We find it easy to say "sorry I haven't been myself lately“ - but have we thought about what classifies as 'myself’? Have we also thought about how ‘lately’ is extremely subjective, for some it might just be a couple days but for me it classifies as the past couple years.
I've just not been myself lately.
I keep telling myself it will get better. You just gotta go through another day, you'll wake up tomorrow and turn things around. You'll stop making mistakes, you'll start being better and it'll all be okay. But another day turns into another week, another week turns into another month, and another month has now turned into another year. Everyday I try to find a solution to be better, because in my head, if I'm better, I might be closer to being myself.
Better is also a gray area. I want to be better for myself, and better for others. But why is that? My brain is wired in a way where I want to be better so that I don't end up being an inconvenience to others. So in these scenarios, what happens when I'm not able to be better? What if I make a mistake or two? My precaution towards my anxiety easily turns into me being depressed because I wasn't able to do the one thing I thought I could do.. Be better.
Things change a little drastically in life. It's just how life works. Life throws curveballs and you master the sport. You adapt and change into newer, stronger versions of yourself. So where does the l'm not myself today coming from. How far back do I want to go to be myself? What is the 'myself" that I keep referring to in my head. Do I want to go back a couple months? Couple years? A decade? What is myself? Do I even have to go back? What if I've set a completely unrealistic version of myself for the future? What happens when I can't get to that? Do I just keep saying it'll get better and hope for the best? And just deal with the consequences if I'm unable to meet expectations? Cz that's how it's been "lately“.
Being diagnosed is a interesting thing - when you're not diagnosed, you wish you knew what was wrong with you and why you are the way you are. You feel like you get a certain type of closure on the 'why is this happening to me’. But once you get diagnosed, you just start using your label' for everything. Every inconvenience gets blamed on anxiety or depression. You can't just have a breakdown without it being known as a mental breakdown. You start looking for excuses to say 'sorry I couldn't focus, I have ADHD' or 'sorry I don't want to go out, I'm too depressed' or 'sorry this seems stressful, I have anxiety' - what ends up happening? You end up hibernating. You start getting used to different things. You don't really long for anything, but you start wanting different things from your life. Your expectations completely plummet because your mindset shifts into believing you can't do anything. You know what that is? You start losing yourself. You start losing your identity, your interests, your likes and dislikes - all the things that make you yourself. So I ask again, why do we keep crying about not being ourselves lately when we play active roles in losing ourselves.
What loophole am I stuck in. How do you break free from these breakdowns? How do you stop hibernating? How do you end up being free from being depressed.
Sorry- let's get to the part where we ty to turn this around, for real.
We lose ourselves, everyday. We lose a part of ourselves because every single day we grow and growth can't happen in thin air.
Sometimes you gotta compromise on certain things about yourself to make room for bigger and better things. I really beat myself up over the fact that I am not myself and that the Old Sara wouldn't make these mistakes or the Old Sara would be better at this. But that's not reality. The Old Sara is gone. There's a New Sara, the New Sara needs to adapt and grow. The New Sara needs to unlearn certain habits, and embrace her current self.
We need to not be so hard on ourselves. We make mistakes, and that's okay. We can't live upto our expectations or others expectations, it's okay. It's heartbreaking and can throw us directly into the depressive hibernation that we're used to, but hey, we got this. We control our narratives. We're going to start embracing ourselves. Stop wanting to be an older self or striving for a future self.
Work with what you have, not what you lost/don't have yet.
Does any of this even make sense?
I guess I haven't lost myself completely since my blogs still don't make any sense.
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Sara Haseeb
Xo
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