When you’re struggling with Anxiety, sometimes all you wish for is to feel ordinary. To wake up without that rush of fear or unease. To be able to make dinner and clean and work and play with your kids without simple tasks being an enormous struggle. Without questioning your every move and decision. Without a constant barrage of emotional abuse from within your own mind. Without thoughts that rush, spin and spiral until you don’t have enough room left in your head to focus on anything.
Recovery can be such a desperate process. You are constantly in hungry pursuit of the happiness and peace that continually eludes you. But you’re also, simply, pursuing the ordinary. When I’m really struggling I experience a lot of envy. I look at friends, family and even strangers and feel consumed with jealousy and self-pity that they get to go through their (ordinary) days, dealing with stresses and problems, without that added layer of Anxiety or Depression. Without having to question every move they make or feel frozen with indecision over the simplest of things.
This is why I personally believe that a mental health issue is the biggest battle anyone can face. There is no escape because how can you get away from your own mind? And there is no distraction when your mind won’t allow it. (Eventually you learn, or are reminded in my case, how to cease engagement with these thoughts and find relief of course, more on that in a future post)
I have found myself wishing for a day when I’m not particularly sad or angry, or even filled with joy, but just a day when I don’t have to feel and question every single emotion or thought. During the latter stages of recovery a big issue for me is mood analysis. It’s a strange shadow that gets left in the wake of the more intense anxiety I suppose. My reaction to this (which is the key element really) ranges from mild irritation to frustration to total panic.
True recovery to me is when you can experience all those normal emotions throughout the day but in an ordinary way; where you can feel worried without panicking or feel fed up without fearing you’ll never feel happiness again. Essentially, when you barely notice the daily up and down of human emotion and simply get on with your life.
After dipping in and out of hell for three months, ordinary days are rushing back to me now and it is so, so beautiful.
Related posts:
10 Things I’ve Gained From Postnatal Depression
