Dear mind, I mind.

My mornings are interesting. I mean, nothing special about them except for how different each one is. They range from waking up with a sigh, glad that the clock struck 7 and I don’t have to lay in bed, wide awake, with thoughts I would rather not own to jumping out of the bed with gratitude for just being alive.

There’s one thing common about them, though. Waking up. There was a time when waking up felt like a nightmare. Yet another day of misery and sorrow. I would wake up in tears most mornings, cussing and swearing the universe for putting me through all this shit. I wanted everyone to know how it felt but at the same time, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. I couldn’t. I did hide it pretty well, to be very honest. I still do. I knew people would think I was weak for thinking such thoughts.  So, I decided to suck it all up and wake up, every single morning, for as long as it took until waking up felt good. And I also decided not to just sit and wait for it to happen someday. I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to make that happen.  And my healing journey began.

Little did I know how strong I was being. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

It took me a long time to realize that strength lies in our choice. When we choose to fight and live through things, we are being strong. But it’s often portrayed as weakness if someone is going through a mental illness. “It’s all in your head”, “if you make up your mind, you can snap right out of it”, “you are in control of your state of mind”, “everyone goes through things like these but only you are making a big deal out of it”, yada, yada, yada. Statements like these are more common than we think. When we don’t expect our immune systems to be strong all the time, how can we expect our minds to? And when we don’t call our immune systems weak for fighting and producing antibodies when we have a fever, how can we call our minds weak when we are fighting through a mental illness?

I started this blog for two reasons. One, to shed light on issues like what I spoke of in the above paragraph, and two, to connect with people who are going through similar things by telling my story and by listening to theirs because the healing process is lonely. Yes, there are people who love, who care and listen yet we feel unheard, misunderstood, ignored and abandoned. That’s because of the internal conflicts, resistance to change (even if it is for the better), the discomfort of getting out of the comfort zone and a lot of other things that we often fail to recognize.

When we talk about healing, we talk about the results, the change and paint a pretty picture, but the process is seldom spoken about, and truth be told, it is ugly. Here, I’ll be writing about different aspects of the process of healing, that are less spoken about, from both a survivor and a support system’s point of view. To me, a survivor is someone who chose to fight through something difficult, because they are surviving situations, thoughts and emotions that are life sucking, every single day. And support systems are people helping survivors by being there, giving them hope, making them smile and numerous other ways.  

With that being said, dear fellow survivors, I hope you get the strength to face whatever you are dealing with and get through it. I wish you get everything you’re in search of. And dear support systems, you guys rock! Nothing but love for you all.