Saturday 7 December 2013

How to catch a monkey.

Funny how my last post was about an ode to keep up consistency with this blogosphere, only to have the longest period between posts since I started.

This isn't going to be some recipe or prose, just me, sitting at my laptop at 4AM on a Sunday morning with a report hanging over my head.

I've been having a tough month, not going to lie. I had a few bad accidents, was bedridden with the worst case of bronchitis and laryngitis I've experienced yet, and dealt with a relapse of my "demons".

If you scroll through my posts you'd probably have seen me reference my demons. To put it simply, they're a literary personification of my past depression, bulimia, and anxieties. 

I want to talk about bouncing back from a low place. From what I've experienced, it's watching your past happier self through a glass, almost cinematic, like a black and white silent film.

Everything feels like the heaviest shit you have to face. Getting out of bed, work, cooking, dealing with people, all of it feels like a chore, like a huge inconvenience. 

Funnily enough, when you're in that mode, you don't realize that the one person that can SNAP bang you out of that attitude is the one staring back at you while you're brushing your teeth.

In this scenario, I'm referencing yourself. Unless you have a creepy person standing behind you while you scrub your pearly whites. In that case, carry on..

As corny as that may sound, it's true. You're the person in control of how you feel, how you react, nobody else. You are the one choosing to feel this depressed. To react this way.

BUT

is it so bad to be in those low moments? 

I know that there are all sorts of spiritual leaders who preach that balance is key to consistent happiness. What goes up must come down, and all that. Which is why I believe it's healthy to feel depressed.

What?

Yeah, I'm serious. If I didn't have my moments of complete and utter depression, where I'm left crying the Nile into my pillow not knowing what the hell I'm doing, or who I am, or what I should be doing with my life, or why the people I've given my heart to have thrown it into the juicer and used it as a mixer, or how friends pass through my life as if I were some form of a drive through; I wouldn't have those moments of clarity where it's so simple.

Nobody knows what the fu*k they're supposed to be doing all the time. Nobody has a set plan and has it all work out the way they doodled it out to be in the 6th grade. The world doesn't fu*king revolve around you and your thoughts. 

I call myself the 'cat of all trades' because I thought it was a neat way to personify what I've done so far: 
I'm cat person. And I do a lot. ... ... .. In a more articulate manner, I should explain that I've dilly dallied in many fields and forms of art, expression, you name it. 

Make up, photography, painting, dancing, acting, performing, poetry, presenting, editing, cooking, and yet somehow I feel more like the jack of all trades, but a king of nothing.

I look at people who just KNOW what they want to do and go for it. I can't help but feel slightly envious. They seem so sure of themselves. So hell bent on their passions that they throw themselves 100% into it and don't resurface until they hold a list of accomplishments.
And here I am, someone who wants to jump into ALL the pools of passion. I don't want to give up anything. Does that make me the monkey with his hand in the hole of the box? Clutching the treat, but knowing I can't pull my hand out unless I just let go?

Do I follow logic? Or chase my dreams? Or logic and then dreams? Or both simultaneously?
How does one hold onto all the things that make them who they are without losing out on everything else?
It's these things that plague me in the misty hours of the night. How do you shut up the voices and angry little French men that play golf inside your mind? Scoffing at your doubts as if to say "Oui, zat  noh doubt eez a hole in wan." ... sorry, France.

There's a conversation I had with myself earlier today.
And yes, I talk to myself a lot more than anyone sane cares to admit.
I thought to myself, 

Is there anything I can do to change my situation? Where I am physically in this world?

Not at the moment.

Is there any way I can change my  way of thinking ABOUT the situation?

Yep. But that'll mean I'll have to admit I was being an idiot.

There you go. You can't always plan everything to be the way you want it to be, and why would you even want to? Life is like being in a rickety boat that you've constructed with your bare hands, floating in a torrential sea of stormy water. You can either feel flooded and sink, or welcome the chaos with a smile, the same way you do when it rains and you lift your face to the sky, not caring about getting drenched.
It's never ever EVER going to be smooth sailing, because life isn't like that. Life isn't easy, and anyone who has it easy probably doesn't feel as satisfied. 
You shouldn't dread the hard times. As someone in her early 20's, you've experienced just as much as most 30 year old's you know. You've dwelt in the darkest caves and have found the glow worms at the ceiling. This is only the beginning. You are still a baby, as much as you hate to admit that, but whatever you've experienced is but a smudge of what life is going to throw at you, and it's up to you whether you're going to fall flat faced into the water, or grab onto your knees and canon ball the shit out of it.

I know that when depression hits, there's a moment where you just cry your heart out, not even crying about one thing in particular, but there's that lump in your throat. And almost every time, right after you ugly cry the hell out of every angsty Radiohead song, you get filled with this sense of calm. Your smarter, inner voice that's subconsciously telling you that things are going to be ok. 

You know you're going to be ok because just like the most recognized symbol of life: the heart rate monitor, if you're not going up and down, you're flatline dead.

My point? It's ok to be sad. It's ok to feel like you can't get up. Go talk to someone you care about or who cares about you. If you don't want anyone to know, record yourself on film. Opening up and talking about how you feel sometimes makes you realize how damn insignificant your worries are. And even if they're not, you'll feel better just by getting it out.

I'd like to end this big ol' rant with something I know will come off as a little bit sappy:
I'm so grateful that I've been given all that I have been given. I forget how my issues and problems are those that millions of people go through, and there are billions who deal with things so much worse. I turn to my future self, my inner, wiser voice of whom has helped me through so much; from backing off the ledge, and mentally holding me even when my mind, soul, and heart have been wringed out of all its contents and left to dry; that little light was always there. 
I am grateful for the people in my life, for the support I've been given, however controversial, and for all the friends that have taught me life lessons. I'm grateful for the fact that I never gave into the darkness completely, and that I realized that no matter what people have said, or called me, or done, I was able to bounce back, middle fingers in the air, and said
"Screw you, I'm living life right."