I will keep fighting every day and I will not surrender to my depression and anxiety.
I can and have accepted that I will have to live with these feelings for the rest my life and it sucks! I have been fighting for the last 20 years and I’m still here. Ha!
Sometimes I want to succumb and lay it to rest (and me) But instead I say fuck you depression! You will not break me, I am going to win, one day at a time. I have had many sunny days over the years but the dark in me never seems to go away, not for good.
When life is difficult, we get the “stay positive” speech from the good-intentioned. Inspirational quotes, are they true or false? and do these sayings really work? Let’s break it done now, shall we…
Think positive and good things will happen = False!
It can work either way. There are things you can’t control no matter how fucking positive you are. You can get lucky though….
Negative thoughts bring negative feelings = True!
Ok, I’ll give you this one. When I am negative and hate myself, I find it’s exhausting. It doesn’t matter if I am positive or negative because they are equally as hard to me, I just have to pick which side I want to be on.
Turn a negative situation into a positive one = True!
It takes some work but can be done and if you can pull it off, it feels great. With mental illness, it is always just a matter of choosing a side to be on. It is truly an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other!
This too shall pass = True!
Nothing last forever, Duh! It’s the waiting that sucks ass!
Positive things happen to positive people = False!
I gotta call bullshit on this one. Negative things happen to positive people and vice versa.
Ok, that being said,
How does a pessimist (I call a dark-sider) stay positive (I call a bright-sider) when you are just not feeling it? I struggle with this every day and I would call myself a realist, who leans towards the dark-sider 🙂
I am not an expert on being positive or being happy in fact, on the contrary, but here are some strategies I use, to the best of my ability. Full disclosure, I am going to use some quotes and/or sayings (that I am sick of hearing) in this post, sorry. Plus, I am going to use a lot of “quotation marks” (doing bunny ears with fingers). So here we go.
Go with the flow or what I call “Just fucking go with it”
I always start the day thinking about of all the things I want to accomplish and it never goes as planned. Life always gets in my way. Life, what a pain in the ass it is sometimes? The only thing I can do is to just accept the way things are going and try to stay on track, or not. If I can stay positive (lean towards being a bright-sider) then I call it a win!
Decide how you will react, to the bullshit or what I call, “Do I care”.
I am pretty good at acting like I am ok with things but underneath I let whatever the situation is, eat me up inside. I need to just relax (which is almost impossible for me) and choose to respond “positively” to the “situation”.
So to help me relax I do this breathing thing my therapist taught me. I count to 4 as I breathe in, count to 4 while holding my breath in, count to 4 as I breathe out and count to 4, then I start it all over again. I do this until I arrive at the “I’m better now” state of mind. It actually works really well for me, most of the time.
Remember there is always tomorrow. Ok, I call this a Do-Over Day.
You know that list of shit I didn’t get done yesterday? Well, it is still unfinished and now it’s longer. Fuck yeah! This is where I get a chance to do what I didn’t do yesterday, Do-over! I usually have a better outcome on the things I have to finish on my “do-over day so I kind of like do-over day.
It didn’t get done for a reason. The reason is usually that I said Fuck This.
Maybe if I had done it yesterday it wouldn’t have turned out as good as it turned out today. This scenario happens to me a lot as I said about the do-over thingy! The idea I had yesterday was not nearly as cool as the one I had today! I love it when that happens!
Be happy with what you have accomplished, I call this, It is what it is.
Ok, whatever. I am never satisfied with what I have done, I beat myself up all the time. I’d rather fail! (Just fucking with ya;) because “failure is not an option” and yeah I just said that. So I have been learning to “pat myself on the bright-sider” which I love and hate at the same time.
Success is relative. Absolutely, you can say that about everything! It’s all about perspective.
Another thing I have a tendency to do is judge my success based on others, but are “they” as successful as I think “they” are. On the flip side of that, am “I” more successful than “I” think I am. It’s all about perspective. If you can change your perspective, will it then change your attitude? I am going to answer that in a positive way (wink) why yes, it can.
Accept what you can’t change. Bring it on bitches.
I am really good at this because I learned at an early age that I wasn’t a “normal” kid and that things never turned out for me the way that they turned out for my friends. I embraced the “fuck it, I’m different” attitude and I wear it well (most of the time).
What is the take away from this staying positive thing?
It’s hard as shit to do but you have to try. Why? Because there are so many things in life worth the effort like your spouse, your kids, your job, your friends, your pets and most importantly YOURSELF. All things will turn out the way they were meant to be, learn to deal with it.
So think about who you are and be that person, even if you are weird, awkward, silly, quiet, obnoxious, shy or outspoken.
Be the one, the only “you”.
I am who I am, depression, anxiety and all that comes with it. As a kid, I wore it well on the outside, pink hair and all. I tried for years to fit into the “mold” but, where’s the fun in that.
I’d rather have lots of tattoos (9, so far), I love alternative music, dark twisted movies/tv shows and I swear a fucking lot. So “fuck it” works for me. Try it on, you’ll never go back!
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