Mental Illness

Hi! It's been a while!

And I'm not gonna beat around the bush. You see the title of this post. So yeah. I've been depressed. Like, literally, clinically depressed.

And it sucks. 

I'm no stranger to mental illness. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder in early 2014 and I've been on and off medication ever since. I suffered from pretty debilitating depression during my first trimester while pregnant. And while I was lucky enough not to experience full postpartum depression, it feels like my overall anxiety since having Finley has increased by 1000%.  

There's a lot of reasons why I've been depressed lately and I won't go into all of it. But mostly it's due to the anxiety that makes me feel like a constant failure. Like I'm just not good enough. 

And when you always feel like that, you eventually just stop trying. 

I've always been very hard on myself. I'm definitely a perfectionist. My mind tells me that if I'm not going to do something perfectly, then I might as well not even do it at all. Logically, I know that no one is perfect and that nothing I do is ever going to be perfect. But that's the thing with mental illness. It robs you of all common sense until you find yourself in this black hole of fear and negativity.

It's this fear and negativity that makes it difficult for me to make friends. It makes it difficult for me to be the best wife and mother and daughter and sister and aunt I can be. It makes it difficult for me to try new things and go to new places. It makes it difficult for me to pursue my passions and interests. And sometimes it even makes it difficult for me to want to get out of bed in the morning. 

It seeps into every aspect of my life and distorts how I look at everything. And some days it's hard to just function as a normal human being. 

Now, I want to make this very clear. I am okay! Haha this is not a cry for help. I know this all sounds really... well, depressing, but I have an amazingly supportive husband and a beautiful daughter who makes me laugh and smile every single day. And while there are times when my mental illness does get the best of me, more often than not, I am able to see the light at the end of this hell hole tunnel. I have full faith that I will continue to learn to manage my depression and anxiety and that someday I'll be able to look back on this time in my life as a time of growth and development into the person I know I can be. 

I'm just not there yet. 

So this isn't a post to say something like, "Woohoo! I was depressed and now I'm not! Look how amazing I'm doing now despite these struggles in my life!!" And this isn't a post detailing the ways in which I am actively fighting my depression and anxiety and how I've figured it all out. Because I'm still figuring it out. I'm still working on it, and everyday is a battle. 

So I guess I just wanted to share because... this is my life. This is what I deal with on a day to day basis. I'm a human being with issues. Just like I know you have issues too. So if you're dealing with the same things as me, or even something completely different but equally difficult, I guess you can just know that I'm right there with ya.

My life is messy. And definitely not perfect. But at least I have my family. At least I have my faith. And at least I have time to figure it all out.