This is a comment I left on someone’s blog a few months back. I never found out if what I said helped them at all. And, in a way, I don’t care to. Mental illness is personal. Some need to broadcast it in order to own it, some need to push it away in private.

So, I left them to the journey. Knowing that even if my thoughts weren’t received, I pulled them from the deepest parts of my spirit. They are the truest words I’ve ever spoken, the most honest I’ve ever been about my struggles with mental illness.

And maybe they were more for me than anyone else.

But, here is just a glimpse into the brain of someone suffering from depression.

~~~~~~~~

Everyone struggles, but some of us are less-fortunate and struggle with a brain chemistry that prevents us from seeing, understanding, and rejoicing in the things that everyone else does.

My struggle isn’t a barrier… It’s a chain.

I can see the thing I want the most.

I can taste it.

If I close my eyes, I can pretend I have it. I can feel my heart race, feel my soul calm, and I can feel that rush of adrenaline as I imagine achieving the thing that I want the most…

But, I am chained just beyond reach.

Everyone around me, all of my family and friends, see the thing that I want the most… and they CONGRATULATE me. As if to say ‘Go on! Take it, it’s yours! You’ve earned it!’

But, I don’t have it. I can’t reach it!

Oh, but I want to!

So, I wail and rage and fight against my shackles, but they don’t give way…

And no one can see me struggling. No one can feel the pit in my heart as I spiral inward into despair.

They laugh, they smile, and they look away as I fail to break free from my chains.

And the saddest, sickest, part of my disease, is I CAN NOT ASK FOR HELP. Not out of fear, or out of an inability to articulate… I physically cannot bring myself to crying out for help. The words never form, because the disease in my brain won’t allow me to form them.

It won’t allow me to trust.

Anxiety has bound my words.

So nobody knows.

I’m left alone in the darkness, with my shackles to bind me.

And nobody knows.

So…

Dear, fellow human being,

Do not feel like no one could possibly understand. I may not know what it looks like on the inside of your prison, but I know what it looks like in mine.

And while I wish I could give you stronger words of encouragement, I can only give you this advice.

NEVER STOP.

Rage against your barrier. Claw, scratch, and destroy it as best as you can.

Guard against discouragement, self-doubt and despair. They are tools of the devil, and he would like nothing more than to use them to make you fail.

Don’t you ever give him the satisfaction.

And above all, if you can at all understand this, those moments when you feel absolutely alone, try to remember that there is always someone on your side.

I recognize that nothing I’ve said here is different than what you have probably already heard. I imagine that you have plenty of ‘do-gooders’ in your life right now, who will attempt to understand your plight. So, take what you will out of my advice. Take it or leave it. Just know that it comes from the heart, and that I felt impressed to share it.

~~~~~~~

Even now, I read these words and am uplifted. I don’t ever want to feel that way again. I’m glad I don’t feel that way any more. It’s amazing that I have been able to come so far!

Life is beautiful, is it not?

Something is different.

For the longest time, I couldn’t put my finger on it. The change was subtle, dull instead of sharp. It’s taken me the best part of this past year to figure it out. But, I finally did figure it out.

It’s gone.

That almost constant heart break that I’ve suffered with for years and years is gone. The ache I used to feel clear to the bottom of my soul, as I yearned for someone to understand me, to love me, to accept me, is finally absent. I can take a step back and finally breathe in some fresh air.

And, guys, you aren’t going to believe this… But,

I MISS IT.

That person I was, the one that let her negativity and anger and depression own her, she protected me from progress.

Let me swallow that one again.

She prevented me from dealing with the anxiety of PROGRESSION! She let me lay comfortably in agonizing depression. Because, in my mind depression was something I owned, and could face by myself. And on the other side of my depression was the prideful part of me that NEEDED to fix it myself. So, depression was soothing, in a way.

Plus, the idea of becoming better, of becoming a stable person was scarier than my personal demons. There, in that depression, no one needed to rely on me. Nobody needed to expect great things from me. I had assured my success by accepting my failure!

But, that is no way to live.

One day something just clicked. Some small, insistent, part of me gave me a jolt.

‘Go back to school!’

Maybe it was a spiritual prompting. Maybe it was just the part of me that knew I was drowning desperately trying to swim.

So, I went back to school.

Something happened to me in those classes. I learned to apply myself. I learned all about mental illness, and the things it can do to a person.

Any student of Behavioral Science could tell you that there are 5 stages of grief. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

The key to successfully managing grief is to reach that final stage. To process the grief, to understand it, then to accept it. I can’t tell you how it happened, but I finally did. I finally accepted ME.

And I finally told myself to cut the crap.

I think the conversation with myself went a little like this…

Brain: You will fail at anything you try! Your friends don’t truly love you for who you are! Look at them! They will only love you if you are awesome! Your family wishes you were somebody else. You’d be better off if you hid your real self. Then, you can try to impress them with fake you, with the person you know they wish you were.

Me: …

(Thinking Hard)

Me: … PLEASE! I’m freaking fabulous just the way I am!

So, there it was.

I finally allowed myself to be myself around my friends. As a consequence, I found myself able to take teasing easier, and was able to dish it out without the fear of others hating me. I grew to love, and trust my friends. I grew closer to them than I ever thought I could.

I was able to accept the plethora of short-comings I have. I started to understand them. To embrace them. And to work on them.

Am I perfect at it? NO! And I absolutely don’t want to be. I want the reminder of how far I’ve come every time I feel myself sliding back into the depression. I want to embrace my doubts and anxiety and fears, so I can show others that it’s okay to have them. The important thing is to not let them own you!

All of this happened in the last year, because I somehow found the courage to stand up for myself. To take the reins back in my life, and own my disease instead of letting it own me!

I think I had a lot of help.

The Lord has blessed me, as He said He would. I am immensely happy that I was able to find him in my life again.

He knows me. He knew me, when I didn’t know myself. He looked right into my heart, and I know He wished he could fix it. But, I also know that He knew I needed to fix it myself. I never would have been truly healed until I could look at myself and own the girl that I saw.

And you know what?

Life is beautiful here.

~

*Post-Title from Rivers and Roads by The Head and the Heart

And now, without further ado, we bring to you the triumphant return of the 30-day Blog Post. I needed a break to, basically, implode my life, and reconstruct it. [Further details later, if I feel like it.] So, I stopped posting here.

Now I’m back, and I’m determined to finish healing through words.

So…

Day 6
A song to match your mood. 

I consider music to be an extension of my emotions. I am constantly cleaving to music that I feel more aptly portrays my emotions than I could honestly hope to.

Music brings me hope. Hearing songs from artists that I feel completely align with my circumstances is a little bit like being discovered by a passing ship after years of being stranded on a deserted island.

I struggle a lot with sharing my emotions, because I feel misunderstood the majority of the time. I feel like no-one else in the world understands exactly what I’m feeling in my heart. I feel isolated, and different, and a bit ashamed of just how different from ‘normal’ people I am.

So, I turn to music.

Music and Lyrics give a solid idea to the abstract nuances of my mind.

Finding my emotions in a song after an emotional draught is a beautiful Nirvana.

My latest musical obsession is this little English Folk Band called ‘Mumford & Sons’. (Well, maybe not so little.)

I'm in love with these blokes.

I love the honesty in their music. The brilliance of that raw emotion in the instruments, the lyrics, the melody.

The true musicianship that is readily apparent with every strum of the guitar, or pluck of the banjo (Yes, BANJO. Stick with me here.) is breath-taking. They OWN their music. They’ve lived it.

And it’s beautiful.

To make a long story short, I love them. And their song ‘After the Storm’ literally brings tears to my eyes.

No other song that I have EVER heard so correctly describes the hopeful, almost hauntingly fragile, feeling that comes at the end of the storm.

The feeling that comes when, after you’ve been treading water for what feels like eternity, always afraid that you would drown, you finally break your head above water and see you are only one final stretch away from the shore.

The feeling you get when you realize that you are STRONGER and BIGGER than your trials, and you WILL NOT let them overcome you.

THAT feeling.

This song gave me hope, and light, and direction.

So, I would like for you to give it a listen.

I would hope that, even if this music bores you, you could understand the beauty of the emotion.

~*Post Title from ‘After the Storm’ by Mumford and Sons. Obviously.

I’m ridiculously bad at expressing myself to people face to face.

I stare at the floor.

I stumble over my words.

I rush to find the greatest thing to say, and end up making a complete fool of myself.

It’s just what I do.

This has hindered me on many levels.

MANY LEVELS.

I think I just get so nervous or anxious that I will be misunderstood, or that I will cause a conflict or confrontation, that I clam up. I literally can’t speak the words on my mind.

So, naturally, my preferred way of communication is NOT verbal. It’s text-based.

It is much easier, to me, to write what I’m thinking than speak it.

I can carefully consider my words, their implications, the way they roll together.

I’ve heard it called Word-smithing.

I prefer to consider it an art.

A creation.

That being said, I also am very protective of my work. I hate to let people see or hear me work. I think its because I definitely hate questions, and I will always feel that they are judging my accomplishments before I’ve finished them.

I hate rough drafts.

I hate sneak peaks.

It gives me a great deal of anxiety.

So, I work and work and work to put my thoughts and feelings and emotions into words and music. And I think a lot of what I have on my mind goes unsaid, because I never have a finished product.

There will never BE a finished product.

Life is dynamic, and people are too. We change to suit the ever-arcing ebb and flow of life.

Thoughts cease.

And entire wars are fought in our minds in the space of a few moments.

I am utterly incapable of capturing those moments.

But, I try.

The hardest things to share are the things I feel leave me raw, and unprotected.

But, its usually some of my best work.

So, here is my favorite song I have ever written.

About my inability to lay myself bare. About how protecting myself usually prevents me from what I really want.

It’s very rough. It’s very raw. It is loaded with technical and musical problems. But, this is me laying myself bare.

*~30-day blog challenge will continue at another date. Life took me and threw me around a bit.

Day 4
Your favorite photograph of your best friend.

Ok.

I have a confession.

I’m kind of a bad friend.

I mean, I’m not bad. It’s just that I always tend to get caught up in my own problems, and I completely miss the subtle hints from my friends that indicate they need a shoulder, or a hand.

Admittedly, this has turned into a self-fulfilling problem, because I have these AMAZING friends that have always been there for me.

Even when I haven’t been, or couldn’t be there for them. They are pretty forgiving.

And I have this one friend.

She’s been with me through the most.

She’s the one I can pick up a conversation with after forever, and feel like no time has passed at all.

Sorry to admit, I haven’t always been the greatest friend to her.

But, because she’s such a loyal and forgiving person, we’ve managed to erase the past, and create a stronger relationship than ever before.

Yeah, I love her.

And I owe her so much more than my life.

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

And I am so proud of her. She is such a strong person. She takes the lemons that life gives her, and makes Bacon Cupcakes. She is a rock.

I want to grow up to be just like her.

~*Post Title taken from “Friends” by Band of Skulls.

DAY 3
Your idea of the perfect first date.

Here’s the thing about me and dating.

…

…

I don’t date a lot.

I think there is something about me, some personality quirk that causes me to be labelled as ‘unapproachable’ by the male species. I think it has something to do with the way I freak out and stare at the floor instead of having a normal conversation. Or, maybe the way that I tend to over-compensate for my shyness by acting like a complete, certifiable, bi… erm… crazy person.

Yeah. I don’t get out much.

That’s not to say that I don’t have my own idea about the perfect first date. Just saying that I haven’t had much practice at them.

I’m trying to make this post less pathetic, I promise.

So, when I think about first dates, I can’t help but think about how sometimes they are 100% awkward. I mean, really. Obviously you are attracted to each other, because you are on a date. Someone asked. Someone accepted. That’s mutually assured attraction.

The problem is, once on the date, sometimes people can forget about that mutually assured attraction, and completely clam up. (Ahem… judge as you will. This blog is auto-biographical.) And that, boys and girls, is a sure-fire way to ruin a date. (And any chance at a future relationship.)

So, my idea of the perfect first date, is a date that will break both nervous, hormonal, and (let’s be honest) over-whelmed individuals out of their respective shells. And, since I consider myself a creative-type, the perfect date would include an opportunity to create something.

THE PERFECT FIRST DATE:

1. Dinner at an interesting restaurant. Somewhere that invites interesting conversation. My current personal favorites are: Malawi’s Pizza, Bombay House, Jasmine Thai, Happy Sumo, and La Jolla Groves.

2. Painting at Color Me Mine. Or some similar creative activity.

And then, if the date is really going well.

3. Dessert at a fun, and delicious dessert spot. (Might I recommend The Chocolate?) Get some Hot Cocoa, or some cookies, and enjoy the wrap-up to your date.

And that simple night is my recipe for a perfect first date.

Of course, if your date has no personality, or isn’t interested in creative projects, this date will not go well.

~*Post Title from “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (Of The Frames fame)

Also, this song contains my most favorite lyrics:

“You have suffered enough, and warred with yourself, it’s time that you won.”

Day 2
A photo of something you ate today.

There is this Bakery that I am absolutely in love with. They have the most amazing Cannolis that I have ever had. (Read: The only Cannoli I have ever had.) And if you get there at the right time, their Hot Chocolate is to DIE for!

I am, of course, speaking of THE CHOCOLATE!

The cafe is located in an old house that has been remodeled. There are couches and chairs and tables all through all the rooms in the house, and there is even a working sink in one of the dining areas. (I’m assuming that that particular room used to also have the wash room in it.)

Their cupcakes are amazing! Their sugar cookies are heaven.

…

And their chocolate cake is something I don’t share easily.

I always love to go to The Chocolate. I’m pretty sure any excuse will do.

So, today I went to the Chocolate with my friends Aimee and Heather. We got there late, so the pickings were slim. (*Sniff* No Cannoli!) But, they did have a really good looking brownie…

Warning: Objects in Picture are slightly more disappointing than they appear.

And I couldn’t say no to a Giant Hot Chocolate…

Still the best ever, when you get it hot.

I think the universe knew that I would be doing a blog post about my visit to The Chocolate, because the stars aligned, and I had the worst experience there I have ever had. It took forever for them to fill our orders. And we didn’t order anything that needed to be specially cooked. (Did I mention they make a mean Cazookie?)

When we received our orders all of our Hot Chocolate was, at best, TEPID.

Not warm.

Not hot.

TEPID!

Aimee’s Hot Chocolate was so cold that her whipped cream formed a clump in the middle of her cup.

My scrumptious brownie was slightly dry and hard. Not what I look for in a brownie.

I am actually a little wary of going back to my beloved cafe of wonders. I’m afraid I’ll have a horrible experience, and I’ll hold it against my favourite little Bake Shop.

I’m going to assume that the bad experience was due to the fact that we arrived shortly before closing, and they were obviously under-staffed.

I highly recommend you try The Chocolate for yourself.

But, please!

Try the Cannoli!

~*Post Title taken from “Chocolate” by Snow Patrol.

There’s something you should know about me.

I can’t back down from a challenge.

Yet, I also hate to be one to just simply follow the crowd.

There’s got to be a phrase for that.

Uniquely Predictable?

Whatever.

We’re deviating from the point.

I was visiting a good friend’s blog recently that I hadn’t visited in a long time. (I’m horribly good at putting things off. Even things I like to do.) I saw she had posted a 30 days blog challenge and then completed it.

Which, set the niggling in my brain off. I had stumbled upon a challenge, and by golly, I was going to complete it!

So, this is me completing the 30 day blog challenge.

DAY 1:
A picture of yourself and a description of how your day was.

So, without further ado…

Heavily Photoshopped. Not Pictured: My Superflous Ego

My day was… a day.

I can’t adequately describe to you my day without first giving some context from yesterday. (Is that cheating?)

Yesterday I was trying to survive on around 4 hours of sleep. I sludged my way through work, and made it home where I was certain I could have a productive day.

Fast forward to the point where I’m waking up on my couch after a four hour nap.

Suffice it to say, that I had entirely too much sleep yesterday. So, today I have been running around with the energy of a young child. Woo!

I flew through my responsibilities at work.

I felt productive and all grown-up when I got a call from my Dad asking me to pick him up from his mechanic’s.

I vegged out a little in front of my TV.

I spent some time revamping my blog.

I spent a long time perfecting my Header, only to have someone instantly tell me she didn’t like it.

I have this weird clarity of thought, that I haven’t had in a long time.

Maybe all I’ve been missing all this time is sleep, but boy are the chemicals in my brain waaay in balance today.

But, the best part of my day was driving all around town with the windows rolled down, enjoying the cool almost-spring breeze, blasting Simon and Garfunkel on my radio.

“Cecilia! You’re breaking my heart! You’re shaking my confidence daily!”

I took a wrong turn. Ended up in the wrong lane. And instead of Orem, I found myself meandering through Lindon. I was unhurried to correct my course, because I was enjoying the beauty around me.

It has been entirely too long since I’ve done that. I suppose I should take more time to be grateful for what I have.

~~~~~~~
Post Title from “Let That Be Enough” by Switchfoot.