"Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi Wan Kenobi
I have been in therapy for over three years now. It doesn't feel like that, really. Perhaps especially since I am still so frequently suffering.
I have recently found myself going back and forth on my thoughts towards therapy thus far. In a certain sense, not very much has actually changed for me during that time. I am still financially poor, frequently sick, socially isolated, with severe bouts of depression and anxiety.
At my best, I can really only say that the only thing that has changed in the last three years is my point of view of these troubles. Nothing has changed, but I frame all of these things in a different way.
But that's when my brain reminds me just how big of a thing that actually is.
While I am still vexed by major anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, I can at least recognize these things for what they are. Before three years ago, I wasn't connecting the dots. I would just ascribe those feelings to whatever situational thing I was going through. And a lot of times that wouldn't really even make sense.
I'd be happily in a relationship, for example, and then suddenly blame that relationship for my not feeling right or being scared or wanting to die. It cost me a lot of good relationships. Something that I would (and still) blame on my inability to be loved or some other such bullshit.
Knowing about my own mental illness helps me keep things from spiraling entirely out of control. Usually, anyway. I still have days like the other day when I wrote my last entry. I still worry strongly that it will be a day like that that will be my last, but at least there is a voice in my head that lets me know that what I am feeling isn't really real and that it is all temporary. And that is something. It keeps saving my life.
And I am trying, but kind of failing, to remember to see my life from a different point of view as well.
My poverty is shitty, sure, but it also represents a certain amount of freedom. My having a part time coffee shop job gave me the opportunity today to accept an offer to be a co-host and writer of a podcast that seems to have an honest to God chance of getting picked up by Colorado Public Radio or at least generating some ad revenue.
And because I am single and have no family that depends on me, I am able to do work like that for free in the hopes of creating a much better life than working the kind of jobs that always make me so anxious when I apply.
And my depression, my poor health, my years of abuse and trauma, they have all given me a perspective on life that not everyone has access to.
I am far more patient, compassionate, less judgmental, and let's face it, more interesting and even a bit more sexy than a lot of my peers.
I still have trouble connecting with people, but the connections I do have are far more authentic and profound than what I see in other people.
I am grateful for that.
I am not in a healthy place, but fuck, at least I know that.
I am going to persevere.
With a little luck, there's a decent change I might even eventually come to thrive.
4:51 p.m. - 2017-07-26
Recent entries:
I Really Liked This One (But It Always Ends up the Same) - 2017-08-26
Is there a difference between giving up and surrender? - 2017-08-25
To the Mountains! - 2017-08-21
At the Bottom of the Sea - 2017-08-10
Hey, thanks everyone - 2017-07-28
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