Today was a very interesting day for me. What I experienced today was amazing in it’s simplicity.
We all have stories about hitting rock bottom. What it’s like to land in such a dark hard place. And for me, as melodramatic as it sounds, I have lived my life from flat on my back, looking up from rock bottom these past several years.
I live with bipolar depression. A serious debilitating kind of depression that has destroyed my life in every conceivable, literal way. It has been a driving force that has caused me to lose more than I deserved to lose. And a couple years ago, it changed, for the worse. It ruined me financially, emotionally, socially and in every other way it possibly could.
But this isn’t a post about how bad things have gotten for me. This is a post about something good instead.
Today, for the first time in so very long, the fog lifted and I felt happy. Today I laughed with my children. I smiled and felt good about myself and about my day. Today I wrote so many little stories and let myself imagine things that I had suppressed within myself for so long.
Today, I even reached out and asked a woman to have a conversation with me. And to my surprise, she did. It was a little short lived as her own life was causing her to feel ill. But I talked to someone. And it was pleasant. And found myself hoping I could continue to talk to her. And then it struck me… I had hoped for something and I didn’t have a dreadful terrible response to it. I simply let that small bit of hope linger in the air like a butterfly on a summer breeze. I didn’t destroy it, I didn’t run from it and I didn’t hate it.
Today I had a good day. And it’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to say that. Even now, admitting it to myself feels strange. Like it should have never happened, but it did.
A part of me wants to dismiss it, saying it’s not going to happen again, don’t bet on it, don’t hold your breath. You know all to well the darkness of your life, that that kind of soul crushing emptiness doesn’t just go away. But another part of me wonders if maybe, just maybe, if some level of healing has started to take place?
I had a good day today. I got to experience some things that were so simple, so plain and ordinary for so many others, but meant so much more to me.
