My mental health. My anxiety. It won’t just go away.
I can’t just decide that after a life time of anxiety that I’m going to be just ok. My mental health doesn’t work for the convenience and comfort of other people.
I don’t wake up every day thinking “how can I make other people’s lives harder by being anxious and not coping with things other people don’t struggle with? How can I inconvenience other people with my mental health today?”
I can’t just wake up one day and decide I’m cured and be ok.
I can’t just snap out of it, get over it, decide to be fine.
I don’t want to feel this way. I would love to not feel like I live life on a knife edge.
But I do.
I don’t want to inconvenience others, I don’t want to have to manage my life in a way that doesn’t suit others, to protect my mental health. I don’t want to be almost broken, trying to glue myself back together. I want to be ok but I’m not there yet!
I am not this way because it is enjoyable or fun. I’ve lived a lifetime of this and it hurts and it scars and it sits lurking, waiting to rob me of all my joy.
I don’t want to be this way, I fight hard daily. I am better than I have been. I have come along way. I recognise triggers, I know what punches to take and what blows to avoid. I can see the dark tunnel closing in on me and I know now what to try and do to stop it swallowing me whole for weeks and months. I make mistakes. I am fallible and I fail as much as I succeed.
But I am a work in progress and it takes time to undo the habits of a lifetime. To mend a mind that only sees life one way.
It isn’t easy.
Sometimes it’s ten steps forward and a couple of steps back. Sometimes it’s staying in one place for a while then a leap forward. Sometimes it’s a lot of hard work and triumph at the end. Sometimes it’s a lot of fear, tears, frustration and a backslide a bit until I work out a way to drag myself back.
Sometimes it’s medication and therapy and sometimes it’s just making sure I practice good self care and make sure I’m accountable to others. It’s learning how to trust myself and to see life a new way.
But it won’t just go away. If I could make it go away I would. I can’t.
I am trying and I will succeed but it takes time and it’s not a perfect journey and I don’t need to be given a deadline or a goal by other people watching me climb and fall.
I will rise, I am strong but I also fight hard.
This is me. I am ashamed and I am not broken but I am a work in progress.
It will not just go away. Stop trying to make me make it!