Chosing Happy

Sister-friend's birthday brunch (March, 2018)

I met up with one of my sister-friend's to share the details of my recent vacation to Italy as she prepares for her upcoming trip. The last time we'd seen each other was two months prior at her birthday celebration.

During the course of our catch-up, sister-friend says, ' I haven't seen you look as happy as I did at  my party in a long time and I LOVED it!' After saying thank you, my additional response was, 'hard work and therapy is paying off!'  The conversation took me back to a similar one had with my Scorpio-sister-friend a few months prior. We had seen each other soon after my anxiety attack, which was my lowest point back in November, but I had been faking the funk and she wasn't buying it! We had an encouraging and uplifting conversation and I appreciated that I was able to be vulnerable with her while disclosing the sadness I had been experiencing for months.

Fast forward to a random afternoon we spent together in February and Scorpio-sister friend acknowledged a shift in my spirit energy. I'll share more about our day in another post. At our encounter in November, I had just began weekly therapy sessions. By the time we met in February, I had been seeing my therapist 2 x monthly and I still attend, to date. It is the best financial investment I can make for myself. 

I am thankful my friends can see the shift in my attitude, disposition, and my happy. More importantly,  I'm thankful for the work that I've done to improve my own happiness.

Living through the darkness

Being around friends became increasingly difficult during my depression days. Although, at the time, I wasn't officially diagnosed, I knew my withdrawal from people, declining invitations to spend time with people I genuinely loved, melancholy moods, numerous days of the blues were symptoms of depression.  Completing day to day tasks were down right exhausting, but somehow, I managed for a very long time to push through. I'm using the term 'depression' because I now know I officially was depressed. I suspected, but my therapist stated so, and that I suffered a panic attack.  More on that later. All of my depressed living lead up to my attack. Anyway, not every friend encounter I could be my true authentic self when responding to the question, 'how are you?', without tears streaming down my face no matter how hard I blinked them away.  Most times, I simply found it to be in my best interest to decline an invite to hang out and to go about my day alone.  Going alone also made it easier for me to change my mind if leaving my house felt too much like a chore, which most days, it did! The fact that it rained an awful lot in 2016, didn't help me climb out of my blues, either.

In spite of how I felt, I had a small circle of friends who wouldn't let me wallow in my depression.  They wanted me to get back to being ME.  As if I didn't want to be me, ** insert eye-roll **, here.  They encouraged me to join them for workouts, girls night ins, and prayer calls.  I'm thankful for those moments, but they were temporary.  I think I was or felt like was too deep within my 'stuff' that I was incapable of climbing out, nor did I have the tools to dig my way out.  Thinking back on all of this, the shit was so fucking real! By the grace of God, I had a come to Jesus moment talk with my mom, which caused me to deal head on with my shit, thus my spiral, and ultimate panic attack!

Funny how God works, right!!