Where did it all go wrong?

What exactly causes depression or anxiety?

According to Harvard Medical,

“It’s often said that depression results from a chemical imbalance, but that figure of speech doesn’t capture how complex the disease is. Research suggests that depression doesn’t spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, stressful life events, medications, and medical problems. It’s believed that several of these forces interact to bring on depression.”

The past few months since my 30th birthday I have been trying to figure out where it all changed? Honestly I have no idea. Can you truly sift through all the memories of the past and try to pinpoint anything? I’ve gone through journals, yearbooks, scrapbooks and miscellaneous pictures that I’ve tried to put in chronological order and there are a few things that could have:

1. Abuse (physical, verbal and sexual)
2. Growing up without my immediate family and feeling abandoned
3. Pressures from grandparents (good grades, follow all directions, etc…)
4. “Tight Leash” with the grandparents (constant checking on me, not being able to go out after school, go away for the weekends, etc…)
5. working at a young age and providing for the family
6. College full time, Internship, extern, and working full time while trying to maintain my GPA
7. Financial issues
8. Negative relationships
9. Death of loved ones
10. Feeling alone in everything because I wouldn’t know where to start to communicate, therefore suppressing all emotions

It could be a mix of all these. Everyone goes through different stressful situations and we all cope different ways. Some of us, like myself when I go through these types of emotions it’s hard to “just snap out of it.” I’m just trying to figure out what helps me cope, talking to someone definitely helps. I think we’ve had a couple breakthroughs. I’m getting closer to figuring things out. I may not totally understand what happened or what lead me down this path, but I am finding ways to slowly get back to my former self.

Although a part of me is thinking that maybe my goal should not be how to get back to her, but to find someone even better. I’m hoping to meet the stronger, wiser, confident, unashamed, and trusting version of myself. I hope that my trials lead me to a path that is much better than the one I just left. It’s not easy, but one can hope.

So far talking to someone on a regular basis is helping. I’m also slowly going back to my arts and crafts. Hopefully next post I can come up with a list of things to help cope…

Until next time…