The Ebbs and Flows of the Human Existence
I know I haven’t written on this blog for quite some time. While my mode of creativity comes in ebbs and flows, for the last couple of months, there have been more ebbs than there have been flows. Water has been trickling in, like little droplets when it came to my poetry, but it has been one droplet at a time. There is movement, but it is slow.
If you have checked out my poetry, or my Tiny Buddha Article (if you haven’t, I will link it below) you might have gotten the sense that I am pretty open when it comes to my mental health journey. I struggle with anxiety and depression, and the more time that I have taken to understand the fine balance between these two scales, the more that I am slowly getting better at recognizing when I am leaning into one end, more than the other.
The funny thing is, anxiety, was something that was always visible to me, and to the people around me. I was always hyper-vigilant, stressed and worried. While for certain periods of time this is quite normal, as life circumstances can cause one to feel the things that I have described, these symptoms, are something that I have felt all the time. Anxiety, like depression, is a bitch. It keeps me busy. It keeps me up at night with my endless thought loops. It makes me second guess myself, whether I did a good enough job or not. Whether I shared too much or not. Whether people like me or not. Whether I am annoying, or not. The list will be infinite. Because nothing is satisfactory, to the anxiety ridden mind. It is precisely like the game of perfectionism. Nothing will ever be good enough, and nothing will ever feel safe. There will always be something to worry about. To think about. To dissect and analyze. It’s exhausting, even trying to explain this.
The physical body can only sustain this state, for a designated period of time. Some people can handle it longer than others. But ultimately, what I have found out for myself, is that when the tank has not only hit completely empty, but has also run on the fumes for a little bit more, I crash. Completely. I get exhausted. I use the weekends to recover on my sleep. Social outings are difficult. Sometimes, I can only handle a couple hours, and then take a nap as soon as I get home. I get in a funk. I don’t want to do anything. I get lost within my thoughts, and hours pass. It’s like I am somewhere else, but I also can’t tell you where I am. I used to think this was burnout. It technically is burnout, but it is burnout with a little twist…depression.
The first step to anything on your healing journey, is acceptance. Any part of your life, requires some level of acceptance. Whether it is accepting that you need help, or whether it is accepting that you were looking at things from a blurry lens and things turned out to be not quite as they seemed. Or whether it is accepting that you were playing the victim in certain instances. My anxiety diagnosis was easy to accept. It made sense. It validated my behaviors, worries and fears. My depression diagnosis came a couple of months later. At this point, the anxiety is chronic, while the depression sneakily creeps up on me. And every time, it feels as though the depression always knocks the wind out of me. Depression, is the harder one for me to accept.
It is very interesting, to examine my own relationship between the two disorders. The depression, is where my true creativity arises. It is no coincidence, that some of the best writers in history, have struggled with their own mental health. While at times, this is a burden to bear, other times, it is a massive gift. To be able to feel so much pain, to the depth that this pain can be felt, displays the fragility of the human existence. If we are able to feel this much pain, can you imagine how much joy one can feel? The vitality? The capacity and potential we all hold to feel? These polar extremes, reminds us of our own mortality. The darkness, is what we equate death with. Cold, numb, the unknown. But if one believes in any type of universal doctrine, life is a constant cycle. Death and rebirth happens, over and over.
In my last blog post, I eluded briefly within my poem, to the eternal return. Whether you believe in this concept is beyond the point. But I will take just one thing out of this concept; and that is the cyclical nature of not only Earth itself, but also the cyclical nature of the whole entire Universe. Everything, operates in a cycle. If you don’t think so, then I think you are not paying enough attention.
We tend to fight things, that sometimes, are just truth. I still fight my cycles. Each time, I think that I have finally overcome the cycle of anxiety and depression; and once the short window of hopeful optimism passes, I am reminded yet again, that I am still fighting against that acceptance. I am in denial of how cruel I was to my body by trying to make it into a machine and overwork it. By trying to be perfect. To function, at a level that is just unattainable.
Maybe, this is my journey. To figure out how to make peace with my cycles. To reframe them a bit. Or maybe, it will take longer to address the demons and skeletons that I am still hiding in my closet. Either way, let this post be a reminder, that I am a human being too. All flawed and imperfect. I ebb and flow through the journey of human existence, still tinkering with the formula that works best for me. I still haven’t found that perfect formula yet. Maybe I never will. And maybe, that is the whole point. To let go of the frustration of finding the perfect formula to the human existence and come to the place of acceptance. The acceptance that, we honestly all don’t know what we are always doing. We don’t always know what our highest purpose is, because that can change as we change. I personally think, that we are not supposed to know; and that in itself, is the whole point.
~Christina Snitko
Tiny Buddha Link: How I Kept Going When I Wanted to End My Life - Tiny Buddha
