Little Things for Which I am Thankful: Learning to Accept

Or should I say, the theme for this post is learning to accept.  (I’ll get to the point after taking a very short tangent below about this weekend.)

It’s going to be a very busy weekend with my friend Lisa who is also known as Mom to Marathon coming into town to run the Boston Marathon this Monday. If  you know of her, you know she was stopped on Boylston Street last year. Thankfully, she ran with her phone and we were able to find each other. Personally, I think she was going on adrenaline most of that day because she was still “going, going, going” later on that night, even though after running all that way she still did a ton of walking with me since the T was shut down and cabs were pretty hard to come by.

I’m grateful for my learning how to accept a few things this week, or at least learning how to accept dealing with certain things.   I’m going to forego the usual list for today, and just write about what I’m grateful for–I hope no one minds.

You may know that I take anti-depressants. I have for the past 3.5 years since my divorce. They have greatly helped me out and I admit, when I started taking them, I thought that they would be a temporary part of my life. You take them, you work through them, you wean yourself off of them, and then you’re all back to “normal.” However, once you have had a depressive episode in life, you are considered 50% more likely to have another one. And if you have had two depressive episodes in your life, your odds increase to something like 85%. I’m in that second category as I know now that I was must have been clinically depressed as a teenager. So, I should stay on them as maintenance medication.

Earlier this week, I mentioned to someone how I thought about still taking them. She suggested I look at them as the same as someone who takes high blood pressure medication, or medication for a hyper thyroid. It’s something that person has to take to keep them functioning biologically correctly and efficiently. The difference between the two is the stigma that gets attached to anything dealing with depression or problems of the mind.

So, I’m learning to accept that I may be on them for a good portion of my life. But that’s ok, because honestly, I like who I am as a person now, more than I ever have before. I’m so much more comfortable with my life. The few times I have tried to cut down by one pill or so, for some reason, I just haven’t felt “right.” So I will be sticking with the plan of medication.

I have also come to realize that most likely my tiny house will be an RV, and most probably, a motor home. This doesn’t mean that I am giving up on the dream of a tiny home. It just means the form of the tiny home will be something manufactured. But I will make it my “own” don’t you worry. The reason I say this is because the cost of tiny homes when made by someone other than yourself, just seem to be skyrocketing as they catch on with more popularity. Because I would be a single woman traveling, a motor home just makes sense for a number of reasons: safety, not having to hitch and unhitch every time I travel anywhere, and also because of my animals. Having a travel trailer would require me to need the help of a second person to hitch up, and also my animals would have to travel in carriers in a car. I already know one wouldn’t make it out of town before puking or peeing himself in his carrier. It just wouldn’t be pretty.  My plan is to not move around all the time like a “snowbird” because God knows, I would need a job! And I would likely keep it in one place most of the time. But it would be nice to know that if I did travel someplace for the weekend, I could take my whole “fur family” right along with me.

And before you mention it, yes, I know those things are hard to drive around in all the time. That’s why I would probably buy a scooter, which if I had to tow behind the motor home, is much easier to attach than say, a full-fledged car. And, they are much more efficient on gas, thereby saving me money.

Since accepting this is probably my path to tiny living, I have felt a sense of relief, honestly. I don’t like dealing with, or I should say, I don’t do well dealing with, uncertainty. I have tried to “control” it by feeding it with information, but someone suggested that I just acknowledge the fact that uncertainty to me sometimes brings anxiety,  and think about ways to satisfy that anxiety.  (Feeding it information is one of those ways of satisfying it.)  So now, the focus is on the word “satisfy” rather than “control”. It has a  much better connotation, don’t you agree?

Anyway, I’m sure I will have a lot more to write about next week after the Marathon on Monday, complete with pics of elite runners, I hope. (Did I mention that I live on the route?? It’s SO convenient!) Have a great weekend, everyone!