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Celebrate ALL Progress!
Friend! I've missed you! I haven't been writing the past few days because I've been in a kind of sour mood. I don't like bringing my sour moods to my blog posts.
Are you working on something, like a book? Homework? Becoming a better person? Recovery?
Well, keep working on it, but don't forget to pat yourself on the back for the progress you're making on it. You're working hard, I'm sure of it!
I think we forget that it's okay to celebrate any of our achievements like we did when we were younger. It's okay to be extremely proud of yourself for making any progress, small or big. As long as you're making progress.
I think we all need to understand that there's some things in life we're only going to make progress on. We're never going to finish some of these things. You shouldn't start to panic when I say this, though.
I remember once an art teacher saying that we'd never be truly finished with an art project. We'd only get to a good stopping point. We'd always have flaws in our pictures. At the time, I was saying, "Liar!" Now I understand that what they were saying was right.
Another thing that we only make progress on is something I feel like a lot of people are scared of talking about. Which is why I'm actually kind of nervous (no pun intended) to talk about it here. In fact, I'll admit I've been avoiding it for the last few blog posts. Which is silly because these things affect a lot of people.
If you have a chronic mental illness, you're always in recovery, it seems like. Your recovery is full of good times, and also the terrible times. Your recovery is full of those mornings you get up at five in the morning and get yourself some coffee and watch your dogs from the porch as you plan your next novel. It's also full of those times you don't wake up until two in the afternoon and don't do anything the whole day because there's too many awful thoughts in your head to really do anything productive.
Your progress in recovery is less likely to look like this:
The hearts in the background of this picture symbolize all the support that you should get when you have a mental illness.
It's more likely to look like this:
The black background symbolizes how lonely it feels when you have a mental illness.
The white line is, of course, progress.
For you that don't have a mental illness, you may be wondering why I don't refer to the days where I lay in bed until two in the afternoon as a waste.
It's never a waste to take a day for yourself. I'm allowed to be sad, and rest the whole entire day. I'm also allowed to wake up the next day and feel like I'm on top of the world.
Last year, I decided to start this journey. I decided to fight the world headfirst, take out the people who were causing me so much pain and place them somewhere far away from little old me, and live my life how I wanted it. There's days where I feel like I can talk and be friendly to everyone, but then there's days where I just sit down and wait for the hours to pass so I can go home as I'm scribbling in my sketchbook. Then I go home and feel like I'm having an anxiety attack, so I put on an old children's show and draw. Yes, watching children's shows is very calming, just watch the older ones.
You're welcome.
Also, it's been two weeks since I've had an anxiety attack! Hooray! I'm going to celebrate by going on Tumblr!
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