Rising Phoenix

It's been a dark few months. It took a lot longer to crash then I thought it would. It's hard to bring myself to write when all I feel is sadness. I had anticipated using this blog as kind of a support, a release during dark times, and then I shoot myself in the foot by hiding away from everything when the crash finally does come. Today I finally built up the courage to "get back on the horse", if you will, and continue writing.

Right now it's 3:50 AM, I have class in 4 hours, I can hear my hall mate vomiting in the bathroom from drinking too much, and I can't sleep. In fact, I just went to check on him since he was making some weird noises in the bathroom. I asked, "You feelin' alright?" and the response I received: "Fuck you"... fair enough. This is college.

Enough about me, now for my post:

As I said before I've been going through some pretty dark times. The constant numbness that seemed to surround me throughout the summer gave way to emptiness, emptiness to pain, and pain to despair. This post isn't about my fall (I'll save that for a future post), this post is about the mindset I am trying to maintain in order to help me survive this.

I'm a person of action. I like to be able fix problems the moment they happen. I hate waiting. Say my car breaks down, I will be perpetually uncomfortable about it until it is fixed. I can't stand letting problems linger. So when I am powerless to bring a problem to a quick resolution, when there is no quick fix, you can see how this would bother me.

One of the biggest problems with depression is my inability to directly control it. I can fight it but I can't fix it. It lingers, it persists, it must take its usual path. It can be buried, it can be ignored, but in the end it's still there and I have to deal with it and suffer through it; by avoiding it I'm only postponing the inevitable. So by not being able to control it, I feel defeated and hopeless. In a sense being depressed causes me to feel even more depressed...

It is important for me to accept this truth. I need to accept that I can't fix it and that it is okay. If I can accept that it is out of my control, I can then accept that it is not my fault, and then I can begin to focus on how to work through it, instead of trying to escape my shadows.

Every time I fall down, I get back up. Every time I crash, I rise from the wreckage of my life, and, like a rising phoenix emerging from the ashes of its previous life, I start anew, standing and alive. This is what I focus on. This is what I remember. Remembering this, knowing this deep within myself, I'm able to continue through the crash, through the fallout, through the fear, sadness, and insecurity, and I am able to make it to the other side.

The phoenix is not something we need to strive to be. The phoenix is something we need to remember we already are. All we need to do is survive. Though the present may be dark, the sun will rise when morning comes. We just have to make it through the night. We have to wait. When morning comes, we will, like the phoenix, rise up again.

There are many things I can't fix right now. Worrying about them yields me nothing. There is nothing now I can do, but I have to believe things will eventually work out. I can't wait until life is perfect to relax. Life will never be perfect. There is always something to worry about. I need to relax now and accept that things will be okay.

July 28... is not about me.

July 28 is the date of my birthday. You probably noticed that July 28 is also today's date. When I was a child, birthdays were big celebrations where I had all my family and "friends" (so everyone I knew) over and there was a big party with cake, presents, and events. Now there's no cake, there's no party, and today there won't even be any friends, because the closest one lives about an hour away. There won't even be any family, because my closest family member lives 7 hours away. This year there will be only a drink at a bar, sitting alone, toasting myself to getting through one more year.

Here's the thing, in every situation an individual can either find something good or something bad. Being who I am, I naturally see everything what's wrong with the situation. One of the things I do that has allowed me to make it through to another birthday is forcing myself to see what's good, even in a bad situation. I may not feel it, I may not naturally notice it, but if I force myself, I can always find something. I don't enjoy doing this. I never want to do this. Sometimes I despise doing it, but I force myself to because I KNOW it helps me retain my sanity. It's not what I feel, but what I know to be true that sustains me.

Here is the good, the positive, the reason to keep on that I have found today, in the bleakness of my birthday:
I have driven hours to visit friends on their birthdays. I have rallied up groups to take kids out on their birthdays. At the very least, I have always at least forced a person out of the house, and celebrated with a drink or meal as a reminder to them that it was his or her birthday. These things are difficult for me to do (I'm not naturally the most energetic person in the world, and I almost always spend the whole time pretending to be in a good mood), but I do them because I know everyone appreciates being appreciated. So here I am, on my birthday, with no one else around, and no one is coming. After celebrating so many birthdays, it's easy to get down when no one comes for yours, but there is an upside. This event does remind me of one of life's truths that has helped me make it this far: It's not about me.

When my life revolves around me I notice my misery snowballs out of control. Sadness begets sadness. When I can only focus on myself, all I see is sadness and anger, and that does nothing more than fill me with a dark, frustrated rage. However, (this is what my birthday has reminded me) when I focus on other people it has a two pronged effect. First, it takes my eyes off of myself, and the rage that is born from seeing my hopeless struggles is transformed into empathy for others. Second, helping others gives me a reason to be. I don't care about myself. In fact, sometimes I hate myself for who I am and what I've allowed myself to become, but I do care about other people. I am not a reason for me to keep going, but other people can be. Sometimes, on the worst of days, the only thing keeping me going is knowing somewhere out there is some person that I might be able to help, and without me they may never see that help, even if it is as small as taking them out for their birthday. I may not feel these things, but I do know them.