This Time It's Different

Lately, I've been feeling down. As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety throughout my life, I suppose this feeling should be old hat by now. This time, though, it's a bit different, as I've spent the past year doing a pretty good job of finding my sanity and keeping the negatives in check:

Sometime last year, I simply became fed up with a lifetime of meloncholia and self-hatred. Nerd that I am, I began researching neurotransmitters and determining the nature of my own imbalances based off years of personal data. Then, I began to study the action of the transmitters and taught myself a form of biofeedback contingent on recognizing the warning signs of an imbalance forming and responding with methods that would correct the situation before it became unmanageable. The results were nothing short of miraculous and I began a process of finding the happy me that had been hidden under layers of sad for so long I had almost forgotten she existed.

Good begets good and I began to see a lot of positive changes in my life manifesting in rapid succession. As my inner extrovert began to re-emerge, I began forging new friendships and rekindling old ones, bringing in an influx of members of my soul-tribe into my life that I had never expected. I began finding connections that led to new opportunities that filled parts of me I had thought would always be left wanting. I began losing weight. I started a new career – a dream career that I had refused to think possible.

All this fortune was falling into my life with a rapidity that I was unprepared for. I have been so busy lately that I hardly have time to think. For the first time in my life - a life that was always filled with social lulls so silent I'd gotten used to the full weight of being the quintessential “lonely only” - I have to plan my weeks each Sunday and choose between a multitude of possible activities, careful always to leave time for my family but, often, lately, forgetting to leave time for myself.

So, yes, lately, my happy has been on the decline. In a way, I'm baffled: How could I possibly be unhappy with so many people in my life supporting and loving me, with so many enjoyable things to do, with a job that I look forward to and daydream about as if it weren't real...?

On the other hand, though, I know.  I know that I've dropped the ball: I stopped the biofeedback and,

even though I knew I was getting too excited and too happy with all my good fortune and my dopamine was headed through the roof, I didn't exercise the self-discipline I knew I should to counteract its effects. Then, as my time began getting more and more scarce, the first thing I stopped was the one thing that had been keeping me most balanced, my exercise.

I let myself get too busy and I let the fear seep in: I'm afraid of not being able to maintain the creativity and inspiration that landed me my job in the first place – afraid that, at some point, people will figure out I'm a lucky fraud. I'm afraid to say no or to neglect any of my social connections because I don't want them to slip away. I'm afraid to reward myself for my successes because I still have so far to go.

The old, familiar, self-hatred has begun to creep back: It doesn't matter that I've lost almost two dress sizes – I'm still fat and ugly and unable to dress in the kind of clothes I'd like to wear. I have no right to write inspiring articles when I can't even find my own happiness. I have no right to tell an author how to improve their work when I procrastinate until the last minute before every deadline and am never fully happy with my own results. I shouldn't want the things I want in life because I don't deserve them...at least not until I work harder, better, faster, more, More, MORE!

When, really, all this working isn't work at all. It's self-imposed busy, borne of a fear of the fleeting nature of my blessings...a snake chasing it's own tail.

And I'm feeling pretty down lately. Because of all of This. It's different this time, not because there is no hope but because of the exact opposite: there is.  Hope. There's a way out of this low...a way out that allows me to keep my blessings without the self-sabotage I once was so adept at engaging in. This time is different because I won't run away. I have a ball...I will pick it back up...I will count my blessings...I will tell myself I deserve them until I start believing it again...and I will move forward.