Always Back to Broken

I’ve liked to think that I’ve made massive improvements over the last few months.  And I have.  I haven’t been spending my days depressed or anxious.  I haven’t been fearing the future or the past.  I’ve been mainly at peace.  And it has been so beautiful.

I know enough to know that a fall will come eventually.  It’s part of the beast.  There will always be setbacks.  Even people who don’t have anxiety disorders and depression sometimes fall into anxious or depressed pathways.

That’s fine with me.

But sometimes I am brought to a different place.  A place where I realize that in some ways my brain does work differently.  And that I can’t ultimately change that.  Or at least I don’t know how to change that.

And that makes me feel broken.

Recently a few things have happened that have led me to feel less secure in the world.  A few things have happened that have made me realize that what I hold sacred isn’t the same as what some others hold sacred.  And I have come to learn that a lot of what I hold to be true and good and worthy, other people see as corrupt and stained and tarnished.

That has been lingering in my mind.  It’s made me consider giving up the world of personal social media.  But more than anything, it has just made me feel less secure.

And then today something happened that took all of that — all that I hold to be sacred and untouchable – and it combined it with a situation where I felt my children were unsafe, and that demolished my little world of peace.

The situation ended up being as benign as it could have, and I am grateful for that.  But I didn’t know that all day.  All I knew was that it felt like someone had broken into an innocent world of my children and tarnished it with evil.  Most people probably didn’t take it that far, but my mind did.

And I got stuck.  Absolutely stuck.

And it made me feel so far away from people.  Because I knew most people could live a normal day, but I couldn’t.

I was back into that world of obsessions.  Where I compulsively play things over and over in my head, and I research every way that I can manage and I ultimately end up nowhere.  The world where I can’t let a thing go.  I can’t think of anything else.  I can’t consider anything else.  I can’t talk of anything else.

I find myself consumed.

And it absolutely sucks.

It’s better than years ago.  Now that I know more of what happened, I can put it behind me.  Years ago I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

But still, it bothers me that I ended up back there.  Because I’ve been feeling pretty healthy lately.  So if the obsessive thoughts and anxiety can be triggered now, they can be triggered at any time.

But that’s my cross.  That’s my battle.  And I’m always willing to fight.

I just wish I could have stayed away from that reality a bit longer.