The other night as I lay awake until the wee hours listening to my beloved husband snore at a volume that was probably hazardous to his health, I realized something: I'm really happy. Like, genuinely legitimately happy. Like all the time.
This might not seem that remarkable to anyone reading this, mainly because I've been married for a month so my life is still a haze of newlywed bliss. The thing is though, until recently, I didn't think I was physically capable of ever being this happy. Let's take a step backward for a moment, though...
Most of you that know me personally, and even those of you that read my blog but have never met me (if there are such people in this world) know me as a generally cheerful person.
I mean, sure. I have a tendency to get a little screechy sometimes, and I sometime complain a lot. I've even shed six or seven tears from my eyes in this lifetime. But the truth is, being cheerful is different from being happy.
I won't go into too much detail about it, but for a very long time, I was not very happy. A lot of my emotions felt really forced and unrealistic, and I struggled with really low self-esteem throughout high school and the first bit of college. I was angry and bitter a lot of the time, and sometimes I just felt empty. As time went on, I started to develop more issues with things like hypochondria and a sprinkling of phobias. There came a point where I started participating in somewhat self-destructive behaviors... Not like suicide, but mostly I didn't really care about my own well being. I did things that could potentially hurt me because I didn't really care about what happened to me.
One of my great inspirations in life, the famous blog-toonist Allie Brosh, explains this feeling awesomely in her blog Hyperbole and a Half. Just look here and here.
*as this is a family-friendly blog, this illustration depicts me licking a very sharp knife, which represents somewhat darker things, but in a much gentler light. NOTE: Knife-licking should not be tried at home ever unless you are an experience professional like myself.
After a year of college when things didn't seem to be looking up, I went to see an actual doctor. At first it seemed like a good plan, because I realized somewhere deep down in my instinctive brain that as a sentient, intelligent creature, I should be concerned for the preservation of my own life.
After a few sessions with the doctor, he diagnosed me with a mild, chronic form of depression called Dysthymia, which is absolutely a real thing, and you can read more about it here, here, and here. I went to see the doctor for a few months before we determined that psychotherapy alone wasn't helping me all that much. I consulted with another doctor, who gave me some tests to find out the underlying cause of my issues. The second doctor said that the reason I wasn't getting better was because I wasn't sad because of how I felt, but because my brain chemicals were all sortsa messed up.
I reported my findings to the first doctor, who wrote me a prescription for drugs. This is very important, so read these words and tell all your friends: If you are ever experiencing any form of anxiety disorder, sad feelings, or mental issues, absolutely do NOT use medication unless it is a last resort.
Here is a cartoon representation of what the drugs did to my brain:
Basically, they went through and cleared out everything that made me feel bad. Since drugs are not very discerning, and since depression makes everything fell bad, they cleaned out a lot of importantish things that should probably have been left alone.
Before taking the drugs, my brain looked like this:
I had a lot of feelings, and a lot of them were not so good feelings, but every now and then I had good feelings too, and I lived for those good times.
When I started taking the medicine, it was more like this:
I didn't feel sad anymore because I didn't feel ANYTHING AT ALL. Not only that, but I didn't even feel like a person anymore. The medicine took away everything that was Jackie and left a zombie-robot behind. Not only was I not sad anymore, I wasn't happy, I wasn't smart, and I wasn't creative. I just ate and drank and slept and breathed and circulated blood and digested and walked around and stared at walls and stuff.
I hated feeling like that. I hated the drugs, I hated the doctors, and I hated my life. I failed all my classes, I quit school, and I quit going to the doctor. He called me a few times and left messages on my phone to see if I was alright, but I was too angry at him for taking away what was left of my life. I also stopped taking the medicine, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but really you should slowly taper off drugs like that with the help of a physician.
For a while, I got much, much worse. I spent a lot of time alone, I was mean to people, I couldn't find enjoyment in things I used to love, and I was bitter all the time. But then, I decided I was tired of feeling that way, so I took control in the only way I knew how.
I took a long hard look at the way I was feeling, and used logic to come up with a solution. Since I was experiencing such a huge volume of negative feelings, and it had already been determined that I couldn't just make them go away, I decided to change my attitude about the feelings I was having. It's hard for a lot of people to understand, but basically I decided to start interpreting sadness as OK. I didn't wallow in self-pity, but I accepted that I felt sad and decided to change the sadness into... alrightness. And I felt better.
It took a couple of years of ups and downs, and I really felt very alone in my efforts. I had friends that supported me, but a lot of people just didn't understand or refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong at all.
Here's the other important part, though: I learned eventually that the only way I can feel good about myself is if I make myself feel good. I can't rely on other people to tell me how to view myself, and I can't use medicine to tell me how to feel. The only one that can really truly determine how I think and act and feel is me. Because that's how humans work.
It wasn't until after months of reflection and self-analysis that I was able to finally be comfortable enough with myself to open up to another human being, and that's how I ended up marrying Daniel.
These days, I find joy in even the stupidest little things that would have made me full of bitterness before.
And these days, for the first time in years, I'm totally happy.
