The Comeback . . . Almost

It’s been over a year. For a lot of reasons. Good and bad.

As I shared before, my sister stopped speaking to me (it’s been over a year now), and she doesn’t like that I openly share my life on here. For a long time I stopped doing this, even the whole purpose of starting this “blog” was to have a safe space for me to do just that. Tell my story to the un-listening void and be held accountable for writing consistently. And then I realized, she already doesn’t speak to me fo other various reasons. Why should I stop this one thing that I was doing for myself? How could it really get any worse if her removing herself and her family from my life is already the literal worst thing she could possibly do to me, well, that’s already been done. So now instead of a family, all I have is this. So I might as well make use of it.

Now I didn’t come here to talk even more about my sister, although that is a vast topic. Or my family much. Although there have been quite a few developments and things to share. I will eventually. Hopefully.

No, I came to tell you about me. About what I’ve been up to. I got a new job and I’ve been there almost a year. I hope to never leave until I’ve done all the growing I can do there, which I’m thinking/ hoping will be a while. I started out in the call center at half what I made at Amazon. Within 2 weeks after training I got a promotion and began training new hires (similar to what I did at Amazon), and shortly after that I got another promotion and now I am the Internal Communication Specialist. And I love it. I love my team, I love the company (Smile Direct Club), and I’m finally in a place where I am financially stable for the most part and am starting to try and pay off some debt.

The only wrench in that plan is that my sweet kitty, Margot, and I, BOTH have to get some dental work done (how cute). I have to get all of my wisdom teeth pulled (at 30)! And Margot has to get some teefers pulled too (infection). :( So those bills will be a minor setback, but overall I am incredibly grateful to be where I am right now and hope to high heaven that I don’t fuck it up.

I don’t feel in the right emotional space to share all the other ongoings just yet, but hopefully they will come soon. I started going to therapy recently (have only been twice) and don’t feel like he has been much use and I’d rather see a woman, but I’m trying to keep an open mind and give him a chance.

I know this post/ update is pretty boring, but don’t worry, I’ll get into all the family drama, diagnosis, 23 and me results, loss of all real friends, new roommates, getting sued, and multiple breakups, and one big heartbreak next time. :)

Until then . . .

Dancing in Your Undies and Being Thankful for Depression

So obviously I'm bad at keeping up with a blog. Usually because I waste away my time drowning in bad luck and self defeat. I don't want to do that. It's weird because there's such a fine line between self pity and depression. I know I have been diagnosed with chemical and situational depression. I know I am not on my meds because I cannot afford health insurance. And I know that all the energy in me goes into trying to seem normal and happy in public/ while I'm at work, as well as convincing myself that each day is worth getting out of bed for and maybe even doing a little dance in my underwear instead of crying. (P.S. I got my first restaurant job working in a Spanish Wine Bar). While my new job requires a lot of energy, I also find it gives a bit back, too. My managers are fantastic and work very hard, a stark change from previous jobs where managers sat back and "delegated" while they gossiped in the office. In addition, just about everyone I work with are entirely pleasant human beings who seem to have good hearts. Even though I barely make enough to pay the bills, I feel more energized than my previous jobs where I was financially secure but miserable. I am so thankful for that. 

Things have been hard for a lot of reasons lately. My sister is pregnant but does not think I am the kind of person she needs in her life right now. This makes me nauseous with fear and sadness just writing this, but hey, a blog is nothing if not a public journal, right? The whole point of me doing this is to open up all of my insecurities, fears, and weaknesses in an attempt to overcome them. Call it a social experiment in place of unaffordable therapy. I know via her perspective she has her sound reasons for no longer finding joy in me. I understand them. I know that in her mind these feelings are valid and legitimate. I may not agree with them or think that the way things are being handled is  . . . the right, familial, or loving way, but I have to respect those decisions and deal with the pain of them on my own. One of the hardest things about depression is believing you are worthy of love, so this has been a massive challenge, but one that was needed. Years ago I would have lied about my life and who I am and not lived the life I wanted for fear of disappointing my family or losing their love. Which is still a huge fear and something I struggle with. But now I don't want to change who I am for anyone and risk my own freedom and pursuit of personal happiness to cater to someone's idea of who I should be. And if their love for me is based on wether or not I am who they think I should be, then I have to let them figure out the course of action that is best for them, even if it breaks my heart. 

I don't mean to get caught up in this, I guess my overall point is that, being yourself is hard. I HATE the idea of disappointing anyone or hurting anyone, but I also know you will never be happy or content if you stifle yourself or try to conform of what you think others want from you. It's unhealthy, it's toxic, it breeds resentment, and a lack of confidence. I haven't felt confident in years because I was too busy trying to be what everyone else expected and wanted, and of course constantly failing, and every time a bit of my own true self slipped out between the cracks I was so ashamed and afraid of that piece of me being persecuted. While it was by some, it also was admired by others. Even writing openly about mental illness and all the shit that people like me go through every day (it's way more of you than you may realize), I have had so many people reach out and say, "hey thanks for writing this, it makes me feel more comfortable." Or, "hey, I am dealing with loving someone who is depressed, any advice on how to love them better?" And that is so worth it to me. Those are the moments I am almost, dare I say, thankful for my illness. If being depressed helps me connect with and even help others, then I am thankful for that. Because those connections help me too. 

I know none of this is a revelation. I know that roughly 43.8 million Americans suffer from mental illness in a given year. I know depression is almost more common than uncommon in our generation. I also know that if one more person suggests "curing" my mental illness by having a "positive attitude," or "just setting your mind to it," I will wish depression on you for one week so you will never say something ignorant like that again. And that's the meanest thing I can think of but also the most educational. 

I do want to be more positive. I do want to believe in myself.  I do want my confidence back. I do want to apply for a job, start a hobby, or study to be a Sommelier and actually believe that I will succeed at it. And while mind over matter is important, and doing things to motivate yourself can help, it is not the absolute answer. There isn't always an absolute answer. All we can do is try to find what motivates us and makes us happy and DO THAT. For me, I make myself get out of bed and listen to a favorite song on repeat and dance around in my underwear for a bit before I get ready for work. (Listen to "Mine" from Bazzi and just TRY not to dance). 

All of this to say is, while I wish I didn't struggle with depression, I am also thankful for it in a lot of ways. I am much more aware of other's suffering. I am much more empathetic. And I am much more compassionate. I of course struggle with anxiety turning into fear and anger, it can also make me mean and bitter, but I can try with all of my heart to open my mind, see everyone else's perspective, and try to differentiate what is real and me, and what is my illness driving me to feel and think. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes, but I think it's important to recognize it and fight it. 

Even though I've hurt people along the way and lost friends and family by being myself, I have also gained fruitful and meaningful connections as well as started getting a little confidence back. Slowly but surely feeling like my "authentic self" (to be cliche) is doing wonders to helping me climb back on the beaten path of life. 

And if anyone is reading this, please feel free to take a moment to encourage, love, and recognize those around you struggling. I have a tendency to get wrapped up in my own problems and forget to see who is suffering around me and I want to be better at that. I also want to not be scared to ask friends how they are doing for fear that I won't say or do the right thing to help them. Feel free to call me out. I need accountability in happiness as well as selflessness. 

So please, BE YOURSELF no matter what the cost. Because if you are trying to be someone you're not you will never be happy. Unless you're a serial killer. If your true self is a serial killer hold that shit in and go see a therapist asap. Otherwise, dance in your underwear and dress how you want, speak bravely how you want, do the work that makes you happy, and live life for yourself, not in fear of others. 

Forever and ever, Amen. 

P.S. I promise every post won't be about overcoming depression. My goal is to write a "happy post" soon and only talk about things that have made me feel joy. 

What is Okay?

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I'm coming in late to 2018. On New Years Day I got strep and due to stubbornness, a weak immune system, stress, and working more than resting, I relapsed hard and was in bed for the first 15 days of January 2018, including those beautiful snow days. But I'm back and I'm ready to make the traditional New Years changes. I'm gonna pretend to eat paleo for a month, (okay, a week), talk about going to the gym, and make a bottle of wine last three nights instead of two (but hey, I'm up from a bottle a night so there's already progress). Kidding! Kidding . . . .

I'd love to give you all of these exciting updates on my life, but considering I haven't been very active or exciting, I've got nothing thrilling to report except that I'm moving. Yet again. Three times in a year. A new record. I'm staying in the general vicinity of East Nash, but downsizing a bit. The only perks to downsizing are a gas stove and a beautiful and perfect front porch overlooking the downtown skyline along with a nice biking neighborhood and an easy walk to plenty of local amusements and cafes. 

Sine last I posted I've seen friends be hospitalized, been a stranger to my own family, struggled immensely with an inhumane work environment, spent a Christmas in a whirlwind of emotions and broken relationships, and I was just asked to write a piece for an online magazine based on the term, "Things are Okay."

My first thought was, "but things aren't okay." And then I realized that's why they have to be okay. My whole life I've felt sorry for myself. My parents divorced before I was born and my mom bailed when I was a kid. I grew up in a broken home of parents yelling and fighting pretty much every night. My sister and my two step-sisters and I would sit at the top of the stairs most evenings and listen to them scream for hours. They thought we were tucked in bed, like their hurling insults couldn't penetrate through the paper thin walls.  Those were the nights my father didn't bring his anger upstairs with him when he tucked us in, to hurl at us instead of my step-mom for a change, which also happened quite often. My father was primarily responsible for the yelling. While he does not truly believe in mental illness and especially not in himself, as it is a weakness to his manhood and his faith and ability to provide, he is manic bipolar. He hates that I am a feminist and the irony is that his degrading treatment of my stepmother and the women in my family is what fired my lust for equality and grew my zeal to be outspoken whenever possible about the normalized mistreatment of women. But I digress. My father and I have a better relationship now than we once did, and as he ages he has also watched me struggle through mental illness and I believe has more of an understanding and sympathy to it now. All of that to say, my life has been filled with the antithesis of what we are taught is the American dream, and that's just the cliff notes.

But wait, here I am talking about feeling sorry for myself and the paragraph literally turns into a pity party. It is so engrained in me to only recognize sorrow in my life because that is my norm. It's what I'm used to. What I feel I deserve. Where I place my worth. But isn't it time I started seeing the exceptional? To stop complaining about the mental and emotional and even physical toll my job is taking on me and instead say, "I have a steady job and a salary I can depend on and that's more than many can say." Instead of crying about broken relationships and familial disintegration, I can take stock of my incredible, and let me repeat: INCREDIBLE friends and be thankful for the family they have given me? Instead of letting it bother me that I am about to pay more money every month to leave a huge and beautiful and perfectly located home that I love to move to a smaller one further out, I can be overjoyed that I have a home, a roof over my head, and the ability to pay rent each month?

I need to learn that even when I don't think I'm okay, I am in fact, okay. How does one change their thought process of almost 29 years? I did it once before with mental illness, and while I stumble constantly and have many, MANY falls that take a very long time to rise from, I do rise. And that is something. I have the desire to rise, and that is everything.

And I have the desire to be okay. And so I will try, again and again, to curb my thoughts to the positive and how it effects me over dwelling on the day to day that is enough to grind anyone down. 

Hopefully I will be better about writing my thoughts down for accountability, and in doing so become better and better with each admission of guilt and negativity. In the mean time, I'm going to compromise. I'm going to simultaneously break and keep my New Years goals (not promises or resolutions, because those are just asking to be broken and they hold you to an impossible standard that makes you feel even shittier when you break them). I am going to have a glass of wine at 3 in the afternoon because it is one of my rare days off, but I am also going to make a paleo dinner and do some writing. So I'm gonna call that a win for today. Tomorrow is another day, and to quote Anne Shirley, "tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet." And that is incredibly uplifting to me. 

Good luck, everyone. You're okay. And if you aren't right now, you will be.

In the meantime, I'm here, and we can chat if you want. I'm a good listener I think/ hope.  

 

Are You There, God? It's Me, Brenna.

Okay guys, 

So it's been a wild ride these past two years, for me anyway, I don't know about you. But I would assume so if you are living in America under this asshat. But I digress . . .

So, I had a hell of a year in 2016, as I think a lot of us did, mine being the holy trinity of economical, political, and very personal disaster. 2017 has been no different. Many of you who know me know that I went through a nasty little breakup with a lying, two-faced, male who masquerades as a feminist. I had a hard time finding steady work. There were protests, shootings, injustices, floods, betrayals, and heartbreak all around. But there were also really beautiful friends that will be my ride or die SATC homies until the end of time. And that overpowers everything else. And then I landed a job with one of the most prestigious, wealthiest, well known companies in the world. So of course I up and moved to Boston from Louisiana, knowing no one and having never been. It was a thrilling little ride of eight months. Eight months of every emotion you can fathom, but I'm glad I did it. 

Although said company royally fucked me and then made me sign some evil things and take a sad amount of money to go away and never speak of it to anyone, I am glad I went. I am glad, however horrible, for the experience. Because it wasn't all bad. I met some incredible human beings who I am still wonderfully close to, arguably soul mates. I learned so much about leadership and management and business and holding your ground for what's right. I learned values and ethics and learned a lot of new Bostonian words for things, like bubblers and jimmies. I re-developed and re-kindled several very important relationships back home from people kindly and sincerely reaching out to support me (thank you forever, you know who you are). I went to a Red Sox game. I walked the Freedom Trail. I spent many a Spring and Summer afternoon exploring a beautiful and wondrous city and I regret none of that. But most importantly I was brave. Or so people keep telling me.

I think everyone dreams of moving away and starting fresh, and I did it. The only way I could have done it bigger is if I moved somewhere I didn't speak the native tongue (but let's get real, some parts of Boston have their own language). People kept telling me how brave I was for going somewhere I didn't know anyone and had never even visited. Moving from the tropics of Louisiana where I had a "community" to the snow covered streets of Massachusetts in the dead of winter. But honestly, it just felt like the next step in life. To not be stagnant you must always be moving forward. Life is short in that you need to grasp at opportunities when they come your way, but it's also long in that, if you take that opportunity and give it all you've got and it doesn't work out, it's okay. IT'S OKAY. You have all the time in the world to get up, dust off, and leap at the next opportunity that unfolds before you. You will fall MANY times before you land. Trust me. I know. I'm not done falling yet.

My next opportunity seems to be Nashville. I can't tell you what it is yet, but I can tell you I'm here, and I'm hustling my ass off to find it. I have had the luck of landing a killer house in Cleveland Park and two pretty bomb ass roomies hailing from Chicago and Knoxville. Margot, my fat beauty queen boulder of a cat, is coping with having another feline in the house. I am working part time at a sweet little shop called Two Son run by some pretty neat people, and I am doing freelance writing pretty consistently as well as promo work here and there. I still don't have enough money to pay rent in my bank account and generally sell more and more of my belongings each month to make ends meet, but hey, I'm not ashamed.

I had this idea in my head that at this point in my life I'd be stable, happy, know exactly what I wanted, and all those oreos. But that's just not how life is. Life is messy and unexpected, and things rarely go according to plan. And while that is scary and sometimes knocks us on our backs, it's beautiful and exciting and the best way to grow and learn that we will ever get. I am constantly comparing myself to others my age and younger and beating myself up about the choices I've made and dwelling on how unfair life has been to me, but what-the-fuck ever, right? Life is unfair to everyone here and there. I just keep my head up and tell myself that it won't always be like this. And hey, it might be. It very well might be. I may always be in debt. I may always struggle for steady work despite everyone I've interviewed with raving about my resume and experience. I may always feel like I'm not doing enough. I may always deal with depression and anxiety, but I also know that I will always have my dear friends who have been holding my hand through thick and thin since we met. I know I will always have my cat (yes, she will never die). I know I will always have The Great British Baking Show to remind me that humans are kind and caring and gentle. Knowing these things helps me deal with the unknown day by day. 

I may not be anywhere close to having it all, or even a little bit. But I'm very thankful for what I do have and that's nothing to scoff at. So until I figure my shit out, which may be next week, or it may be another ten years, I'm gonna work my knuckles to the bone to do right by people, to stay kind and not jaded. To bench press my cat every Wednesday (and yes, we'll be wearing pink). And to always be there for my friends the way they have unfailingly always been there for me. Who knows, I may even have health insurance again one day and get my happy meds and acid reflux meds back! 

So, here I am. What better time to launch the blog and domain you've been hiding for two years than when you're unemployed and work in your pjs from home all day with your cat constantly walking across your laptop and pissed at you for moving your arms so frequently to type. This website, while available to the public, is for me. At least right now. It's for me to come and write, and practice, and grow, and hopefully someone can relate and it becomes a source of comfort and motivation even. Who knows what will be. But if you are reading, thank you for taking the time as it is such a precious commodity.