It is quite ironic that the thing that makes me feel the best is something I put off for so long when I am going through a rut. Oh, how I have missed blogging. It’s been a while since I have posted, and the lack of a creative outlet has definitely hurt me more than it has helped me. About once a year or so, I write a blog post about mental health and my personal struggles. This is unplanned, but it always seems to work out that way.
It’s common knowledge at this point that 2018 truly shook me up. From start to finish, it was a hellish whirlwind – starting with contracting mono at age 23 (?!?!?!?) and ending in one of the worst heartbreaks I’ve ever had. My biggest takeaway from 2018 is that I never ever want to feel that way again. I was consumed by my mental illnesses. I cried more in 2018 than I ever have. I felt loss in the deepest sense of the word. It literally hurt to be alive.
So, I decided. I decided not to feel that way again. To stop complaining about things I wasn’t willing to change. To stop being the victim of circumstance. To stop waiting on others to change. And to work on and love myself as hard as humanly possible – and that is the toughest feat a person can be faced with.
In typical Taylor fashion, I’ll give you a little bit of background on what happened throughout this past year and what brought me to the point I am now:
In February/March, I came down with mono that was definitely undiagnosed for a while, and it was sucking the life out of me. I was blaming it on my anxiety/depression until I was faint and dizzy, and I could barely stand up without seeing black. I was seeing multiple doctors and no one could figure out what was wrong. I have learned very serious lessons in listening to your body and being heard by medical professionals, so I kept making my appointments.
It got to the point where MS was brought into question, and that was one of the scariest moments of my entire life. I was in full-blown hysterics for about two hours straight. (My mom had MS, so you can imagine how devastating the possibility of that could be). After a last-resort trip to the gynecologist (thinking it was possibly birth control-related), she was the one who knew right away that something was wrong. I vividly remember her being like, “I have never seen you look so tired before – something is not right”, and she ordered the test for mono. Sure enough, she was right. Denise will be receiving a Christmas card this year, for that one!
Then, because my body loves to kick me while I was down, I got the flu (yup, even despite getting the flu shot), and I ended up having to be hospitalized because I was so ridiculously sick. I was bedridden for so long that my back completely locked up, and I had to go on muscle relaxers. To add insult to injury, the 2 weeks I took off to recover were PTO (which came back to bite me throughout the remainder of the year). Just want to emphasize again – LISTEN TO YOUR BODY, AND DON’T LET PEOPLE TELL YOU THAT YOU’RE FINE WHEN YOU DO NOT FEEL FINE. YOU KNOW YOU BEST.
As dramatic as it feels to write, being sick for that long really takes a toll on you. Given that I am an extremely social person, I was forced to take time to rest and do nothing, and I was literally starting to go stir-crazy. Plus, I was getting anxious about being away from my projects and clients for so long at work. I wasn’t feeling myself, and decided to see a new therapist one of my close friends recommended.
I was very quickly diagnosed with PTSD, which truthfully, took a while to sink in. My first thought was, “great, ANOTHER diagnosis”. I felt a lot of shame (which, with hindsight, is ridiculous) toward the fact that I have been diagnosed with 4 mental illnesses at this point: PTSD, anxiety, depression, and OCD. That’s a lot for a person to take in, and I couldn’t help but feel like a walking DSM manual.
Then, a lot of realization hit. It explained so much. My inability to think positively at times, because I am so terrified another thing will go wrong if I am too optimistic. My hyperawareness at all given moments – to the point where my body hurts and I am constantly drained from being on high-alert 24/7. My sleep issues. My emotional detachment to trauma in the past. My nightmares. My mistrust of the world in general.
It all started to make sense. I think there is a huge misconception that you can only have PTSD if you have been in a catastrophic accident or have served in the military – accompanied by Hollywood-style, debilitating, slow-motion flashbacks. Not to say flashbacks aren’t a symptom, but for me, it’s the combination of a lot of symptoms I automatically attributed to my general anxiety and/or depression. I started to learn more about trauma and how deeply it affects you. Trauma actually rewires your brain, and it heavily influences how you see the world and act towards it. My therapist told me I was “operating in survival mode”, and that really resonated with me. It was time to unpack my trauma and get myself the help I needed.
Or so I thought. Fast-forward through a summer full of traveling and laughter. I was feeling great – to the point where I asked my doctor to lower my Zoloft dosage. I felt like I was truly able to take on the world. Well, as always, the seasonal depression began to set in, and I was starting to have hard time again. My anxiety skyrocketed after I lowered my dosage, so I went back up to 50 mg from 25. Work became increasingly stressful and tiresome for me. I was given huge projects/client work with very little oversight, and my life became my job – and not in a good way. I was working long hours, given huge responsibilities with unrealistic expectations, and I was not being compensated in the way I deserved.
On top of this, my personal life began to plummet. My grandfather was diagnosed with brain, lung, and liver cancer – and we watched him suffer for months until he died. My cat, who I loved more than anything in the world (and only got a year prior), got extremely sick without any sort of warning. I had to make the hardest choice, which was putting her down, and it really shook me up amongst everything else. To add the cherry on top of things, I was involved with someone who was not good for me, and our relationship was slowly but surely declining. This relationship brought me more happiness yet also more sadness than I ever thought was possible with another person.
Everything felt like it was crashing around me. All. At. Once. The most accurate way I can think of to discribe this is, imagine standing on a piece of ice. That piece breaks in two. You jump to one piece and finally feel a sense of relief. Then, that piece splits into two. This keeps happening over and over and over again, until you ultimately start to drown. That’s how 2018 felt for me. It was the first time I can say I truly felt broken. Wholeheartedly and completely broken.
I honestly don’t know when it happened, but something inside of me snapped. I was tired of sitting back and watching my life fall apart. I was tired of crying my eyes out, knowing nobody could relate to what I was going through. I was tired of coming home, throwing myself in the bathtub, and then going right to bed. I was tired of being tired. I was looking past the people who care about me so deeply and worrying about those who pretended to instead. Rather than focusing on what was working for me in my life and who was there for me through it all, I was worried about who wasn’t meeting my expectations and what wasn’t working for me.
I needed to stop standing still and start taking action. So, I did just that. I left a job that was completely taking a toll on me, and I landed a job in the city. I removed myself from relationships that did not have my best interest in mind. I stopped surrounding myself with things that put a pit in my stomach and started to gravitate toward the things that made me feel light and my heart feel full. You cannot heal in the same environment that made you sick. Read that sentence again. And again. Listen to your gut – especially when it comes to the things that make you feel genuinely good versus not. We are more aware of these vibes than we realize, but we often ignore them – and this must come to an end in order to help yourself heal and move forward.
I made a promise to myself that 2019 was going to be MY year, and I intend on keeping it that way. I want to be the person I’ve needed to be for myself. I want to forgive myself. And I am working on accepting and loving myself for who I am and the things I’ve gone through. We really can be our own worst enemies, and our inner dialogue has such a profound impact on how we live our lives. Believe me, I would know.
I want to close this with thanking everyone who has been there for me throughout this painful journey. The hardest part about hurting is reaching out and asking for help, and many of you went above and beyond. That meant/continues to mean so much to me, and I am so grateful for you – from the bottom of my heart. It’s amazing how the smallest tasks can feel the most arduous when you’re going through a tough time. The simplest things – bringing me coffee, taking me out to eat, scooping me up for a car ride – made a world of a difference for me. So, thank you.
Thank you for always loving me.
Truly,
Taylor