Patience.

Recently, I was told that transparency can be a good thing, so here goes.

For me, learning to have patience is, I think, the toughest aspect of living with anxiety, because that learning process forces me to evaluate a lot of things aka. issues aka. problems in my life that I’d rather ignore. For example this evening I left work with the worst dizzy-spell-turned-tension-headache not because I had had a bad day, but because I spend SO much time staring at a computer screen both in my work and home life. Then on the drive home I started thinking about WHY I spend so much time staring at electronic screens (especially during my free time), and I realized it’s because I get home and don’t have the energy to do much else.

Here’s where the lack of patience (paired with a touch of anger and self-loathing) comes in. Depression sucks the life out of you, and the will to BE or DO just about anything:

Finish that puzzle you started a month ago.

Go on a hike.

Text your best friends.

Read a chapter in your bible daily like you promised to do on January 1st.

Eat dinner.

Eat anything period.

And these are just a few examples. Meanwhile anxiety is over there in the corner like HELLO why aren’t you excelling at all of these things when a) you said you would do them and b) some of these things are completely necessary to begin with.

I want to feel the way I feel at 3 in the afternoon when I’m laughing at a funny joke at the office.

I want to come home and cook a three course meal.

I want to feel like I have energy, and stop beating myself up when I don’t.

So many “wants.” It’s a constant battle between wanting to have patience, and not wanting to think about any of those “bad” things at all, because then you’re forced to admit that you STILL don’t have it all together. There’s so much tragedy in the world that we can’t control, so why can’t we control the one thing we’d think would be obvious–our own bodies? One day we WILL look at ourselves and say we feel GOOD, and mean it. Sometimes it’s just like man, why can’t that day be today?

But we got this, peeps.

Finding my way back.

As soon as I read this quote, it struck a cord because honestly, today was a really, really bad anxiety day. Extreme emotional highs, and then extreme emotional lows (like, “crying to Mom over the phone that I’m just so TIRED of feeling this way ALL the time” “I THOUGHT 2016 WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER LOL #newyearnewme” emotional lows. It happens, folks).

Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly low, I find myself trying to remember what my life was like before I could put a definition to why I acted the way I acted, or felt the way I felt. Was I happier? Was I a better problem solver? Was I less lonely? Was I less afraid to drive a car? I don’t know. All I know is that–today especially–it’s exhausting to overanalyze why you overanalyze.

But that’s okay, because we get through it. Nothing is permanent. I may feel like my depression and anxiety threw me so far away from who I am, but maybe that means I get to find myself all over again.