There's a Fire Inside

Depression and anxiety have always been a part of my life, just like my eyes have always been brown and my eyebrows a little too unmatched.

When I was asked by a therapist how far back these feelings went, I couldn’t tell him. I could tell him when it got significantly worse, and that was when I was sixteen and I was let go from my first job. When I was told that I wasn’t learning as fast as they needed me to, I wasn’t as available as they needed me to be, or adapting very well to the personalities of my coworkers.

I didn’t work another job for over a year, and that following job was mostly just helping at a relative’s small business that I was already familiar with. Then it was factory work for a few years, and now it is customer service.

Those three reasons for being let go have been digging into the vulnerable parts of my brain for six years now like termites at each job I’ve held. They eat away at my passion to create and my drive to succeed. They eat away at the foundations of who I am and I need to keep rebuilding myself better each time. It takes time and sometimes I let the foundation sit to dilapidate.

Those are the “bad" days.

When I hit that point. I have gone through my reserves of rational thinking and stress has soaked through both the physical and mental barrier. My immune system can only hold back the worst of an illness for so long until the dam breaks and I wake up the next morning with a full-frontal migraine, plus whatever physical illness that was backed behind it.

Right before that point, I am the dog drinking from his mug, and sitting amidst a burning room, saying, “This is fine, this is totally fine.”

When the dam breaks and I am not home to put out the flames, the flames escape me in the form of anxiety.

My body will burn from the inside out with the heat of embarrassment, flushing my cheeks red, and forcing my digestive system into overdrive. Then I promptly excuse myself to the bathroom to cry hot tears and evacuate the other emergency exits as the fire consumes everything within, including the termites of depression.

The emotions the termites have eaten are growing back fast, raw, and painful. With each meditative breath they are soothed and healed. This specific step in process gets better with time, but it is never perfect. The fire has left embers that grow hot on those emotions when someone asks the dreadful questions:

“Are you okay?”

“Are you feeling better?”

“Were you crying?”

I slap mental band-aids on with the same breathing techniques trying to answer, but it isn’t enough sometimes.

Take two: back to the bathroom, because I "forgot something."

I take enough time to slap more band-aids onto my brain so that if it had a physical form, it would look like a toddler tried to tape my brain back together with them. I tell myself it will hold until I get home, or at least until I get into my car.

I tell myself so many things that I have convinced myself that the person I am when I am on fire and falling apart is not the same person when I am trying to convince myself to hold it together. Is it crazy? Let me tell you my answer:

No. It’s not. Sometimes the only person that can be there for you is you.

Use the “mom-friend override” on yourself.

Use that fire for other things since the same fire that burns me inside as anxiety is the same fire that lets me rebuild again to be better.

Though, I could do without the termites.