Truly the light is sweet, Ecclesiastes 11:7
|
Welcome to Searching for Sunshine! |
Rainbows and sunshine, that's a cliche, eh? Life isn't always rainbows and sunshine, you won't always be happy, you won't always be able to control your thoughts. They're called intrusive thoughts for a reason. I forgot this, I had had a few really good weeks, and I thought "Hey, I'm getting better, it's going away!" I forgot that mental health isn't a straight line, that I'll have good days and bad days, heck I could have good weeks, or months, and then have bad ones too. And in forgetting this, I forgot the purpose of this blog. I didn't start this just to only write about the good times. I'm searching for sunshine, and so, sometimes there will be clouds, and there will be darkness, and I can't hide from that. And so today, I'm going to tell you about what I've been through since my last post.
These past few weeks have been pretty rough. It's like my mood climbed onto a roller coaster, and it's taken me up, and down, and all around. And honestly, the downs were a lot bigger, a lot longer and a lot worse than the ups. There was a lot of anxiety, anger, sadness, hopelessness, I was depressed. I slept a lot. The main physical symptom of my depression is exhaustion, I'm tired all the time. The amount of effort that is required for me to be able to function on a semi-normal level drains me. This means that I can sleep for 12 hours straight and still wake up tired. I didn't even have the energy to shower regularly, getting up and going to class felt like an impossible task. I didn't want to see people, even though I knew that getting out could greatly benefit my mood. Initially, I didn't want to write about this, I didn't want to be a downer. But I can't hide from it, we can't hide from it. Having a mental illness means that sometimes I'll feel like this. I know that it'll get better eventually, I won't spend all day in bed, I'll have the energy to get up, get dressed, to brush my teeth, to wash my face. Heck, maybe I'll even have enough energy to get through and entire day without crashing, I'll be able to have fun again. My mood did eventually start to clear up. I hit rock bottom, where everything felt dark, I felt like I was suffocating, I slept for 15 hours straight. And then I started to feel a bit better. The next day wasn't great, it wasn't even good, but at least I woke up and did something. It's a long journey back to normal. I'm still quite fragile. Sometimes my mood will drop suddenly and I'll feel like it's back to square one. But maybe it won't last as long, or it won't be as bad. I guess I could describe it like this: Imagine you're walking along, having a good time, and then suddenly you trip on a stone. You've fallen down, it hurts, but you can get back up again, you can keep going. This is what it's like when you're at a normal, healthy place. You have your setbacks, but you can dust yourself off and keep going. Now imagine this, you trip on that stone, but then you fall into a sinkhole. Now you're really far down, and it's dark and scary. That's the bad spell, and you can fall for a long time, or a short time, it's different every time. After you've hit the bottom, you can start to climb back up. It's hard work, and as you're climbing, you lose your grip, you slip, you fall back a bit. Overall, you're progressing, you're getting closer to the top, but sometimes you fall further away, these little slips are easier to recover from, you only fell a few meters. This is the recovery, you're still not great, but at least you're improving. It's a lot easier to fall here than if you're in a healthy space, and it's harder to recover from the fall. These sinkholes can vary in size, I might fall a couple hundred meters this time, maybe it takes a month to recover. I could fall kilometers, that would take a bit longer. But in the end, we climb our way out.
3 Comments
|