This year marked three years of sobriety, and six years of being off drugs. My mental health has taken hits left and right, but as the years progress I learn to adapt to my brain’s needs. We work together like a dysfunctional team and at this point in my life I couldn’t be happier with where I’m at. Yes, things could be better. Yet I won’t complain because it could be so much worse. While I still think about alcohol and drugs daily, my darker thoughts are fewer and farther between. Days can pass without thought of self-harm. Again, I have adapted to my brain’s, shall we say, eccentricities.
2018 has turned into an amazing year. I lived my dream of writing full-time and while I believe my time is limited in that aspect I enjoyed the months with nothing but words to toil away upon. There is no way to thank my readers enough for reading my stories and embracing bodies in all their shape and sizes, shades. When I branded myself as a body positive author to describe the characters I wrote, but it was a label I always wore no matter the tales I told.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Depression, Failing Self-Care & What's Left
It could be the holidays or just my usual mental state, but
depression has been nipping at my heels for months. Several weeks ago, it sunk
its teeth in and hasn’t let me go. I believe mental illness shouldn’t come with
a stigma—some stupid reason we shouldn’t speak up.
As an Atheist, I’m not big on holidays or what they mean.
Christianity pillaged pagans for their traditions, whatever, but it’s around
this time everyone gets a bit down. We don’t have family to spend it with for
whatever reason. It highlights our anti-social tendencies. Whatever it is,
holidays just seem to exacerbate the shifting of our moods.
I don’t think that’s what has me down. Spending days in bed
to awaken and just turn back over because I’m tired of existing. A week ago, I
had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital, my panic attack didn’t come on
with that annoying tightening of my chest and the bugs crawling beneath my
skin. The nosebleed which isn’t a normal part of my attacks. It hit me like a
sledgehammer and I had no way of controlling it. All the counting, visualization,
none of it worked and I let others see the weakness.
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