Written By: Lauren Howard
I wasn’t sad.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t lay in bed for days.
I didn’t miss work.
I also didn’t laugh a whole lot.
I thought that that was the best that it would ever get. There wasn’t much else out there for me, certainly not a fulfilling career or a life I enjoyed living.
I wasn’t imaginative. I didn’t have the capability to dream of bigger or even marginally better.
The world just kind of turned grey.
I don’t know how long I was like that. It was years, at least, but it could have been longer. It’s hard to say because I have no idea when it started.
One day, it just was. That was just who I thought I was and who I would always be.
In reality, it was crushing anxiety and a touch of depression. The worrying that makes me good at my job was making me bad at everything else. I was annoyed and frustrated, but I was still functioning, so it took years longer for me to realize that maybe things weren’t supposed to be like this all the time.
I was functioning, but I wasn’t living.
Sometimes, these things pop up in ways that don’t look like what you would think. That doesn’t make them less real or valid.
I take a pill a day, and the sun started shining again. The world isn’t grey anymore.
I’m also way nicer. Ask my husband.
It’s okay to not be okay, and it’s also okay to ask for help when things are bad but not terrible.
You don’t have to be in full crisis to deserve better.
Image by Paola Chaaya via Unsplash
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