Spring Awakening

Every year at the end of winter I get a mini depression. And don't get me wrong, this is not me being cute and flippant and using depressed as a synonym for being sad one day. I mean, I've experienced depression the year my dad and my friend died. I know what it feels like to start crying without any discernible reason. To lie awake at night because your mind is going round and round in negative spirals. To live each day waiting for it to be over. To have no control over your mood swings. To feel like everything is a disappointment and nothing will ever get better. So yeah, I don't use the term lightly.

Now, it hasn't quite gotten as bleak as that, but I noticed the absence of my regular optimism. I'm usually a rather positive person, but the past month and a half I kept focusing on everything that was wrong. Everything I did wrong, and everything that everyone around me did wrong. A lack of faith that things would turn out alright in the end. And me being the naturally worrying type, I REALLY need to keep that faith that every cloud has a silver lining. I just won't survive if I don't keep my faith.

And even though this happens every year to a varying extent, I always forget how much the sunshine means to me. After the holidays have come and gone, after that last, dark, grey stretch of winter, I'm done. I have no energy of myself left. I need the sun to shine a new perspective on my life. So when the clouds cleared from the skies two weeks ago, it was truly like a veil had been lifted that had separated me from my true self.

It's not like my life has no worries or issues anymore. I worry every day, there are always doubts and frustrations. And ooh boy, it just seems to get worse now that I work full-time (which is a story for another blog post). But it feels like now I have the resilience and the perspective to deal with all of that again. Now, I acknowledge the problem, and I give it a place rather than having a problem paint me into a corner. Let's hope this feeling sticks for a while.

I should end this with some corny metaphor about blossoming or something, but you can think of that yourself. Hope you enjoyed the clothes and the honesty. Do you ever get overwhelmed by, well, life?