Breaking Bad Habits

What will I do when suicide is no longer my fallback plan? The weight of responsibility is crushing. As terrifying as it may sound and not to downplay my own anguish, the thought of ending my own life is a sanctuary of sorts. When I am low, I become absolutely fixated on my own inadequacies and so will never be able to accomplish anything. The fear of failure is greater than the fear of death.

As I recover (fingers crossed!), I will have to begin facing those anxieties of underachieving without a light at the end of the tunnel. But how? Wanting to live despite sure heartache, failure and disappointment requires breaking the bad habit of entertaining the idea of just opting out. 

When my mum was trying to get me to stop sucking my thumb she painted my nail with some sort of vile tasting polish. Hmm, so what then will be my vile tasting polish for this bad habit? 

Working in a bookstore for four years I have avoided the self-help section like the plague. The section astounded me; thousands of books all geared towards self-improvement. Flipping through the table of contents of any of them lead me to two conclusions: positive thinking is the key to happiness and that the self-help industry has been built on the most head-slappingly, simple obvious advice. Think good thoughts and your life will improve! Earth-shattering! Cats and dogs, living together!  

But alas, I’ve lost my natural instinct for positivity and so my Olympian-like proclivity for daydreaming is a thing of the past. 

Although a severe depressive episode usually cannot be helped and is so debilitating that to focus on anything other than the depression requires Herculean strength; negative thinking is a dangerous byproduct. And once that negative thought weasels in there the next low is that much closer. The key seems to be focusing on the not-so-low times and squeezing some happy thoughts between unhappy. I need to force myself to daydream again.

I’m not going to be making a vision board or anything but I’ll give positive thinking a shot.

So, getting back to my original quandary of what to do when suicide is no longer my fallback future, well, instead of killing myself I’m going to get a dog and name her Dorothy Barker. I am going to work on reading a book a week. I will keep writing this blog and try my hand at writing fiction again. My best friend and roommate is moving away so I will find a new apartment, a beautiful little one-bedroom with a big sunny kitchen and vine covered balcony. I applied for university and I will get my BA studying the classics. I am going to run everyday and maybe even try my hand at a marathon. I’m going to save up money and go visit my darlings in Edinburgh and Albania (?!) and my brother in Denmark. 

There is so much for me to look forward to and knowing that right this moment when I am relatively stable is all the more important because I’m not out of the woods yet. The darkness will fall upon me again but until then I will fortify myself with my dreams .