Life... a year after the fall

A year ago... many would say that a year is a long time, that it's enough time to recover, to heal, to live and thrive knowing you got through the worst. To me, a year is so short and frustratingly I feel as lost and alone as I ever have.

This time last year I was in the middle of a mental, emotional, nervous, heartbroken, soul destroying breakdown and I will say that although the trigger was heart break like I'd never experienced before, the breakdown had been brewing under the surface for quite some time just waiting for its chance to destroy me.

A year ago today I wanted to sleep, I wanted to close my eyes and I didn't have a care whether I opened them again. Today I use sleep as my escape, a way to avoid dealing with the constant crappiness that depression keeps rolling out to me.

There's been some progress since, I've made it off Mum's and Dad's couch, I've made it out of my pajamas, I'm no longer heartbroken and after 8 long months I made it back to work. For most people, these things are a piece of cake. For me, they were some of the hardest things I've ever had to do and yet still I feel as though my life is sitting stagnant, waiting for this dreaded black dog to give up, to get off my back and allow me to experience happiness.

When I look back over this past year I have learnt more about myself than I could ever have imagined. I have worked harder than I ever have before to just get by in this life and the road ahead will be paved with much more personal growth and much more work for something others find so easy to have. Sometimes, like the past few weeks, I want to give up, out of exhaustion, out of despair but other times my will to fight gets me through the days. This fight is long, this is a fight I will be battling for the rest of my hopefully long and happy life but the rewards I hope will outweigh this illness, will outweigh my need to crawl up into an emotional ball and stay there.

It's times like these that I urge my family and friends to stick with me... I'm still me, the fun loving me... she is just currently stuck under a doona, behind a mask waiting to be found again. Hopefully... she is worth the wait...