It's been a week since I've gotten back into the daily grind of life. If you can't recall the last post, I spent a good five days last week trying to get my life back on track. I used that time to strike at the roots of my depression; to start moving forward with my life. And for the most part, it went quite well.
Actually, to say it went well is quite an understatement. However, I didn't realize how much of an understatement it was until now. Yes, last Monday, when many of my goals and plans had been accomplished or set in motion, I was feeling very chipper. Like there was a literal burden removed from my shoulders and I could walk a little taller without straining my back. The feeling was... familiar. I can actually say that I felt like myself after that "long weekend".
In fact, I felt even better than I remember ever feeling. I felt like Peter Parker after coming in contact with the Symbiote in the mostly-bad "Spider Man 3" (except without acting like an ass). Maybe it's just been too long, but I can hardly remember feeling that good aside from being in love or being on stage (and I can barely remember what those feel like). I've even felt a surge of creativity; comedy skits and scripts have been spilling out of me since last week. I've even been able to come up with half-decent songs as well. I felt so good, I even told a very pretty girl on the metro (who looked a little like Taylor Swift) that she was very pretty... and I didn't care if she thought I was hitting on her or not (which I wasn't... I was polite and I was just complimenting her)! Yes, I was beginning to feel like myself... and maybe a little bit more.
I say that I felt like myself because through this rough period of my life, I noticed as days went by that I was no longer the person I was. I was happy with who I was before; proud of myself. But there were times over the past year or so that I felt so far detached from who I was, I barely recognized myself. I began to question weither I could ever get back to that... get back to feeling good about myself.
"The future's so bright... I gotta wear shades."
Since last week, not only I have noticed a stark change in my attitude and the way I carry myself, but others around have noticed as well. Various people in my workplace noted how I didn't "look so sad" all the time or wasn't "as stressed as before". I believe last Thursday, my boss's exact words after seeing my improved mood and performance at work were "You're like f**kin' Jesus Christ back from the dead!"That was probably the most accurate way to put it (not that I'm comparing myself to Jesus or anything). Before, I'd felt more dead than alive; a shell of a man. But now, I feel revitalized, reborn, ready to take on the world. It was as if I had been encased in skin that resembled a grotesque version of myself and now I have shed that skin. I am alive again.
Though I feel good about myself and the track which I am now on, I know that I am not the same. I am still suffering from depression (physically, my body is still in depression mode) but that is something that I can overcome through time. What I am going to have to carry with me for the rest of my life are the scars from my experiences.
We are the results of the experiences life takes us through, be they voluntary experiences or unexpected ones. In either case, what we take from these experiences is up to us. Now, we may not always have the right mental or emotional or spiritual tools to maximize what we mine from from each episode of our lives but we still take something. It might do us good: make us stronger; more resilient; more understanding; wiser; more emphatic or more sympathetic. Then again, they might not serve us nearly so well: they might make us more stubborn; hateful; closed-minded; vengeful; depressed.
I really feel that I've begun to take all the negative baggage I've accumulated over the course of the last year or so and started to shape it into something worthwhile and positive. Yes, I still, and most likely will continue to look back at the past and can't help but frown when I remember how it felt to be going through the various situations I'd found myself in, but now I find that I've grown stronger from those experiences. It's almost as if the my despair and anxiety have allowed me to tap into a previously unseen dynamic to myself. I could very easily have used these experiences to turn me into a horrible person that I would never wish to be and if I allowed things to travel on the trajectory they had been on, that may have been the case. Instead, I've gained a greater understanding of many things... things that other people have and will go through and a greater understanding of myself.
The struggle is not over, I know, and it's not quite time to uncork the champagne and drink to my resurrection. What I do know, and celebrate every day, is that the old me... the one beaten and weathered by tribulation... is gone away. I'll always remember that person and I would do well to use him to serve as a reminder that the future (which feels more so now than ever) is worth living for.
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