Sad & Selfish

I have a really, really good life right now. It’s a life I never would have imagined possible when I was younger—a life I wouldn’t have known to even wish for because it was so far from my reality I would never have gotten my hopes up this high. Every day, I take stock of the things in my life I am lucky to have: a job I am excited about, a house that keeps me safe and comfortable, family and friends who want the best for me, a boyfriend who is the most compassionate and caring person I know. I've done more in these past few months than I have in my twenty-four years of living, and these opportunities will never be forgotten.

I take my tally of everything wonderful and have a moment of quiet gratitude. The universe didn’t have to let me have these things, but it did, I do, and I am thankful.

Which makes me feel like a garbage human when I have moments of stress, or sadness. It hit me this morning, out of the blue, with no cause. I finished my breakfast, washed my plates, and then sat there in a pool of unreasonable melancholy. And I got frustrated because 1) there was no trigger that I could point to that would have instigated any sort of sad feeling and 2) what right have I???

 Like I said above, I have a good life. I am so happy and grateful to be living the life I’m living and I never take a single second of that for granted. But sometimes that makes my more sensitive days all the more frustrating. I don’t want to waste time being sad when I have so many good things going for me. I want to be the smiling, energized Erica people like to hang out with. I don’t like who I am when I’m vulnerable or sad or anxious. I’m going to have to be okay with who I am in those moments, but it’s not easy.

I live in this strange cycle with anxiety and depression where my anxiety/depression acts up, I feel selfish for letting it act up, and then am increasingly hard on myself the longer it stays. I tried to explain it the other week like this:

 I get anxious. > I feel like a burden for being anxious, even though the other person is doing absolutely nothing to make me feel like a burden. > I’m told I’m not a burden. > I feel like more of a burden for making them feel like they made me feel like a burden.

 And so the spiral goes.

This is just another thing I’m adding to my long list of “areas needing improvement.” It’s okay to feel sad sometimes, even when I have things in my life that make me happy. It doesn’t make me a bad person, it means I need to sit down and try to figure out where that feeling is coming from. (And sometimes the answer is nowhere. Sometimes it’s the depression.)

My bigger task, though, is to work on the burden thing, because that gets me the most. I’m always worried that if I am not perfect and happy and everything people expect me to be—or what I think people expect me to be—that I’m going to eventually become too exhausting to be around. I don’t want the moments I have hard times to become too heavy for someone else to carry, so I’ve always carried it all on my own. It’s difficult to remember I can share part of that load, now. I’m getting better, but there’s still a far way to go.