4/4/19

I realized I was stressed today. I come to these moments of stress a lot, these moments of finding out a fear and anxiety that I have been holding onto for a long while but having no name for. During college, I frequently felt sick and stressed. A year before graduation, it came to a head when I looked over at the heavy machinery in my place of employ and thought:

I could just kill myself.

I was scared and alarmed by the thought. It had been years since I was last suicidal, and realizing my stress was getting bad enough to flare my depression up in such a harmful way was a wake-up call. I made it through the semester and relied on my friends and family to help keep me stable. And then summer came, and I was proud that I survived. I worked on my health and entered my last year as a college student in good spirits. I wasn’t suicidal the entire semester. I considered this a win. It wasn’t until I graduated that I realized just how poor my health had gotten. I would be relaxing in my house, a place of immense comfort and joy for me, and be hit over the head with stress. My stomach would churn, my heart would race, and I would find myself panicking about life, and what came next, even though I had a job that paid more than living-wage, a house that was warm, and friends and family that loved me. I had a plan. I was working on that plan. And stepping back, it appeared to me at the time that I had nothing to worry about.

And yet today, while having lunch, I found myself sick to my stomach once again. This has been happening a lot lately. After a horrible bout of stomach sickness that left me bedridden for several days, I determined some of my issues were stress-related. Getting too worked up caused my stomach to reject anything and everything I ate. I went hungry. I lost ten pounds. Considering I’ve generally struggled keeping myself at a healthy weight, this loss put me back at the weight I was in my early high school days. This was clearly a concern. Something else had to be going on. A something else probably is. But the entire situation has made me pause and consider myself.

I’ve always struggled with depression. After rearing its ugly head in high school after horrendous 7^th and 8^th grade years, it has haunted me throughout my life. I went to a dark place for several years, played my own suicide, and self-harmed to keep from throwing myself off a bridge. I was scared of my own mind and what I might do if I lost control. But eventually, by the grace of God, I was able to get better through hard work and amazing friends and family. There is no cure, but there is a way to manage it, and I was able to do just that. When college came around, I did well. I was confident, and the course material was nothing I couldn’t handle. As I set out into university life with the determination to pay my own way without loans, I knew it would be stressful at times, but I also knew I would be able to do it. I could succeed at this task. And I did. A fact I am incredibly proud of. But it didn’t come without drawbacks.

I’ve realized my mental health has taken a few steps back without my recognition. It doesn’t present itself in the way it used to, in the way I’ve prepared for. Instead, I am unaware of its existence, even being confident it does not exist, until I realize my heart has been pounding faster than it should and I force myself to take calming breaths.

            What is it? I’ll inquire to myself. What’s wrong? What’s the problem?

I often find that the problem doesn’t lie within work, or even within life. But in the expectation of it, I suppose. The idea that I need to be successful, the idea that I need to be victorious. And it’s not directed at anything but my writing. I place such an emphasis on my creative work due to the fact that it is everything that I am—or, at least, what I believe makes up my whole person. I’m so insistent that this endeavor be successful, that I’ve mistakenly placed a greater stress upon my shoulders than I’ve ever acknowledged. This is what I love. These words upon the page, the flowing narrative, the characters interacting. This is what I live for, what has countless times before saved my life. And yet, it seems, I’m letting it hurt me. Writing is one of the only times that I feel truly at peace and truly fulfilled. It is what I love, it is what I long to do for a full-time job.

And yet, at this rate, my stress will kill me before I even see that through.

I have a hard time calling myself anything other than a ‘decent-enough’ writer. I find that I could improve in a lot of areas. But my friends have taken to insisting that no, I’m a good writer, and I’d better only call myself that. I’m thankful for this. And I’m learning.

Doing what you love for a living is hard. I’ve not even made it there yet, and that’s what I’m discovering. But I refuse to let myself get in the way of success and healthy living. I refuse to let stress and depression cripple me into bedridden sickness. I will succeed, but I will do it at my own pace. I will breathe. I will remember that everything takes time, and everyone’s road is different. I will work on not comparing myself to other indie writers. I will breathe.

And I will breathe.

And I will breathe.