As I stroll through
the different parts of each of my days and nights lately, I find myself baffled
by how my life has completely shifted into something that I had no anticipation
it would. I didn’t wake up the morning of January 4th, freezing and
utterly alone for the first time in my life, thinking that everything was going
to be okay. In fact, for dang near a month I wasn’t sure that anything, any
part of my life would ever be okay again. For the entirety of January I went
from my bed to my couch and back to my bed for days at a time, completely lost,
fearful, and emptier than I can ever remember having felt. I would go out
occasionally, usually to bumble the eight blocks to the bar in a trashy
tee-shirt so I could quietly drink myself into a crying mess with minimal
attention.
I spent almost the
entire month of February with zero confidence in my own strength. There was none.
I spent weeks at a time refusing to leave my house, eat, or socialize. I curled
myself around my puppy in clothes I'd been wearing for what must have been
longer than recommended and watched full seasons of shows I’d seen a billion
times before so that I didn’t need to focus on anything but the ugly situation
that I was allowing myself to spiral further into. February, I thought about
killing myself almost constantly. February, I was certain I had lost every good
part of me that existed, and that it had been replaced exclusively with
gigantic heaps of anger, resentment, and sadness. Most days, if I didn't wake
up crying, I started crying the moment my eyes opened and would cry myself into
a coma and fall asleep for brief periods throughout the day. February was the
furthest I had ever felt from believing that I might have a normal existence
ever again. I believed I was so broken and far gone that there was no fixing
it, so I stopped talking to people, stopped even toying with the idea of a
doctor or medication, and almost completely stopped eating.
Then there was April.
Suddenly, on a gorgeously sunny Saturday at the beginning of April I decided I
didn’t want to feel broken anymore. I made the conscious decision to be
happier, make healthier choices, and start to mend my own stuff because all the
crying and sad songs in the world weren't going to do it for me. I had sat on
my porch in the rain the previous day in hopes that the water pouring from the
sky would wash away the pain I had been harboring for months. I watched as
gigantic raindrops splashed on the table and was taken by the way they hit my
cherry blossom tree and sent the petals gently gliding to the ground beneath
them. I remember sitting there with my book in my hand praying that the rain
would fall on me and let me start again like those petals…
I wanted to find a new
purpose, a new me. Much like those petals would eventually be trampled by dogs
and people and snow, compacted and pushed into the ground where they would
provide tiny pink bursts of nutrients to the earth below them, I wanted to
finally give up and stop fighting against myself and everything around me and
fall into something more purposeful and fulfilling. Something that could make
me feel like me again. The me who nourishes people, the me who feels strong, the me who knows how to fix her bad days. I closed my eyes and listened to the rain, wishing harder than I'd ever wished before, that I would be able to find the strength to come through this.
And so I did.
That night, I went out
to the bar to see a friend I'd not seen in several years, despite every part of my anxiety and
depression telling me not to. I went out fully expecting to completely hate it
and want to come home immediately. I went out with no makeup, awful hairs, and
looking fully like a lazy slob. My friend and I hugged and I met some incredible new people.
I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking to my friend and sharing
photos of cats and puppies with these beautiful new people I had met. I woke up
in the morning with a smile on my face for the first time in I have no idea how
long. And then everything was different. I had decided to say yes to something
I had spent the past four months avoiding. And it was worth it. I took a walk
the next day and felt like I was finally able to breathe again. Like I had been
suffocating myself for years and my lungs were grasping at as much air as
possible to make up for nearly a decade of deprivation. Everything felt
different, looked different, smelled different. I walked and felt the breeze on
my face as I let Andrew Jackson Jihad sing all of my most favourite songs into my
ears; a concert for one as I completely rediscovered what it was to be alive.
I spent that day in
utter bliss, finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel that
everyone speaks so highly of. I felt like I had been traveling down that dang
tunnel for forever and the end was finally, finally in sight. And that day fell
into the next week, a week of mending my heart by actively deciding to begin
functioning again like a normal human being. I started cooking meals, not that
I was eating them initially, but I was inviting people to my house and
delighting in watching their faces eat the things I had so lovingly cooked. I
started taking my puppy for walks. I started saying yes to things. I started
going out and meeting people. And have since met some of the most incredible human
beings, probably in the world. Some of them? I literally cannot even imagine my
life without them; I can’t comprehend how I existed before they came into my
life. Before I knew their hugs existed.
I have spent the past
two months completely, without any hesitation, increasingly happier than I have
ever been in my entire life. I, of course, have had evenings where I’ve had too
much to drink, I’ve had days where I just couldn’t look in the mirror, but at
the end of each of those nights? I have been goddamned thankful for the life that
I have consciously decided to begin forging for myself. I chose to let go of
the resentment, the anger, all the hideous things that I was clutching on to
for dear life. I have spent more nights going to bed with a sore face from
smiling than I ever have in my whole existence. I’ve wasted more mascara from
laughing until I cried than most people could afford. I have hugged more people
in the past three months than I ever did in the past thirty-two years.
