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I remember seeing him for the first time. We were looking for puppies and decided to go for a boxer. We were looking through ads and decided to schedule a few meetings to see the different litters. I saw his little face and saw that spot of white fur above his nose, and that was me. That was the moment I lost my heart to him. I kept being told that I shouldn’t get attached, that he might not be there, but I couldn’t help myself. We drove for ages, and we finally got there. Went into the house, and we met his momma. I petted her and as I was doing that, I felt two little tongues on my leg. When I looked down, there were two little puppies. There he was. The family was trying to get him and his little brother to play, but he was sleepy, and he kept wanting to waddle back to his bed. I loved that about him. His sassiness and commitment to do exactly what he wanted. While I was there, it fell on me to choose between the two puppies, and I faltered. I wondered which would be the best choice. Was I being selfish, or was I just picking him just because he was bigger than his brother? I just felt like there was something about him. A touch of destiny, perhaps. The therapy needed to address my being able to get what I wanted and second-guessing it… I listened to my heart, though, and I went with my heart. We got to take my dreamboat home, and this is how our story started. We got this baby, and he was the sweetest thing I've ever seen in my life. He was soft as velvet, and he had the biggest brown eyes looking back at me. Sunshine was coming out of his little bum. He was walking on his Bambi legs, which looked too long for his body. I had held him and cuddled him on the drive back, and he smelled of rainbows, happiness, and wishes coming true. I loved his smell so much, and I still breathe his smell in deeply now. Oxytocin gets released when a mother bonds with her child, and the same happens when an owner bonds with their pet. I did not doubt in my mind that I would do anything in my power to make sure that he was protected and that he was happy. I would go to jail tomorrow if anybody tried to hurt him. On the first night, we could hear him crying in the kitchen while we were googling and whispering under the covers, trying to understand what we should do. We tiptoed to see what he was doing, and he was crying and looking at his reflection in the stove door, that way, when you cry, you look at yourself in the mirror to see if you are suffering enough. He fell asleep and we could take some rest too, but not for long, cause he would be up shortly after. During the day, he would come to sleep on my ankles, and I put down the cushions for him so he could be more comfortable. I have taken so many pictures of him just living his life and playing with his little toy monkey. The next night, we knew that we couldn’t leave out water and food, cause that would make him wake up again and again. He was still in the kitchen, and there was a cardboard stuck to the door keeping him in. I could hear him banging against the improvised door, and all of a sudden, I could hear him crying closer. I went to check, and I could see my little Houdini crying and chewing on a sneaker that he found in the hallway. I put him back in the kitchen, without talking or comforting him, just like the internet said, and I went back to not sleeping a wink, worrying about him being ok. On day 3, we bought a crate to try something different. To get him used to the crate, we played with him in it, I got fully in and fed him treats, we put his bed in there, and he managed to sleep in it during the day, and then it was time to take it into our bedroom during the night. He cried for an hour, and then we all finally managed to fall asleep. I had my light on, and I was hanging halfway down the bed so he could see me, but that worked. He was happy that he was not alone, and he could see me, but I slept so poorly for months. I started to see him so much like my child. I worried about him being healthy, I worried about what he might want to eat, toys he might like, treats, and vitamins he might need to take. I saw him so small and in need of so much help. He had so much to learn that in the beginning, it was overwhelming. We would go into the back garden, and he would investigate the leaves, tripping over his legs and sniffing everything. A bit scared of the new environment while I was trying to encourage him to smell everything and try to be brave. His first time we played was in the garden, and a stick was his first outside toy. Inside, he had this quiet little monkey that he loved so much; out of all the toys, he took care of that one the best, and he would sleep with it. It is one of the things that I still have, that I will keep with me forever. His personality was so strong. He always wanted to join in everything, he always wanted to be around us, and he was a demanding little princess from day one. Plenty of times I have found myself in the bathroom and him kicking in the door like SWAT and coming in. He would just waddle in and come to fall asleep on my feet while I was on the toilet. As he got older, he would come and lick my face, and regardless of how much, I would try to tell him to get out; the most I got was him lying down and guarding me. I suppose it makes sense since I am connected to him, and I have to watch him every time he goes to the bathroom. I could live without him staring into my soul while he is squatting and his knees are shaking, but apparently, I am meant to give him cues in case he is not safe. I also don’t get to take a bath in peace, he would come in and try to drink some of my bath water. I would essentially be a giant tea bag for him. We knew from the start that taking him on would be our greatest responsibility. That training him right would mean that we would keep him safe since he was going to grow to be a big boy. We couldn’t roughhouse with him as a pup, we knew that we had to watch as he would be around children. He is a boxer, and his instinct is to hook around our hands with his paws and pull things in, he throws paws, and he stomps on things. I got chewed on, I was black and blue from claws since he didn’t know his strength, and I got hurt, but he learned. My baby is gentle as anything. Whenever I say “ouch”, he will immediately drop the toy and start sniffing me and licking me to comfort me and make sure I am all right. He will wait by the toy so I can chuck it for him. He will not play fetch for the life of him, but he will love to have you chase him. If you say drop it and you are holding the toy, he will drop it, but otherwise, he just likes to tease you. Potty training meant I had stepped in so many warm and cold puddles that I care to remember. We tried taking him out every two hours, and we tried to introduce the bells system, which he took to like a duck to water, but he was being so demanding with it that we decided to remove it as he was bullying us with impatiently ringing them. I had asked the nurse what I should do as he didn’t seem to make progress, and she said that by 6 months, he should be fully trained. That started to feel like pressure, and then like clockwork, when he turned 6 months, that was him trained. He must have been listening to the nurse, too. I have had to let go of the idea that my house is going to be perfectly clean and that this is an all-right price to pay to have him. He would drink water and leave a trail behind him. He would eat and then go around the house and wipe his face on everything I own. If you do not come and wipe his face, he will come and wipe on you. Guess who gave up on the idea of looking cute while walking the dog? He would pull like a fiend on the lead so my shoulder and back have gone so many times than I care to remember. To mediate that, I would let him off the lead, and when it rained, he would go, find, and lie down in a puddle, get the zoomies, and then try to body slam me to play with me. He would then growl like a demon dog and gently nibble on my sleeve. He sounds aggressive, but that is because he is so vocal when he plays. I called him a hellhound a few times, and he got the biggest puppy dog eyes when I did, and I swear the more I repeated it, he just got fluffier and cuter. The irony amused me every time. I became a true helicopter mom. Training him to stay alone in the house gave me the worst case of anxiety. While he was in the house, stealing our things and making a bed out of them to comfort himself, I was in town thinking of one hundred ways that he would kill himself alone in the house. There would have been a fire, and he would have been trapped. I forgot to remove his collar, and he will strangle himself. Everything would happen in this one hour while I was in the supermarket, and I wasn’t there to protect him. I would spend my time watching him sleep and wondering if I could ever make him as happy as he makes me. When he would wag his tail in his sleep, I liked to think that it meant that he had had a good day and when he would cry or bark in his sleep, I would think that maybe he was upset and had had a bad day and I would hug him and kiss him and tell him that he is safe, and he is loved. From time to time, I would cry at the thought that my perfect little angel would only live a short life, and I would lose him at some point. Life had a rhythm to it. Wake up. Take Bruno for a walk. Feed Bruno. Get ready for work. Put him in the crate or just say goodbye and then leave. Go to work. Come back. Cook dinner. Feed Bruno. Walk Bruno. Cuddle with him. He began to sleep in our bed, and while he slept between us in the beginning, he would end up sleeping with his head on my ankles first and then between my legs in a coil or spread eagle. I have spent so much time not moving for fear of waking him up or trying to figure out how to move around him so I can relieve some of my back pain. It had a rhythm, and then it didn’t. Then I was faced with the decision of keeping him or letting him go. I tried to figure out what I could do to keep the love of my life, and at the same time, I felt so much shame that I felt weak, and I could barely take care of myself, so I didn’t know how I could possibly take care of him. It didn’t help that I tried to get close to him, and he would run away from me. It seemed that he had made his choice, and it felt so selfish of me to try to hold on to him. I wrestled so much with these thoughts and when I left the house to start the new stage of my life, while I had not decided about us, I buried my face in his fur, and I cried all of my unfulfilled hopes and dreams about the life that we could’ve had, and I begged him to forgive me for being weak. I later decided I could not give him up, so an arrangement was worked out about sharing time with Bruno. We could give each other up just fine, but never him. I would visit him. When I would come to the door, I would be received with such joy by Bruno. He would body slam me and give me kisses, he would wag his tail, and his entire body would turn into this croissant shape, and I would feel so loved by him. We would go walking, and I was so happy to spend time with him, but I felt like we were chased, like we were on the run, like there would be nowhere to rest. All of a sudden, I couldn’t have him all the time. I didn’t have the freedom to choose what I wanted to do with him, I had to adjust to just having glimpses of him, even though I would see him every other day, during the pandemic. I was able to stay in the backyard and not only see him but all the other dogs that were in the building, and they made me so happy. So much joy from them to see me, and I was so happy to see them. They received me without judgment and love, and that made me feel so happy. The most honest of connections. I moved again after another 6 months, and I was able to have him for a week at a time. I felt more at peace. I could enjoy him without restraints, we could schedule our day however we wanted, and I made sure I took so many pictures of him so whenever I didn’t have him, I could look at them to get me through it. In this period, he also became a teenager. He started to try to push boundaries and see what he could do. He also started to get his hormones coming through, and he was maturing sexually. That meant he was becoming more protective of me. He was becoming more aggressive and trying to square up to other male dogs. I was very anxious, and that was being transmitted to him too. I felt that I was failing him as I didn’t know how to control this, and I didn’t know how to train him and help him through it. I became scared that I was putting him at risk, and if he attacked another dog, he would be destroyed because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. We came together and we went to a behaviourist, and he confirmed that it was our fault, and we were transmitting the anxiety to Bruno and making him feel like he needed to protect us. We also decided that we need to neuter him so we can curb this behaviour and ensure that he can have a full life, to be able to play and be off leash rather than be trapped in this hyperaware state of mine and then getting tunnel vision and going for another dog. That helped, and he calmed down. Sure, there are still dogs he doesn’t like, and that is fine, but I know how to recognise the signs, to avoid a conflict, and how to calm him down. He brings me such immense joy from his beautiful face to seeing his ears bounce when he walks. I love the click-clack of his nails on the pavement when he walks at night. He makes me smile. I see him running around. The way he gets zoomies, and his head goes back as he runs off. The way he comes over when he is mad, makes a circle to get ready to sit down, stops, looks at me up and down, and then essentially chucks himself on my legs, landing with a sigh. That is the most discreet “I love you, bitch!” I ever got. I love the way his tail moves like that of a rattlesnake when he coils to go to sleep. I love to think that when I take off his collar, he is wild and naked like I feel without my bra. I love how he never steals food off a plate, but he just puts his face next to the plate and then uses his eyes to send messages that he wants the food. He will not cry, but he will drool, and there will be spit bubbles. The way he arranges the pillows when he sleeps is just like when he was a baby; he loves a cushion. Even his side eye and the way he judges my entire existence make me smile. He also triggers me immensely. I had days when I was falling apart, and I felt like I was not doing enough. I would walk him, and then he would take too long for my anxiety, and I would start telling him that he should hurry up. Or he would want to play more and would try to run away, while I would be depressed and wanting to lie down, having already struggled to get out of the house. If he came back into the house and started crying, every single cry would tell me that I wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t doing enough. That I was being selfish. That I am holding him for my benefit when I should let him be, and he would be happier without me. I feel I can never get sick because then there would be nobody else to take him out when I have him. It gives me anxiety to go out when I have him because I feel separation anxiety and guilt. His being sick is the worst. The last time, he was sick, and I thought I saw blood when I was cleaning up. I called the vet and explained what was happening, and she gave me advice and told me to keep him hydrated with a syringe. It was a Sunday, and the pharmacies were closed. I was panicking so much as I didn’t know what to do to help Bruno, and I was so worried about what it could be. In my highly anxious state, I put my finger in his water bowl and rubbed it on his gums like it was cocaine in Narcos. What that did was stick his upper lip to his gums and expose his four upper front teeth. With his lip like that, he looked at me, and then away, and then at me, and then away. I could see the wheels in his brain moving as he must have been thinking: “Have I… Have I just been assaulted here? Do I need to call SSPCA on this woman?” That thought alone made me laugh, and all of a sudden, I was relaxed. I knew that whatever would happen, I would do whatever needed to be done for him to be safe, and we would be fine. I might not have it together, but I will show up for him. Just as he triggers me, he calms me down. He comes and gives me kisses, he licks my face, and he cuddles with me. He brings me toys when I am down, he makes me go on walks, and by the end of them, I promise you that I am laughing, I am relaxed, and I have a good time. He is calm and forgiving. When I snap at him, he is disappointed, but when I come to my senses and realise that it is about me and he is not to blame, I apologise, and he will happily accept the hugs and kisses. We eat together, and I love to cook for him. He checks up on me when I have fallen asleep on the couch and comes to take me to our bedroom. If he is asleep somewhere else, he will eventually come and sleep in my bed. Looking at him makes me happy. Cuddling him makes me happy. Smelling him makes me happy. He has this calm way about him when it comes to people who are scared of dogs, and that calm expectation without judgment means that I lot of people who are scared of dogs are not scared of Bruno. He is so gentle and loving. He is so kind that a part of me feels proud that we have raised him right. He makes one feel taken care of whenever he is around, loved without expectation and limits. I am so lucky to have Bruno in my life. He is one of my soul mates. While people think that he is just a dog, for me, he is where all my maternal urges have gone, he is the reason I am still around. He is also the one who triggers all of my fears around parenthood. He is my teacher when it comes to living in the moment. He is silently loving and wise, showing me that actions are more important than words. Every moment with him is precious, and I try to capture as many as I can in these snow globe moments, like him playing in the snow, making a new friend, and him getting stalked by the neighbourhood fox. My time with him is so precious, and my little angel spreads love, joy, and laughter everywhere he goes and with everyone he meets. I might not know a lot of things, but believe me when I tell you, if you met him, you would love Bruno too.

It is hilarious how art imitates life. We all start with a basic character. Who we are and where we came from dictate our starting point strengths and weaknesses. We then start to explore the open world, and we make decisions that dictate the character and the stats that we will have at the end of our game. We unlock achievements and miss opportunities, all hoping for the best. There are simple things that influence us. Things like going to my dad and asking him if I am beautiful. He said no and started to laugh. Cue me crying in a therapy session over 25 years later that I never feel like the most beautiful woman in the room, that I never feel like the smartest person at the table. I recounted this story, and I could remember it so vividly even though I think I asked the question when I was 8 or 9. My therapist assured me that my father surely thought he was making a joke and if I were to bring it up, he would not remember that it happened. Would this have been the source of my low self-esteem for years? Potentially not, but it showed me that if you throw a rock in the pond, one does not know where the ripples will go. You then add years of being told you are too skinny or that you still need to lose a few kilograms. I was laughed at for being too white, laughed at for being a late bloomer and not having big breasts, compared again and again and found wanting. I felt fat at 54 kilograms, I felt that I needed to lose some more weight and tone up and maybe then I would be enough. I am 1.70m, by the way. I was considered underweight medically, but the brain is a liar. My genes kept me skinny so, for the longest time, I could eat whatever I wanted and not gain weight, I never starved myself. I then got to the point where I started to comfort eat to the point where I went to 81.2kg. I know the exact weight because I had decided to weigh myself and start going to the gym as a New Year’s resolution. It wasn’t just the weight, I kept looking into the mirror and saw that the eyes were most definitely mine but nothing else seemed like me. It started slowly, just one kilogram here and there. Eating to hide from the anxiety, eating to feed depression. Losing bits of myself, one mouthful at a time for 7 years. Just buy bigger clothes and hide the fact that I am losing respect for myself. Binge eating is truly a trap. Then my crisis came. Absolute panic stations. Depression, anxiety, boundless loneliness, insomnia, panic attacks. I would forget to eat, I would forget to drink water, I would forget I have a body until it hurt. I would undress, wash, and put my clothes on without really being aware of my physical being. I was just a walking tangled thought bubble. Surviving not really living. Then one day, I was just walking by the mirror, and I caught my eye. So much so that my eyes got fixed to the mirror and my body had to travel back into view. For the first time in a long time, I looked, and I saw that changes had started without me knowing. My body had changed, and I was starting to look like my old self. I was starting to shed the pounds as I was going through my thoughts, and I was shedding old beliefs. I was looking more like my old self and that made me feel good. I started a practice of looking at myself in the mirror to make sure that my mind keeps track and keeps in check with my physical body. Some things I liked right away, some things I had to accept that they are a work in progress, and I have accepted them as they are. I started to take pictures of myself. Partly because those were milestones and those were proud moments when I felt good, partly so I could monitor the progress. The funny thing is that whenever I look at them now, I never focus on the body, really. I focus on the eyes. The eyes always tell the story. They say how I was dead inside; they say how I came back to life and how I continue to become. The sparkle, the light, the inflexions. Windows to the soul and my soul had been in pain for so long and now it was reaching out for happiness. When I first started the journey, I had seen The Call to Courage by Brene Brown and what I knew with certainty about myself was that I had always been vulnerable, I have always shown who I am. In truth, all I have ever wanted was for somebody to truly see me so, vulnerability had come so naturally. It is not an easy path, unfortunately. Because one is so vulnerable, it is so easy to get hurt when you don’t pick the people to be vulnerable with wisely. I had always been naïve about it and trusted people immediately. Judged them by my own measure. I was honest so; I assumed that everybody was honest. I tried not to hurt anybody, and I assumed that people had good intentions. I always try to see people as they can be in their best version of themselves. I treat them as if they can be that. Most people will be awfully quick to prove me wrong and that is disappointing since I ask for so little but, it is so wonderful when people do turn out to be great. For that little spark, all the rest of it is worth it. With my new image being built and my ego still very fragile, I have started to look outwards. Observe the world and see that this template of what is loveable and what is not is skewed. There is no rhyme or reason, there is no right or wrong. There is no perfect recipe, and I can’t be fragmented constantly to please other people. I had been wrong before about so many other things and if I was wrong about them, what does that say about me? What I can remember from philosophy is that there are three people in every person, the one that you think you are, the one that other people think you are and the person you really are. Cue existential crisis. Who am I? I knew how to be somebody’s partner but what am I by myself? What do I like? What do I want? If there is a purpose for all of this, what could it be? So, I have started to put together a spreadsheet. I am both analytical and goal-oriented so, there must be a method to the madness. One creates a spreadsheet and within catalogues assumptions, things I know I am things am not sure of and things on which I can improve. I have started looking at each one and I tried to be as honest as I can in each of them in the quest for myself. Starting to see myself, starting to appreciate myself, starting to set small goals for myself and achieving them made me feel stronger, made me feel like I could do this like I can be all that I want to be. Boundaries had to come next. I can do anything, but I must do it in my own timeline. So, I had to start telling people what my terms and conditions were for engagement and stick by them. The first painful lesson was that some people just want to use you, and they will do anything that they can to keep you in place. I thought that I was being supported and understood by this person and then I found that I am only liked if I don’t say No. That there is no care, there is no understanding, there is only lip service to keep me saying yes. So, I had to get rid of the shame and the guilt around No being a full sentence. “I don’t want to” is a perfectly good explanation. It is all right for people to leave my life if they think that my boundaries are a problem. The next one was harder still. Realising that people don’t think of you as much as you think they do. Not even people that say they love you and when they hurt you and you confront them, they say they hadn’t stopped to consider your feelings. I understood from it that people will do what serves them and while I thought that their concern is also about my happiness, the same way I consider how I affect others and constantly try to figure out if I am being fair, that it is not the way that everybody does it. And with that fact, I understood that the only person I owe happiness to is myself. That I am the only one that suffers the consequences of my choices so, why would I live my life to please other people if it is not the life, I envisioned for myself? I have the power to make myself happy or unhappy if I accept less than I deserve. Still work in progress on that one but I am getting better. Next, I looked inward again and again and started questioning why I was not good enough. Why do I not feel better no matter what I do? I started to pay more attention to the things that I tell myself when I am at my lowest. You watch the ghost that keeps on yelling and the more you look at it, the more familiar it sounds. The brain tries to keep hold of it, but it is somewhat in the corner of your mind’s eye. And then one day it clicks. It is the voice of your dad. All the things that were said when he was angry, and they have all been taken over and now they are the things I say to myself to put myself down. But, still, not enough, that wouldn’t explain everything, and one keeps on searching and one keeps on drilling and thinking on it until, one day while washing my hair, the thought just surfaced: “You are never enough because you were never enough for mom” First, it comes as a surprise. What a strange idea. Where did it come from? And I repeat it in my head a few times and every single time, it rings more and more true. And then I just start to cry because it is the answer to something I have been trying to riddle for ages. It has been forever present in the back of my mind but, it has been pushed to the back again and again because it is so painful. It has guided and shaped me and now that I say it, I can be free of it. I try to think of a moment when I was told “I love you” and no matter how much I try, I can’t find any in my memory. I pay attention when I talk about my achievements, and I talk about the things that make me happy, I get nothing. Maybe an “oh, that’s good.” Or a “good for you.” It cuts deep but then after a lot of crying and depression, one accepts it. I accept that I do not need her approval to be happy. Just because she cannot participate in my joy, it does not mean there is none to be had, or there is nothing to be celebrated. And then life brings you a Ted Talk called “The Art of Being Yourself” by Caroline McHugh and everything just starts making sense. She said that we have one true note to sing in this world and our life goal is to find that one thing that we were meant to do. You have something that nobody else has and one should not compare to others because they have things that we don’t have and that is all right. People will like you for who you are. The right people will always show up for you. The right people, the ones that count will always cheer for you. They will be part of your sorrow, and they will be part of your joy. Above all else, you are your true ride-or-die. You must be kind to yourself. Accept yourself. Forgive yourself. Love yourself from the bottom of your heart. Be honest with yourself. We are born alone, and we die alone. We only have ourselves for the entire life and we are the worst with ourselves. Knowing all this the competition is no longer on the outside. You no longer compare to others, but you compare to how you were yesterday. I still struggle to see what I have achieved. When you are caught up in things, you can’t tell how far you’ve come, you can’t really see all the changes that have been made as they are happening. And then the universe just sends you another crisis and, in that crisis, you struggle, and you stumble and fall, and you feel distraught but, when you stop and look at things you realise that you have handled it a lot better than you would have before, that you showed up for yourself so much more than you would have ever done. And at the end of it, after not having slept for an entire night, after I had been so anxious that I felt nauseous and I had trembled for hours after I told myself that I was hopeless and things were just not getting better no matter how much I try, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I thought: “Look at you! Sure, your life is an absolute dumpster fire now but, you are gorgeous! That body. That face. Tragedy becomes you. Time for a nap and then back to sorting this disaster” And that is how I know that I am strong within myself. It is not always a beeline and sometimes I will struggle but one thing is for certain: “I AM ENOUGH!.”

I have always been interested in the intricacies of the human mind. I have always watched documentaries that explain how the brain works, how different chemicals influence emotions and how those emotions influence actions. I love watching true crime documentaries that talk about the life of serial killers, and documentaries about how the brain chemistry works and I always look for the nurture vs nature components that are at play. I found dreams interesting and how the subconscious sends messages to you, or your brain tries to continue to problem solve even while you sleep. I have always thought that words have power and that there is so much meaning in the words we pick, how we choose to order them, and how they are used to emphasize certain things. The right words can motivate and inspire, and the wrong words can cut and bring someone to their knees. Every choice conveys meaning and gives clues about the speaker. Listen enough and everything will be revealed. From this point of view, talk therapy has always intrigued me as to how therapists can pick the thread of the issues from the stories we tell. I am an introvert and an overthinker, so my instinct when something happens is to start dissecting it and introspecting to see what happened, how it happened and how can I assign blame… to myself, mainly. I have been on the brink of breakdown and despair many times and I have always known that I needed therapy. I kept on thinking about it from time to time and then talking myself out of it. While I was young, I knew that there would have been an expense that my parents would not have wanted to take on. When I started earning, I kept on thinking about it but, kept on saying that I have been managing to keep it together on my own so, I can deal with everything just fine. I think a big part of it was that I was still in Romania, and we still had this view that you are just meant to keep your problems to yourself, never air your dirty laundry in public and that one should just get on with it. I moved to the UK and the times moved as well and the focus on mental health has increased and still, I thought that I could be just fine. Regardless, of how hard I struggled I still thought I could do it. The idea of trying therapy seemed so big. I didn’t even know where to start. I kept on saying that I would try it and that I needed to work on myself but I still, didn’t do anything about it. After a bit of procrastination and going back and forward, an appointment was made for me. I have found myself in front of the building about 15 minutes early with no idea of what I am going to say for an hour. I do have two speeds, either too anxious about things that I arrive super early, or I get too relaxed, I underestimate how much time I need to get ready, and I am late. This time, my thoughts were racing, and the time was just expanding and dragging. If the social anxiety didn’t get me, the fact that I was given the instructions to a labyrinth would certainly do it. I get lost in a turnaround and I have two screens worth of instructions. I got this image of a skeleton in a corner of the building like in a cartoon, just bones and my outfit with a couple of daisies, no desert around me. I finally made it to the door with two minutes to spare. It gave me enough time to do everything that I should do. Should I knock? Would that be rude? Would somebody be in, and I would interrupt? I stayed there and stared at my watch, letting the seconds go by and I felt that this was an important moment, like standing on the precipice of something great. At the top of the hour, I took a deep breath and knocked. I was let in, offered a seat and given a form to fill. Just the usual info but at the very end was a section that required me to add an emergency contact. That part made me crumble on the inside, my hands started to shake, I felt so incredibly lonely, and I felt ashamed that I had to say it aloud. I have just very feebly asked if it were required to fill it in just then or if I could leave it for another time. She smiled and said that it would not be a problem and then we settled in our chairs and looked at each other properly for the first time. I made a mental note that she looked like my mother. She asked me what my expectations were of our time together to which I replied that it was to be guided to find my solutions. I am dramatic in all things, and I could not help doing a parallel with the Divine Comedy. As Dante loses his way, he finds himself in the woods and as he wanders around, he finds himself at the foot of a mountain but as he is attempting to make his way, his path is blocked in turn by a leopard, lion and she-wolf, aka, lust, pride, and greed. As he despairs, he sees a shadow approaching and it is Virgil, his guide through the Inferno, to show him the way through it. My beasts were anxiety, depression and panic attacks and my Virgil was using cognitive behavioural therapy to guide my path. I had been terrified that I would not be able to fill an hour but once we started, I had to be told that the time was up. It was pouring out of me. I never wanted to be judged and while I knew that I was being assessed, I didn’t feel any trace of judgement, even further, I didn’t feel any trace of expectation for me to act or be in a certain way. We started face-to-face and then, when the pandemic began, we switched to phone calls. While I was just a voice on the phone, I never felt so seen in my life. I wasn’t used to anybody listening, so I was used to talking to myself and I was most definitely used to being shut down when I tried to express emotions so, having someone to really listen, understand and validate me was incredibly addictive. I had my friend, Diana and I had my therapist and between them, I was anchored, and I had a support system like I had never had before. While other people turned to drugs and alcohol to numb their pain, I started to look at it as an enigma I needed to solve. I would watch documentaries, interviews and TED talks trying to understand what was happening. I was analysing myself and my emotions and then I would have my therapy session where we would discuss it all. In the beginning, I would count the days between the sessions and when the day came, I could unload everything. It felt like people were tired of talking about my breakup and my feelings and they either talked to me less and less or they would tell me that I should get over it, put it behind me, and stop talking about it. The positive thinking chat was brought up. I started to feel shame and guilt that I wasn’t getting better fast enough and that I was bothering people and then in my therapy session I could be open about how I felt, and I would get told “Everything you feel right now, it’s normal.” That gave me permission to feel my feelings and put down my burden. It gave me respite even for a few hours. We had a chat, and I was told that I had to feel my feelings. I thought I was or, at least most of them but I got told that I needed to feel ALL of them. All of them? There were so many and even the ones that were sipping through were extremely painful and violent. I have been told that I need to feel them as they come otherwise, they will surface and explode in my face at the worst times. Well, at the time, everybody was about the good vibes so, after watching a Ted Talk about the high number of suicides in the world’s happiest country and learning about people being happy by comparison, I concluded that while I have no good vibes to give, I can bring happiness to people because they would be better off than I am. This is the time when it was suggested to me that I should stop watching Ted Talks if this is the way they make me feel. Fair enough! I could see that it was working, and I had days when I felt a lot better so, I listened to my therapist’s advice like it was the word of God. It wasn’t easy to work by any means. Before every session, we would take the test that assessed my anxiety and my depression, and I was knocking it out of the park. My test scores were high on both accounts, which also meant that I was in quite a dark place. Furthermore, to start becoming aware of my patterns and my triggers, I started to rate my emotions on a mood chart. Not only would I rate myself, but I would write an account of what happened. It hurt the first time when I felt it and again when I wrote about it and reflected on it. We would then look at it together and see if we can gain any wisdom from it. Things were pilling on and on and I did go so far into depression that I became suicidal so, I had asked for help, and I also went on antidepressants. I felt that we had a very good rapport, which is very important but that doesn’t mean that emotions are going to be linear. There was a time when I felt anger towards her. I felt like I was stuck, and I didn’t know how to progress, and I felt resentful because it seemed to me like she knew and wouldn’t tell me. Why wouldn’t she just tell me? This would be so much easier if I just got a list, I thought. Of course, that is not how it works. Therapy doesn’t work at that pace and your therapist doesn’t lift the curtain on all your life problems for a grand reveal. Mostly because, one would rebel, reject the revelation, and never come back to therapy. These are feelings and parts of the self that have been hidden or rejected so, it would be quite the shock to face them all at once. I got crumbs, I got hints and then I resolved issues at the speed that I was ready to accept them. I was determined to make this happen so; I decided that if the subject is too easy to talk about it is not an issue. I wanted to make a real change in my life, and I couldn’t do that unless I fully committed and leaned into it. Nobody changes what they don’t consider a problem so unless things are ready to come to light, the subject will be dodged again and again. There is this thing called Kintsugi. It is a Japanese art form in which broken pottery is put back together with gold. The idea is that one embraces the flaw and that the imperfection makes it an even more beautiful piece. The gold makes it more durable, and more resilient. I felt so broken, and I was being put back together piece by piece, I felt that by the end of it, I would look like C-3PO. Slowly, things started to get better, I started to accept my feelings, and they started to get easier to feel then with my mind not being in a constant state of flux, I could concentrate and evaluate everything so, I started to test the waters with the new skills that I was learning, and I started to feel better. Days felt lighter and it was funny that sometimes I would speak to my therapist and Diana independently and they would give me the same advice or have the same opinion and now I had the mental space to appreciate the gift of both of them. I would walk with Bruno, and I felt that he was such an amazing dog to be around. We had talked about looking at my childhood and while I accepted in principle, I would change the subject insistently when it came to practice. There were a few sessions that were just chats, so I was asked if I still needed therapy and if I was still getting the full benefit of our time. I considered it but I still felt that I had a few things to cover. And then, it was time. I said that I was finally ready for her to let go of my hand and for me to step out into the world. There is always a final conversation in which we assess how it all went and also, one gets reminded that this is not a final thing, that life is full of ups and downs, that healing is not linear and if there is a need to come back, the possibility is always available. I had done 7 months of therapy at that point and by the end of it, I was so grateful for the help that I got. I had started this journey not knowing who I was and by the end of it, I had received the gift of me. I had reconnected with myself, and I was deeply in love with myself. This had been more than I could have ever hoped for, and this would have to be a goodbye… for now.

Here I am, in the wastelands of my own consciousness. I am in the eye of the storm, but for once, there is peace. I can see all my thoughts whirling around, the ghosts of the past clutching at me, and my demons prowling, ready to pounce at any minute. It has been such a long journey, and it all started with me willing myself off the floor. I was so small and so scared, not knowing what to do next. I decided that giving up was not an option and took the first shaky step into the unknown. I was disconnected from myself, a stranger for years. I looked in the mirror and I wondered who the woman was staring back at me. It was not only that I didn’t know her, it was not only that she was so far from what I thought she would be but, I saw her as wanting, as weak. I hated her so much and I tried to get as far away from her as I could. A troubled time followed, sailing the rough seas of my own failings. I braved the storms knowing that I would not find what I was looking for unless I kept going beyond the dark clouds. I braved it as could, but it all seemed endless. Just a wide stretch of despair as far as the eye can see. The shackles of this world were tying me down, pulling me under and the void was so alluring. The thought that I am just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things and if I disappeared no one would know the difference, no one would care. Just a blip out of existence like I had never even been. I wanted to let go. For what was I fighting? For better? I have hoped for better and better seldom came and if it did it would only be temporary. Just enough happiness to hint at a possibility that I can have it too. It always came with a great fear that everything would just disappear in a puff of smoke. At this cross point, my guardian stepped up. Fearful, unsure of me but, with so much love in his heart. Two brown eyes watching me without a word. Waiting for me to make a move, to make a choice. I would pet him, and his soft coat would bring me peace. I would put my head on his fury chest and the sound of his beating heart would quiet the voices in my head. He would put his paws on my shoulder, and he would slowly and methodically lick my face, lick my tears away, making me feel taken care of, making me feel loved. Giving me his love when I had none for myself. Bruno was unassuming. He didn’t judge me for my past and didn’t question my future. He lived in the moment, and he accepted me as I was. He didn’t judge me for being in a low spot. He had absolutely no expectation of what I should be or how I should feel. He became the Cerberus, guarding my own personal hell. He has shown me love beyond belief. He has accepted me with the same joy in my best days and my darkest days. He has watched over my heart fearlessly and he has healed it at every step. He has allowed me to fall apart, and he has been there to pick up the pieces. It was for him that I held on. I felt that if he loved me like that surely, I could be loved. For him, I would be strong. For him, I would transform. I have always been fascinated with Marin’s Sorescu’s “Iona.” The main character is a fisherman who carries with him a bowl of fish and on a bad day, he fishes in the bowl to make himself feel better, to make himself believe that he has achieved. A giant fish swallows him one day and he attempts to free himself by cutting the belly with the hope that he will make it somehow. My mind always came back to it. I always pondered what it meant and why it was so important to me. I have thought that changing friends, changing surroundings, and changing my look will make a difference. I had thought that it all happened to me and that I had no choice or agency. That I am powerless in the face of destiny. The answer was always staring me in the face. The way out is within. I have looked inwards even harder, I have become a Phoenix, changing again and again, reinventing myself, analysing every permutation that I could, not knowing where I would end up but, knowing with certainty that I was becoming. I have killed my ego again and again, slayed some of my demons, and starred others in the face. I have taken the masks of those taunting ghosts of the past, given them a name, and freed myself of their power over me. I have grieved every single failure and allowed the wounds to bleed openly. I have been brought to my knees so many times but, I got up each time and I tried again, and again, and again, and again… I have tried to find some way to connect and fight the deep loneliness that stretched endlessly in front of me. All, I wanted, all I EVER wanted was for someone to look within and see me as I am. See all the scars and all the wounds and not pull away. The problem was that I was the first one to run from myself. I have pushed and pulled in all directions. I have tried to will into existence everything that I wanted, leaned into the pain knowing that it is the only way that I can make everything a reality. I have tried to pull my reality back together and held on to it with both hands. I have been struggling, fighting, falling apart, putting myself back together for so long and while I am growing, I am also growing tired. So exhausted of feeling that I don’t have any answers, that I have no real solution so… here I am, not giving up but, giving in. It Is time to stop and take stock. See all the lessons that I have learned, look again in the mirror, and allow my mind to adjust to who I am now. Not giving up, just safe in the eye of the storm, resting while the wheel of destiny keeps spinning.

Out of all the challenges that I must face in this lifetime, asking for help has always proved to be the toughest one. Nothing makes me more anxious or makes me more insecure than asking for help. It is feeling weak in the face of the realisation that I can’t just handle it myself and feeling guilty that I am imposing on someone else’s time. I should be able to just handle things on my own. It is seen as a sign of independence and great strength to handle things on our own. All we hear about is how this great person has done it all. In the face of adversity, they have stood on their own two feet and did not give up. Every story says strength is doing it alone. For me, it starts in the spiral. I try to think about what to do, and my mind reaches for support, and I think that no one can help me. Down, down the spiral I go, and I start feeling so alone and my mind keeps telling me that I am the only option, I am all the plans, and it screams at me: “Look at you… so pitiful… do you actually think you can handle this?” and I feel the sinking feeling and I start to put myself down. When I first started the journey, I was told: “You never know how strong you are, until you must be. “I didn’t know where to start and I was trying to manage everything at once. Find solutions and try to deal with it all. A place for everything and everything in its place. There were so many things that I didn’t know how to do and so many fears and every single time I tried to grasp it all in my mind, I could feel as if my entire body was being attacked at once. I would convince myself that I must do it and then my mind would scatter when I tried. It is very much like watching a bank of fish. Swimming along in the same direction, logic seeming to guide their actions, the hive mind taking them where they need to go and then once a danger comes, they just disperse. No aim, no purpose, just panic. We do not know where we are going but we do know that we don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be doing this, I do not want to be me.  What to do though? One can’t just stay still. One can’t just give up. There is no backing down. Things have happened, things have changed, and things cannot be taken back. Once the lid has been taken off the Pandora’s box and the evils of the world have escaped, they cannot be put back but, they cannot be left unchecked either. No going back, the only way is forward. I have tried for several days to put it all into order and then all that came of it was that I knew what the pillars of the situations were. I knew what aspects needed to be tackled and resolved. I knew what they were, and I knew that I could not handle them all at once. So, I have started on the path of deciding which one is most important. Which one must be dealt with first? I knew that I could not deal with it all at once so, I started to break it up into pieces. I will make decisions about what to do tomorrow and when the day comes, I will do my best to follow through and see how I faired. Just keep going, just keep swimming, allowing myself to fall apart, allowing myself to cry, allowing myself to waiver. I can break down as many times as I need to break down but there is no other option but, to keep trying. “It matters not how strait the gate, /      How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.” (“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley) Cry because you don’t know how to do something. Look it up. Cry because you can’t find an answer. Keep looking. Cry because you found an answer, but you don’t understand it. Keep looking. Mention it to people and see if they have experience with something. Get a clue. Find a little hope. Keep looking. Cry about having to look so many times. Find a solution. Cry because you found a solution, but it is something new. Start creating simulations in my head and think about all the outcomes. Think about what could go wrong, getting ready for the worst scenario. Experience all the negative emotions that go with it because one needs to be ready for when shit hits the fan. Cry over each single one of them. Start implementing. Cry at each turn because you feel overwhelmed, and you feel alone. Complete the task. Reward yourself with a cry to celebrate the fact that you were a good girl or grieve over the failure and have a good cry considering the lessons. One way or the other, there is progress. I am exhausted in both body and spirit, at this point. I look at my life and I try to find the reasons. One would be that when I asked for help, as a child, I either got in trouble for being in trouble or I got made to feel like it was an inconvenience. Getting told that I can’t do anything right. Getting told I break everything I touch. Getting told I don’t respect anything. Escalating anxiety all the while, guilt, and shame added to it. It just taught me that asking for help makes a nuisance out of me. I just need to be perfect from the start and then fix it myself when something goes wrong. My mind automatically goes to I need someone to help. I just need to tell myself again and again that no one is coming. That I am my own saviour. I have done things before. I achieved. I am fine. This is fine. Everything will be fine. The next issue is just talking about the problem and somebody saying that they will help. You ask if they are sure and, they are positive. You start planning around their promise and then you mention it again and try to see what they are comfortable with and the entire mood shifts. You realise that they didn’t think that you would take them seriously. They didn’t plan on helping. They have had time to consider it, and it makes them uncomfortable to help or it does not align with what they can do. This one cut even deeper. For needing help, shame for trusting somebody, shame for not being able to handle things myself. I asked my therapist why someone would offer to help if they didn’t mean it. It seemed so strange to me. I was told that it makes people feel good to offer. Saviour complex but, just offering is enough to make them feel good and gives them validation. Take some more shame in the shower because you thought they meant it. Because you need them to mean it. I have tried to share my problems and people have half listened to close the subject and then told me they were sure that I would find a solution. I don’t mind this that much. I don’t think that anybody owes me anything and I can appreciate that nothing is being offered when they are not comfortable offering help. I know that sometimes I talk too much, and I have no filter so, I am triggering for people. What I don’t understand is when people say that I should have asked for help because they would have stepped in. Would they? Would they actually? Is it a further message for me to learn my lesson or is it the passing of responsibility and washing away any guilt? No help was offered, no help was expected, no help was given, situation was resolved. Why the extra mention? If you could have helped, then why didn’t you say when I said I was struggling? Take some shame to go because you are not meant to be an island and we are meant to ask for help because not doing so, is not healthy. Still my fault. I don’t know how to ask for help. I am deeply uncomfortable with asking for help outside a work environment. I got forced to do it there. I felt extremely uncomfortable in my first job when I had to do it but, I knew that I couldn’t solve the issue unless I did. Now, I just ask, take millions of notes, and try to excel at whatever it is for me to become the person who can help. Trying to be calm when I show somebody else, try to not make them feel guilty for needing help, try to understand their thought patterns, trying to explain the logic so, they grow. There is nothing better than showing somebody what they must do and then shining with that knowledge, becoming the best that they can be, and reaching their potential. They won’t have to feel how I felt ever again. I talk about my issues, and I tell people what I am going through. I share my worries and my thinking process. I don’t know how to ask for help but, I give opportunities for help to be offered, and I am not ashamed to accept help. I know I can’t do it all. Sometimes people realise that I need help, and they try to find a solution with me. They offer an option. They tell me they see worth in me, and they want to support me. I feel so grateful and scared at the same time. Grateful that I am not alone, and I get advice or a solution, scared that it might not come to pass, or I might trust, and it will be taken away. I am lucky to have found a few people that I can trust all the time. I can ask for help, and they never make me feel weak or needy or like I am being a burden. People who understand that if they tell me the truth about their situation, I will understand. I can understand not being able to support someone when one is feeling down. I can understand someone being busy and not having time to help. They understand that I am scared, so they read the signs, sit me down and ask me what is wrong and how can they help. I am so endlessly grateful to those people. The truth is I know that in this lifetime, the only person who will get me anything I want is myself, but it is nice to be able to lean on someone from time to time. All I really need is a hug and for somebody to believe in me. It is hard and it takes a lot of preparation but, I now try to pluck up the courage to ask for help. I keep repeating to myself “It is fine. What is the worst that can happen? They can always say no.” I need to do this. I need to learn that it is all right to express my needs and that it is okay to be vulnerable and say I need help.

In the grand game of fight or flight, I am “freeze.” My anxiety tells me that I am not safe, that I should do something, that I should find a solution, and that I should act. My depression binds me to the ground, paralyzing me and it tells me that it is useless, that it is hopeless, and I should not even bother. My brain is firing up and getting overwhelmed while my body sinks into a sofa or sinks onto the floor. Before, I would try to stop all those thoughts. Don’t think about it. Just stay busy. Just distract yourself and all will go away. Don’t deal with it and maybe if you don’t deal with it long enough, it will resolve itself. The worst for me seems to be the fear of the unknown. Knowing my enemy allows me to prepare. I tend to overthink anyway so, I spend hours considering everything I know, and I emotionally cut myself with possible scenarios. I experience every feeling with the intensity that I would experience if the scenarios would come to pass and unfortunately, I don’t have an overly optimistic view of the future in most cases. If I already felt the pain, it is easier to handle. I can look beyond my feelings and focus on the practicality of the situation. I have tried to look at the big picture in the past and all the fears came crushing in. All the ghosts of low self-esteem, all the voices chanting that I am not able to handle it. It is not being focused enough to decide what I should do doubled up by not trusting my mind to make a good decision. Thinking that if I make a mistake everything will be lost. Thinking that I need to have one big solution to make it all better at once. I tried and I got paralyzed by fear again and again so, that I understood that it is not the way to go about it so, I have started to break it into pieces and look at them one at a time. I can handle things one chunk at a time. Anxiety shows up in different ways. It can come as this desire to procrastinate for a bit and take a break since the issue at hand is causing tension. Watch a clip, or scroll through posts on social media, again and again and again, with no real patience to watch any of them but unable to stop and do something else. The brain feels fired up and one feels hyper-aware of everything. A chorus of 1000 intentions coming in at once and they seem just out of reach and none a good solution. There is a sense of feeling unsafe. Something will happen. I am not sure where it will come from or what it will be but, it will be bad and my entire being needs to brace for it. I will not be able to control it. I am so tired that I can’t think straight anymore. All I know is that this feeling is here, and I need to make it better. It is urgency to eliminate the sense of urgency and danger. What’s wrong? Nothing and everything. My head feels caught in a vice. My mouth is dry. I breathe faster. The muscles tighten more and more as if something is trying to squeeze my ribs together. Either that or stabbing muscle pain until the muscles relax. My shoulders go up and my neck is tense. I get an itch at the base of my skull on the right side and regardless of how much I scratch it, it will not go away. My heart is beating fast and going faster because I am scared. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach, a mixture of rumble and nausea. I am restless and I need to move. Trapped in this place. Trapped in this moment. I need sleep but sleep won’t come that easily. No rest for the wicked indeed. I start to ask myself: “What are you avoiding?” “What are you burying?” There is nowhere to run. There is nowhere to hide. You can try and lie to yourself in the moment but, it will just come back in a different shape to hunt you. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Please, stop! I just need to stop these thoughts from going through my head. They are galvanizing and gathering in my chest. It feels like they are sitting there as terror takes over me. They are too much. I am too small. I can’t handle them. I can’t cope. I am alone and I can’t fight them on my own. I can’t do this. I just need someone to help. I am so scared, but the enemy is within. My fingers start to tingle. They are starting to feel numb. I look at them and they feel swollen, and they are getting whiter. My legs are getting heavy. Cold sweat is running down my back. Heath is coming in waves down my arms as my skin turns red. I am feeling dizzy. I start to feel like my eyes are swimming and I feel intensely nauseous. I feel like I am about to faint. If I don’t stop it, I will faint. Take control! Take control NOW! Force a deep breath and then another. My brain is a liar. I am fine. This is fine. Everything will be fine. I breathe deeply again and feel my chest decompress as I realize that my body simply forgot to breathe because of the panic. Focus on scanning your body and cataloguing each sensation as it occurs. Nothing is happening, nothing is truly coming, and you are still fine. Open your eyes now and focus outwards. Find five red things. It can be anything, but we need to find them. Find things that are similar to what you know. This feels new but nothing is completely new. You have done this before. Just hold on and then you can go into the fresh air. Tick, tock, tick, tock and now you are free. It is fine. Deep breath and it is done. When I have long periods of anxiety, my body shuts down what it doesn’t consider important to participate in my rescue. I forget to drink, and I forget to eat. My brain forgets that my body needs anything in its pursuit of an answer to my problem. I lose weight without even trying, I just realize it in my clothes. The worrying part is that I get compliments for the weight loss. One tends to be socially conditioned and without a strong image of self, one starts to chase external validation. I stay away from those kinds of compliments because I could end up harming myself. When I was at my worst, I would use a calorie counting app to remind me to eat as it kept on reminding me that I hadn’t added data for a mealtime. That was my cue to have a meal. I also don’t bother restricting what I eat. I just eat what I like and brings me joy. I feel that if I were to restrict the food items that I have then it would be a sure way to develop an eating disorder. Anxiety hides in the back pain that keeps on coming back because one is so tense, and it sometimes shows up to rob us of our mental capacity. Brain fog. Isn’t it poetic? All the information is there and yet, you can’t find it in the fog. The fact that your subconscious is so busy dealing with the state of anxiety, stops the conscious mind from dealing with the issue at hand. So, attention is scattered, and memory is affected because I am not present mentally in the here and now. I get tongue-tied and I get in a state where I can’t remember words, I lose track of what I was saying, and I forget the point that I was trying to make. Decision-making goes out the window. You get paranoid and the mind is spinning out of control trying to analyse every single thing and just go over all the details. One can’t understand how there are gaps in the memory and anxiety just bridges all of that with the worst-case scenarios. If I can’t sleep because of anxiety then I can’t think straight because of being tired, always tired but hyper-stimulated so, one can’t sleep despite being exhausted, how can I be at my best? I have experienced times when someone looked at me pityingly and talked to me like I was dumb. I am analytical and rational; I like data and proof for everything. Informed decisions always and safe bets and then my anxiety comes and just pulverizes all of that because every fibre of my being is trying to take back control and stop my world from imploding. What are we protecting against? It doesn’t even matter. Just run now and find out later. I try to tell people that I am struggling with doing something and they just reply with “That is simple. There are so many articles on Google. Just follow them.” It is simple for you. It is not simple to me. It is not that I lack the intellect or that I lack the drive to do something but it can become overwhelming very fast when I start thinking about all of the details that I need to take into account, all of the back draws of each of them and all of the things that can go wrong, understanding that this is not something that I know and it is so easy to get it wrong without the confidence that if I make a mistake, I can forgive myself and I will be all right, it is paralyzing and debilitating. Somebody telling me how easy it is to do when I feel unable just adds to feeling horrible for not being able to cope. I know it is driven by good intentions and people are trying to tell me that I am worrying about nothing but, one has to consider that worrying is what I know, and it is my baseline. Some parts I am aware of and other parts I don’t even begin to fathom where they are stemming from. I have tried quite a few things to keep myself occupied. Walking helps and I walk fast because I do it at the speed of my thoughts. I just keep walking until my body gets tired and my mind starts to settle and then the present moment can be felt. The wind in the trees, the song of the birds, the smell of the flowers, the grass and then I am in the moment, present in my body. Work harder, longer hours and if I am busy with that, I won’t have time to think about anything else. Organizing helps. Cleaning the house from top to bottom to show myself that I am in control of my space so surely, I must be in control of my mind. Routine is a good one too. Make the same safe choices every single time and then you will get the same results. The one thing though that I am amazing at is numbing myself. Just push it down and put it in the back of my mind until I forget about it. There is a part of me that wishes that there would be somebody to save me. Someone who can just deal with it, and I can just relax. It was especially hard when I used to have a safe person that I could rely on and then my safe person was not safe anymore. I spiralled until someone stepped in and took on that role and just listened to me, gave me space, allowed me to go crazy, and still check in on me again the next day. Their belief that I can do it, makes me feel more confident and helps me act. I have had days when I was just crying on the floor with Bruno coming over to comfort me, forcing me to stroke his chest and licking my face to calm me down and I felt like I could not get up. What got me up was knowing that there was no one coming. No prince charming on a white horse on his way. There is only me and if I don’t do it, it won’t get done. I have to be my knight in shining Armor. I can have support, and Lord knows I need it but, I am plan A, B, and C, and I need to solve it all. Help can be requested but help cannot be expected. There is no going back, there is no surrender. I do not have the luxury to allow things to fall apart. I can allow myself moments of respite before moving forward. There can be moments of weakness and doubt but, at the end of the day, I have to accept that I need to do it all, slowly but surely. If ever there was a life goal, being free of anxiety would be the one to pursue. I need to become friends with it and see what it hides within. Life would be so much easier if I wouldn’t spend so much time second-guessing and overthinking, trying to prepare for the worst to come, and bracing for something that might never happen. It lurks in the shadow, it appears under so many faces, it watches from the far and it strikes unannounced but what does it want from me? What hides under this cloak of darkness?

There is a very real sense of pain that comes with a broken heart. My entire being feels sluggish, it feels like my body is not my own anymore but that of an old person because my movements start to slow down, my joints start to ache, and there is this feeling of being cold all the time and feeling tired. There is no motivation to do anything despite the knowledge that one has to. I feel weighed down and I feel the need to sit down, lie down, and cover, to cocoon for safety. My muscles are tense and tightened so I physically feel like my heart is hurting. I feel like a chasm opens inside of me and I am on the edge of it for ages trying to hold on, trying to avoid it. I start slipping inside of it. A sea of endless sadness finds me at the bottom, and it is so overwhelming, that it encompasses everything that ever was and everything that could ever be. I start to cry, and I let it all out, I accept that I am feeling like this now. Before I would try to put an end to it, stop it, run away from it, and I would make myself so busy that I wouldn’t remember what I was feeling, but now, I accept that this is my current state. I need to ride those waves of sorrow and remember that in the same way, happiness is not forever, neither will sadness be. There are moments when it becomes so hard to reach out to people. It is not that I don’t think of them, I do. I think of them, I think of what I want to say, I think of how wonderful they are when they talk to me, and how I would like to know how they got on with things from the last time. I want to be in their presence, even if it is virtual because they are so important to me but, then I stop myself. I consider what I have to offer when I am down. All I have is this feeling of emptiness. This feeling of being out of time and out of the normal flow of existence. I feel like my entire universe has slowed down and I am not a part of existence anymore. Life happens around me while I am very much wrapped up in my thoughts. The passage of time is surprising and there is this strong sense that life just passes by, uninterested in my individual story. What is a speck of dust in the grand scheme of the universe? It is not that I don’t want to talk to people, it is that I become convinced that I have nothing to offer but sadness. I am conscious of my energy and how I can pollute other people. The loss of energy also manifests outwardly. I stopped having the energy to clean my house so, it looks like an absolute disaster. My dishes go unwashed, my clothes are wherever I dumped them. My inner life spills outwards and I just let it be whatever it needs to be in that moment. I then start to feel that it is draining to be in a space like that. It becomes claustrophobic and I start to clean the house frantically. It starts with, I will feel a lot better if I just put this back where it belongs. Well, since I put that thing back, I should try to put another one that is in the same area. Fast forward to two hours later when I am scrubbing things at 2 o’clock in the morning because if my house is clean then maybe it means I am fine. I cannot control my life, but I can control my space. Completing tasks also gives me a sense of achievement so it helps with self-esteem, as well. The same goes for washing myself. When I lived with other people, I had times when I was planning to go take a shower for hours and another person just goes before me while I am totally paralyzed. I have had days with just sitting on the couch and looking like I am watching TV but in my head, I thought: “Go and take a shower. It is not that big of a deal. It takes only 5 minutes. Just go” I would visualize the entire experience. Walking into the bathroom, taking my clothes off, going into the shower, drying off. Knowing full well that once I will do it, I will feel amazing, warm, and refreshed. Watched the clock, decided that I would do it in 5 minutes, and then realized that the brain has been doing that for hours, and then this person comes in just out of nowhere, able to take a shower as soon as they thought of it. From the outside, it seems like I am a sloppy person when in fact, I care a lot about it. Sometimes, small things like that just get overwhelming. I started therapy, I have taken the pills, I have done more therapy, I introspected, I read books, I have accepted everybody as a teacher and the biggest lesson of all is that this is a process. This is not something that can be cured with a one-size-fits-all approach but it is something that can be managed better and improved upon. Today, I am well off on my journey. I have hard days that I accept and I know that tomorrow will be better. I have days in which I feel so bad that I feel like I have made no progress at all or ever. I can go from everything is awesome to none of this is worth it in 5 minutes. And then once the storm passes, I can look, and I can see that I have made progress. I noticed the signs sooner than before. I have stepped out of the pattern that hurts me and used the good practices that I have in place to get myself on the other side. I am fortunate that I have people that support me. That keeps me accountable and lets me be who I am. One of the most important parts of my life is my dog, Bruno. Some people say that Bruno is just a dog. Somebody implied that my happy-go-lucky, live-in-the-moment, big-hearted, beautiful dog is stupid. He is nothing but. He has shown me such immense love. He has accepted me as I am, and he has not given me any less love if I was happy or sad. He and his puppy friends have made such a difference in keeping me afloat by bringing me a toy to play with so that it breaks my thought cycle, and I stop ruminating and overthinking, to asking for a walk so, I get out of the house. I always feel happier when I see him jumping around and enjoying himself. He does this thing where he will be asleep in another room, wake up and he will come looking for me. If he sees me on the couch, he will come over and smell my face to see what my pheromones tell him about my mood and if I am all right, he will give me a lick on the nose and then go and watch the neighbours out the window. If he sees that I am down, he will get me to hug him and he will lick my tears to comfort me, if I resist, he will physically sit on me. That is his way of saying that he is there for me no matter what. That he is not giving up on me so, neither should I. I was with Bruno walking one day and I found these glass marbles. I picked them up because I thought they were a choking hazard. Bruno had smelled them, but another dog might swallow them. I was playing with them in my pocket while I was thinking about everything happening that week. As I kept on doing it again and again, my focus started to change to them. To the sound, they made as they ground together, to the cold feeling of them in my hand, their weight and size. A smile slowly started to blossom on my face. I had realized that for the past two years of my life, I had lost my marbles and here I was just having found them. The universe always has a way of reminding you that you are in the right place, at the right time. I am not sure where my destination lies but, I know that I have the full power of making my happily ever after a reality.

I think in images the best way for me to describe my depression is that I can see myself at the bottom of a dark well. The bones in my body are broken so, I can’t get out. I am screaming from the top of my lungs, but no one can hear me. The point of view shifts to the stones that make up the well and into the impenetrable darkness. Next, the viewpoint changes and turns into my hair so, I can get a full view of me and watch myself utter “No, I am fine. I am just a little bit tired. Once I get a nap, I will be fine” Except, I have been tired for more than half my life and there isn’t any real end in sight. I heard someone say in conversation that they hated how people claimed that they have mental health issues as an excuse for everything. It seemed so funny to me how little understanding they had. I suppose that is the case for most things. People can empathize up to a point, but their imagination can only take them so far for some things. Someone who has not been through it will not be able to understand how you can sit, laugh, and have a good time and then suddenly something in your brain shifts. Suddenly, all the colour drains from the world, and it turns into this bleak scene filled with despair. You are no longer of the world; you are just a witness to your own life. I suppose people that suffer from depression are liars up to a point but, not in the way that people might think. We lie that we are fine. We lie that we are just a little bit blue. We lie that we just need a nap. We lie that it has just been a long week. I can talk to anyone, and I will seem the happiest person on Earth. I will be engaging, and chatty, I will put the focus on you. I remember one day when I had intrusive thoughts coming again and again, up to the point where I had to voice them and simulate the action to soothe my brain. I had been crying for quite some time and then someone wanted to go on a call with me. So, there I went on the call, all smiles, to the point that there was a comment made about how chipper I was so early in the morning. I never realized how much of a poker face I had. I always wondered how people didn’t realize that I was struggling but how can they when I wear the mask of fitting in so well? The truth is that there is still a lot of shame in admitting that one is depressed. We are all meant to be happy all the time. Everything is meant to be just smiles, rainbows, and unicorns. “Only good vibes here!” We look at other people’s lives and what they project as their lifestyle, and we compare. We know we would want to be like that, but we don’t know how to get there. It isn’t a matter of faking it until you make it, it is a matter of hiding everything you are so people accept you. Everybody knows how to play the game apart from you. Even further, telling somebody that you have suicidal thoughts…watch the panic wash over their face as you realize that you have put a burden on someone that was not theirs to carry. I tried to think when all of this started for me. I can remember feeling alone, I can remember reaching out for connection and being denied. I remember wondering why I couldn’t be loved and soothing myself that it is fine, I don’t need anybody, that I will be fine and once I grow up, I will find somebody to love me. That changed into the certainty that people won’t like me because there is nothing to like. The strong feeling is that I was broken, and once people realize how broken I am, they will leave. Shifted again in the darkest times to think that I am so broken that I have broken other people. That they would have been better off by not knowing me. That I ruin everything I touch. My demons are always by my side, ready to agree with me. They used to be ideas chucked at me in anger by others, but now they live inside me, and they are my loyal companions. Internalized, bonded with every fibre of my being. “You are not good enough.” “Nobody cares what you have to say.” “Who do you think you are?.” The gang is all here, lurking in the shadows. I have always had problems sleeping. Staying up late and going over everything that I have done that day in my mind. Trying to remember every detail. How things were said. The words, the tone, the inflexions in the voice. Beat myself up about everything that I said, everything that I did, everything that I should have said. Going around and around and when I didn’t have something that happened that day, my brain had something from years ago that I could sit and hate myself about. Causing myself more and more pain for things that I could not change. Not wanting to be who I am, not wanting to be where I am. Just more shame. I have had weeks when I would skip a night to sleep a night. I would be too exhausted to sleep and watching the worst infomercials possible. Then, it would shift. I would feel like my body is full of led and I would just sleep for hours. I have had days when I prayed that once I fell asleep, I wouldn’t wake up. Trying to sleep my way through my existence, hoping that it would change on its own. Disappointment would hit the next day when my eyes would open. I have pushed down inside of me all the feelings and I have tried to keep myself busy. If I don’t have time to deal with whatever I am feeling, then it isn’t happening, right? I have started to prioritize everything and everybody above me so, that I can keep running from myself. I kept on following myself and telling myself all these things, tormenting myself with all my mistakes. Telling myself that I am weak and wanting and nobody could ever see value in me. Nobody can ever hurt you like you hurt yourself. I kept on asking myself what I was waiting for. What do I expect to happen? How do I expect things to change? They never did or if they did, it was only for a little while and I kept thinking that I failed for staying strong and not giving in. I allowed myself to be seduced by a moment of happiness that just got me back to where I was in the beginning. It always seemed that I had islands of happiness and then things would get back to the way they were. I had a period when I used to live alone and when I had a really bad day, I would go to one of the corners of my room sit between the wall and my bookcase and lean against the wall. This felt comfortable, this felt safe. I just mindlessly saw that corner and felt the urge to get up and sit there. One friend saw me one time and asked me what I was doing. I thought about it for the first time, then and there. What was I doing? I realized that this felt safe because three directions were covered and everything that could come at me would just come from the front. I would feel the need for connection. I would try to reach out and the people would just get further away from me. I had become convinced that people don’t just leave but, they leave me. I kept on trying, again and again, to just show people who I am but how effective was that when one does not have the power to stay myself without changing to who I think they want me to be? To stay around people and not filter who comes into my life but just hope that there will be more people staying. Feeling less connection than ever because one realizes that people put you in a box and they become very uncomfortable when you try to change, evolve, or get out of the box. One tries to find a cure. One tries to get away from it. One tries to look at how others have done it to try and escape the loop. For me, it took a breakup to put me in front of all my fears at once. Just the day before, I was saying that if it were ever to happen, I would not be able to take care of myself and then I had to. But that is a story for another time…                                              To be continued...

In the beginning, there was the lonely. Friend and foe all in one breath. It is always with me and shrouds me wherever I go. Not sure when it first appeared. I just looked around and there it was. Staring back at me. Just a visitor, at first, and then more and more present. Tormenting me with its mere existence. Eating away at me as the years have gone by. I remember being small and reaching out. Wanting to spend time with my parents but mostly wanted to spend time with my mom. Needing to feel loved. Needing to feel that I am connected. My parents smoked and they would stay in the kitchen. I would try and join them and be part of their conversation, but I kept being told that I was too young and that it was not healthy for me to be there. That I should go in the house and that they would join later. I would try and go back from time to time, and I would get sent away again and again. When my sister started smoking as well then it felt that she was in the club as well and it would just be me that would be left on the outside looking in. I remember that I would ask for cuddles for my mother, and she would cuddle me whenever she felt like it and then, she would tell me to go away when she had enough. I felt so rejected. I felt that I was asking for too much and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to spend time with me. I would always get more attention when I was sick but, it was always a matter of, having to prove that I was sick enough first. I had to have a fever to be taken seriously. I would get Mom’s one-on-one attention, and she would make my favourite things. To the day, unless I am collapsing, I tell myself that I am fine, and I can keep going. I feel guilty about calling in sick from work because I think that I sound fake. I remember being sent to my room again and again. I was considered a sensitive child. Every time that I was considered too much. I would have to go and be by myself. I had no idea how to deal with my emotions and when I got angry not only was I being isolated but, my dad would be triggered by it too. It is the old “I will give you a reason to cry about.” That just meant that instead of being taught how to deal with it, and how to channel my anger, I learned that showing anger is not safe. If you get punished for showing an emotion long enough, you tag it as being unsafe and you suppress it. You bury it deep down and you don’t deal with it. Either that or you turn it on yourself. One starts to punish oneself for having the emotion in the first place. Blame yourself for it. Start to believe that you deserve all of it. That of course no one wants to be around you. What do you have to offer? You are so weak. You are too much, and no one would ever love you. You start hoping for a saviour. Someone who sees you for who you are and rescues you from everything, but nobody ever comes. The only way to calm yourself is crying. Cry until you calm down and you can sleep. You have this feeling though that you are not a bad person. That if they tell you what is wrong, you can fix it. As a coping mechanism, I started to make up stories in my head. Not telling them as stories that have happened, no. Never divorced from reality. Never try to use them to get attention or try to become popular because of them. Just stories the way I would wish them to happen. Escapism at its best. That I would do something and suddenly they would start to see who I am and see value in me. You start to build this role self. This persona that you can be and if you become this person, they will like you. They will love you even. For me, it is a good girl. The girl that helps everybody, the girl that doesn’t say no and hides her desires. I started to believe that if I do the things they want, I will get the love I need. I started trying to be as best I could in school, get high grades, always do my homework, and work hard. I started to people to please, I started to overachieve, and I started to be hyper-focused on every gesture, every word, every reaction to try and figure out what I could do to be whatever people wanted. People like people that do what they want so, there goes the boundary setting. You do your best and when you don’t get a high grade, you get asked how other people did. You get asked how others do well, and you don’t. When you do well and you tell them that you have done better than those same people, you get told that you don’t compare yourself to other people. No rhyme or reason but somehow you are always wrong. You figure that overachieving is the path to take because they are quite happy when they tell other people how well you’ve done. They parade your grades and say to everybody about your awards, but you don’t seem to get more than that. Must not be enough. Try harder, do better. You try to celebrate things and every time you do my dad says that I am his smart girl, my grandmas are so proud of me and dot over how their smart granddaughter has done them proud. My mom just tells me that this is good, I will have time to focus on the next thing on the list. No time to celebrate, one must do more to get approval. Never satisfied with one's achievements, never knowing how to take praise. People ask me to acknowledge what I achieved and tell me how amazing I am. I get uncomfortable because I have a to-do list and no time to waste. I have started making friends and going out on my own to play. I made some friends, and I had fun with them but, again I am an emotional child. So much so that when I am being insulted and treated poorly, I just start to cry. That is all I know how to do. Standing up for myself has not paid off in the past. More so, I got either punished or rejected even further so, the only option is to cry and try to be their friend the next day. As one can imagine, that worked well with bullies. Nothing more fun than pushing somebody further and further until you see them cry. Maybe if you are nicer, they will like you. Maybe if you like them enough, they will try to get to know you. Try to understand you. That was what I always wanted. That is what I ever needed. I started trying to show who I am, and I kept getting told again and again that I should change this and that for people to like me. By this time, I am extremely introverted. I would go somewhere, and I would just want to be a fly on the wall. See everything, and hear everything but, to not have to expose myself to participating. I had real difficulty speaking in a group so, people started to make comments about how I hadn’t said anything in a while. Asking me if I had nothing to say. I had plenty. I had thought of so many things, I had read so many things, I noticed, and I made connections but being put on the spot rendered me silent. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would be of interest. I start seeing friends stabbing me in the back and I can’t understand why and what I have done to them. I have kept their secrets. I have been reliable and still, they would be ready to sell me out in a minute for the people they like more. That brings on a new kind of loneliness. Being lonely in a crowd. Still rejected and still feeling like I am not good enough. Nobody tries to know me, but everybody has so many ideas about what I should be different. Now, people not only fail to understand but, they can hurt you when you least expect it. People-pleasing behaviour meets trust issues. I start growing up and dating. I start getting told that I am beautiful and maybe they will like me, they will stay. But they just take what they need emotionally and then they leave, as well. There must be something wrong with me if people keep on leaving me. Try harder, love them more, be more understanding, and don’t ask for too much. Don’t take too much space and don’t start a fight. Still, they go. They go and they come back, and they give you crumbs of happiness but, this is all you have known so, hope is your biggest enemy because I ignore the red flags again and again in the hope that they will realize that I am worth it. Savior behaviour, meet inability to let go of toxic relationships. The lonely reminds you that it has always been there. No matter how much you try and run. No matter how much you try and hide. No matter how you try to push away the feeling and pretend it doesn’t exist. Always following like a shadow. So many issues that come with it now. The gang is all there and all the voices in your head yell that you need to change. They are so loud and so scary, so many, so overwhelming. It has been going on for so long that I cannot soothe myself anymore. I need somebody to tell me what thoughts are right and what thoughts are wrong. To tell me if the decisions I make are right. If the feelings, I feel are right. I have always known that I needed help. I have always known that I need to make friends with the lonely. I have always known that I needed therapy. I mean not all relationships I have are bad or dysfunctional. Not all people have betrayed me. I have friends that I have known for 14 years, some that I have met along the way, and they are so precious. I am so grateful for all of them. There is nothing worse than having a problem or a success and not having anybody to share it with. Their support is invaluable to be able to show the parts of me that have been buried. One thing that I know though is that it is not their duty to fix me so, this is where the therapist comes in. We start with what we know. We start with what we see on the surface and then therapy will show me the rest of the way. I need to understand how it all comes together. I need to understand how I can accept and embrace the lonely. Make peace with it and let it go. There is no way we can inhibit this place anymore. There is no solace for me anymore as there never was. A deep breath and down the rabbit hole we go.