On Wednesday September 28th, Hurricane Ian hit Florida. I was at work throughout the hurricane, on Team A, which is the team that hunkers down at work during the hurricane. I was at work for over 51.5 hours until I was released to go home. During my time there, I delivered meals to residents, tried to keep their spirits up, and basically helped wherever it was needed. I was in the kitchen cutting strawberries when we lost power and were switched to generator power. My new job can withstand a category 4 hurricane, so I knew I was completely safe. I also knew my roommate was completely safe because she was in a similar situation to me. However, I was worried about all my friends in Florida. We lost cell reception and Internet, so I had no way of knowing if everyone was OK. I was worried about my roommate’s parents and son, who were at the house. I was worried about my boyfriend and his parents, who I didn’t hear from for about 48 hours after the storm was over.

As someone who suffers from anxiety and whose mind always likes to go to the worst place, I was going through my own private hell during the storm. I tried to keep my mind busy, but near the end of those 51.5 hours at work, my mental health began to break. I was tired, sore, my routine that helps maintain my mental health had been disrupted. I was relieved when they finally told me I could leave… and then I went home to no power, no internet, and no running water. I was fine without the internet because I have books, and I got a ton of reading done during the week we didn’t have power or internet. Though in total honesty, we were all ecstatic when we got power back at home because we were all starting to get irritated and hot and we were all fighting a lot the last few days before the power came back.

So I survived my first hurricane completely unharmed. The house lost its chimney topper and we had some trees taking up one side of our driveway. That was the extent of the damage we suffered, so we got off really lucky.

But my mental health took a severe nosedive as a result of the non-stop stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions I went through in the aftermath of the hurricane. My mental health has only started to show signs of improving again within the past day or two. And it sucks because before the hurricane, I felt my mental health was at the best it has been in a long while, and possibly a the best it has ever been. My therapist told me this was a giant bump in the road so I don’t need to start all over again with rebuilding my mental health- I just need to pick up where I left off. Easy for him to say, hard for me to do!

Speaking a bit more on my mental health, my psychiatrist had me get some genetics testing done to see what medications would work for me… and the results are horrifyingly amusing to me. So basically, there isn’t a single antidepressant that will work for me, all of them would do me more harm than good. Also, I have low-ish folate levels, which could explain why I’ve had trouble getting pregnant. So my psychiatrist made a recommendation of something I could take to help with my folate, so I’m just waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Hopefully it helps.

As for my depression, I can exercise to help it (let’s all laugh together because I don’t exercise), and there might be a few other avenues I can explore, but I’m not sure if I want to because I haven’t done research on them. So for now, I’ll have to deal with my depression and hope that some day soon, it won’t be so bad anymore.

Work has been stressful as result of the hurricane. We didn’t have internet for about a week, so it made it hard for us to do anything. and when we got power back, our residents still didn’t have theirs, so trying to notify them of anything was basically impossible. And there was so much miscommunication between departments that things got really screwy. So hopefully we’re past all that and can resume things as normal.

Besides all that, I can’t complain too much. Things have been getting better for me. I’ve pursued some new interests, like Diamond Art, which is really relaxing. I’ve still been on my decluttering/minimalism journey. I’ve been trying to get my life in better order because I’m hoping to move into an apartment with my boyfriend before the end of the year, but we’ll see how that goes because apartment hunting in Florida is hard! My Halloween costume is coming together. My roommate’s kiddo picked it out- I’m going to be Luna from his favorite cartoon, PJ Masks. He picked her for me because she wears a lot of black, just like I do, and one of our favorite things to do together is run outside and look for the moon.

So right now, life isn’t perfect, but it’s not the worst either. Things are coming together, slowly but surely. Hopefully soon the goals I’ve set for myself and the things I want the most in life will come to me. I just need to be patient… which is something I’m terrible at being!

So how have you been lately? Anything new or exciting or scary happen to you lately? I would love to know! I hope everyone has a great weekend!