Worse things have happened.
And other things I tell my anxious and depressed brain.
You don’t get it, do you? People like us don’t get to be happy, they don’t get happy-ever-after’s. We grab what we can and then, then we run.
Inner me has a voice and it is loud and opinionated. It demands to be listened to and keeps at it until I get the point.
When bad things happen and I feel depressed, my first impulse is to try and look at all the other good things that are around me.
This is next to impossible as everything is shrouded in a cloak of gray. There’s this game I play, tallying up the bad things that happen and comparing them to the good that’s happened. Take a wild guess: which side outweighs the other?
Life is hard and my depression can carry on for a long time. That is when Inner me starts providing some tough love. I know she sounds mean but she means well and sometimes her advice helps me out of the rut.
When other challenges loom up in front of me, I remember that worse things have happened. Although sometimes I feel like I’m just working hard and getting very little out of it, at least, I have the opportunity to try.
Worse things have happened.
There were times when I faced bigger challenges. Like the time when my mom got sick and there was nothing, I could do to lessen her pain. Or when my dad got arrested after being falsely accused by one of our relatives. It hurt and was isolating to realize that not everybody who is supposed to love you, will.
But I got through it that time and I will get through it this time. My life is a series of small days sewn together to from weeks to form months then years. I don’t have to have all the answers, I just have to get through the next five minutes, the next 24 hours.
Grab what you can.
It’s hard to notice the small good stuff. But I have to. They add up and give me a reason to move forward.
It might not get better right now, but it will get better.
Sometimes we get so caught up with the mountains before us that we forget the mountains behind us.
-Mom
And I definitely do not take everything that she says seriously but I take enough. I’ll prove to her that I also get to be happy.
