Let’s paint my Mental Health with the paintbrushes from Mean Girls, Shall we?
But first…A quote
Your circumstances don’t define your destiny, but your response to them does.
I love the premise. I kept this one particular one close today. Ripped it off the calender, held it next to my computer while I write, type of close. Still, I struggle with it. I don’t think it’s easy to stuff what I feel, all the time anyway, into a ‘control your response’ type of box.
I fight every day not to die. Insert - blah, blah, your life is worth more, sentiment here-.
Some days, most days, those comments don’t help. They are lovely. They show me someone may care, but it doesn’t stop the ache. That familiar feeling of perverse worthlessness that has somehow, over several years, become a close friend. The type of clingy friend that gets annoying but you know will always be there to support you. Except in this case, my clingy friend is a tightening noose and a very questionably placed box that is rotting and barely able to be considered ‘wood’, back during the Salem witch trials.
Yeah. That’s it.
Chronic depression is that 1600s beautiful paradox of random strangers filled with vitriol for someone they don’t know (only that, for some reason, cats like her), except in my case, it knows me all too well. See? Paradox.
Now for Mean Girls.
My chronic depression, let’s call her Gretchen Weiners, is never going to get ‘positive mental health thoughts’ to happen. Not all the time. During my good days, weeks, and months (let’s call my good days, Ms. Norbory), Gretchen, in her tiny skirt, comes on down the Highschool Highway to Mental Hell (see what I did there) to remind me that my medicine will not stop the periods of low depressive episodes (let’s call these fuckers Regina George(and yeah double boxes to emphasize that more than one Regina is terrifying AF)).
You know, Norbury is a pusher; she comes and tells me everything will be great. And for a while, I join her after-school mental-mathletes club, and things are great! But then, Regina just comes and takes my boyfriend (balance with my meds), Aaron Samuels, and just guffaws as I fall on my face, trying to please her while I wade through the madness that is self-acceptance and love. (I also still really want my meds to work, so mentally, it’s always October 3rd. Ha.)
Still with me?
Mental Health, specifically Bi-Polar II disorder, is like a rerun of Mean Girls. You laugh, you cry, you wear pink on Wednesdays, and yet you miss the overall premise time and time again that in order to fully come out on top, you have to fight every day for your own self-acceptance and love.
You fight like hell to be Cady Heron because, through the ridiculous fights and pain, you realize you are absolutely still worth it all.
But want another twist? Let’s not forget the lovable yet sometimes annoying Karen Smith. Who, despite her hotness, is completely clueless. Well, Karen? She is my ADHD, and GODDAMNIT, my tits are always hurting because there is a 100% chance that it is already raining.
Still with me? Making sure here.
Circle back to the quote.
So, the part of the quote that sticks with me?
You can only control the Energy you put out there— and this determines your future.
Now, this? I totally believe it. Despite my roughest days, I try to push positive energy. The problem with that is…yup, you guessed it… the depression coupled with my anxiety is a slow leak of carbon monoxide in the proverbial air that makes me grow weak. Still, I fight. I push like hell. But the problem with working so hard when there is a carbon-monoxide leak? It seeps into your lungs anyway, dragging you down. Making shit foggy, make it harder to move and to keep going. Fuck, exhausted yet? I am.
My support system to stay afloat? See the middle of the quote above.
I meet it all with positivity, hate with kindness, and fear with faith. For OTHERS. I push and fight for others because it keeps me afloat. Strange, isn’t it? I mean, you’re supposed to put on your air mask before you try to put one on someone else’s.
But what I have found with all my mental health adventures…yeah, adventures… is that nothing ever goes the way it’s ‘supposed to.’
Let’s just throw all that shit out of the window and focus on what helps you survive another day.
For me?
It’s helping others survive another day. It’s pushing past the bullshit and wading past the darkness to find a beacon of light that needs to be pulled and tugged out of the traps of their own mind. While I know the typical response to that, sometimes it’s going beyond the typical to find what works.
And like a ridiculous movie from over a decade ago, it just…works… So, to bring this all around…
I will continue to fight it all my way, I will push Regina in front of the bus with pride because…
Fuck you Depression, you can’t sit with us.
And that bitch Anxiety?…She doesn’t even go here!
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