as excited as i am about the possibilities of a new year and what this year will bring, it wouldn't be right to move forward without summing up the year that was.......but where do i even begin???!
and so my warning to you is this. brace yourself!! this has the potential to be a very long post and i'm told that i write much the way i think. if as you're reading this, it doesn't make sense, take an additional moment or two and re-read it! :) muchos gracias)
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every new years eve, I cross my fingers and silently swear to myself that the upcoming year will be the year that brings about incredible change and personal growth. and although i realize that both those wishes are inevitable, there's a much deeper meaning behind both. and so, each year I put my wishes in the hands of faith and hope for the best. i can honestly say that 2012 was the year that all my hopes and wishes came true. (maybe not all, but I couldn't have asked for a better beginning)
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2012 didn't start off any different than any year previous, but I still held hope that things would start looking up. after all, how can our move to Toronto have gone so smoothly if being here (in the very place we were) not meant to be.
at this time last year, i was still battling my all consuming fatigue and constant sluggishness... still doing my best to pretend that the world couldn't be any more amazing and that I couldn't imagine being anywhere else, and yet i was struggling more than i ever had. i had pretty much shut out every single person i was closest to; that would give up all to be there if i needed anything. lucky for me, the person closest and dearest to me, lived with me and therefore couldn't be pushed too far and lucky for me, the more i pushed, the tighter he held.
i'm not really even sure at what point last year (calendar wise) things started to change. i wanna say late April maybe...but after months of various tests and opinions from a ream of doctors and specialists, i found myself in perhaps the right doctors chair.
and so began my life on an antidepressant. (this is where i admit my early thoughts of frustration... depression wasn't the problem. why wasn't anybody looking at my symptoms as a whole??) but whatever my thought process was at that point, i just wanted to feel better. i just wanted to be able to get out of bed in the morning and function the way i once did, and as corny as it sounds, live the life i knew i was meant to live.
as a side note. i wish i could put into words how horrible and suffocating it is to know that you are not being and projecting onto the world the person you know yourself to be! it's almost as though your mind is attached to someone else's body and no matter how hard you try and coordinate the thoughts to the actions, they never seem to align the way they're meant to.
as a side note. i wish i could put into words how horrible and suffocating it is to know that you are not being and projecting onto the world the person you know yourself to be! it's almost as though your mind is attached to someone else's body and no matter how hard you try and coordinate the thoughts to the actions, they never seem to align the way they're meant to.
it was a slow change at first, but gradually everything started falling into place. the stars started to align (corny i know) and being here in the now was making sense. i started feeling better. i started being able to get out of bed in the morning. do something as simple as leave my apartment to do laundry. (dare i tell you that my laundry facility is in the basement of my building). i was able to leave my actual apartment building and venture down the street to the local fruit stand. walk to the library. send an actual email (on my own). all these little things that so many take for granted, i couldn't do on my own. (one of the top reasons i secluded myself from family and friends)
and then, out of the blue one day, things changed even more. i received an email from someone i hadn't seen in years. someone i quite honestly never thought i would bump into at any point in the near future, let alone connect with again. she sent me an email and told me the company she was currently working for was relocating to toronto. was i looking for a job and would i be interested in applying for hers as she wouldn't be making the move.
and so began the biggest change of 2012.
i began work on june 9th, 2012, for an amazing (old school big - current, small & new) company.
i was thrown into a world that had i been thrown into a month or two previous, would have crumbled. and yet here i was, doing things i hadn't done in years, and on a much greater scale. and it was fine. the thought of not being able to do those very things a mere couple months previous seemed beyond ridiculous to me.
let's not pretend that my diagnosis and subsequent treatment of'depression' is a thing of the past. it's not. it's still current. but current in the sense that i'm cool with taking the antidepressant if it means i never have to go back to feeling the way i did for so many years. if taking that small pill daily means functioning the way a healthy individual is suppose to, then i'm cool.
and in the essence of being honest here, why not share with you the fact that i also take what i like to call my 'social pill'. (which is essentially Ritalin). Ritalin being most commonly associated to young children with adhd. it allows me to 1/ not feel the need to nap at continuously throughout the course of the day, and 2/ it also allows me to focus on a task for more than a few seconds. which means i'm able to get shit done. as amazing as my antidepressant has been in terms of allowing me to function, it hasn't done miracles for my chronic fatigue. so my biphentin, which is my prescribed form of Ritalin, allows me to focus long enough to actually read an article and retain at least 75% of what I've read which previously had been closer to 10% we'll say.
overall, i still don't know that depression is the actual underlying problem. i still believe, (which i haven't previously mentioned in this post) that what i'm dealing with is thyroid related. i'm still trying to figure out what's next. but with that being said, i'm happy with how i feel so i'm running with it until it doesn't do it anymore. and for those of you to have known me to be 100% against prescribed medications in the past, i've obviously evolved my understanding and opinion of them. i still believe hands down that diet can do amazing things to ones mind and body but i no longer believe that mental illness can solely be cured by nutrition - we're all human and in knowing that perfection doesn't exist, nothing could ever be so set in stone that a natural method of healing could work consistently for anybody.
so friends, in a nutshell - the above has been my 2012.
(in case you miss it, hit the read more below)
so what does 2013 hold?! what are my hopes and wishes?.... i don't know to be honest......
i know that things are already great, most consistent than they have been in years. i know that when i look forward to the months to come, i see only positivism and happiness. (if you've known me pre-depression and you've known me in the last 6 months, you know that even when things are shitty, i see the positive) life is about experiences and enjoying the small things. it's about trying new things and meeting new people. it's about sharing experiences and looking back and knowing you were meant to be there in that moment at that point in time.
i know that some of what i say has the potential to sound really corny and cliché but humour me
when i look to 2013 and the months to come and i visualize the things i would like to experience and accomplish, i honestly see no obstacles. i see myself making plans and doing them.
2013 will be a year of simplicity and enjoyment for me. i'm not setting in stone anything but one goal, which i have listed below. all others are just a matter of being.
my set in stone goal is checking this first experince off of my bucket list
1/yoga in times square for summer solstice (wed, june 20th, 2013)
2/i'm taking up moksha again (jp already splurged on my first month)
3/osha & stand up paddle boarding
4/picnics in the park and outdoor movies
5/afternoons spent with friends
6/more time spent cooking and savoring
7/ more wine
what i've decided is that i'm sending a link of this post to those of you i feel i owe an explanation to. maybe not so much owe, but would like for you to know what's been happening. at some point, we were close. at some point, the relationship we shared was so different than the one we share now. there's a part of me that feels like i have so many years to make up for in terms of theses relationships but at the same time, it's not a matter of making anything up. for some of you who met me in the thick of the above, and i'm sending this to you, i'm sending it because we got to know each other so well that you know the person you met wasn't the whole me. you now have the exterior shell of that story.
to the others i'm sending this to, i'm thinking we're probably going to be crossing paths in the near future and you may as well know what's been happening. or if we weren't super close, but we met and i'm sending this your way, maybe i wish our meeting would have been different, or maybe i just thought you might like to know what the fuck was wrong with me ;) either way..... now you have it.
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so happy 2013 y'all. i hope your ringing in of the new year was nothing short of amazing and i hope that at some point in 2013, we're lucky enough to cross paths.
je vous aime gros
(i love you as big)
xoxox
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