There must just be something about standing on the precipice of a decade that triggers an existential crisis in me. It's been nearly 10 years, and here I am again.
It's like when I turned 30 I became unmoored. Maybe it's all the changes in my life. I'm married now. I suppose that's another form of "graduation," right? Graduating from being single? I have a house, I have a mid-level corporate job. Two cats, a fish, a butt-ton of plants.
I felt (fairly) steady with my sense of self in my 20s. At least, as much as a 20-something can feel steady. Of course I struggled with dating, and I was shaken pretty badly after I left a truly soul-rending work environment. I spent a little bit of time wondering about my worth, if I was cut out for communications or adult life. In the end, it only took a couple of months to right the ship and stabilize again. I suppose I'm impatient.
Otherwise, the majority of the decade felt pretty steady, pretty predictable, really. Even if it wasn't always happy, even when I had experiences that made me angry, or scared, I felt like I had a solid understanding of what I wanted my life to look like.
And now it's all changed.
Sure, the wedding stuff was stressful, but I still felt in my element. Even for a little bit afterward, life felt refreshed, invigorating. And then I got passed up for a promotion that I was 100% confident I would get. Like, not even considered. And it just kind of set off a nuclear bomb within my sense of self.
Up until that point, I'd been growing into a kind of confidence I'd never lived in before. And that confidence was being validated by the people around me. I felt like I had a good understanding of myself and my capabilities. I suppose it wasn't really confidence, if a passed-up promotion made me call all of my identity and faith in my capabilities into question. But I won't gaslight myself. It's pretty devastating to throw your hat in the ring for a job that you've done for three months by yourself, in addition to extra projects within the past year, only to be promptly dismissed. There was a chat, but honestly, I wasn't even interviewed.
To be passed up on something that didn't feel like a stretch in the least, why would I continue to put myself out there? Was something wrong with me? Maybe I'm not as capable as I thought. Maybe everyone who's told me I do a great job was lying to me. Maybe I've been lying to myself.
Between having to adjust my expectations for myself and my job, having to onboard and train up my new manager, and coming down off of an intense, life-altering event two years in the making, I just kind of fell apart.
You know, even without those factors, I think it would still be reasonable if I did, anyway. I've struggled with depression for a lot of my life, so clinically and statistically, it's very likely it would come back. And the pandemic plus the domestic and world events of 2020 and 2021 seriously hurt everyone, not just me. And when the vaccine debuted, while the world and our psyches were scarred and reeling from previously-unfathomable change, fear, and loss, we just pushed it aside and went back to normal. As if we hadn't experienced terrible trauma, as if trauma is something you can just set aside afterward.
I was struggling with my sense of expectation and "normalcy," and so were a lot of people. And trying to pick up where we left off in 2019 just didn't make any sense. Nothing made sense. Life is just a big game of pretend. We're all animals made of flesh and blood and bone. Designed by nature to survive in earth and wind and rain and forests and plains and mountains. Yet here I sat on a video call in order to earn currency that exists only in the human mind and institutions, being asked to come up with a catchy phrase to change my perspective and help me ignore the very real problems of the world. To turn away from trauma and wounds and make my pain and its root cause disappear with a positive attitude.
"Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you make of it." That's bullshit. My flesh and blood brain is tired. My bones and my organs hurt. I cannot create something out of nothing.
The stress of it all took a toll. My mind gave out under the weight, unable to try anymore. Try to eat, try to wake up, try to respond to an email or answer a question. Try to look after myself in any way, much less look after projects and responsibilities that didn't really directly impact me. I started having dizzy spells and heart palpitations. When my husband didn't make me food, I didn't eat.
I went on a very sudden medical leave. That, or my doctor would send me to the hospital. Even so, with 6-8 weeks of rest, I was partially admitted anyway. Maybe I'll dive deeper into that another time.
In truth, I'm not "better." Not in the way I'm expected to be, anyway. It's been 11 months.
Of course, I'm way better. I can function again. Live without my husband playing the role of aide. Feel actual emotions rather than feel the empty spot on the shelf where that emotion should be. My therapist knows how far I've come. My therapy group, too. My doctor, my close family, my husband.
But my depression lingers, even if only a little, in comparison to where I was. And this is where I have to re-sow my parsley. In my early 30s, coming out of events that have altered my life completely. I don't think I want the things that I wanted before. I don't know what I want. Or at least, whether or not what I want is even possible.
Dearest Reader, I originally stopped blogging because of the pressure I put on myself. My posts had to be insightful, thoughtful, show a side of vulnerability, but still present a positive image. And I had to post every week. So I did what all good perfectionists do and just quit altogether.
I'm not doing it for you this time. Sorry. I need to be my full self this time. Maybe you'll reject it, maybe it'll be ugly to you. Maybe something I say will make you mad at me. I can't be sorry about it. I need to stop hedging my language and massaging my image to be invulnerable.
Or maybe you won't think less of me. Either way, the whole deal here is that I stop getting my sense of self from external validation.
I realize that's what I'm doing in this note to you, so I'm going to stop now. Go suck pond water, Dear Reader.
