Spoons

During I did the Write 31 Days blog challenge. The series I wrote dealt with my current journey through the darkness of depression. At the end of the 31 days, I wasn't anywhere close to the end of my story -- partly because I'm still living it, but also because it's such an involved story that I only got as far as last Christmas (2013) in the allotted time. I decided a few days after the challenge finished that I want to keep writing about it. I haven't come back to it yet because I've been writing a new series, but the last couple of days have been rather difficult and it occurred to me that one of the reasons might make a good blog post on this same subject of depression.

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One of the questions that most well-meaning friends and family will ask a person who is depressed is "How are you?" Because I don't usually feel like talking much about it or don't want to get into a long and drawn out conversation about how I'm really doing, I often just say, "I'm okay" or if it's someone I don't mind talking to a little, "I'm tired." Sometimes, both of these are a bit of a fabrication. You might be asking why someone would be less than 100% truthful when a friend or family member is genuinely interested in their well-being? Well, it's usually because I'm either all out of spoons or trying to conserve them.

Say what???

No, I don't collect actual spoons. It's a metaphor for the physical, emotional, and mental wherewithal that a person needs to get through their day and do what they need and/or want to do. Still confused? Let me explain.

A person who is physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy and well wakes up each day with a number of spoons that looks something like the picture above. It's a huge number. A person who is sick in some way, wakes up with fewer spoons. A person with a significant or chronic illness -- be it physical (like cancer, lupus, MS, or fibromyalgia), mental (like depression, bipolar, dementia or Alzheimer's), or emotional (like grief) -- wakes up with far fewer spoons still.

Every thing you do in a day, whether it is a necessary thing or something you want to do, burns your spoons. Someone who is healthy can do several things before they burn a spoon. They can get up, shower, make coffee and eat breakfast, dress, and drive to work before one of their spoons is gone. Someone who is struggling with depression loses 4-5 spoons doing those same things. That might not sound like much, but if you only start the day with 10 spoons in total, that's close to half of your spoons gone before your day even really gets started.

The other thing about spoons is that you never quite know how many you're going to wake up with each day. You may go to bed feeling pretty good but then your sleep is disrupted multiple times, you get woken up in a stressful way, or you just wake up feeling emotionally worse than you did the day before. Because of this, you may wake up with 12 spoons one day and 4 the next. I even had one Sunday where I woke up with about 4 spoons to the sound of my children fighting and it was so stressful that I felt like I lost all my spoons before my feet even hit the floor.

So what happens when your spoons are gone? Well, they're gone. You can borrow against tomorrow's spoons (and sometimes you have to), but just like any loan, you'll be paying it back with interest. In other words, instead of borrowing 1 or 2 spoons, you'll wind up with 3-4 less the next day. That said, it's best to ration your spoons and prioritize those things that are most important to you. Unfortunately, there are some days you won't get done everything you want to do or need to do and that can be very hard.

For example, yesterday I woke up with very few spoons. I had a rough night's sleep and not much sleep and then some early morning stress that burned a couple of spoons. My middle daughter's class had their Thanksgiving meal yesterday and I had to make the choice between having enough spoons to do that and enough to care for our 2-year old and myself. I knew that given how few spoons I had woken up with and the stress of the morning that a trip to her school was out of the question. As much as I wanted to be there, I knew I'd be plunged into the barely controlled chaos of the throng of other parents, siblings, and students all visiting over Thanksgiving foods in the cafeteria which would wipe out the rest of my spoons and then some. It was a painful decision to make because I know how important these little things are to kids and I've always striven to make sure I'm there for them. I actually had a cry over it (burning another spoon in the process).

As I was pondering this, it occurs to me that people who care for those with mental illness deal with limited spoons too. Caring for someone who is struggling with severe depression is very stressful. Whenever you've got additional stress beyond that of the normal day to day challenges, it reduces your number of spoons and increases how fast you burn them. This is especially true when this additional stress is ongoing for several months or years. I have observed this firsthand with my sweet Gray. He has gone above and beyond in caring for me, but I know it has taken a great toll on him personally. He does his best, but I know that there are days when we've put the girls to bed and he says, "I'm done." There may be quite a few things that need doing and that he has time to do before turning in for the night, but he's out of spoons and he needs to do some self-care so he'll have enough spoons for the next day. I've also observed that when I have a better day, he has a few more spoons to work with and that the opposite is true when I have bad days. The longer my depression lingers, the fewer spoons he has to work with overall each day.

Image courtesy of But You Don't Look Sick (a great website about living with a chronic & invisible illness)

I can't take credit for the idea of spoons as a metaphor for what it takes to live life. The credit for that goes to Christine Miserandino. This is simply my own take on it and my personal observations. I read her theory some months ago and it so resonated with me because it's a perfect picture of what it's like to live with depression day in and day out. Most people understand that there are certain symptoms, but I doubt many of them give much thought to how those symptoms affect the way you live your life. Hopefully, this spoon theory gives you a better idea of this.

Do you deal with limited spoons? If so, how do you decide what to do when you're running low?