SO. Here we are. Me, you, my computer, and my ridiculous brain. Yes, it counts as its own entity. It’s full of itself like that.
And we’re here for many reasons, of course, among which is the fact that my therapist, like many other people in my life, agrees that blogging is probably a really fantastic outlet for me.
SO. Here we are.
And yes, I said therapist, which is pretty huge for me, seeing as I apparently think the generally accepted rules of dealing with chronic mental illness don’t apply to me. But I finally had a wakeup call involving my sweet, sweet little boy a couple of weeks ago, and reality walloped me in the face. Hard. Hard enough for me to finally stop and ask myself some, er, hard questions: What the fuck am I doing? Why am I not asking for help? How is it I think I can just continue brushing off these episodes and pretend everything is fine?
Because everything is not fine. Keeping my children home and inside all day because my severe anxiety makes it difficult for me to even open the front door some days? Not fine. Checking diapers, making a large platter of snacks, refilling water bottles, and putting on a long movie for my children so I can crawl in bed and hide and pretend not to exist for a minute? Nope. Not fine either. Finding excuses to avoid social situations like the plague, even ones solely comprised of good friends and family, because my extreme social anxiety literally makes me ill sometimes? Yeah, not so much in the fine department. Being sent off by my wonderful husband to a cafe to read or write and decompress, yet getting there and sitting in the parking lot for a minute before driving off again because I can’t bring myself to interact with the public on even the lowest level at that moment? NOT. FINE.
So to therapy I go. And as I said, that decision was a big departure for me, as after a therapy-intensive childhood, I haven’t been to a therapist really at all as an adult. I’ve never really felt it could or would help me at this point. Most of the insights people gain from therapy are things I’m already intimately familiar with. They’re the gems I offer to others when they come to me with their own issues, and after only two sessions, my therapist could easily see that was the case. Yet there can be a serious disconnect when it comes to knowing something intellectually versus actually using that knowledge to initiate much needed change. Help with the latter, then, is what I’m currently hoping for.
I’m also hoping blogging again will help me find my voice and, through it, myself. My new self. This self I find myself as currently, the one who doesn’t seem to really know what the fuck she’s doing or what the fuck she even wants to be doing. This self that seems to have lost her sense of purpose and identity a bit. And trust me, I realize how incredibly cliche this all sounds--suburban housewife raising two kids while trying to find herself? YAWN. But you know what? It’s a cliche for a reason, that reason being that it happens. To a lot of us. Regardless of whether one deals with depression or anxiety, reinventing yourself several decades into this thing called life is kind of the dickens. And while I really hope age 35 doesn’t count as midlife for me, I suppose this is sounding suspiciously like a midlife crisis, eh? Seeing as I'm constantly struck by illnesses and conditions decades ahead of when “normal” people do, though, I suppose it’s fitting.
So we’ll do this again soon, then. Like maybe even tomorrow. Because we all know I don’t write because of a lack of things to say. I don’t write because, well, reasons. Reasons I intend to explore through...writing.
And if that makes zero sense to you, worry not.
You’re in the right place.
