Monday 2 January 2017

2016 is the year I dug myself out of a grave

By all rights I should be dead, yet I am fortunate enough to still be here and damn, it feels good. So I will savour that feeling, holding it close as I enter into 2017 unapologetic. No longer will I look to the past and punish myself for things I cannot undo. Instead I move into the new year with fierce determination, never again allowing myself to become as withered and limp as I once was. No longer will I apologise for my being who I am, flaws and all.

This past year has undeniably been one of the hardest of my life, but simultaneously the most rewarding, spending half of it in self destruct- writhing in my own skin as I felt myself decay. I spent months trying to wrestle my way out of my own mind only to sink deeper into its icy grip, severing the ties of many a relationship as I descended ever deeper into the grave I had dug for myself. I was resigned, uninspired and convinced of my undeniable evil; all of this seems like a distant memory now. Awakened from a dream, vaguely aware it happened, the details lingering on the periphery of my mind- dancing away from my grasp whenever I reach out to retrieve them. I say let them dance, let them evade my reach, they are but shadows of the demons of my past.

I have spent the latter half of this year growing as a person more so than ever before. 2016 has been the year I clawed myself free of my grave; digging furiously at the darkness around me until eventually I emerged, gasping and disorientated into a lightness of being I had not felt in what seemed an eternity. I emerged all at once the same person and completely reborn; I learnt to walk again, talk again, breathe, communicate, love, fear, cry, feel- I learnt to fit myself inside my skin and it was glorious. Never has life tasted so good to me as it has these past months. I unwrapped myself from the chains of my illness and learnt how to walk on my own through this world. It is undeniable that I wouldn't have got here without the continued support from the people I hold most dear, but for the first time in my life I can stand up and know that I am ok- better than ok- on my own. My happiness is no longer dependent on any single person, I am untethered, unrestrained and free to fly; free to climb up high and breathe in the crisp air of my success.

I have gone from personal decay, to seeking help, to diagnosis and continued deterioration and finally I have found myself in a comfortable middle ground. I am not my illness, but neither am I completely separate from it; I am an amalgamation of the experiences it has caused and contributed to. Within this I have found peace and comfort. I do not run. Instead I take the truth and wrap myself in it; mould it to my body, fill myself with it until it overflows. It is my armour, my shell, it is warmth and light and it is mine and only mine. I have, not only accepted but, become the truth of my being and that truth is frightening and comforting all at once; the two are not mutually exclusive. Nor is becoming that truth bad in any way. I am an imperfect conception of a hundred mistakes and successes and I am gratified to be the result of that. If even one aspect of my past changed then who is to say I'd have become this same person? In retrospect it's ludicrous to wonder what alternatives may have become my reality, other than the one I'm living, it only serves to destabilise and make you wish for things that could have been. In the end I am stuck with myself and the truth of my being and if I ever wished to move forward I had to embrace it; run at it with arms wide and leap into it without hesitation, and that is exactly what I did. After writhing, wrestling, sinking, succumbing, clawing and breaking through some of the darkest months of my life I slowly rediscovered myself and my truth and that truth is this...

I have the capacity to be a terrible, volatile, terrifying thing: selfish, nasty, vindictive, aggressive, petty, irrational. But these are not attributes reserved for the mentally ill, and by no means are they the core aspects of my personality. Everyone in the world has the capacity to be these things in their own way- this is something that I have come to realise and it has served as a great source of comfort. I am more than my worst days, more than my worst parts. I am kind, selfless, caring and above all loving; I am intense, passionate and fierce. Some people will like this in me and some people will not, but that is not important. What is important is that I like this in me, and I do. The love I now feel for myself is fresh and uncertain, fragile and unstable, but it grows everyday. By no means am I perfect- nor do I wish to be. What fun would life be if I was? So I take myself into 2017, I take all of myself. I take my love and my pettiness, my selflessness and selfishness, my kindness, consideration, anger and irrationality and I bring them unapologetically into another year only to tame them, refine them and own them ever more. I go into 2017 unapologetically myself and unafraid.


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