There was a time in my life when my anxiety and depression ran my life. Everything happened around them and if I didn’t do something, or I bailed, it was because I was letting my anxiety and depression run my life. I am well aware that many are going to think that this is a lame excuse and I should have sucked it up and got out of bed, went out with my friends, eat that extra meal. However, what you don’t realize is that I wish it was all just a lame excuse. It isn’t though, it is something that I live with every day of my life.
Well here I am, five months after starting therapy, three months of being on medication and as hard as this journey can be I can say that my anxiety and depression no longer run my life. Now I am not at all saying that everything is sunshine and rainbows, what I am saying is that I now have some kind of handle on things. Yes, there are still days that I struggle and that’s okay, yes I still need mental health days off from work and school sometimes I can proudly say that I only need one day at a time compared to when I couldn’t get out of bed for up to a week at a time.
My anxiety may no longer run my life, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t present and that I don’t still have them because I do. I just got lucky with my medication and my therapy, I have a wonderful therapist and my medication is doing everything that it should be doing.
So, here I am working on me and my recovery hoping that I don’t relapse again and that my medication keeps working because for me, being in recovery is almost as scary as letting my anxiety and depression run my life. I think I see it like this because I have been in recovery before and failed, so for me I wake up every morning and hope that I won’t relapse, that my medication will still work and that I can live another day as me.
Recovery is hard, recovery doesn’t happen overnight, recovery isn’t always pretty, recovery looks different for all of us. It’s okay to take control of your life again and get the help you need. If you don’t think you can go alone or have too much anxiety to set the appointment up yourself, reach out to a friend, a professor or anyone you trust and I promise they will be more than happy to help you start on your recovery. We all deserve to have control over our lives.
