I'm not going to make you feel better about my mental health

I'm going to talk candidly about what it's like to live with mental illness, so, trigger warnings ahoy!

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, apparently. I wasn't particularly aware that this was a thing until Sunday, when my tram drove past a Beyond Blue booth at Fed Square. They had a sign that had a few buzz words on it, and one of those words was 'recovery'. This did not sit well with me.

For those of you not aware, I have chronic depression. It is not severe; I have never needed to manage it with medication (*cough* *cough* not including self-medication *cough*), I can get by without regular access to mental health services. I am able to manage it quite well through self-analysis, because I have developed the skills to do so. I have a pretty good sense of how I'm going mental health wise, and what I need to do to turn things around when I feel a depressive episode coming on. I also have an incredible support network of friends who I can turn to, and, when I need to, I usually can access some sort of mental health service fairly easily. All in all, I have a lot of privilege when it comes to managing my illness.

But I have also learned how to function in a closet, of sorts. I am very good at hiding my illness. It's a survival strategy I picked up, because, the world is a pretty shitty place to live in when you've got mental illness. For the most part, I can pass as a mentally healthy (ish) person.

This sign on the Beyond Blue booth suggesting mental illness is something to be recovered from troubled me. From my own experience, depression ebbs and flows. It never goes away. It is managed. Constantly. That is not recovery; it's remission.

Apparently the idea of promoting 'recovery' is to give people hope. But which people? Cuz those of us living with the daily struggle of mental illness are well aware we're not going to magically one day get better forever. Promoting hope of recovery amongst us is a false hope that reeks of saviour complex. And to borrow from the sex worker rights movement, save me from my saviours!

'Recovery' here is being used as a feel-good awareness raising tool; to engage people who are not affected by mental illness by giving them hope that one day we will get better. If we just keep on believing in ourselves and trying our darnedest. As Helen Razor (amongst others) has pointed out, how inspirational our sad, awful lives must be. Fuck. Off.

The problem with using hope of recovery as an awareness raising strategy is, it puts the blame back onto us when we don't get better. Which we won't. Because we can't. Not forever anyways. With remission comes the constant threat, and occasional (or frequent) reality, of relapse.

I had my first major depressive episode when I was 8. I used to think this was when I developed depression, but that doesn't really make sense. If it was something I developed because of an event that would be trauma. No, the depression was already there, waiting to be activated. It just so happened that my parents divorce pulled the trigger. But if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. Because that depression was always there, lurking in the back corners of my brain.

It's hard to describe what it was like, this first episode. Not because it's emotionally painful, but because my brain has actually erased most of that period of my life. I have very little memory of what it was like when my parents got divorced. There are things that I know happened, like moving house. I have no idea what it was like to pack up my stuff and move into an apartment. I don't even know if I was involved in that process. There are other things that are more fuzzy. Like, one day my Mom mentioned about how after the divorce she had to set up special permission with the school for me to be late, because I was unable to get to school on time. The deal was that I'd just pop into the front office and let them know when I'd arrived. Which explains why I have so many memories of stopping into the front office. I don't remember anything else, really.

My depression went undiagnosed into my 20s. I don't know when, exactly, that first major depressive episode came to an end, or how. I know that I grew up thinking it was normal to feel sad and kinda bleak about life. I didn't believe people who claimed to not have an underlying sadness to their expressed happiness. To be honest, I'm still suspicious of those types of people and prefer not to socialise with them. To paraphrase from a Nicki Minaj song, I don't mess with them...regulars.

Over the years the depths of my depression changed, but never really went away. I know I had another major depressive episode when I was about 19, but I don't know what brought it on. (Well, that's kind of a lie, but it's also my business and I'm not making it yours.) I'm not sure if it was my second, or just the second one that I remember.

I didn't have a name for what I was going through until I was about 23. I knew depression was a thing, but I didn't know what it was. Again, being sad felt so normal for me and I hadn't really had any convincing evidence that I was the abnormal one. That ability to believe that I was not substantially different from anyone else, that was a blessing. I don't know if I would have coped at that young age, knowing how wrong I was.

What changed for me when I was 23 was that I started to have suicidal ideations. This is different from being suicidal; I had no active desire to kill myself, no plan, nor the means to execute one. It was just a sense that I'd be better off dead. Apparently I'm also quite the optimist, because at 23 that struck me as really ridiculous and helped to snap me out of what were becoming increasingly intense depressive episodes.

From that point on, I started learning about depression. Teaching myself, getting involved. I volunteered on a crisis line, which was a transformative experience. It taught me about empathy and listening and not to try to solve other people's problems. It taught me that life is incredibly complex, that people are ridiculously resilient, and that although my depression was pretty small potatoes to what other people go through, that does not in any way, shape, or form make my experiences lesser than anyone else's. Mental illness isn't a competition; but it should be a comradery.

When I am in a depressive episode, really basic things become overwhelmingly difficult. Like getting out of bed, or getting dressed. Leaving the house can feel like being sent into war. One of the things I find hardest when I'm depressed is eating. I have to decide what to eat while having no discernible appetite, then either buy it or buy the ingredients to make it. In which case I then have to do all that work of making it. So eating healthy and physically nourishing myself, that's not happening!

The other thing that I find almost impossible to do when I'm depressed is talk about being depressed. Admitting to what I am going through feels like the scariest thing in the world. Death would be much easier. But talking about it, admitting that it is happening, is a really key part of my recovery. That is the other reason my illness lives in a closet. Even now, when I'm in a pretty good place with my mental health, admitting to this inability to speak is frightening. Because that depression is still whispering to me from the back corners of my brain "What if somebody reads this and holds you accountable? What if they make you name me?"

There is something... almost comforting about having depression. It's like a companion for life that I know will never leave me. I can always count on it to be around; can't count on much else! Maybe you've heard of depression described as a little black dog. It's an apt analogy for that sense of companionship - for better or worse - that comes with living with mental illness. I mean, it's quite an active thing to manage. Even when my mental health is in good shape, I've got to be constantly aware of how I'm caring for myself, how I'm feeling, looking for warning signs that a depressive episode is coming on, thinking about what I need to do to maintain my mental health.

It's a job, for which my labour is both unpaid and unrecognised, but constantly expected. It is a job that if I don't do I will be punished for. Though I won't be rewarded for the work when I do it, because apparently living without the black plague of depression immediately hanging over me is reward enough. It's really not.

This is the problem with these mental health awareness campaigns. They offer nothing of substance to those of us going through the daily slog of existing with mental illness. They don't offer up any sort of structural change for how the world works, how it is organised in ways that actively penalise those who, for a myriad of reasons, are disadvantaged (as in, those who are not able bodied neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual middle class white men). Side bar: it needs to be stated here that those who are disadvantaged are not equally disadvantaged. The disadvantage some people experience is so minor that, really, they should probably just take a seat (white feminism, I'm looking at you). For others, the disadvantage they face is so extreme that they deserve a fucking medal for getting out of bed and facing the world.

I am going to discuss some of the ways in which I have been, and continue to be, penalised by society for having a mental illness. Now again, I need to state that my experience of mental illness comes with a lot of privilege. Like, as bad as shit sometimes gets, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be fine. That is a luxury and I am aware of it.

It took me about 7 years to finish my PhD because I couldn't manage working on it full time. My self-care necessitated that I slow down, but I didn't exactly have the space to do that. Partly because of my intense unwillingness to discuss being unwell when I'm unwell, but also because of practical restrictions relating to my visa. It's almost impossible to be granted a student visa in Australia when you're enrolled part-time. I think it is technically possible if you have health conditions and letters from doctors, but, having the kind of health condition that makes you unable to study full time is not going to be looked upon favourably if you are planning on later immigrating. On top of that, I often couldn't suspend my candidature when I had a major depressive episode (and I had many during my PhD) because then I wouldn't receive my scholarship money, and then I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. Which, it should go without saying, would make my mental health issues drastically worse.

Of course, PhD scholarships don't last for 7 years, so this meant I had to take out loans. A lot of loans. And now I am straddled with a crippling amount of debt. As many, many people have pointed out to me, this is not a unique phenomenon for people in my age range. Arguably though, my debt load is tad higher than my Australian cohorts. And now that I have entered the mandatory repayment period, managing my mental health isn't optional. If I don't keep my shit together, if I can't get out of bed and go to work, I won't be able to afford to live.

Going into academia adds extra challenges onto this. At the moment I am jumping from casual job to casual job, with my workload literally changing from week to week. There is no stability in my current situation, so I have to make sure I do a damn good job whenever work comes my way so that I can build good networks and keep the work coming in. But on top of that, in order to advance into a more stable job, I need to publish. On my own, unpaid time. On top of working as many paid hours as I can possibly manage. And then once I get into that position, the expectations placed on my workload will increase exponentially. I have no idea how that will work seeing as this doesn't come with some sort of magical ability to traverse time.

I am not asking for or interested in your pity. I am making choices about how I want to live my life and I am aware of the challenges those choices contain. (There are also some clear benefits to working in academia, like the ability to work from home, in my pyjamas, at whatever hour suits me. The pay is pretty decent, really. And I get to do what I love, mostly.) I don't exactly know how I'll deal with those challenges, but, I'm leaving that in future Joni's capable hands. The point of telling you all that is to highlight how fucked up managing life with even mild depression and a whole lot of social privilege is.

There are different takes on mental illness and agency. Some people say their mental illness makes them unable to make rational choices, other people say they are not their illness and are responsible for the decisions they make. I think the reality for most of us is that the interplay between controlling and being controlled by our illness is more complex.

Last year I wrote about the culmination of events in my life that had occurred over the preceding 2 or 3 years that left my mental health and general well being reeling. When I wrote that, I felt like things were finally turning around, like I was turning over a new leaf and on my way to a better life. Instead, things got worse. Or, bad in a different way. I don't know. But 32 was a particularly shit year. Most of it was spend in depressive episodes, some minor, some major, all awful.

The thing is, when my mental health is in a good place, I can maintain that. I can sense when I'm starting to slip into a bad place and adjust things in my life to help stop the depression from coming on. When I'm in a good place with my mental health, I control my illness. But, we can't control life. Sometimes things happen that prevent me from engaging in my usual self-care strategies. Like having no money and being really fucking stressed out about it.

But also, sometimes things happen and I decide not to take care of myself. Because depression is slippery like that. It whispers at you to just let things slide, to take the easy route for a change. And considering how hard and how fucking draining it is to constantly be actively maintaining good mental health, the temptation to just, say, have a pint of icecream for dinner instead of cooking for myself can get very strong! Then before I know it, the idea of eating food seems awful and I can't bring myself to cook and the only thing I can stomach eating is icecream, and hey, here come those 40 kilos I worked my ass off to lose. And aren't I just a fat sack of shit who can't even manage to cook a fucking stirfry? And then hey, guess who's back!

The older I get, the more I know about the world, the less able I am to convince myself that feeling like I'd be better off dead is ridiculous. Instead, it becomes about facing that as a truth and living anyways. Finding joy and happiness and meaning anyways.

So, yeah, let's talk about mental health. But let's do so in a way that acknowledges the lived realities of those of us who have mental illness, instead of in a way that panders to those that don't. Let's talk about how the world needs to change. Let's talk about the structural barriers that create systematic oppression, that make living in the world an act of willfully subjecting oneself to violence. Let's talk about what it would be like to recognise life is awful, in a meaningful way. Let's talk about how we can open up space, as a society, to let people breakdown. Let's talk about how we can support each other, collectively, so that we are not forced into maintaining abusive relationships just to survive. Let's talk about the courage it takes to get up every day and face your demons, knowing those demons will never really go away. Let's talk about those who have not been able to continue that fight and remember them and honour them for how hard they tried. Let's acknowledge that sometimes giving up that fight is the only reward we'll ever get for being in it in the first place.

The Seance 2.0

I've recently started to re-engage with my PhD data. Unlike how I usually describe it, my PhD is probably best summarised as looking at the ethics of relationship negotiation within new media environments. While my research wasn't looking at my life, my life certainly looked at my research! Going back to that data, while being single and occasionally submitting myself to the torture of dating, has got me thinking. About ghosting.

For the unfamiliar, ghosting is the practice of seemingly disappearing into thin air. It usually happens before people have even met; you're chatting away to someone on a dating app and then suddenly they just disappear. Or they just stop replying to your messages. It also happens in the early stages, where after going out on a date or two contact suddenly stops. But really, it can (and does) happen at any stage of a relationship. All of a sudden, somebody just disappears.

To be clear, I am not against ghosting. I have experienced it plenty of time, both as the ghoster and the ghostee. It is certainly not the ideal way to end contact with someone, but seriously, when do people actually behave ideally?

New media technologies (which is an awful term... they're hardly new, but anyways, it's the one I'm sticking with for now) have not so much changed the types of relationships people have, but have created a hypervisibility and contactability. And this has at least changed the potential ways people can engage with each other.

The phenomena of ghosting is hardly new. People have been fucking off without saying a word forever, so let's not start with the whole "OMG kids today don't know how to interact like proper people" bullshit. I mean, hello, the whole "He just went down to the shop for a bottle of milk" trope. What is new is the potential to conduct digital surveillance upon one's ghost.

I could talk about the ethical implications of this, the ways in which people could behave to achieve some sort of idealised niceness around the awkwardness of ending relationships, in their various guises. I won't. Because, post PhD, current living in the actual world of being a single woman, I don't believe promoting an ideal is the way to go.

The other night I had drinks with a friend who is also using Foucault's later work in his PhD. We had what was for me a very liberating conversation about Foucault's neoliberalism. We acknowledged that, at the end, he turned to neoliberalism. Not as a wholehearted embrace, but as something which could be queered and co-opted into leading an ethical life.

The downside of this, which came out in my PhD findings (probably not as eloquently as I would like) is that the ethical framework he describes can be used in hugely unethical ways. When you develop this acute understanding of how power operates within your interpersonal relationships, you're faced with this red pill/blue pill situation. Do you use this knowledge to promote equality within your relationships, or do you use it to get what you want? That choice is up to the individual, and while Foucault is often said to be encouraging the even distribution of power, I think the reality is more complex than that. I think he was maybe a bit more OK with letting the world burn than is usually discussed. But that's a rather undeveloped critique best left for another forum another time.

As the night continued, my friend and I discussed our various experiences of dating and the complications that arise in negotiating relationships and feelings and that desire to not be a dick. And, of course, how to manage the situation when the other person turns into a dick. For me, this is where that desire not to promote an idealised niceness comes in. This is where I see Foucault with his matchstick burning shit down.

There is a huge discourse surrounding dating etiquette, in general, and a growing body of opinions/advice on how to deal with dating in new media environments. But telling people what to do is not the answer. People deal with shit differently, and saying things like "cyberstalking your ex is unhealthy and you are bad at doing breakups" is really unhelpful. Who is this person who is good at doing breakups? A sociopath?? Breakups are shitty and awful and they hurt, and there is no reason why being ghosted by someone you've never met should hurt less than the end of a long term relationship. Life is not linear or simple and the idea that we should all just be nice is ridiculous.

Despite my actual, certified recognition as an expert on relationship negotiation, I am constantly turning to my friends any time I have to deal with negotiating pretty much any aspect of a dating type relationship. Because there is no rule book; nor should there be. How people relate to one another is going to be unique to the context of that relationship and trying to fit it into some external framework is only going to cause everyone involved grief. That much I can put my stamp of expertise on.

Recently, I've had a lot of contradictory advice given to me, and this is why I think it's problematic to promote some sort of standard of how people should interact with one another. It is easy to get lost in these discourses about what you should and should not do. I found in listening to all these other voices that I was both losing myself and losing sight of the context of what I was negotiating. I was getting caught up in these external judgments (which may or may not have actually been happening) over how I was behaving. I was ignoring what my own needs are and how best, for me, to meet them.

How we use new media technologies, individually, in our negotiations of relationships is going to produce different things for different people in different contexts. There is no magical singular way to behave that will mean everyone is nice to one another and nobody gets hurt. And one person's strategy for mitigating the hurt they cause to somebody might actually be perceived as quite harmful by somebody else. The best we can do is engage authentically with ourselves and those around us, and, because we can't avoid hurting people, be accountable for what we do.

This brings me to the seance, which I am defining as the attempts at contacting someone who has ghosted you. Again, I place no judgement onto the seance, or onto the ghost's response or lack there of. Because while there is a need to be accountable to the person you've hurt, that need does not come at the expense of yourself. It's a tricky thing, negotiating that desire not to be a dick with what can sometimes be a legitimate need to be kind of a dick. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to manage this conflict. At the end of the day, you're the one who has to live your life. You're the one faced with the consequences of your actions. So you're the one who gets to choose.

I cannot overstate how much I am saying there is no overarching right or wrong here. The only advice I'll give is this: think your actions through and do what's best for you.

Death or Marriage

When I was a little kid I thought that getting married and having kids was inevitable. That it was just the natural progression of life and there wasn't really anything you could do about it.

When I was a little kid I was severely depressed.

As I got older I gradually became aware of feminism and queer politics and realised that those things are choices that I didn't have to make. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.

Now, single and childless in my 30s, I understand why those things are presented as the cornerstone of adulthood.

Existing as a single person is hard! And it gets harder with age.

We live in a society that is geared toward coupledom. Particularly economically.

Having just completed a PhD, I am acutely aware of how our social systems disadvantage single people. I did not have a partner who's income I could rely upon to help me afford my basic needs when I needed to focus on studying, or when funding for casual research staff was slashed. Fortunately, I had family who where willing to help me out with loans. Unfortunately, this means I am now saddled with debt and am not in a better economic position now that I'm working.

When I am sick, I have to take care of myself. Because I am casually employed, taking sick days means not making money. Because the nature of what makes me unwell is not covered under MediCare (which I have only recently qualified for) taking time off work makes it harder for me to access the care I need to get better.

Then there are the more luxurious things, like travelling and going to cafes. Booking accommodation as a single person often means either paying double what a couple would pay, or staying in cheap accommodation like a hostel (a compromise I am less and less willing to make). Tomorrow is Sunday and I would very much like to go out for Sunday brunch with my computer. Which raises the inevitable problem: what do I do if I have to pee? Should I take it with me to the toilet? Will it be OK if I just leave it there? Are the cafe staff going to be too busy to notice if somebody nabs it? Can this person sitting by me be trusted?

My point is, our society is structured in both formal and informal ways that encourage us to pair up and take responsibility for one another. Like a buddy system, with benefits. This is a large part of why my BFF and I are moving in together, again; it will give us both something of a safety net.

I think it is problematic that our society requires this buddying up. It creates greater marginalisation for those people who, for whatever reason, don't have a buddy to share the social burdens with. Like, full stop, I think we need to completely restructure society and that anything short of a complete dismantling of the system is not going to produce equality (and even then it is likely to still be flawed).

But the more addressable problem is, this societal buddy system privileges certain types of buddies over others. Specifically, it privileges those buddies who are married over everyone else. So yes, congratulations same-sex couples in America, you can now enjoy the privileges of this elitist buddy system too!

Queer resistance to heteronormativity was my saviour. It showed me that a different world was possible, and that there was a place where my difference fit in. Watching the push for 'marriage equality' feels like a slow death to me. Marriage does not make us equal. Marriage tells us that we should conform to a system that basically shits on everyone who is not a white cisgendered man with money.

It is a complex issue and I have engaged in many conversations with my fellow queers about why it is important and what it produces. And I absolutely take the point the marriage allows access to rights that are not otherwise available to couples (even defacto couples, especially around migration). I also completely recognise that marriage has individual importance to some people's personal histories that it doesn't have to me. And while on the one hand I don't want to take away your right to express your buddied up love in this particular way, on the other hand I do. I want to take away the legal rights that are entitled through marriage so that those rights can be accessible to everyone, not just those who, for whatever reason, choose to conform.

Marriage erases other types of relationships, yes, but it particularly erases single people.

Being single is seen as a liminal state; as something that we transition out of and into over our lives. It is not seen as a valid state for a person to choose to stay in. Not in the long run, anyways. Single people are constantly met with a barrage of messages about how they should not worry as someone will come along eventually (like we're stuck on the side of the road with a flat tyre), peppered in with messages about how they should work on themselves to be more open and receptive to that love when it does come around (don't fuck it up!) What it boils down to is this: being single is not natural or normal. (As a quick aside, it boggles my mind that being in a couple is seen as the normative state of things, when we have always existed in communities.)

For me, throughout my adult life, being single is what feels most comfortable and right. It is where I feel safest and most at peace with myself and my life. I am tired of being told that this means I have some deep seated psychological issues that I need to work out. I am tired of being told I just haven't met 'the right one'. I am tired of having my experiences silenced and erased.

This love that people talk about experiencing when they pair off, this has not been my experience of relationships. My relationships have involved two people tolerating each other being awful to one another, to varying degrees and for varying amounts of time. They have meant constantly being told that I need to change - change myself, change who I am in a relationship with, change my outlook on life - in order to make things work.

I do not need to change.

I know that I am a devisive, strong-headed, bossy, outspoken, bitch of a person. And I also know that I have an incredible group of friends who accept me for who I am, even when they don't like me/what I'm saying/how I'm saying it. So no, I do not possess some inherent flaw that makes it impossible for me to attract loving, supportive, accepting relationships.

And no, I do not simply have to wait around for this magical person who will love me as the imperfect being I am to come and swoop me off my feet. People come into (and sometimes out of) my life all the time that love me for exactly who I am. Why should the connections I form with these people be deemed lesser than marriage-types of connections?

So this is why I am not rejoicing. Why I am being a pain in your asses. Because society continues to say that your relationships are more better than mine/the lack of mine. Because we live in a society where you can ask your partner to watch your stuff while you go to the toilet and I cannot just trust that my shit won't get stolen because we have developed a community of care and respect. Because queer issues expand beyond the boundaries of coupledom.

I would like to acknowledge that this piece is self indulgent. There are much more pressing issues in the fight for equality than the recognition that being single is a valid lifestyle choice (for the long haul, not just while we lick our wounds from the last relationship). But this is how I, personally, am negatively impacted by the push for marriage equality.

I think it is entirely possible to reorganise the way we distribute and reward rights and privileges so that it doesn't centre around marriage, but around individual choice and community. But the more we buy into marriage as a panacea for social inequality, the harder it gets. I hope I'm wrong; I'd love to be wrong. I'd love to see a queer revolution sprout from the rainbow aftermath of marriage rights, a revolution that dismantles the system from within.

But I don't think that is going to happen. Not when Jennicet Gutiérrez was shushed and booed for speaking up about the rights of trans immigrants at an LGBTQ Pride event. And not when I can't leave my laptop unsupervised in a cafe when I go to the toilet.

I Should Have Left You Long Ago (But I Stayed)

A couple of weeks ago I somewhat unexpectedly found myself unemployed. While it's a temporary loss of income, it's unclear how long it'll be. This left me frantic and stressed and scrambling to find work. Any work. OK, almost any work. Finding something casual and temporary has proved difficult. And while I haven't given up hope, I've realised it's more practical for me to be putting my energy into finding new work in my field, even if it means forgoing an income for a little bit.

As stressful as this has been, having this time has made me realise how badly I needed a break. It's not exactly ideal to be taking a forced, unpaid, break, but, it's made me spend some time taking stock of my life.

Some other things have happened as well, one of those being that I finally let go of a relationship that I'd held on to for too long. You see, I've got a long history of staying in relationships for longer than I should. In fact, if my life was a Country Western song it'd be called 'I should have left you long ago (but I stayed)'.

Walking away wasn't easy (or pretty). It was painful and messy and left me with some things to process. Fortunately for me, I've also got plenty of time to sit and reflect on how I got myself into that mess and why I stayed for so long.

What I realised is, the year before I met my ex was insane. There was so much big life stuff happening, and on top of that lots of ridiculous bullshit stuff that I was responsible for dealing with, that I'd just been surviving in crisis mode. There were health issues, housemate issues, housing issues, relationship issues, family issues, thesis issues, friend issues, work issues, money issues, immigration issues... At baseline my life was pretty stressful, but there was always some additional thing I also had to deal with. And every time I'd overcome whatever calamity had arisen, a new one emerged.

Things were finally starting to settle down for me when I moved into my own place. My housing issues were coming to an end, as were the housemate issues. Work was stabilizing, my income was fairly steady, my health was improving, my thesis was being examined, I had a plan of action for my immigration stuff, my family and friends were alright, and I was single and excited about getting to be single in my own place. I hadn't quite gotten the balance back into my life of focusing on myself, but it was on the horizon.

A week after moving into my new place, I met someone. I hadn't planned on it becoming a thing, I wasn't looking for it to become a thing, but it became a thing. He was handsome and charming and after what had been a very difficult year, a perfect distraction from dealing with my own life.

So I focused on him and on our relationship and for awhile, forgot about myself. It didn't last though, the distracting myself from myself. Once the magic wore off, my life was still a mess and I had the added burden of an unsupportive partner to deal with.

There were some practical reasons for why I stayed longer than I should have. But mostly it was fear. Not fear of being alone; I've been single most of my adult life and know that that's quite a comfortable and fun place for me to be. No, the fear was of having to deal with the mess my life had become. I wanted someone to hold my hand, to tell me it was going to be OK. But what that resulted in was actually me holding myself back.

I've said it before, and I suspect it's a lesson I'm going to keep re-learning for a long time: life is much easier once you let go and just face the fear.

It's been hard. It's been really hard. And it's going to continue to be hard for awhile to come. But having the chance to get back in touch with myself is worth all the hardship that's made it happen. Being forced to take a step back, I feel like I can see clearly again. It's still early days, but I've got a much better sense of what I want for myself and what I don't. I can see the parts of my life that were allowing me to grow, and the things that were holding me back. I am coming up with a plan of action for how I want to live my life now. I am thinking about ways to rebuild that will allow me to have the balance that has so sorely been lacking for far too long.

For starters, I need to get back to writing.