My circle of friends shrank exponentially following my divorce and depression diagnosis. A good portion of it was a direct decision by me to cut ties where I felt the conflict of friendships was too high. I’m sure some felt this was just me giving up, but sometimes you have to come to a decision to take yourself out of a situation where your mental health comes at the cost of trying to act like nothing has changed.
Having said that, I still maintain a small group of friends that I still interact with, some local, some from far away (ish). I’ve never really been a social butterfly, I’ve always felt that it wasn’t the proximity of your friends or how many of them you had, it’s the closeness of them that counted the most. I would gladly rather have ten tried and true friends than a hundred trivial ones.
One of my friends, I’ll call her M, was kind enough of to send me a care package.
The manual labor of doing a pour-over (or hand-pour) coffee has been a coping tool for me. It’s that kick start of physical activity to get my blood moving and to get my mind focusing on something other than nightmares or depressive thoughts. I grind my coffee by hand so it’s a whole experience. Gone are the days of a push button Keurig for me. Call it coffee snobbery if you want, for me it’s a way of getting active, even if only in a small measure. What’s nice though is that I found ways to gradually expand from my coffee habit to things like making desserts (Coffee Panna Cotta — Dwallops of Happy Panna Cotta)
If you’re faced with the same challenges as I’ve been. Try to find something even if it’s small. Every little bit helps if it gets you up and moving. It’s painful and easy to get trapped by depression and the physical ‘drag’ that entails. Small things can help in the long term, even if they don’t seem like it at first.
