The Long Pause

It’s been over a year since I last posted. A long year. With so much death and hatred it has become difficult to see past the bad and retain hope. A friend’s boyfriend was in Charlottesville during the riots and was so affected by what happened that it pushed him over the edge of his already teetering depression. He took his life. Friends and family have lost jobs and family members, been diagnosed with cancer, and have had to move away just to afford to live. None of that is new, but it builds on the already unusual surplus of negative energy that weighs down our world.

Despite that, some good has come from this year. One of my very good friends got married to her best friend. I got engaged to my boyfriend of 6.5 years in July and we’re planning to get married next year. We moved from northern Virginia to southern Maryland for his job, which pays plenty well for us to live. I’ve found a Pagan community to socialize with and I’ve transitioned to a full-time job. Things are going okay and despite the raincloud of my depression slowly following me, I can run out from under its downpour often enough that I don’t feel like I’m drowning. Some of that is because I’m on a stable regimen of medication. More of it is because my Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is going well. I started it about a month ago to progress with coming to terms with my sexual trauma from college. That someday may be another post I write in detail, but I’m not there yet.

One thing I’ve been trying to get a better hold on is my daily practice. Whether or not you are Wiccan or have spiritual practices, find something you do every day. I’m sure most of you have a routine in the mornings: brushing teeth, washing your face, eating breakfast. Find five minutes that you can sit down, clear your mind, and breathe. Let your thoughts drift by like colorful inner tubes on a lazy river. Focus on the breath, the IN and OUT of the air through your lungs. If you are religious, give a shoutout to your favorite deity. Whenever I see my cats I remember how much Bast has supported me and loved me and I thank Her for blessing us with our two derpy fuzzballs.

Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, remember to express gratitude to those around you. Be a little extra nice to the cashier at the grocery store. Say “Thank You” to your spouse or partner when they bring you food on the way home. Give an extra hug or pat to your pets before you leave. The output of that small positive energy you expel will hopefully multiply and help tip the scales to balance out the negativity going on everyday.

Thank YOU, for the few of you who do read my posts. If you’d like to have healthy discussions with me or others in the comments you are most welcome. Questions? Ask away.

Breathe, ground and repeat.

Support without Stigma (a pondering)

I’ve been away for a while. Mostly trying to get parts of my life together, but also I’ve been working through things. After the post on death (which succeeded the death of my boyfriend’s childhood friend who passed too young), I lost my great aunt and I also was dealing with more issues of my ongoing trauma counseling. 

It’s been hard to focus on many things at once. In waves, my interests change from one to another: crochet to calligraphy to cake decorating and back to crochet. Sometimes I’ll throw in some painting and video games when I’m feeling particularly froggy, but much like my mood episodes, my coping hobbies come and go like the tides. 

So then why am I writing now? Because I have something to say, I guess. I got a new job, in photography (for which I got a degree), and finally got out of the soul-sucking retail job I had. I am truly honest when I say that the only thing that kept me there was the discount as I held out for a better opportunity. When I finally got it, things have started to fall into place. I get to work with the cutest kids every day while doing what I love. I also get to afford moving in with my boyfriend of 4+ years, something we’ve talked about for a while but couldn’t follow through with due to my lack of funds. As we start the next chapter of our lives together, and while I am in the most stable-feeling plateau of my ever-changing roller coaster life, I still feel the tides of depression.

Why is that?

As complex as the whole answer is, I can simply put it this way: depression is not just situational. The first time I heard the words “what do you have to be sad about?” coming from a family member’s mouth, I felt ashamed of considering myself as having a mental illness. Why should I, when I have a healthy family, friends, and a paid-for education with no major childhood dysfunctions to warp me into a psychotic mess? Because mental illness is more than being haunted by war or damaged by a hard life. It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain that you don’t get control over. It could be genetic, or it could be a mutation of the insanely randomness of biology. 

Either way, after some therapy and growing up, I learned that it’s not something I should try to hide or be ashamed of. If other people couldn’t at least see me for all that I was, then they didn’t need to know me. Some have come to change their minds, others stay ignorant. Despite the awesome advances I’m going through in my life right now, I still have my low points, I still struggle with the possibility that my irrational brain will try to convince me to self-harm, and I still have to take my daily dose of “crazy pills,” as my boyfriend jokingly calls them, to keep some part of my chemistry stable. Even if it doesn’t fix everything, it’s one less thing I have to worry about. 

I’m still my derpy, creative, over-thinking, extremely empathetic, deeply loving self, who is working to become the spiritual pagan I want to be, and underneath I have issues I don’t go into depth about unless I trust that you won’t judge or belittle me. I’m still me, and my issues and “illness” are a part of me. So I’m working to try to help remove the stigma from the negative connotation people feel when they think of people with depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness. 

And even if this doesn’t reach a kajillion views or shares, because I don’t expect it to, if I can pass on the message or even spark a seed of hope to help one person, then I accomplished something. I know what it’s like to be thankful for the little victories, like getting up in the morning, or looking people in the eye when I talk to them–even if I just want to look anywhere else. 

So do me a favor, and yourself, and think of three things (no matter how seemingly insignificant it may sound to anyone else) that make you thankful for the coming day or even just the breath in your lungs, and just try to appreciate those small victories. Because to us they’re way bigger than that. And I appreciate them too.

Breathe & ground.