The Road Back

. Visit a new city! -- Melbourne, Australia.

2. Make proper macarons.

3. Get another tattoo. 

4. Run 10K. (Again!)

5. Accept a compliment gracefully.

6. Read 12 books. -- You Suck & A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins, Hannibal, The Hunger Games trilogy, 7/12

7. Make more time for dancing. 

8. Send letters to people I love.

9. Maintain a fitness routine for 3 months. -- In progress!

10. Find my signature beer/cocktail.

11. Learn how to use dad's SLR camera.

12. GO HIKING!

13. Learn "hello" and "I love you" in 3 more languages. (Bonus: Learn simple Russian phrases to talk to Babcia.)

14. Shoot a blog video for Bite Club.

15. Finish a third slam poem, for a full set, just in case...

16. Surprise someone! -KACY'S VEGAN BIRTHDAY SURPRISE

17. Ask someone out. (Bonus points: in person. Forget texting and Facebook.)

18. Drag out on Halloween. 
19. Actually print off and frame some of the photos I've taken.  

20. Learn things about latte art. (Like, oh, I dunno, how to do it.)

21. Stay out all night, until the sun comes up, who knows how long it will be before you can't do it anymore?

22. Get rid of some old stuff.

23. Make a 24 before 25. (Never quit striving!)

Going back to school and feeling less like everything is stupid and pointless now. I'm singing in the shower and recipe hunting. I even want to write and edit a little. I no longer want to fall off the face of the earth in a bid to stop existing. So I'd say everything is going relatively well. I feel like myself. 

Q&A

Dear internet, I know I've been getting pretty dark and heavy with shit here the past couple of posts, so I feel it is my duty both to myself, as well as to the people I love and care about who read this blog, to record something positive, when there is indeed something to write about. To record for my own mind, a note that when things get tough, that doesn't mean they get impossible. Push.

I'm not feeling 100% better, to be honest, my anxiety is wobbly and my self esteem is not great, but these are things that can be worked on, and that's the point. That's fantastic. When we're weakened, we can rebuild. Today, I painted my toenails, just because I wanted to. For fun. Something completely unnecessary to my survival, something that plugged me into myself, my life, and I had the drive to do it. I slept because I was tired and not because I was sick of being awake and being alive and being aware of both.

I've turned a corner of some kind. I'm even back to worrying (lightly) about the choice I have to make between what career path I want to chase down right now, instead of shrugging it off because "whocareswhatyouchoosebecausenothingmatters."

I may not have the answers right now, but at least I'm asking questions. God, I can't wait to make up my mind, get even better, and get on with blogging about something else for once.

Push.

I'm writing this because trying to verbalize any and all feelings I'm having right at this moment seems almost impossible. Sometimes, I zone out from the world, staring off into nothing, and I realize my brain is trying to scrape together words that might summarize it.

It's not sadness. It's not nothingness. It's not worthlessness. It's not a lack of something, so much as a presence of something else. When you swallow a thick food, like a wad of hot mashed potato and it burns and sticks in the back of your throat and there's a strain of a choking to get it all down? If that was an emotion, this would be it. When you look in the mirror in the middle of the night, half asleep and you don't recognize yourself, and you don't like what you see. When you know you need something but you won't get it for yourself, whether it's because of empty batteries or because whogivesafuck. When life seems impossibly, agonizingly long from the point where you're standing, and you're not looking forward to it.

Knowledge about mental health is REALLY important to me. It's an issue close to my heart in so many places, through so many people, and I try to educate myself on it as much as I can. And I can say with some conviction that I think I'm suffering an episode of at least mild depression. I didn't want to use that term because it's serious but... I've never felt like this before. I'd been sad, but this is something else. I've never actually been depressed before... Not until now. I just woke up one day and it was...different.

The blog Hyperbole and a Half has a pretty apt explanation of what I'm feeling like right now:

"At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is. "

And while what I'm experiencing is not as extreme, shreds of it resonate with me. (Read the whole post here, the insights are amazing, heart breaking and sincere.) The feelings go away if I push.

My new motto. "Push." Push to go for a run. Push to do something you like, even a little something, like baking an easy batch of cookies. Push to wear something other than sweatpants. Push yourself to see the people you love, even if you're afraid, afraid of crying at them, or staring at them without being able to relate to their overall goodness, or afraid of being misunderstood. Push to get out of the house. Push to try and sing like I used to.

I'm trying a little bit every day to get better, because as much as whatever it is I'm dealing with wants me to be nothing, and do nothing about fixing it, I am pushing to help myself. To engage. It's not easy, but I can't let it beat me, because I don't want to live this way. I want to love life again, or I should want that, so I do want it, somewhere deep down. I'm reading a book about cognitive behavioural therapy to try and fix whatever's gone awry.