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Meantime Chronicles

001: Hi, I'm Broken

By Adrian ChamblissPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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Meantime Chronicles
Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash

Hey there, how's it going?

My name is Adrian Chambliss and I suffer from depression. I won't go into too many details, but I imagine I'm like most people in the sense that I don't like talking about my feelings or even acknowledging them. It's not that you mind talking about it, but some things tend to kill the mood and you don't want to appear to be a downer. I get it. That's why I wanted to do a daily blog thing to help navigate my own journey while I work through getting better. My hope and goal is that by the end of this, I'd have something to help explain myself to others, as well as give a sense of calm or normalcy for some.

To start, my son was still-birthed in 2018. I didn't get much support or time for mourning in the way of that due to life happening, but I did my best to sort things out. I've been mostly keeping busy and distracting myself with activities like video games and drawing, trying to escape a reality where I didn't know who I wanted to be. I suppose I developed a dependency on my fantasy life because it allowed me to choose to be great in a way of my choosing. I got to build who I was and if I didn't like it, I could start over. That's not an option in reality, though. Everything's in real-time and there are no pause buttons. A pause button would be a cool, or maybe a creative mode where we can live our lives like The Sims and speak a common, goofy language. Something that unites others under a common interest that anyone can participate in and forget their troubles; that's what I'm looking for.

Sorry if this gets random, I just want to type how I'd speak for the time being. I've been trying to be impressive for 27 years, and honestly, I'm tired. Life was supposed to be easy for me, you know? Graduate high school, write a New York Bestseller, then live in a studio apartment in New York forever. I don't why since I've lived in Michigan all my life. I've never been to New York, but it's where I'm my mother was born, so I guess the curiosity started there. But all and all, it didn't happen. I work at Wendy's, I live in a country where humanity is put last, and my thoughts are more than often negative. I'm nothing like I wanted to be and that's me admitting it to myself. But the truth is this: I don't want to be myself.

I want to be the me that let's me live at best. I want to be the me that is confident in his skills again. I want to find all of the good in myself again. That's why I started my own Self-Therapy blog. It's not something I had a plan for, but it helps get things off my chest. My purpose for an audience is that I know I feel alone when I'm like this. I imagine another soul out there might be struggling to express themselves and if they see me doing this, it'd open them up to express their pain. We all have this pain we endure every day of our lives and we're told to find ways to cope with it. Some of us don't have many options with life happening in real-time, so we suffer in the "Meantime", or what I call the moments we don't wanna live in. So in the meantime, I decided to do something, even though honestly I'd rather be in bed, asleep.

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Hey there, friend.

Today I wanna talk about the Moment and the Meantime, and how to survive both at the same time. Let's start with the hard part: Meantime. You can joke that the meantime is "Mean Time", but it's not always something bad happening or any inconvenience. It's the time between now and then. It's the moments in-between the one we live in the most. It's the waiting. Whatever you call it, the meantime can seem slow and dragging most days. Even now, my body just feels heavier, even though I can still physically do all the things I could before feeling this way, with ease. I know gravity isn't crushing me, but my mentality allows me to tell myself I'm exhausted. In reality, it feels as though I'm so stressed out, my mind confuses it with physical fatigue. If you relate, then I'd like to give a few tips on how to navigate this particular wave of depression. I'm no expert beyond my experiences, but I hope it helps

Exercise is recommended for depression, but I believe in the Japanese business philosophy of Kaizen, which is basically doing a little more than you did yesterday. Maybe you wanna do something, but you have no desire to put in the effort. For example, I took several breaks writing this passage out because I lose confidence in others reading it, or maybe I'm not that into it, then. It's okay. I just keep coming back to it. Maybe I write a sentence and stop. Tomorrow, I'll write two sentences, then a paragraph. I keep going and I let the progress show it self. Before I knew it, I forgot about the Meantime and made it "me" time. It's corny, but it's better than nothing. The point of it all is to continue preparing, even when you're not ready. Think of everything you'll need to fight your battles and make a journey to find it all.

depression
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