the basics of survival
taking it back to the bare minimum
I don’t know about you, but it’s been a hard couple of weeks. Couple of months? Maybe just a hard year…
I feel like I can’t catch a breath. Every time I think we’ve reached a moment of calm, something else absolutely out of control happens. Life just does not stop slinging curveballs at us. I mean, I knew that, but it’s getting kind of ridiculous.
I’ll admit, things seem to be normalizing now, but then you’ve got the holidays. The holidays are notoriously difficult for those of us with chronic illness (if you’re feeling it this year, you’re not alone). The stress from that alone would be enough to take me out.
My family and I, though, are still recovering from late October, when my dad had a really serious health scare. We are all fine physically — now — but getting back on our feet afterwards, emotionally, has been difficult. Something very serious almost happened. It’s that almost that lingers still in happy moments, around the corner. This moment almost did not happen. Your dad almost was not here for this.
When my dad was in the hospital, towards the end of it when we started to realize he would be okay, he implored us to take care of ourselves, to not worry about making our days perfect, to just do what we needed to survive. For some reason, that was exactly what I needed to hear. It’s what I still need to hear, with the shadow of those days hanging over me, with holiday stress tugging at the edge of my clothing demanding I order gifts now and pay attention to things that I don’t normally have to. When the stress crowds in, a stiller, smaller voice says to be patient with myself. To slow down. To only focus on what I need to do.
Do the bare minimum. That is more than okay.
Right before my dad was in the hospital, I started using the Finch app. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a little pet bird you keep on your phone. By completing goals and self-care tasks, you take care of your bird, too. It’s been aptly compared to the tamagotchis of the early 2000s (or digipets, if you went to the dollar store like I did).
I actually had the app downloaded for three years, but I had used it inconsistently. The reason? I had been trying to use it perfectly. I had been trying to use it to advance and improve with big, grandiose steps — I felt that I needed to make my goals important and more self-improvement focused. My perspective changed when someone told me about their guided path to “literally survive the day.” That’s more my speed, I thought. I just need to literally survive the day.
So I started using it in this way. My goals were simple. Get out of bed. Change my clothes. Drink water.
Just be.
In addition, I purposefully set out to not add too many goals. Once I start using apps like this, I tend to get overexcited and add a ton of goals and then my ADHD brain just short circuits and I can’t handle it. So, for Finch, my intention was to keep it simple. And it worked. A few days later, I happened to be using Finch when my dad was in the hospital. It sounds silly now, but this little bird helped me focus on taking care of myself, on remembering to take walks, to distract myself, to still do things I enjoyed. (Not sponsored, but I highly recommend Finch.)
If you’re going through something hard and soul-wrenching and difficult — no matter what it is — this is what I recommend. Literally just survive the day. Boil it down to what you need to do, and then do that. Don’t worry about the rest. You literally can skate through. It’s okay, I promise.
I used to watch The Walking Dead, and one episode that sticks out to me is this episode where this kid had written “JSS” on her wrist. (Disclaimer: I don’t remember anything else about the episode.) It was a mystery throughout the episode until it was revealed that it stood for Just Survive Somehow. I think we can twist that to meet our methods here. Just survive somehow. It doesn’t matter how. If you need to use dry shampoo, that is fine. If you need to subsist on granola bars and protein shakes, that is fine. I don’t care — just that you’re here to see another day. Just that you’re making it and taking care of yourself, no matter what that looks like. These are the basics of survival. This is how we get through this.*
Sending you so much love as you survive. We can do it.
— Sky 🌱
*“This” = the holidays, the political climate, our chronic illness symptoms, literally anything
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