Lucky and Free

Lucky and Free.
Oh, how I've wanted to remember what it feels like to be lucky and free again.
And I think I'm beginning to.

I want to run every day not because I feel like I should, or because I know it's good for me, but because I like it. I feel strong, I feel energized, I feel excited to be alive. I love the bright reds and blues of the cardinals and blue jays. The different hues of green surrounding me, the flowers dotting the path. There's so much beauty everywhere.
I do workout videos because I want to. Because it's one of the few things in my life that I have some degree of control in. I can push my body and feel the goodness of being sore yet growing stronger. I get a degree of satisfaction from seeing results and feeling the effects of those results.
I play piano because I enjoy it. I'm surprised to see that my fingers still remember more than I thought possible, and I can still read music and learn and grow. I find myself drawn to the piano just to stretch myself and try playing the pieces from memory.
I drew the other day with my brother, and discovered that I still can sort of draw. And I enjoy it. I'm not perfect, but the act of creating something that looks even remotely realistic or aesthetically pleasing is great. The shading, the details, the way you can create something out of nothing, a blank page being a clean slate.
I've also started to bake. To make food, mostly desserts, with my brother. It's so simple, but it's great working together.
I play cards, sometimes even with myself, something I couldn't used to do because it felt like a waste of time. It's weird, because of all the hobbies or past-times, that's the least 'productive' one. But I've been playing a lot of cards lately.
I can sit an listen to the birds again, watching the river flow past, immersed in nature that stays the same but is always changing. Before, I would be restless the whole time, my mind hijacked by anxiety and all the things I had to do that were more 'productive' than this. But through all of these strategies and practices I've been incorporating into my life, my mindset has begun to change.
I can read, for fun, and get sucked into a book for hours.
I can sit on the porch and drink coffee, just allowing myself to be.
I can color, watch a movie, or journal, without feeling guilty.
I can work on lessons and instead of feeling the dread toward work that's been following me for so long, I feel excited for the progress the kids have made, for how far I've come as a teacher, and how much room there is for growth.
I do miss my friends, and being in my own space, but this has turned out to be a great place to rediscover being lucky and free. The woods literally in my background, nature surrounding me whenever I go out. More time.
Oh, how incredible it is to taste and see again what it is to be lucky and free.

I look back at where I was a few months ago and it's baffling. I feel like a different person, this a different life. I don't know how I survived in the headspace I was in, but I am so deeply thankful for the healing taking place in my mind and body.

I still don't know what's to come, or where I want to be.
But I'll just savor these small signs I'm learning, once again, to be lucky and free.

Lucky and Free. John Davey

Aware

May is mental health awareness month. I just found out. A month dedicated to raising awareness. I don't know who needs to hear this. Maybe its even just for myself, a step on the journey to my own mental health, but here it is.

Although I've been wrestling with depression possibly since high school, I've never really stopped to reflect on all I've been through. Depression runs in my family; many of us naturally have low serotonin levels, and other genetics that predispose us to mental health struggles, but I just thought what I was living was normal. I never really woke up to the great importance of mental health awareness until recently. 

The end of high school and start of college were extremely difficult times for me, but I didn't have the knowledge or words to know that this wasn't how the world was supposed to feel. I just thought I was a "bad Christian" for obsessively doubting and feeling so low that life itself seemed hopeless and pointless. I figured everyone teetered on the edge of existential crises rather regularly. I knew feeling physically paralyzed when overcome with hopelessness and doubt probably wasn't normal, but I had no means of figuring out why. Thankfully several amazingly life-giving people came into my life and I found ways to cope, ways to hope against hope. I still struggled in the environment I was submerged in, but I heard about something called spiritual OCD. I tried to research it, but couldn't find enough information from the sources I could see. The thought that depression may be playing into the whole scene hadn't even occurred to me. 

It wasn't until after I took a semester off, studied abroad, and finished my last semester that I had a conversation that shed some light onto the struggle bus I had been riding. I graduated early and was temporarily moving back in with my parents, in a fairly new relationship, trying to figure out which future ship to board, and I talked to my mom about some of the struggles that had been dogging me for years, some of the thoughts and the fears. And for the first time, I was made aware that it could be depression. I knew that others in my family battled with depression and other mental health struggles, but I had always imagined them as removed and far away. I didn't really even know enough to say what they were, and I never realized that there could be a name for what was going on in my mind. But at that point, I had decided to move to Beijing to work with a nonprofit and the departure date was closing in; I was about to uproot myself and change homes yet again, leaving all support systems and friends. Thankfully, before I left, I had a chance to talk with the doctor and get some meds. Even then, I didn't really have time to try to understand what was going on in my head. But I took the meds and they seemed to help, but the transient style of the next two years made it hard to be consistent- always moving homes, moving countries, no insurance and no salary, it was a challenging time. 

Then, after I came back for grad school, I decided I was "ready" to go off the meds, which I had already been taking inconsistently due to the lack of availability. Probably not the best move in hindsight, especially since I was undergoing multiple transitions and life-changes yet again, but I did. And for a while it seemed okay. I still encountered existential crises somewhat frequently, still battled with thoughts of hopelessness of the futility of it all, but it wasn't the same as before. It seemed more manageable, what I thought was not too out of the ordinary. 

After finishing my degree in New York, I did it again. I uprooted myself, said goodbye to all my support systems and friends and moved to Shenzhen. I definitely did not realize the chaos I was willingly walking into, and soon I discovered that I wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared for what I would find there. A new school, no textbooks or curriculum, an unfinished building and kids who behave like they've never been in a classroom before. Vague expectations, little support, lack of training and resources, expectations to report progress without clear definitions of what that meant, no horizontal or vertical alignment among grades. Classroom management was an absolute disaster, and this was my first year teaching standards and content to kids. Literacy for a class that has 15 different reading levels in it, some kids who can't say a sentence with others who are nearly fluent. It was enough to make even a seasoned teacher shudder. Add that to a new city, a new apartment, and later a new relationship. I was struggling. Crying after work nearly ever week. Obsessively thinking about work around the clock, never feeling like I did enough. Only able to see the negatives, frustrated with myself for how I was reacting. Having moments at work where I was fighting back tears, struggling to breath normally, feeling overcome with fear. Moments when I wanted to curl up in a ball and never come out from behind the wall. It was like I was carrying a giant weight on my back ever day, waking up in dread for what lay ahead. I couldn't control my thoughts, and they kept taking me in a downward spiral to a place where I could barely function. I just thought it was stress. After all, a first year teacher is usually a mess from all the demands of her new position. But this seemed different. I just thought I needed to chill out, relax, not think about it so much. Just trust God more. But every time I tried, it would get my mind and body even more riled up. It was a frustratingly vicious cycle that I couldn't seem to break free from, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't seem to find freedom. I saw how it was negatively affecting me, my relationship, and all other aspects of my reality. But I felt helpless. Hopeless. I could quit, but this "stress" would just follow me. I had become someone I resented, someone I did not like, someone I looked at and didn't even recognize. I just wanted to be lucky and free again, and I kept thinking it would get better with time. But it didn't. It got worse. 

Then on what was supposed to be a relaxing 2-week vacation, Coronavirus blew up and things kept on spiraling. Now I was in an unfamiliar country, with no computer, no resources, still expected to teach. I was traveling with two great people full of life, seemingly quite carefree, with few responsibilities, which only magnified my own struggles and what I later came to know as anxiety. 

Then I had another conversation. I was explaining my situation to a friend from work, and she suggested a name. She said it sounded like that could be anxiety. And even just having a word that might fit provided some strange sort of relief. I began researching, trying to see if my experience could in fact be anxiety. The thought had never crossed my mind. I just thought I was broken. I'd heard people talk about anxiety vaguely in the past, but I didn't really know what it was or how it affected you. After reading and listening about this monster called anxiety, I began to realize that it was likely that it really was what had been shadowing me for the past 6 months. The unnervingly high scores I kept getting on the unofficial assessments online seemed to support that. But I didn't know what to do to combat the invisible monster of anxiety and his close companion, depression. Before that conversation, I didn't even have the vocabulary to describe what I was feeling inside. And I'm pretty good at putting on a face when I need to, so sometimes, even if I talked about it, people find it hard to believe that I was struggling with anything. I started reaching out to people I knew who may be able to offer guidance or some first step of help. The school counselor, a friend's psychologist mom, using the resources they recommended to keep learning and searching for help. 

I ended up departing the company of those two travelling friends, seeking some sort of refuge in the house of a dear friend in yet another country. It was difficult to leave people I cared about and loved, but things were getting so bad I was becoming desperate for some sort of relief. Another conversation in Germany was the first time I felt hope that it wouldn't always be this way. Hope that there could be change. I tried setting up appointments with counselors, but nothing was working out. Eventually, I ended up coming back to the States, staying with my parents for the time being, hoping to find some sort of stability and routine. 

I reached out to multiple counselors, tried for hours and days to get ahold of doctors. But I was determined to get help. I knew I couldn't get out of that spiral myself. And after several long weeks of searching and appointments, I was prescribed medication that treats both depression and anxiety, as well as OCD, I found a therapist, and another who did a different kind of therapy. That's also when the guy who had been the only bright spot in the past 6 months of my life decided to end things, right when things were starting to come to light and healing was beginning. 

It felt like being kicked in the gut just when I was trying to get back up. But I was determined. 

I've written about how I've invested in my mental health in previous posts, and that's not at all to boast about the progress that's been made, but in the hopes of giving hope to those who are struggling with an issue without a name. 

Oh, I wish I would have known sooner that this beast that's been plaguing me was also known as anxiety. I fumbled and stumbled like a child in an unfamiliar room in the dark, not aware that I was actually in the dark, let alone where the light switch was. I had begun to think that stumbling and falling so much was just normal. I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel because I thought I was just broken and out of reach of hope. I didn't have the words to express my thoughts or emotions, I didn't understand the situation or how my brain could affect all those things. I never considered the major life transitions that were all happening at once, the innumerable stressors that were suffocating me. I didn't have the awareness to know that this was a time I should ask for help, that I didn't need to try to beat this thing on my own, in the process just beating myself, so I kept trying to defeat it, and kept getting hit with hard blows that left my life feeling absolutely depleted. 

If I had known what anxiety was, if I had an awareness of depression and mental health struggles, maybe I wouldn't have struggled in vain for so long, thinking there was something wrong deep inside me and I just needed to try harder to fix it. 

Now that I've reached out for help, and invested a great deal of time and energy into getting healthy, I feel like a new person. I'm still learning (and unlearning). I still have a long way to go, but I know that I'm not alone. Especially now, in a time of crisis, so many people are coming face to face with mental monsters that they can't describe. They're scary and unfamiliar. They seem to have unlimited power. We aren't aware that it could be our mental health, unaware that there are resources and help. 

Each time there was a turn for the better in my journey, it seems a conversation is what sparked it. So I guess my hope is that we won't brush mental health under the rug. We won't pretend it doesn't exist or that those who struggle with it are somehow inferior. The stigma alone can cause people who struggle to keep quiet out of fear of being judged. I think more of us than we realize have had encounters with mental health struggles while we've been alive, especially now. And the fact that you've survived and can live to talk about it, hopefully even from a healthy place, or even just a place of solidarity, is enough of a reason to be open to sharing your story with someone else. 

Some of us never really learned about mental health. Or maybe we didn't listen because we thought it irrelevant. But awareness really can make a difference. 

Being able to give the monster a name can give us direction and tools on how to defeat it, strategies and a community to support us.
It's easy to hide yourself and feel alone, forgotten, and unseen in your struggle and pain. But there is so much healing to be found by running out into the rain that's been so intimidating. Even simple conversations can start a transformation process that may usher in change. 

Ask your friends how they really are, and truly listen to their response. Be open to sharing your life experience, sharing resources and hope. 

We are not alone. 

Thinking Back

I don't think I'm angry anymore. Instead, I wish the best for you and look forward to learning what's you have in store.
At first, I thought it was all my fault. I piled all of the things I didn't do or should've done into a giant mound over myself, nearly suffocating from the weight and the heat. I felt abandoned. I felt unlovable. I felt rejected. And I knew that my mental health struggles had gotten the best of us. All of my worst fears had come true and when you saw the mess I was, I knew you would leave. And you did. At first I was hurt and angry, mostly with myself but also with you.
But as I've been investing nearly all my time in getting mentally healthy, I've also spent a good deal processing all these feels. Before I felt like I was looking up at this looming ship of inferiority that was about to crush me like a tiny bug. But now, I'm learning to allow myself to feel, work to gain perspective, and stop and give myself a hug. It's tough. It sucks. Losing someone you love and coming to grips with the fact that you may never see them again. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking all of it is nullified now that the other voluntarily left your side. But I will fight. I will fight to keep in mind the numerous situational factors that slowly drove a wedge between our lives. I will fight to recognize the unlikely environment the pandemic forced upon us, something that neither of us was prepared for, something that would bring stress on even the strongest of relationships. So much uncertainty, so many unknowns, so much being thrown to the wind in exasperation because nobody had answers or any direction.
I know you did what you believed was the best thing for you, and I can now see that the best thing I can do to love you is to let you go. But I'm still rooting for you. I still hope you can find what you need in your new move. That your career will develop and build into what you hope for. That you'll find people in your life who can provide life-giving support. I hope that you can find rest and peace, that you can find happiness and freedom from the Asia stress.
I know that our relationship had its rocks, and that my anxiety left you feeling put in a box. I know neither of us were perfect and my work often became a burden for you, distracting from the life and exploration of the city and terrain we found ourselves in.
But I also recognize that we experienced so much together. We climbed mountains, ate meals, baked together. We tried new things, you held me when I cried, we laughed and laughed until we were doubled over gripping our sides. There were so many special little things that I will treasure, so many experiences I'm thankful for and will remember forever. You brought joy to my life when I couldn't find it any place else, were rays of sunshine in the midst of a hurricane. You helped to keep me sane. Of course there are so many things we both could've done better, but I'm grateful for the time we shared in Shenzhen together.
When things had gotten quite bad with my anxiety, I remember you saying "You need to find happiness without me." I didn't realize that you would later leave, but I'm thankful that I'm finding it. Joy and peace.
Looking back, I don't feel angry. I feel sad because I lost a best friend, as well as a sense of stability, but I'm also learning to find that elsewhere. I can see beauty all around me again. I can see hope that you always told me about in the past, but I could never quite grasp it through my clenched fists. I didn't think growth and change was possible, I thought I would be stuck with the rucksack on my back forever. But I'm watching as change happens. I'm watching as life seeps back into my empty shell, awakening from the hell that was all this anxiety and stress, and likely depression. Before you were the only thing that could pull me out of it, but now I'm learning to crawl out myself. I'm learning to rely on the help of God.
So thank you for being there for me. For listening and walking with me. Thank you for the time we shared. I'm sorry you never really got to know the real me, but I'm grateful she's coming back out again for those around her to see.

Blessing or Curse?

I think lately I’ve realized that I have this tendency to roll things over and over in my mind, seeking to gain a deeper understanding and see a new perspective of the issue at hand, but I’ve seen that it’s not always well received.

Some feel like it’s going round and round in circles, wasting time and energy to say the same thing again and again.

And maybe there’s some truth to that. 

Just look at how I've been writing about the same thing, saying basically the same ideas in different ways. 

Maybe it’s part of the obsessive thoughts that cause me to keep running back to things I’ve already thought through, causing my mind to become enveloped with the thought, examining it from every side, hoping in it to gain some new insight.

Or maybe I just don’t like the thought, and so I roll it around in my brain hoping that it’ll morph and one of these times it won’t be the same as it originally was; somehow it'll be transformed into something easier to swallow.

I’ve come to realize that this is both a blessing and a curse.

I would much rather not have this issue of obsessive thought. I know I can’t change anything by just thinking harder, and it often causes frustration for friends and partners.

But sometimes it does lead to a change in perspective, greater empathy or a slightly different lens through which to see things.

I’m learning that the best way to strip these obsessive thoughts of their power isn’t to try to force them out of my head or shame myself for being drawn back into the same thought over and over again. Trying not to think about it or judging myself for being distracted by it only makes its grip stronger.

I’m still not exactly sure how to maintain a healthy relationship with these thoughts that linger, but I’m learning that change is an inevitable part of our existence. That no matter where my mind stands today, it’s apt to change. And that’s okay.

Overthinking and obsessing may be able to be redeemed into a gift that helps me to see that which others may not always see, but I also see that getting lost in the sea of thoughts can cause me not to be present.

I don’t think I’ll ever lose the part of my identity that tends to overthink things, and I’ll likely keep examining all sides of situations, but maybe that can be shifted into a healthy relationship with thoughts and perspectives. 

Transform me by the renewing of my mind. 

Back in Indiana

In an effort to speak with complete honesty, I thought being stuck here for months would be a tragedy. In the first few weeks, in between breakdowns, as I was groping desperately for any sense of routine, I fought to believe it was possible to get better in this space.
But as I was making intentional efforts and getting the support I needed to get a grip back on reality, I found the grace to submit it to God. Even in a season when everything feels dry and distant, when questions and doubt seem to characterize the everyday, I found grace. I knew full well that if I found healing here, it would be by the grace of God.
That's not to say I don't love my family, for I dearly and deeply do. But it can be challenging at times to find peace of mind in the midst of the struggles in life here. With no friends around, family challenges, in the midst of a pandemic where I've been unexpectedly away from my home in Shenzhen for almost 4 month, away from friends and community, and with no clarity for what's coming around the bend, I knew healing would be His doing.
I don't feel the same obligation as before to fix things or usher in the restoration of certain aspects of relationships. I'm beginning to understand that I can't fix some things, and instead I can practice patience and love, trying to withhold judgement for things I don't quite understand.
Each of us are broken in our own ways. Each of us have a story. And hopefully I'm on the road to becoming one who asks. Who validates. Who listens.
Right now, nearly all of my energy is being invested in me. Before I would feel utterly guilty for that, but I think maybe this is one key way I can give back right now. If I'm not healthy, stable, and secure in my identity, how can I love others well?
It's a weird time now, with no inkling of when I'll go back home. And realizing all of my time at that home was invested in one person (aside from work) who won't be there when and if I return. That hurts. I can't even imagine it, nor do I want to, but that's what'll happen if I ever get to go back to my place in Shenzhen.
So now that I'm not being controlled by anxiety, now that the depression is lessening, I'm working through losing someone I loved dearly who left voluntarily. I'm also coming face to face with this truth that I have no clue what I want to do with my life.
I forget what I enjoy. I struggle with the sheer overchoice.
But I don't have to have it all figured out right now. I don't have to have plans set in stone. I'm learning to again walk confidently into the unknown, yet seeking clarity and listening well, including to myself, but walking in the confidence that comes from a faith in something greater than myself.