Making peace with life… and shaking up old habits
November is usually when things start to unravel for me. My brain gets swallowed by the loss of light. And December? December is the end of the end — the annual endpoint of my life, every single year.
To be honest, I didn’t exactly grow up with winter as a yearly reality, nor did I learn how to survive it. By mid-December, we would routinely fly to the other hemisphere to visit family back home.
It was the escape I waited for all year — right around the time when you begin to wonder if the sun will ever come out again. I’d return two months later, fresh as spring, stretched across my school bench pretending I hadn’t missed a whole chapter of collective education.
Since the journey has been on my own dime (basically since adulthood — which started very early for me), I rarely migrate south to escape the shadows and cold anymore. Instead, I take the full blow of winter depression square in the face. And after all these years, I still haven’t grown used to it.
While waiting hopelessly to become rich enough to resume my intercontinental pilgrimages, I’m trying to make up for my chronically low dopamine — already dysfunctional by default. I’ve spent far too many hours online searching for “natural” alternatives to chemical drugs.
From all the results, I kept music, trees, cat cuddles, and sleep.
The last two, I’ve got handled.
Apparently, cheese also boosts dopamine release, hence the “raclette”. But it’s not exactly a sustainable daily ADHD treatment, if you ask me.
The first two, though, I could do better.
With music, I’ve spent years trying to find a collective, activist musical practice that works with my social capacity1, my limited skills, and my solo-parenting schedule. And I finally found it. I joined a choir. As of… two weeks ago. I can’t sing, and hearing off-key notes makes my stomach twist (so yes, quite the challenge! But I seem determined to put myself in uncomfortable situations).
I also scheduled forest outings: a few small hikes and a bigger one in early December. Putting nature back into my eyes and wind back onto my skin might shift something in the way I relate to winter.
One advantage of having the kind of brain2 I have is that I’ve never felt compelled to fit my life into Western norms. But that doesn’t protect me from the feeling that maybe I haven’t accomplished “enough,” especially since I’m colonized by productivity thinking like everyone else.
But accomplish what, and for whom?
Maybe resistance also means walking toward the “useless.”
Useless for capitalist society, I mean — not useless for Life (animal, vegetal, etc.).
I want to have as little negative impact on the world as possible and limit my participation in systems of domination, without giving up on being part of society. Even though, sometimes, I dream of becoming a hermit.
Engaging in “useless” activities that nourish both my soul and my body feels like a promising direction.
Walking, to break with agitation.
Singing, as a gesture of resistance.
And making peace with this everyday life that doesn’t quite feel like mine.
ps: I’m sharing all this with you because, in order to “function,” I need an ersatz version of body doubling.
- Being AuDHD — at the intersection of autism and ADHD — doesn’t give me the best starting cards for group socializing. With age and wisdom (!), I no longer have patience for certain “oppressive” behaviors, even when they’re “just jokes.” And I’ll choose queer feminist groups over mixed ones any day — it’s simply easier as a trans person. It does complicate things a bit though. ↩︎
- A combination of noncompliant functional autism and creative hyperactivity that keeps pulling me toward nonconformism. ↩︎
Leave a Reply