This is our story ... #4 · 7:44am Oct 12th, 2016
Hey, guys.
Another 'This is our story' this week.
I've had a bit of a rough week. A couple rough patches here and there. But I'm actually doing better than I have this past week. I actually feel okay this morning, believe it or not. I think ... a lot of it has to do with my writing. I've been able to write. And not just reviews, I've actually been able to write a little bit of something I've been going through my head for a while. And that's something I haven't been able to do in a long time.
Most of the rough days I had were due to stress. And not here, but mostly at work. We just finished a remodel of our store. The store I work at. And our boss has been on a rampage. And I don't like this gentleman anyway, so it made it doubly hard this week. Not that he's a bad person, I just... don't like his work ethics. I'm sure he's fine as a person. But it's over now and things are... somewhat normal at work.
But enough of the negative, I'm sure we'll talk about that in a minute, but I want talk to you about something that makes me happy. Or affects me in a positive way.
***Inside Out***
Ever since the first Toy Story, I've loved Disney/Pixar animated movies. I've loved all the ones I've seen. Even Cars, surprisingly. Which a lot of people didn't like. I haven't seen them all. I haven't seen like Cars 2 or Planes or Monsters University. But all the ones I expected to be fun and creative, they met my expectations. But this story, this movie... really spoke to me. On a very personal level.
If you haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil too much, but it's about the different emotions that go on in this little girl's head. Not all the emotions, it just takes like five emotions that work for this movie. Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. And each emotion affects the girl differently, big surprise there. Emotions make you emotional.
The movie puts the girl in a very difficult situation and shows the steps of what she's going through and how she's dealing with it or not dealing with it. And the emotions inside her head, try to make the girl okay. But no other emotion is having an affect on her. And it gets to the point where she doesn't feel anything. And... that's kind of how I felt for a time.
I really felt like there was no room in my life for emotions. Good or bad. That it was bad to feel the things I did. That what I was feeling wasn't important. So, I just... pretended not to feel it. This came out... slightly after I had started to seek help for my depression and started to recover. So, this meant a lot to me. This movie meant a lot to me. I cried. I'm not going to lie, I cried horribly. I'm not ashamed to admit this movie really touched me.
I know I said I wasn't going to spoil the movie, but I kind of feel like I have to to talk about why this movie has such a positive impact on me. The girl gets to a point where no emotion can help her, except Sadness. Admitting to herself that, she was not okay. That she wasn't feeling okay. That she was hurting inside. Admitting that to herself and admitting that to her family, she was able to find comfort. She was able to ... get out of her depression. She was able to recover. She was able to heal.
And as someone who was and still is recovering from depression, that meant a lot to me.
But of course, there are other reasons why I enjoy this film. It's very well written. It's very imaginative. It's very funny and very clever. In fact, it's my favorite Disney/Pixar film and this is coming from the guy who loves 'Up' and 'Toy Story 3'. But, this movie means a lot to me because of the difficult place I found myself in for a long time.
And this movie was... really a positive thing for me to see. That when you admit to yourself and to people who care about you that you are not okay, that you are hurting, that you are sad, they can and will do everything in their power to make sure you are okay, that you aren't hurting any more. I'm actually tearing up right now, thinking about this movie. I cry every time I see this movie, I'm that big of baby. But... this movie showed me that things do get better. They do. Even if they don't seem like it.
When the girl is at her lowest point, the movie doesn't end. It's not over. It still goes on. And she does get better. She does heal. And I believe that about myself. I hit my lowest point. But since then, I have been getting better. I have been healing.
***Bad Days***
Bad days are something that everyone goes through. It's not just people with depression. Everyone has days where nothing seems to go right and you just want the day to end so it can be tomorrow.
When I was dealing with depression, I didn't want there to be a tomorrow. I didn't want to wake up when I crawled in bed. Because I feared that if I did wake up, I'd have another bad day. And then another one the next day. My future always seemed to have nothing but bad days. And when you're depressed, bad days can seem worse than they actually are. And that's a horrible thing to see for yourself. It's really hard to always see just the negative side of the future. It makes it hard to invest yourself in anything because you think to yourself 'What's the point? Nothing works out for me anyway.'
You can have just a fine day. Nothing wrong, but nothing spectacular. Or maybe even something good does happen to you and you feel that for most of the day. And then, you could do something or something could happen to you that just causes the entire day to be ruined. Where you don't feel that good thing anymore. And it could be something as small as dinging your car door or stubbing your toe or just something that feels bigger than it actually is.
Any good experience, any good feelings, any good days that you feel like you had, they feel like they don't exist if you have just one bad day. But that's not true. They did happen. They do happen. It's something that I really had a hard time grasping when I started to heal.
I actually got some advice to... make a little tally of all the 'good' days, all my 'bad' days, and all my 'okay' days. It just went based on how I felt at the end of the day. It's silly. It's extremely silly, I know. But when I did it, and maybe this will work for you, it might not, I don't know, but I was able to see how many good days and bad days I had. I had a lot of marks in the 'okay' days, but it was a lot, lot more than I did having bad days.
Perspective counts for a lot and that little exercise helped me feel, even if I was having a bad day, it made me realize 'I do have some good days. I do have some okay days. They do happen.' And they do.
Bad days can certainly make you feel like you've lost progress or you've gone backwards. But when you're recovering, there is no going backwards. There is no loss of progress. And I was once told this really good piece of advise that I kind of stuck with. This person knew me as a writer and knew about my passion for storytelling. And this person said that 'When a bad thing happens in the story, does the book end or go backwards?' No. The book doesn't just end. It doesn't just go back to previous pages. It keeps going. The story keeps going forward. And you can see that when you look at the book and there are still hundreds of other pages left. There's still more to it beyond this one bad thing.
Again, perspective. It helped me keep things into a good perspective. It helped me to look at it that way.
And I don't want you to feel like if you have a bad day, you have no right to talk because you do have good days. That's not true. It's okay to have bad days. It's okay to feel sad. See how I connected it to Inside Out? It's okay to feel not okay. It's not okay when you hurt yourself because of it. When you let those feelings control you or dictate you. It's not okay when you let these feelings make you think you're worthless or you're not important.
Taking those feelings and doing something constructive or positive with them, that's okay. Doing something that makes you feel better that isn't hurting anyone, that's okay. Those are okay. And I realize sometimes you can't do those things, but even if you take five minutes to just help yourself cope with it or get you to a point where you don't have to feel like you're hurting yourself or beating yourself up because you had a bad day or you are sad or angry.
And even when this does happen... it's not your fault. It's not something you should feel ashamed of. You shouldn't feel disappointed in yourself, I'm not disappointed in you, people who love you won't be disappointed in you if you feel like you have a relapse or feel like you're going backwards. It's something that has happened to you that you're dealing with. It's not because of you though. It's not the real you that's the problem. It's this... sickness that has taken over.
Don't let a bad day ruin everything you've done to recover. It's just one day. Maybe it's even a week. But it does pass. I know it's really hard sometimes when all it seems like you have are bad days, but it does pass. Time does pass and those days, weeks or whatever, they do pass. Almost a year ago, I didn't think time would pass. I didn't think those days would pass. But they did. And I still have bad days, but those days pass too. Today, you might feel horrible, but tomorrow, maybe you won't. And that's worth waiting for. It's worth waiting for those days to pass. To get to the ones that are good.
***You'll Be Okay***
I think I got a lot off my chest this week. Again, thank you for letting me do this. I know I say this every time I do these, and maybe I said this last time, I don't know, but it really means a lot to me that you guys allow me to talk about these things. I really do appreciate that more than you could ever imagine.
Thank you again, guys. I'll see you in 2 weeks.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1 (800) 273-8255
Websites that may be helpful:
http://www.7cups.com/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/
I am not trained in mental health and do not suggest following my own ways of dealing with depression if they do not seem like they would be a good fit for you.
Glad to hear you're doing better, despite the rough week.
This is very good advice. If I had a working printer, I'd print it and pin it to my wall.
4252783 It's kept me going through a lot of tough days. I hope it does for you too.
4252756 Me too.
Well, I'm surprised that I have to reply to something without any smarm or general snideness. To your blurb about Inside Out, and the fact that I can safely say, even though you felt better about it, it promotes such a disgusting philosophy. And no, it's not homosexuality. my beef is with lesbians anyway, much love to my gaybros. platonic, but love regardless
For starters: In today's society, this would be a benefit to be apathetic(or sociopathic as some hysterical people would say, briefly before saying you're too emotional without any acknowledgement of their hypocrisy). As I just said in parenthesis, emotions are, quite frankly, seen as weak, laughable, and giant targets for people to gang up on you. I know, I know, "lol fuq society id o what i want xddd"
No you don't, and no you aren't saying "fuck society" when you go outside to do anything. You go to a store to pick up some groceries, you're interacting with society. You walk around people, your very presence is an interaction. Even if you lived as a hunter in the mountains you'd still respect litter laws. But I can't tell if you'd really say that(but by the many times I had this particular conversation, I feel like I made a good educated guess). Let's get back to Inside Out. If it's not obvious I'm skipping parts I have nothing to reply to, agree with, or disagree with to a "well I see it this way and you see it that way, so we're kinda fucked" extent.
I'm not even gonna do the "told you so" routine. Everyone goes through this, as far as I can tell. All we can do is hope we get through it in the right manner.
In all honesty? You were doing the right thing, and maybe you could've stopped pretending to make it a reality. There's no turning back now, and even if you could "regress," it's not anyone's right to demand how you live. Discussion and demands are different, before you point anything out.
Hmm. My uncle said that the whole part about her core personality thing turning half-sad and half-happy made it more complex, and therefore more "valid." You say it's a confession to being hurt.
And to both, I say "that's a complete load of shit." It's not admitting and confession leading to recovery, it's submission! You're letting your sadness rule your life, and your "recovery" is just you embracing sorrow and growing to think of it as a positive influence! I don't give a shit if that's supposed to be just fine, because if people claim that having self-esteem means you have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and demand you get therapy for it, then this supposed "recovery" would be seen as equally self-destructive if we didn't glorify self-loathing! God fucking dammit, I KNOW I said it's not in my right to demand how you live, but I feel I have the right to at least let you know how disgusted I am that you'd bend over like this. This is long past the point of any jokey vendetta, it breaks my heart and drives me up a wall to see anyone start living this way. Whatever delusion you live in, I pray it doesn't crumble any time soon for your sake. I mean it, this looks like one hell of a rubber band effect to me.
I don't know how many horseshoes you have hanging and how many frogs you kissed over your lifetimes, assuming reincarnation is real. I can't imagine any reason for you to not understand the caution needed in "confessing" to the oh so HORRIBLE crime of being in pain to anyone, other than a ridiculous amount of luck. If I weren't the sort of person who wants to build and live his own life with no influence in an ideal world, I daresay I'd envy you.
What the movie doesn't cover is if this will last. I won't take back anything I said, especially the part where I hope you don't crash and burn. People have put self-loathing and self-deprecation on such a high pedestal that I dread the day they learn that blaming themselves is hurting them in the end.
I don't know what else to say. I could go on about how I say that contrary to my uncle's words, you can have a part of your personality without sadness, and being "valid" is a load of shit. I could go on about how disgusted I am about people's love of hating themselves and making themselves martyrs, and going after people who realize they need to point their finger in another direction. I could go on about many things, but that's just personal shit. I've said things relevant to you, and there's not much else to say, besides reiterating how worrying and, quite frankly, frustrating this way of life is. So live a good life and all that, here's hoping none of us crumble.