I still remember the day it all changed.
I’ll tell the longer version of this story later; but the short version goes like this:
I had fucked my life up. I was on a pretty good track. Actually, a great track. My life was pretty amazing. But I started to screw it up. Slowly at first.
I started to slack, and get depressed, and make excuses, and slack some more, and then use the depression as an excuse to slack some more. Rinse, repeat, fuck it, let’s repeat it again.
The excuses got worse and worse. I started to let other people down. I’d been letting myself down for a while, so I had plenty of practice at being disappointing.
I stopped trusting myself. I’d say I was going to do something, and even I stopped believing it at some point. Something would always come up. Some excuse would “get in my way.”
Of course, it was all bullshit. All lies. All in my head. Negative self talk is always a lie, but that’s the best trick depression knows how to play. You start to believe it. Start to doubt yourself. Start to live up to your negative self talk. The lies start to become true.
And then… I don’t even know how or why or even when, but I woke up one morning and then I did something I’d never done before… I woke up again. Once from my nightly slumber and then again from the nightmare of lies I’d been telling myself about my life.
HOLY SHIT!
What? What the fuck? No no no no no no no no no no no. Please let this not be real. Holy shit. Fuck. No!
In terms of the “5 stages of grief,” it felt like I went through all of them in the course of a few seconds.
- Denial. (What!? No no no no no no no.)
- Anger. (FUCK! HOLY SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK!)
- Bargaining. (Please let this not be real.)
- Depression. (Again… fuck fuck fuck, but now only lowercase.)
- Acceptance. (OK. Well, this fucking sucks, but let’s do something about it.)
It was a rough morning, but it was extremely valuable. I’d hit my breaking point.
I could finally see clearly, and it was time to change.