I took a shower. I’ve been working at this assignment that’s due tomorrow. I’m just going to turn it in late. There’s nothing else really about it. I am dreading however working on this thing 24/7 for the next few days though. I think I have developed a fear of coding. I don’t know why I chose this as my minor. I realized in the shower that part of my anger and sadness comes from the fact that I don’t have anyone. I’m so isolated. So when things go sideways, like they always do, I spiral, because I have nothing. I guess a lot of folks go through this during quarantine, but the thing is that’s just my existence. Being isolated. I have no one to talk to. Nobody. Whenever I try to talk to my mom about my problems, my real and honest problems, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is “Are you taking your medicine?”. I know that taking it is important. I know that it will help me. I know I shouldn’t be stopping and starting and stopping and starting and stopping and stopping and stopping like I do. I know that. But sometimes I just want someone to listen. I just want to feel like there is someone that is there. Giving me some robo call response and then saying that’s life makes me feel so empty. Like I’m talking to a hollow shell. Like there is nothing there. I always say that I’ll amount to nothing. I honestly believe that. I’m so numb to it now though. It’s like your lost and you’ve been lost for a while and you take a turn and you see a brick wall there. And you think “Oh it’s a dead end” and you know there’s no point in turning back. Or you are too afraid to turn back or something. So instead you just sit down and stare at the wall. And you just let time slip by. It feels surprisingly numbingly nothingly numb. I feel like I am nothing. It feels painful I suppose.
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The journey to mental health isn’t a straight line. Folks always seem to want it to be a straight line, but truthfully it is an endless beach with an unpredictable tide.
I have been in your shoes, I still walk your path. I once again find myself being taken out by the tide.
Mental wellness is the beach. Walking along I find shells, sometimes some putrid fish, many times just plain garbage, and sometimes, oh sometimes, I find a wonderfully intact sand dollar, bleached by the sun. The tide is out, the sun in shining. On the horizon I see the wave headed my way, no one understands this wave, no one sees it but I do. It is coming my way.
“Are you taking your meds?”. I can’t say how many times I have heard that. Truthfully though? This wave is coming for me regardless of the meds, all I can do is clutch that perfect sand dollar I found and wait for it to crash. It always does. Right over my head and takes me out to sea.
Then I just begin swimming back to shore. Hopefully I’m not caught in a riptide, but I’ve been in enough of them to understand how to swim with the beach line, not towards it. But that doesn’t get me any closer to mental health, it just keeps me alive. I’d like to just let myself go under and allow the endless sea to take me, but I’m still clutching that sand dollar I found, so I tread water and head as best I can towards shore, so I can begin the process of walking that endless beach.
Mental health is walking forward, on whatever terms I can. Sometimes that sand dollar makes it back to the beach with me, but typically only part of it gets back. I put it in my pocket with the rest of the shattered sand dollars and continue the journey.
Folks want things easy. People like us, we aren’t easy. We aren’t easy to live with, we aren’t easy on ourselves. Walking that beach takes practice, lots and lots of practice. But it is a forward motion. At least for me. Sometimes that forward motion seems utterly useless, it appears that way to you as I read your post.
I’m not going to tell you it gets better. I’m not going to tell you to take your meds. All I can say is it gets different. Choosing to walk forward is extremely personal. I’m constantly looking for the next sand dollar. Lately they have been hard to find. It has been a rough year, and not because of Covid, or isolation caused by what Covid has done to society. This would have been a rough year regardless. The day I decide to stop walking forward is the day I walk into the sea and finally allow the waves to take me on my terms. Not their terms, and certainly not because “She just stopped taking her meds” but because it was time to just stop walking.
Sometimes we just fall forward. That is okay too. Sounds like you are in the process of falling forward, which is still positive motion.
HDS
<3 I love that one.