Just Being

"I was at the PostSecret Event in London. I didn't find the courage to go up to the microphone, but if I had been able to, this is what I would have said.

I spent so long feeling guilty, feeling ashamed of my sadness, and you know what? It just made me sadder. You are allowed to be sad, you are allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be depressed. We all deserve to feel our own sadness in our own time.

Something you will have heard before - you deserve to be happy. That, of course, is not always easy to hear, especially in the depths of depression - so let me add something. You deserve to be happy - but you don't have to be happy right now or all the time.

It is okay to be sad, it's okay to not be ready to be happy yet. One day you will be ready to recover - that day doesn't have to be today or even tomorrow, as long as you know and trust me that it will come.

It's okay not to be okay.

Thanks for everything Frank,

Holly, London

P.S My secret is that I decided last night that I'm ready to recover and it's going to be incredible."

This is from this weeks PostSecret.com page.

It explains a lot of how I've been feeling.  Several months ago, around October, I finally got fed up with pretending to be happy with everyone.  Fed up with putting on a smile and laughing at everyone's jokes, even the ones that made me cringe inside and hurt more.  Fed up with being polite and worrying that I would make the world a worse place if I was honest.  Fed up with making everyone else's feelings my responsibility.  You know what, if you are annoyed at me, pissed at the world, or happy or not happy, I no longer care.  I really don't.  That is your problem and I have too many of my own to be spending that much energy on everyone else.

Also, I don't want to be happy.  I know it's a good thing to be so, but I've tried to be happy, I've pretended to think positive thoughts, I've pretended that everything is going to be okay.  But pretending just makes life worse and hells a lot harder.

Some days I am happy.  Some days I am not.  The world will not end either way, and I don't like ignorant and unthought out advice quoted from so many "self help" books or Secrets of life.  Those books don't know me, you don't know me, and continually bombarding me with cliche advice just makes me feel guilty for not being able to live to those standards, for not taking advice that is just so simple. 

Do you know why people give this advice?  It's because my unhappiness, my depression, makes them feel uncomfortable, sad, worried.  They don't like to feel those things, so by giving me unasked for advice, without thoroughly exploring why I feel so, makes them feel better.  Regardless of how I feel about it.  It's a selfish thing to do, and also, I think, just part of human nature.  

This is the part where I feel I should describe to you how I actually feel.  Explain to you everything.  Answer your questions.  But I just don't feel anything much any more.  No more anxiety, no more anger, no more happy, no more excitement.  And I just don't care.  Someday I'll feel again, but right now, I just don't.  And I'm satisfied with that...I'm not particularly ready to change.  You could say today is a happy day.