Brave Enough To Be Bliss

b ut once I did slow down, and once I could cry, and once the voices were quiet in my brain…I even started to enjoy the silence and seclusion. It just took me a long time to catch up with him in these ways.

I remember when I realized that I no longer had to have music on at all waking hours because the silence no longer scared me. I actually liked to be alone with my thoughts. Being inside my mind was no longer the hateful, noisy, and scary place it had been for all those years. Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed being with me.

“Instead of saying ‘I’m damaged, I’m broken, I have trust issues’ say ‘I’m healing, I’m rediscovering myself, I’m starting over.’” Horacio Jones

Like all things, there are multiple perspectives on what’s right and wrong and good and bad. And there are things that at various points in my healing made complete sense to me, and then after I healed some more, something completely different resonated. For instance, I initially connected with brokenness because there was a lot of stuff that wasn’t working in there, so I wanted to be broken because if I was broken then there might be hope I could be fixed, corrected, perfected. And then I read the article at the beginning of this chapter, and it changed how I viewed brokenness, and ultimately how I began to see myself. And then the quote above presents yet another viewpoint. To me, it doesn’t matter what resonates with anyone, only that we keep searching for whatever will make us healthier and have more connected relationships with ourselves and each other. I’ve often said to friends about traditional healthcare services, alternative medicine, diets, meditation, exercise, or anything else, if something makes you feel better and you can afford it, go ahead and do that. Life is too short not to do whatever we can to feel healthier and more alive. The advertising that exists with people saying, “ this is ‘ the ’ fix or the ‘ only ’ way or the ‘ best ’ way ” can leave people feeling unsure what to do and like a failure if something doesn’t work for them. The healthy alternative in my opinion is, try this, it worked for me, but if it isn’t for you, try something else. That’s one reason I’ve tried to include so many resources in this book, not to say this is how to do it, but to spur readers to think and search out things for themselves. All these resources are ones I learned something from, or even if they didn’t resonate with me, I gathered some perspective from them. Because many of us grow up having to seek permission for things, sometimes we carry that process into adulthood and wait for someone to give us permission for things that we are now able to give ourselves permission for. Because I entered adulthood in a state of fear, never wanting to do anything wrong, fearing being “in trouble,” not feeling that I had control of anything, including my own body, I sought permission for many things that weren’t necessary. I often told myself it was the respectful thing to do, when it was really that I was too scared to decide for myself. I kept a screenshot of this poem while I was in the messy middle because there were times I was just so tired, for a variety of reasons, and I needed to read it to calm the voices that were telling me I could do more and that resting was lazy. It gave me permission to simply be where I was at that time and not give myself a hard time for it. While I didn’t need permission , I wasn’t healthy enough yet to give it to myself, so this poem did. In addition to what Ginger had provided, this is an example of how I sought out and found tools that helped me not give up on the climb up the mountain entirely. They kept me from canceling the appointments. I would want to, but then I would read through old screenshots and better be able to see the progress I had made. During the hardest of times, my phone would fill up with screenshots I could refer back to in order to keep going. Whatever helps you, do that. Just remember the mountain is n’t insurmountable; even when it seems like it, that’s just a voice in your head making up a story that simply isn’t true. “The future is only scary if we try to avoid it.” Simon Sinek

The Mountain | Poem by Laura Ding-Edwards (centerformentalhealth.in)

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