What happens when you get depressed – and it happens whether you’re a little depressed and struggling or whether you’re sunk in that pit of cold water with a boulder on your chest – is that you can’t. You can’t, and you care less and less that you can’t.

Most of what you can’t do is self care – it’s energy, and it’s time, and maybe, sometimes, you think it’s something you don’t deserve, or maybe sometimes it’s something you don’t think about at all. And you don’t take care of yourself.

It’s not like, scented baths and a manicure and a fancy coffee self-care, it’s the basics. It’s changing your clothes. It’s the shower, because getting in and standing and lifting your arms and drying off and all of it, it’s so much. It’s washing your face. It’s brushing your hair. It’s brushing your teeth. It’s looking in the mirror.

When you look in the mirror, sometimes it’s seeing how you look – grey and unkempt, kind of gritty, kind of gross, and thinking that this image, that’s accurate. That’s kind of how it feels. That’s kind of what you deserve, isn’t it? It’s feeling sunk there and not knowing how to dig out.

It’s hating how hopeless you feel. It’s getting into the shower finally, dragging yourself in and sitting under the spray, just a little hotter than you can stand, and scrubbing and exfoliating and defoliating and letting the hot water stream through your hair and over your shoulders, and hoping that it’s washing everything away and you’ll emerge – fine. Okay. Better.

Cleaner, at least, but nothing’s changed, and the sheets aren’t changed, so you crawl back into dirty sheets and you wonder what it will take to drag you back out, and if it’ll be worth it.

It was especially easy to give up when I was drinking. Every day, earlier every day. Drawing a line – this is where I stop trying to cope. This is where I let everything get softer, easier, simpler. I can’t work or write or think when I’m tipsy and I can’t work or write or think or feel anything when I’m drunk and it’s so simple to pour myself into bed and black out, safe from dreams. Get up hungover and that was the thing most urgent to deal with, coffee and Diet Pepsi and being on the couch with dogs and letting it all accumulate like a film over my brain and my skin. Letting it all catch up to me, finally, aging me into sad eyes and bags under them, skin like sandpaper, dull and old lady.

Not drinking now, about five months of it. Five months of never being drunk. At some point there I sat back and said, I guess this is working. I guess this is a thing that’s happening. I am not drinking, I am not getting drunk, and what does that mean?

What does that mean. I still don’t know. But I thought, what can I change right now? I’ve stopped drinking, do I sit here and wait in place for not-drinking to become manifest and meaningful? What do I do from here – what has changed, and how can I mark that?

Reforming friendships, or settling friendships, or smoothing old hurts, mending the things I broke, making amends for the things that can’t be replaced – that’s the thing I want most badly, but that’s where I’m hesitating, hovering, wondering if that is pain and shame I need to come to terms with and fold back into myself as lessons learned, as a solid idea of who I don’t want to be any more and what I have to do going forward. How do you fix all the things you ripped apart, when some of that is how much you were loved and how badly you hurt the people who loved you?

Concrete things first, concrete things to hang on to and build a foundation and feel like solid enough a real person who can move forward. I’ll take care of myself. I’ll pretend I’m a person who takes care of herself, who is concerned about things like skin care and not horrifying her dentist.

Three months of a regimen – every day and every night, brushing, flossing, interdental brushing, mouthwash. Face cleansing, toning, peptides and antioxidants or whatever is in this little bottle that promises me brighter skin and fresh skies and new horizons and a shining star to light my way, and oiling up with more antioxidants and retinols and pesticides or whatever and then moisturizing which I am told closes your skin’s barrier and thus makes all of your unguents and potions work vigorously in service of your derma-health, and then sun screening, religiously, even on those days where it is gray and the sun is tired of your bullshit. Sometimes a hydrating sheet mask. Every morning, every night.

And lately, there’s been a difference. My face is changed, my smile is different. I lean forward and I smile big and my teeth are the white of teeth that haven’t been bleached to hell. They’re my normal teeth – the dental implant that was fucked up by a bad dentist, the fuckup that makes me ashamed to smile sometimes but it is not so bad. My smile is not so bad.

My skin is smooth. Have I ever had smooth skin? Has it ever felt silky and not kind of rough, and when did that patch on my cheek, that bit of discoloration, when did it start to fade away? When did my face start to look dewy? When did I start to look my age instead of ten years older?

My skin is glowing, and it is soft and it is bright and I lean into the mirror and I see my fine lines and the wrinkles around my eyes when I smile, and when I laugh, but look at me, able to smile at my own reflection like I mean it. Look at me touching the skin of my cheek and thinking that I kind of look beautiful and maybe a little happier, just a little bit.

The best skin I’ve ever had, at 46 years old. The first time I’ve ever taken care of myself in any sustained way. Ever. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never thought it mattered. I never knew what a difference it would mean.

Where did I learn that it didn’t matter? What made me decide I didn’t matter? I’m not sure I really believe it even now. But I’m told anything can become a habit if you keep at it long enough.