Several years ago I came out the arse end of a ‘relationship’ and for the first real time in my life, I felt genuinely lost. It wasn’t that I was with this girl for a long time as it barely lasted a few months. The thing is that I had chased her for 2 years and the fantasy didn’t exactly live up to the reality.
It was a bizarre case of the (almost) right people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I had invested so much of my mental self into this girl that when the end inevitably came, it had wiped me clean out. In the days that followed the break up my brain had turned to mashed potato and any sense of structure to my life had melted away completely.
I stayed in bed and refused to go to work… hell, I didn’t even call in sick. It wasn’t that I was ‘hurt’, it was the realisation that the person whom I thought was perfect for me – wasn’t anywhere close to being that.
I was lost.
Soon after I tried to date some other people and I ran away from all of them. They just didn’t measure up – not to the girl I broke up with, but the girl I truly wanted her to be. It took me a long time to realise that she never existed, and never will.
I could now focus on getting to know people for who they really were, not who I wanted them to be.
That was a great feeling.
Anyone who has ever gone through depression will tell you how utterly crippling it can be. You are stuck in an endless revolving door that won’t let you get to the other side – spinning around in your own mind without an escape route and you can barely even remember how to go back to the person you used to be.
You feel trapped, helpless… different.
That’s how I feel on a weekly basis. Not all the time – it comes in waves.
But this is great too, and I will tell you why.
Without the downs, the ups will lose their appeal. You need both in equal measures to truly appreciate what you have.
Today is a good day for me so far. I feel motivated and while am lacking in a little energy, I realise that this little window of opportunity is how I get my shit done. Who knows when the next low point will be – it could be this afternoon, or tomorrow or next week. The important thing to remember is that it will come – it always does, but it’s this knowledge pushes me to make the most of the quality time I do have.
We are conditioned from an early age to fear failure, to always look for the negatives and to seek happiness at every opportunity, but life isn’t black and white. Everything that happens to me is great because it makes me what I am today. Every bad decision and every wrong path, all the bad luck and missed opportunities – these are the strands of DNA that hold me together. Who I am isn’t the genetic makeup that I was born with, but the experiences that life threw in my direction.
I am a work in progress – a continuation of a prototype from 32 years ago. Jamie 2.0 has come and gone, every day I receive a firmware upgrade because every day I am learning and finding a better way to be me.
It doesn’t matter if everything goes wrong today – who cares? It’s still a great day because I will have learnt something and improved as a human being.
Every broken heart
Every punch
Every insult
Every fuckup
Everything that happens to me is great!
Ah, the chase. The idea of the girl. When you built someone (or anything really) up like that, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment if you’re not realistic enough. I used to look at the failures of the past as regretful decisions I’ve made but you know what? They’re all learning points for me.
When I’ve built someone up and found out that they were nothing like what I thought it taught me higher standards and to be realistic. What greater lessons are there than those two things? I couldn’t have figured them out on my own. Instead, I had to live through it, kick myself for a bit, then realize that indeed everything is awesome.
Vincent recently posted..Hitting Rock Bottom, 3 Lessons Learned from Below
I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘one itis’ and that’s exactly what you’re saying there. Building someone up through your own fantasies and expectations. Of course it’s impossible they will live up to it but we still do it. We still pursue these people.
People think high standards and being realistic are mutually exclusive but the truth is they fit so well together.
Winters do come, so better be prepared. That’s indeed true. Winters bring us experiences and chances to walk on new paths. That’s part of the life, if the life is an Adventure. And why wouldn’t be so…
Mat Veni recently posted..TOP 10 recipes to remain unhappy (1/5)
Hey, I’m new to your site (redirected from Cracked), but just wanted to leave something and say, thanks for writing this. It was kind of direct and simple (I mean that in a good way) and it was encouraging to me, since I can relate pretty well, especially to the depression part. I have highs and lows, more lows really.. but now that you point it out, I do notice and appreciate the highs more when they’re there (even if I don’t show it, being a naturally more reserved person). People that are mentally “high” and happy all the time confuse me. But anyways, thanks for writing this. I enjoyed it.
Hi Angela, thanks for your kind words! It’s all about appreciating the little things that most people take for granted (or don’t even notice).
How very Nietzschean of you.