Other people are complaining so possibly I can too

[violsva]

The thing is, when I entered this living situation I knew it would be bad for my mental health. I did it anyway because I had very few alternatives and they were not necessarily better, but I set up ways to ameliorate it and deal with it.

And they were working. It actually worked really well. I was doing fine for six months, and then in February Mom was in Florida and I had a great month of not needing to put that much effort into dealing with it. Then at the beginning of March I was a little off balance because I went from that to an excellent weekend with my sister and Pixies and then I suddenly came back to here again. But I could have managed it and got back onto a level baseline. I was trying.

And now most of my coping mechanisms are suddenly unavailable.

I could sit down and think up more ways and set up a schedule, but I am back to not trusting my ability to follow a schedule. That kind of specific, deliberate deciding on coping mechanisms works better when I have a baseline of decent mental health to start from.

And what this mostly is is lack of options. Part of what helped last fall was the variety of different spaces I had access to. It's still not much above freezing most days, and soon it's going to be raining a lot. There is nowhere else indoors to go. And mental distance just is not as effective as physical distance.