ve had a man over. I’ve posted a billion cat pics and can checks without even thinking about the background. I was able to invite a friend over with zero notice to watch the eclipse because I had extra glasses which would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago. The other day I was not in my best state of mental health and when I got home, walking into my house made me feel better. My cozy, pleasant, decorated-for-me, CLEAN sanctuary.
That’s how everyone should feel about home.
