A Real Update!

Hello, all. It’s been quite a while since I wrote about what I’ve been up to, hasn’t it?

Well, the truth is, I was trying to distance myself from all of this. I’ve contemplated deleting the blog. I’ve been having nightmares. It’s been a bit of a struggle. BUT! I have come to decide that I am not going to delete the blog, because I feel its presence helps people too much to just selfishly throw it all away.

But that being said … there will be times when I will be absent from here. I obviously don’t update the way that I did when I began this blog (and, frankly, I avoid re-reading old entries at pretty much all cost), but I’d never just abandon it. I do fairly regularly keep up checks on it, so even if I’m not posting or responding to comments / emails right away, I’m still around, so don’t worry–and I will reply to everything eventually!

The reason I’ve been so removed from everything lately is that I’ve been rebuilding my life, and I’ve found when I focus too much on the memories of “being mental,” or when I think about WHY I take medication each night, it starts to cause me anxiety and make me doubt myself. I’d rather just pretend that I have no issues whatsoever. Personally, I’ve found that by not giving myself the excuse of ANYTHING that I can fall back on, I’m able to make much more progress. I don’t live my life by thinking I can’t do this or that because I’m “crazy” and it’s “too hard.” What I do is stay ever conscious of my stress levels, do little things here and there to stay balanced, and I think of myself as being like anyone else.

Of course, somewhere in the back of my mind, I do constantly worry about falling apart again, but I don’t let that fear overtake everything. I have had some small episodes over the summer that did end up affecting my progress some, but I walked away from them learning more about myself rather than gaining more fear that I might go totally crazy again.

Currently, I am taking a handful of classes again and have decided that I’m going to work towards a career in art therapy, which is exciting. I’ve also found some part time work that I started last week. I’ve never worked and gone to school before, so it’s a new experience, but one that I’m pretty happy with and am learning to handle well. Going back to work is a big step for me, since I’ve kept a fear of it ever since I had my breakdown in the midst of holding my last job, but there was no way to conquer that fear and anxiety except to jump in to everything again and just go with it. I absolutely LOVE the work I do now (and I’m being intentionally vague to keep some privacy) and I look forward to advancing in school and having a career / life that I’m really going to love. It’s very exciting because I’ve never had a very clear path to my life, and I’ve obviously had a lot of obstacles to overcome, which have planted many seeds of doubt that I’d ever HAVE a real life, so being where I am now makes me so, so happy.

I also recently ended the relationship I was in for good (I don’t think I mentioned much of this since we last split a few months ago, because it was so on and off and I didn’t want to confuse people). It took a lot for me to put my foot down, but I did, and after a few days of feeling miserable about it, I bounced back and now I feel absolutely fantastic. My ex had plenty of good qualities, but the bad ones greatly outweighed the good, and I don’t think he appreciated me enough. He upset me more than he made me feel wanted, and after a recent event that he failed to come through on, that was the last straw. Our relationship was extremely complicated and spanned across six years (off and on), but this past year, especially, was a major test of everything, and in the end, I was the only one putting any effort into any of it, and that’s fucked up. I need someone who will support me equally and make me feel wanted, and most importantly, respect me. I need stability and I need a commitment. But … I’m not very concerned with this subject right now. As with other negative things in my life recently, I’ve taken this all as a lesson about myself (I now have a clearer picture of who I am and what I want in a partner, and I know I can speak up when I’m being wronged) and I’m moving on. My therapist pointed out yesterday that I’ve progressed a whole lot since I’ve been on my own, and she’s right. I’m not overly dependent on others like I used to be, but I definitely do put things off more and use them as an excuse to not get things done than I do on my own, which is why, right now, I’m actually pretty happy to be on my own. It’s going to do me a lot of good to just focus on my own goals and build up my own life for a while.

As a last note, I’ve been adding some other blogs to my list that I think you should check out. There are two blogs kept by others who also deal with schizoaffective disorder: Coping and Hoping & Suicidal No More: Choosing to Live with Schizophrenia, and then the most recent addition to the Bipolar blog roll: Bipolar: Crazy Mermaid’s Blog. Check them out! They are also linked from the main page of my blog along the sidebar.

Well, I hope this was a more fulfilling update than I’ve done in a while. I really need to get back to studying now, since weekends give me the only real free time I get now, which I need to break up wisely between school work and leisure.