Category: Personal Development

Autobiography · Mental Health · Personal Development · Relationships

Revival

Ruby Pipes8 Comments

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“tide” © snarl , 2005. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Strangers. Our eyes met and I flashed a smile. The earth was magnetic, chest light and fluttering. He was at once my roots and wings. The world melted and there he stood. Alone. Spotlit. Deafening.

And I find myself having trouble writing about him. About the angles of his body complimenting my curves perfectly. The way we dissolve into giggle fits just by exchanging glances. How his hand regularly reaches for mine, like he needs to be touching me to be sure I’m there. That this is real. That we exist. Here. Together. Finally.

I catch myself wondering if I ought to be jaded. How the broken promise of forever-love should leave me unbelieving. Instead I let him put his hands on either side of my face and kiss me deeply upon greeting. I let my knees get weak and my face to ache from smiling.

There is nothing wrong with inviting love back in.

In the morning he gets up for work and leaves me sleeping. Twisting in the sheets that belong to him. Hours later I climb into the shower. The smell of his shampoo engulfing me in the steam. I breathe deep and boggle at my good fortune of just existing.

He is the first one from the new time. From the beginning years. The first one to meet me after the medication is settled. After I rediscover my own spine and plant my own feet. He is the first one to only see the scars and hear the stories. To not have the memory of the woman I used to be. To not remember how empty I seemed.

We recreate ourselves through others, don’t we? And this time I know how I want to do things differently. So when we’re scared we tell each other, just like when we’re pleased. I stand firm on what’s important to me. I make time to see my friends. I keep writing. I talk to my family. I remember to believe there is nothing wrong with me.

Really believe.

This man does not know the way I pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed about living. He does not know the suffering. And I can see it in the way he looks at me. I am not broken or fragile. I am not a time bomb, a loose cannon. I am not the person I used to be. I’m… Happy. Grateful. Ecstatic and thriving.

Guest Posts · Personal Development

Guest Post: She’s got it all

Ruby Pipes13 Comments

"Entrance into darkness" © Dragan, 2015. CC 2.0.
“Entrance into darkness” © Dragan, 2015. CC BY 2.0.
I have a friend who is gorgeous, tall, svelte, and talented. She’s always fashionably dressed, has great hair, is good at her work, and fun to be around. Basically she’s perfect.

As we became closer I began to notice that she didn’t feel perfect. She felt shunned by a few co-workers, pressured by her managers, and wasn’t enjoying our work environment. Everyone has these experiences so it made her more human to me. Yet she still looked pretty perfect and I loved being around her and her light.

Recently we went out for  lunch. It was one of those catch-up ones where you try to condense four months of living into one hour. Near the end she asked, “How do you do it? You’re always upbeat and you’ve got your stuff together.”

I laughed and said to her, “It’s the drugs.”

My laughing remark became serious as I saw the effect it had on her. Then I had to confess. I told her it’s a lot of therapy and occasionally a pill I’ve been prescribed to help me let go of the anxiety and focus on the lessons learnt in therapy. I told her I adore the psychologist I work with. That her goal on day one was to see less of me and give me the tools to fight my anxiety on my own. I told her I went from multiple sessions a week to visiting my psychologist a few times a year when my tools need sharpening. I offered to send my friend her contact information.

Then it was her turn. She told me she’s been suffering with body dysmorphic disorder since her early teens. Everyone compliments her body, her style, her life, but she feels that she’s barely hanging on. She’s in a committed relationship but confessed , “He didn’t fall in love with me. He fell in love with the girl I pretended to be, not some sick woman.”

Listening to her I knew how she felt. The gift of mental illness is that we can wear a mask so beautiful that it fools the world. So people look at us and think,”She has it all!”

To be honest, I usually don’t mind people thinking that. Today I’m clear so I can see that I have a lot. Can I improve? Yes! What’s the point of life if you can’t improve and learn and grow. Does this room for growth mean that I’m rather incompetent and only making it through by faking it? Not at all.

On days when I’m less clear it comes crashing down. Every mistake is an emergency failure. I’m not really successful I’m just some talented fraud who will be found out at any moment.

I know I’m not alone and unfortunately my friend was honestly hoping for a secret that could help her. Some trick I’ve got to great mental health. My only trick, which has come from therapy, is to attempt to recognize when I’m engaging in distorted thinking and immerse myself in the truth.

The mask I mentioned, well it’s interesting. As we’re busy fooling the world, we’re also fooling ourselves. We really are the strong, fashionable, smart women we’re pretending to be, but the masks are on firmly. When when we take them off we don’t recognize that the faces in the mirror are even more beautiful. The faces behind the masks are everything in the masks, but so much more. The  face have seen darkness, survived, and continue to battle. We are warriors.

–––––

youmeanme is the pen name of a millennial blogger who is blogging her journey out of debt on Saving without Scrimping. She has been battling anxiety and depression for the last twenty years and is learning to cherish each day as a victory.

Would you like to have your work featured on this blog? Send an email to rubyabrowne[at]gmail.com.

Autobiography · Personal Development · Writing

Collective

Ruby Pipes4 Comments
big-loft-room-great-photo-640px
© Collective Agency, 2015.

I noticed it when I started glaring at my walls. Sighing heavy when I moved into my office to start writing for the day. When I couldn’t make myself get up and go running in the morning because what does it matter anyway?

The bounce slipped out of my walk and heavy feet trailed around the apartment. Thick socks dragging dirt from wood floors to carpet and back again. I sat on the couch and played Mario Kart instead of writing. Started watching Jane the Virgin on Netflix. Crocheted my first scarf. Anything to keep my mind, my hands, my eyes busy so I wouldn’t have to write.

Losing momentum. Maybe that’s the best way to describe it. Momentum lost. I love our new apartment and the fact we both have separate offices to work out of. But having a commute that consisted of walking from one room to the next made me feel like I was always and never at work. And not being around other humans during the day really started to take its toll on my emotional well-being.

So last week I joined a coworking space in Portland. I gave myself a thirty minute train ride every morning. A desk surrounded by other desks. People to go to lunch with. A big, warm room filled with folks like me.

And as soon as I got there, I started writing again. Words spilled from my fingertips onto the screen. I careened through blank space, filling it with letters that mattered to me. I took deep breaths and could feel the vibrancy returning to my being.

It’s often the simple things, isn’t it? We have so many monumental battles we’re fighting on any given day that it’s easy for us to forget the small ones. Forget the leaving the house ones. The talking to a friend ones. The making a phone call or reading a book or taking a walk ones. The little battles that make the big ones seem like maybe they’ll be okay.