Seeing Red

Or, There's a lot going on but not really

I’ve got a lot going on. But not really. There’s a woman in my writing group who is on her seventh week of not being allowed to put weight on the foot she fractured while swimming. She’s got at least three more weeks to go.

All I’m doing is volunteering myself for instant menopause in October. NBD. In case you’re curious as to why, I’ll put the details in this footnote¹; those of you who couldn’t care less can just keep reading.

Since making this decision, I’ve been in a state of mental paralysis. The stress, the grief and other conflicting emotions, and the desire to get everything in order before I’m out of work for a month and my body changes forever have overwhelmed my already ADHD-flaring brain to the point where I just freeze.

This has been my M.O. for decades — one of my many flawed default settings. I get to the point where my brain is so overloaded with possible directions I could take that I end up doing nothing. I’ll get a sudden burst of nervous energy, start something, then lose my drive a minute later and flit over to something else. I end up starting lots but completing little. And when it gets really bad, as it has this past week, I do barely anything at all.

I was relaying this predicament to a friend, and as I was talking about it, I got sick of myself mid-sentence. A distinct section of my brain said, “Oh my GOODNESS, enough already.”

(This was not my higher self speaking. She is never mean. But she did chime in right afterward, saying to me, “You know what you need to do.”)

And, as always, she was right.

I needed to just start. Get up out of bed and do something. Anything that would move my body and literally break the Freeze Mode.

I got off the phone with my friend, went to the kitchen, and unloaded the dishwasher. Then I loaded it with the dirty dishes. Then I wiped down the stovetop. Then I indulged my ADHD for a while and let it take me around the house, spotting things that needed attention.

Putting away my matcha mug inspired me to unbox the matcha powder that was delivered last week.

Breaking down that shipping box inspired me to take out the rest of the recycling.

Seeing all the pollen on top of the recycling bin inspired me to wipe down the surfaces in my office.

Before I could wipe down my desk, I had to spend a few minutes clearing the clutter from it.

Seeing my freshly decluttered and wiped-down desk inspired me to sit down and do some art journaling.

A while ago, I saw a Reddit post from someone who’d made “rainbow pages” in her junk journal — two-page spreads devoted to each color of the rainbow. I’d made an introductory “Rainbow Spreads” spread — a colorful sticker collage, rainbowing across the pages — weeks prior, but had yet to start tackling the individually colored pages. I just couldn’t conjure the energy to get started on it. It felt like a weight, not an opportunity.

But after encouraging myself to break the freeze, move around, make some progress in my physical space, I suddenly had the urge to make a little art.

So I looked for red.

I brought out my ever-heightening stack of magazines and flipped through each page, scanning for cherry, crimson, ruby, and garnet. I tore out the images that called to me and used my Gyro-Cut to wind around their edges with delicious precision. I used washi tape for the backround of one side, larger red magazine cut-outs for the other. I layered and unlayered, tried and played, until it looked “right.” I glue-taped it all down.

It was the best meditation session I’ve had in months. My brain had been achingly distracted and woefully unfocused for weeks, and for over an hour, I simply looked for and cut out and played with red.

I finally felt the sense of calm I’d been so desperately missing. My brain had remembered how to one-step-at-a-time-,-Beautiful.

Lord only knows when I’ll get to orange.

✨ If you’re here, reading this footnote, I’m ever so grateful. ✨

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1. I was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 endometriosis, with extensive damage to both ovaries. So it’s all coming out in October.