The last two months have been a huge cluster fuck for me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve never been a person that has ever buckled under pressure and I refused to start to now. As a black woman in the proverbial corporate America, I can never let “them” see me sweat. So, I don my mask and venture into the world and show everyone that I am a force to be reckoned with. I am the reason the mythical Devil built an ark of sinners to protect him when my feet hit the floor in the morning. I am the face of success that my nieces and nephews look upon to see what it looks like. I’m the one that gives cogent advice to those who need it, and the one that makes sure all those around me are happy as much as they can be. Hell, I’ve made it.
To where though? At the end of the day, I’m drained of all my positive energy. I’m exhausted from all the smiling and being cordial to those I meet. The street people, workplace peers and others I just encountered during my day to day interactions, get a forced smile and forced niceties. When my day is over, and I wind down and take off my mask I have to think to myself, “Did I really make it or am I faking it til I make it?”
I’ve been through so much, and talking to immediately family and others, minus a few close to me, about my state of being is a HUGE fuck no. Why? I have an intuition that tells me that they just would never understand. They will take mole hills and turn them in to volcanoes, take a pile of sawdust and make a house, take small rocks and them boulders. You get the point. So I’ll pass on that bullshit. Why elevate my already high anxiety and piss myself off because of some possibly insensitive fuckery that maybe said during a strained conversation? I’d rather turn all my angst, pain, and toxicity inward.
So what’s really going on, you ask. Why so down, why the long face? I moved from one state to another damn near every two years or so, what is it about this one that makes it different? I have no idea.
The anxiety started before the move, with the delay of the orders. Not knowing when or if they were going to come down, and wondering if any of the other positions I applied for would come through before the orders were released to me. When the orders came down, I had two days to secure my household goods to get picked up, clean up my apartment, secure a some place to stay in the city I was moving to, as well as still go to work and maintain as normal of a life as I could.
My anxiety was still going higher with no chance of getting better, but it was continually getting worst. Fortunately, yet unfortunately, no one ever knew, some saw it but brushed it off as the stress of moving. Was it though? Was it really? I was leaving behind a lot of people who meant a lot to me and going somewhere I knew no one. Where would I get the support I needed?
I get to where I’m moving, move into the hotel, and I was just there. Waiting on my house to close, after the house I really wanted was sold from under me. A little depressing, but okay. Going to work and not having anything to do, then going back to the hotel to the cat and being bored. This went on for 24 days, until my house hold goods we delivered.
Now my house is in utter and total chaos, there’s nowhere in the house that I can feel at ease, but everything is in there. I don’t feel whole in my house. My belongings aren’t clutter or junk, but with it spread across the house it feels like I’m on an episode of Hoarders. You would think I would have my creative lab together, but nope. I haven’t even decided which room it will be. I haven’t even gone out in my backyard and enjoyed the yard.
You know where I feel normal and comfortable, when I drove seven hours to Northern VA to see a dope ass play at the Kennedy Center, and when I did a comedy writing workshop with the Co-creator of How I Met Your Mother. Those two weekends felt so comfortable and normal to me. It was the least amount of stress I’d had since March. I could think. I felt alive. I wanted to do everything. Sadly, I had to go home on Sunday.
Depression and anxiety has taken over my life. I have talked to my therapist. What? Surprised I have a therapist? Shit, you need to get one if you don’t have one. There’s too much going on weighing on my aura on a regular day much less when my depression and anxiety wants to show their ass to not have one.
Will I get through this crisis. Of course, I will. It’s just taking a little longer than usual. I’ll just don my mask and front like I use to when nobody knew, and I’ll get through it all. Will I be unscathed? I seriously doubt it. I’ll suffer a little from this, but I’ll eventually be back and better than ever.
These are the realities of my mental health.
o.flows.up