It Comes and Goes in Waves

Dear Me,

This probably seems weird to you right now, but there was a time that you weren’t very happy. You hid in your room most days, avoiding the sunlight and people out in the courtyard. You closed yourself off, and you refused to talk about what was going on. You were scared.

I have some very good news for you! You’re happy now. You love the sunlight and hearing the people outside. It means spring. You hate being stuck in your dorm all day because you know that there are millions of things that you can do to make yourself feel better, to occupy yourself and don’t even get me started on being able to do your work outside again.

You surround yourself with some amazing people. They look for the little glimmers of joy and make them precious jewels of euphoria.

You’re smiling again. Not because you feel like you have to in order for people to believe you when you say you’re fine, but because you actually can’t contain it sometimes. You talk about how you’re feeling, now. You know the importance of being honest about your mental health. What a change, huh?

There have been days recently where I feel like I could never stop talking about how happy I am, how I don’t think I could put into more words the joy that I was feeling in my entire body. I wrote the start of this post in mid-April when things were at the peak of all they could possibly be. I later crashed into a major wave of depression. The truth is, it all comes and goes in waves.

There will be nights when I am at my happiest and can’t stop thinking about the amazing things and people in my life, and then suddenly I’m engulfed in a wave of sadness that seems to paralyze me.

In those moments it’s so hard to remember the good. It can feel endless and suffocating.

Feeling alone in a sea of people. Like I am the only sailboat that is still afloat after the big storm. Why am I like this? What allowed my brain to send these signals to my body that all seem to say ‘YOU SUCK’ right when I start doing great?

It comes in waves. The happiness accompanied by the sadness. Sometimes the happiness prevails and I am free to go about my life and be exactly that, happy. Sometimes the sadness hits like a tsunami, taking out anything and everything standing in its path. It’s real, this is real, and when it is suppressed, it can make its waves in physical ways.  

Before I started therapy this year, there were little things that I would begin to notice would happen to my body. I would wake up sometimes to the complete right side of my leg being numb, severe and constant headaches, and sometimes I would even have a tremor. This is something that can be chalked up to me ignoring my anxiety. Stuffing it down into the depths of everything and assuming it would go away.

I was astounded when my therapist told me this.  These things that I had been assuming were just my body acting up were the physical signs of my body going HELLO? CAN YOU PLEASE FIGURE OUT WHY THIS IS HAPPENING!

I always wanted to focus on the good waves, the ones that you could surf on and never wipe out. The days that are good, are great. I never wanted them to end. It felt like I was walking on sunshine, ‘coasting down the PCH on spring break before hitting traffic’ type of good. Waking up felt like nothing, and I always knew when it was going to be a good day. But the truth is, not every day that you are awake is a good one.

This was a fact that I knew, but never wanted to actually come to terms with. It takes a lot to acknowledge that you’re actually sad, that there is actually something wrong with you. To sit down in the room with the people you love ( or a complete stranger that you tell more things to than your friends) and say that you aren’t okay. That you may not be okay right now, and that’s okay because you will be soon.

So embrace the bad, hold onto the good, and ride each wave like it will be your last.

Big Sur, California