When I read or hear something that resonates with me, I note it so I remember to incorporate that idea or topic into a blog post, article, white paper, or some other type of writing. For example, a while back, I noted, “Time doesn’t really heal anything. The things just fade.” I know what I thought and felt when I made that note, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it into something. Then last night, I was reading an interview Ed Sheeran gave regarding his latest album and had a lot of realizations of my own. So today, I’m “putting brain to paper” and writing this thing. I will incorporate several notes here because they are more similar than I knew when I first made them.
This post is purely my opinion. I haven’t looked into if there is any research to back up anything I write below, but many people probably feel this way and don’t talk about it. Enter Sam…
Anxiety Doesn’t Always Go Away
I’ve had anxiety for as long as I can remember. The older I got, the more debilitating it got. I’m 33 now, and my anxiety is absolutely overwhelming. I start my days with 225 mg of Effexor and 10 mg of Buspirone; I take another 10 mg of Buspirone in the evenings. If necessary, my prescription allows me to have 5 mg in the early afternoon. I have .25 mg Xanax on hand because if panic strikes too forcefully, I have to sedate myself to come out of it. I see a very expensive therapist at least once a month and continue to pay for her because I never stuck to therapy before she came into my life. I spend far too much time alone because that’s my preference. People, even people I love, make my anxiety worse. It’s easier to be alone. The point here is time, medicine, and therapy haven’t healed my anxiety; I’ve just learned how to live with it. Kind of. Well, better than I used to live with it.
Confession Time
I am still friends with a few people from high school. But, regularly, I consider cutting them all, minus one, from my life because high school was a traumatic experience. I don’t look back fondly on those days. In 2018 I went to a 10-year reunion and had to bail early in the evening because the unhappy memories flooded my brain. If there is another reunion, I don’t know if I’ll go. I understand that part of getting past anxiety is facing your fear, but those aren’t memories or experiences I want to face again. They’re complicated and ugly. They make my heart pound in an awful way. I’ve been out of high school for 15 years, but time hasn’t healed those wounds. I’d honestly rather hear the words “You have cancer” again versus reliving high school. [I’m not being dramatic.] The wounds have faded, but they’re still very much open. The answer isn’t cutting off people I love because of the time of my life they’re from, but I can’t come up with another way to move on from those memories and keep going back to, “Well, I just won’t talk to them anymore.” They don’t share the same struggle as me, and I don’t feel like I belong in that circle, so I turn to another unhealthy coping mechanism – cutting people off for no reason.
[Visual: tears are pouring from my eyes as I write this.]
Pruning Promotes Life
Let me make things confusing. Sometimes you must cut people or things out of your life as you grow. Just as with a rose bush, pruning promotes life. For example, I chose not to have a relationship with my biological father long ago because every conversation made me angry. Every action he took infuriated me. I couldn’t live that way. Allow me to use an overused phrase here: he was fucking toxic.
[yes, I think referring to people as toxic is overused. Not everyone is toxic just because you don’t like or agree with them. There, I said it.]
Cutting some people out is self-care, which I’m slowly accepting isn’t selfish. I had to choose a tiny bit of happiness or my father. I chose the former. So why don’t I remove those high school friends who remind me of painful experiences? Because removing people who remind me of painful experiences but didn’t cause those painful experiences isn’t the type of pruning I need. I obviously can’t prune the painful experience, but I can move away from it. So, I chose to continue giving myself time and patience to learn how to do just that because I don’t have the slightest fucking clue how to begin healing yet.
Pain, Love, and Hope
All humans have painful memories. Some may say they shape us, but they don’t define us. I’m still determining if I believe that. I think some of my painful memories do define me. We all have the power to choose how we respond to mental pain, and I’ve chosen unhealthy coping mechanisms repeatedly. After being sexually assaulted once at age 15 (which I knew was coming and continued to put myself in that situation), I allowed that person in my life for YEARS. I continued to let him manipulate and use me. Instead of telling anyone the pain I was feeling that summer, I attempted to take my own life two days before the start of my sophomore year of high school. I chose to let boys and men use and abuse me up until the day Jesse declared himself my boyfriend when I was 17. Looking back on it, allowing him to make that decision and not even debating whether it was what I wanted was the easy way out. I have an incredibly unique and deep love for Jesse, but letting him “fix” me fixed nothing.
Many other examples of unhealthy things I chose to do define me. I wish I could say my love for myself motivates me to take care of my mental health, but that’s a lie. It’s love my two dogs have for me. It’s never wanting my sister to have to explain to her boys why their aunt isn’t here anymore. It’s the love I have for those boys and the smile their smiles bring to my face. I have the desire to continue pushing forward and make something good out of absolute shit because of two dogs and two sweet boys. And hope, well, it’s the hope that things will get better that keeps me going. Perhaps that’s naive, but I’m clinging to it. We all cling to hope, even though hope isn’t realistic.
Prescription for Patience
The saying goes, “Healing takes time.” I’m here to say that I don’t think healing is ever final. Things just get easier or fade with time. Things will happen that remind you how bad the pain or trauma was. Being patient and allowing ourselves to feel all the emotions of the neverending process is essential. (This means I must be okay with crying. Oof!) It’s okay to have bad days and to struggle with old wounds. It’s okay to take time for ourselves and prioritize our mental health. And it’s okay to reach out for help if we need it. Sure, I don’t reach out to a damn person when I need help, but it’s okay for YOU to do that.
In conclusion, time may not heal anything, but it allows us to learn how to live with our pain and grow from it. It’s okay to cut people out of our lives if they aren’t good for us, but it’s also okay to just step away from people for a bit (not forever) until we come up with a healthy way to move past the pain. Self-care isn’t selfish; it’s necessary. Be patient with yourself and have hope (as unrealistic as that may be) that things will get better. Learn to live with the incompleteness.
Call to Action
I’ve spent so much time and effort on healing my anxiety and the depression that comes from living in a state of panic just to realize it’ll never be healed. So all I can do is manage and deal.
Here’s my call to action to those who made it this far – learn to be okay with the fact that healing is not linear and may never be complete. So instead of working toward an impossible goal, spend your effort on what can bring you joy so you don’t miss out on the good stuff.
If you feel like suing me because I give shit advice, go read my privacy policy and disclosures first. I’ve covered my ass with a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo.
Cheers friends! Until the next time I grace your phone or computer screens with what I’m promising right now will be more lighthearted and fun…
