where you been so long?

I feel like I just woke up from a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad dream. Seriously. I'm now taking two different medications and for the first time in a long time, I feel happy.

Well, maybe I shouldn't say I feel happy. Rather, I feel like I am allowed to be happy. I've been living my life in this down place for so long. I just get used to it. It's weird how when I do feel good, my brain will think of things to get me down because that's all I know. Life is sad, after all, right?

No! It doesn't have to be. And I don't want my life to be sad anymore. So even though other people don't get it, or won't get it, I'm just going to keep taking my medicine, seeing my therapist, and talking myself down from the ledge until I can learn to think the opposite way. I will train my brain to think happy thoughts when I am sad, instead of the reverse.

I am also going to own up to things. I haven't taken the best care of myself for many years now and I have taken advantage of my friends. But, I'm also going to speak up for the little girl I used to be. She got jipped. And I don't care if you think I'm a martyr or a victim or a headcase, because the truth is, what I experienced as a child was deeply traumatic.

Waking up on Christmas Day at ten years old only to sit in your father's lap and hear him say that your mother is dead has a lasting impact. Not being allowed to express your feelings in the years after her death has a lasting impact. Living with people who don't allow you to grieve has a lasting impact. Up until now, I've just been a ticking time bomb.

This fall it was tick, tick, boom.

I met CB and my world fell apart. Not in an amazing way. In a terrible, awful, no good, very bad way. I was so happy to be with him and then I woke up one morning to a paralyzing fear. An irrational fear. A fear that was so deep that I didn't eat or sleep for over a week. I woke up every day and wondered if today would be the day that I would kill myself. Seriously.

But, I made it. Here I am. Take a good look.

I'm happy and healthy. For the first time in a long time, I've met someone who I genuinely want to commit to and love. I'm not usually the girl to fall head over heels or the girl who wants to make it all about a boyfriend. But, suddenly, it feels so nice to just want to be with somebody who wants to be with me. I'm back to the happy I had when we first met.

And if I go back to the terrible, awful, no good, very bad dream, next time I will know how to wake myself up.

wg