Tag: Self Awareness

and that’s okay.

(Apology in advance for formatting or typos, I’m writing from my phone. This is so important to me that I want to express it now instead of when I have time at a computer.)

All day I kept thinking about what to write in regards to World Mental Health Day. This year has been hard for me and the last few years have been the hardest of my life. I don’t have any shame or embarrassment talking about the fact that I struggle with anxiety, depression, or any other mental health disorder. I know for some people talking about those things is hard. That’s okay.

Either way, if you’re comfortable publicly talking about it or not, just know that it’s okay to not be okay. Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed. 20% of adults will experience some type of mental health issue this year. Thats roughly 1 in 5 people.

With our society and the culture of the information age, we as humans are likely smarter than ever… which in my opinion opens up so many doors, both good and bad. We have constant access to informational resources, the world’s knowledge at our finger tips, and the ability to communicate 24/7 with just about every person in our lives.

For me, a lot of my struggles and issues are caused by over-analyzing, assuming the worst case scenario, miscommunicating through text messages, or putting WAY too much value and thought into read-receipts.

Everyone values different things. Everyone communicates slightly differently. Everyone expresses their emotions differently. Everyone lives a different life. We even experience the same situations differently. With the variation in the human brain, Living, Loving, and Laughing isn’t always easy. Different aspects of life are easy for some people while that same thing may be someone else’s kryptonite.

I think that the world has a tendency to see new diseases or disorders that become common diagnoses as more of a fad. Take for example, the diagnosis rate of ADHD, the diagnosis rate of Autism, or the diagnosis of Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). All of these things seem to become “popular” diagnoses at some point in the last 30 years, but not prior to their popularization.

Why? Because it’s the cool thing? Because it’s the newest thing? Because everyone wants some sort of reason to claim they struggle or that their life is harder than others? No. I’m going to say none of those are it. I think one of the major causes is due to the ability to have information at the tip of our fingers in seconds. The ability to co-create, simultaneously. The ability to discuss, confer, and combine data with people on the other side of the world who speak a different language. The technical ability to test for these things has just recently progressed or maybe even has just been invented. For good or bad, the advancements in science and technology have led us here.

Maybe 100 years ago the same percentage of people didn’t suffer from RLS, but 100 years ago how many people spent 8+ hours a day in a sitting position? Not saying that’s a cause, I’m not a doctor. I’m just saying the world is different than it has ever been before. Nature is constantly changing and evolving, thus even nature is different than it was 100 years ago. That’s just how life works; in order for us to survive we must advance and improve ourselves in order to keep up.

Now, I have to say, I wish there wasn’t a negative stigma attached with mental health. I’m sorry that there is, actually. Sure, I am taking the risk of putting myself and my mental health issues out in the open. However, my hope is that at least ONE of my Insta or Twitter followers, Facebook friends, or Snapchat viewers will recognize that their struggles are valid. And that it’s okay to seek help, regardless of what that help is.

I want you to know that it took me 12 months to find a new therapist after having a horrible one. Not all of those months were spent looking for one; half of that time was me allowing myself/convincing myself to be okay with the concept that I needed a new therapist. Help is not easy to find, or to afford unfortunately. But use your good days to take care of yourself for those bad days.

In order for the world to keep improving, we must keep improving. Associating a negative stigma to mental health problems does absolutely no good for society. We must acknowledge our problems (as a society, culture, race, etc.) in order to fix them. Hiding them, suppressing them, invalidating them will only allow them to grow into worse problems. And I mean that in every sense. We have to be okay with the fact that sometimes we aren’t okay. And that’s okay. It is the only way to move forward.

Please take some time this week to check in with your friends. Ask, and genuinely listen, to see if they’re okay. Let them know that it’s alright if they aren’t. Any resource you can provide is helpful whether that be a website, a phone number, a coffee-date, or simply being someone they can text when they’re having a rough day. All of these actions show sympathy, and you never know, but doing this one simple thing may save someone’s life.

Acknowledge that mental health issues are real; they are as real as physical illnesses. Accept that these issues are valid. Whether it’s sometimes or all the time, it’s okay to not be okay. 🖤

who am I writing for?

All day I’ve been asking myself ‘who am I writing for?’ wondering who I am writing these posts for. Are these posts for me, or are they for you? Or, are they for her? Maybe they’re for her, and for the rest of the world – to tell them what we can’t tell them directly. In a way that would make them for us, I suppose. Even though I don’t have a concrete answer (I lean towards the last one), I don’t really care what the answer is. Some nights I enjoy this, other nights I feel like I really need to get a thought off of my mind.

When i spend long periods of time alone, a lot of thoughts run through my head. We joke about that a lot, that my brain is always running and we better not let it get too crazy because who knows where it’ll go if left unattended. But, in all truth, a lot of my thoughts are memories (sometimes good, sometimes bad) and less often about paranoia or worrying about worst-case-scenario situations.

I just want to share so many of these memories that I have, here, with everyone reading. Especially those memories relevant to this particular story I’m trying to tell. I wish I could stop whatever I was doing each time I had a memory that I realized I hadn’t written down yet that I wanted to share – but the reality is that there are other things that must be finished first. Things like getting ready for my day, spending hours at work, keeping the house clean, making meals, or taking care of myself and the animals; then, only then, when I get to my free time at the end of the day can I come here and write. That assumes I’m still in the ‘writing mood.’ It seems I’ll go about a week without wanting to write, and then write for a few days in a row until I write a really long (usually an emotional) catalogue of my thoughts. Either way, I’m thankful that I’m finally doing it.

Meanwhile, our lives unfold, as I get ‘further behind’ in my imaginary, nonexistent schedule of writing whatever this is that I’m writing. Today we got some good news, albeit very tiny – we are definitely being optimistic with it. Tomorrow is the day we really find out if this ‘news’ is good. If it goes the way we are expecting, I can continue writing this with the outcome I hope for. If it doesn’t go as we expect, well we either just keep waiting for another solidified outcome or there’s a twist we don’t see coming.

Time is Relative

How do you pick just one place to start when trying to describe this time of my life? I have no I idea where to start and what to talk about first. There’s so many things I feel like you should know to get the whole picture; like about my long history of head injures, my scarring heartbreaks, my isolated childhood, or my most recent influx of anxiety and stress. Being ghosted just after finally feeling like you’ve found ‘the one,’ falling into deep(er) depression and isolationism, then swooped back up, told everything you’d want to hear, getting your life back on track, to only find out you’ve been cheated on for months, and he now needs you as a character witness to prevent him from going to jail for the next 7-10 years of his life because of her.

Sometimes reality is a bitch.

Sometimes you realize that you’ve been blissfully ignorant for 28 years of your 28-and-a-half year life.

Right now, it’s a Saturday night in the middle of February. Given the context clues I’ve provided above, that would make the current year 2019. My dog, who is five and a half months old now, is laying next to me in my king size bed and soon my kitty cat will join us for the night. She’s quite the snuggle-puss.

I can remember thinking about a year ago, at the start of 2018 just after the new year, that 2017 had probably been the hardest year of my life. New year’s had never been a big thing for me in terms of parties, resolutions, or any sort of sentimental value but on the 2017/2018 new year night it was. I had been struggling with a lot. I still struggle with a lot, that’s why it’s almost midnight and I’m writing to you. That evening was what I felt would be a positive turning point for my life going forward.

Full Circle

Lately I spend the days thinking how much I was the one that screwed up over the past year.  Did you know we are coming up on the 1st year anniversary on when we met? Just months ago, for a second time (or maybe even more) I thought I couldn’t have screwed up more by meeting you.  There have been days in this last year where I wonder if I regret even meeting you.

You were the first person I ever met from ‘the internet,’ oooooh scary!  What a scary thought, in the year 2018 at the age of 27 – how could that be? Well, I had been in serial monogamous relationships basically up until that point for the last… I don’t even know how many years! Six? Seven? Ten?? I’m not even sure.  And that night I was moving on from one and looking for another.  That night I fell in love with you so hard within just the first hours of knowing you.  The first hours, the first minutes, the first seconds. Your voice, your ambiance, your character, your gestures, your jokes, your stories, the way you held yourself, and the way you laughed and most importantly, that smile. The way you chose when to make eye contact and the way you chose when to reserve the eye contact for a better moment.

The way we kissed in the parking lot and a fire ignited. I knew in that instant I needed you in my life and there was no turning back from that point.

That’s how I fall.  Well, specifically, that’s how I fell.  For me, there’s no going back until a relationship is completely gone.  However with you, there was an instant connection unlike no other I’d felt before.

But our relationship over the last year hasn’t been so great, has it? And yet, somehow it’s still not over and we keep coming back. Now it’s time to move forward.

While I can say that we have both learned a lot – a lot about each other, a lot about ourselves, a lot about the way the world works, and a lot of about the human brain – I can say that it hasn’t been the funnest ride all the way through… Sure there’s been fantastic ups and extremely low downs.  But damn, do I know about those lows, as I’m sure you do.  At this point we may not have even talked those through yet, but we will.  We will get there and we will get past them.

However, my reflection on us has brought me to a conclusion that this story isn’t about you; this story is about me.