Interlude: My Story Continues

I know I usually write informatively on this blog but tonight I wanted to take a moment to connect about what’s going on with me personally.

When I started MSB off with “My Story” (you can read it here) I wrote about a very scared and angry person who vowed never to be wronged again by our mental health system.

I’m still that person, full of piss and vinegar, as my mom always used to say.

But, since starting this blog I’ve become something more.

With all the research, the different perspectives, and the support from my community I find my edges softening. Being able to share my voice here has helped me grow tremendously.

You see, I started this blog when I was most broken. I had just left a job I loved because it was damaging my mental health. I was having daily panic attacks, paranoia, and breakdowns every weekend.

After 3 years of muscling through I just couldn’t go on.

More or less I was forced to step back and start this new journey in order to stay sane. I began MSB around the same time to help myself heal.

I’ve been spending the last two months trying to “get better” and I thought I was just trying to heal from an overwhelmingly tough time in my life. I thought I just needed rest and this blog would be a brief, fun interlude to keep me going between “big girl” jobs.

I suddenly realized today though, I’m not going to get better. At least not in two months anyway. I’m really pretty sick – long story short I had a trauma happen when I was very young which I never understood how to process. So it festered in me for 25 years, forcing me along, driving me to be perfect so I couldn’t be hurt again.

I’m finally opening up to that pain, letting it pour out when it wants to, gently coaxing it out when doesn’t. Meditating, writing, chanting, crying, screaming, and just plain existing with no other purpose than to get better.

It’s frustrating. I’m not used to just existing. I’m used to doing, achieving, and conquering. This is a totally alien experience for me which I am not at all comfortable with. I have so much guilt and shame. But I have no choice but to sit with it.

Writing here has helped so much with the frustration. As I’ve opened up to the pain from the trauma, I’ve also opened my soul to a creativity I had lost from living a life of survival. I now get to create meaningful content, I get to write, I get to make videos and friends, read beautiful blogs and photograph my garden.

Best of all I get to bring all these things together to create a beautiful new life for myself, where I can finally thrive. I’m frustrated, yes but somehow I’ve never been more content.

For those reasons, I’ve decided to keep MSB as the focal point of my life – thinking of it as my day job instead of chasing after another “big girl” job in the corporate world.

I still struggle with my mental illness. I struggle tremendously. I think I’ll need a long time to heal from a lifetime of pain and I don’t know if I’ll ever really get better; but getting to be transparent with the WP community and giving myself time and space to heal has made it more manageable.

And for that I’m truly grateful.

I can’t thank you all enough, dear readers and friends, for giving me a way to express myself – you don’t know how much it means to me to be able to do this.

So keep reading. My story still has many more chapters I’d love to share with you as I grow and change.

Love and Light to you All,

MB