Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if I didn't decide to take an active role in my recovery. What if I listened to the voice in my head that told me if I left my first university I would be letting people down? What if I kept telling myself that medication made you crazy? What if I had let myself continue to drown in dark emotions instead of hauling ass to therapy to get it out? What if I hadn't started to speak up and out about mental illness, the thing we make the elephant in the room?
I'd be stuck. I'd be failing out of school. I'd be driven physically ill by what goes on in my head. I might even be dead. And that's scary to think about. But that makes me all the more proud of how far I've come.
Some days suck ass. Simply put. You don't get your way. The asshole in your head wins. You feel like your emotions are suffocating you.
But I think that's just the nature of the beast.
Some days, nothing works. I can recognize that the things that cause my anxiety are often irrational And I think it's important to. But that's only half the battle.
The other battle in how you respond rather than in how you react.
Some days, my reaction is negative self-talk. I call myself the dreaded "c word:" crazy. I tell myself I hate that I'm doing this. That I'm angry with myself. But then I start RESPONDING. I tap into my coping mechanisms.
Sometimes the music, the baths, the reading, the weighted blanket, or even the medication doesn't work. At that point, I decided to give into the day. I just go to sleep.
Why keep this internal battle going when I could just end it quietly by heading to bed? I go to sleep recognizing what went wrong. And I wake up tomorrow refocused and ready to keep fighting.
Medication doesn't fix everything. Therapy doesn't fix everything. Self-care doesn't fix everything. In fact, there's nothing to fix. All there is to do is accept the reality and decide to do something about it.
I let life pass me by for a year after I stopped running from it. And it beat me down until I thought I wouldn't see the light again. But I pulled myself up. I looked to the sunshine. I decided to make the change.
ME. I DID THAT. SHE ACTUALLY DID THAT.
And I'm happy. Life isn't perfect. I'm not always thriving. But I'm SURVIVING. A year ago I could barely do just that.
So yes, this is me patting myself on the back. Because I've done something that people have noticed. And I did it for me.
Usually, we think doing things for ourselves is selfish. But not this.
This is powerful. This is strong. This is recovery. And this is me. Living, despite it all.
