The messy side of recovery
I’m going to be extremely honest with you guys, my recovery process has been all over the place. I’ve been putting this constant pressure on myself for the past couple of days to stay positive and share only useful information that would be helpful for others. Although, half of the time I have a hard time believing anything that I come up with. Trauma and healing can be tricky, they can get messy, and complicated, they can be unpredictable. You just have to remind yourself that you are not your trauma, you can’t allow it to be your identity. Instead, you should accept that it happened to you and it’s a part of who you are, but never let it dictate what you become. Healing can be a great learning experience, because you can try out different coping methods until you find the one that works best for you. Each up and down that you go through, gives you an understanding that life isn’t perfect and you’re going to have some fallbacks but that’s what makes us human.
It can be difficult to stay focused on getting better when your mind is constantly tricking you into thinking that nothing will ever improve. You become so used to the way that you are when dealing with depression, that even a tiny bit of constructive behavior doesn’t feel like your true identity. When you start to feel remotely happy, you become unnerved, because you’re sitting around waiting for something awful to happen. You can never let yourself truly feel peace, because it’s hard to believe that you can actually experience a period of positivity, without anything negative coming into play.
The truth is, I struggled today. I struggled with keeping up my image of being the strong, brave woman that everyone is claiming I am. I felt like breaking down today and giving in to everything I worked so hard at overcoming. I craved alcohol all day, I craved finding something to distract my mind from the overpowering thoughts I had all day. I could feel my depression breathing down my neck throughout my whole work shift, but I was able to acknowledge it and suppress it altogether. Still, depression lingers. It will keep itself hidden, yet it waits. It waits to attack at full force when you’re least expecting it. You just have to be prepared to outsmart it and not allow it to access the power of controlling you.
