When you suffer from depression, you become extremely apathetic about almost everything. I wasn't pulling my weight around the apartment, my room was a disaster, I wasn't taking care of my dog like I should have. All I wanted to do was sleep, even when I started therapy and was beginning to see some hope, I just wanted to come home and curl up in my bed and not face the world. I identified this as an area that I needed to improve if I wanted to have a happier life. It started with my dog. Until this point, I was lucky if I managed to take him on a walk a few times a week, but now my goal had become to take him on a walk at least once day. It was surprising to me that this was also something that would make me happy. My dog is crazy and goofy, and watching him just be so excited to see and smell everything he possibly could in that short walk made me smile, so I kept making time to do this day after day.
I quickly realized that taking Gus for a walk also gave me more energy. I would usually take him around 12:30 when I first got home from therapy, and just that simple act of having something to do that kept me out of bed when I first came home made a big difference. Suddenly, I had the energy to do some housework, even if I didn't have the motivation. Action before motivation. That's what they said frequently in therapy. I would make myself do the dishes, I would make myself put away my laundry, I would make myself clean my room. Even though these were small, every day tasks, every single thing I accomplished felt like an incredible achievement to me and made me feel some pride in myself once again. That feeling of accomplishment was echoed when I would share these small victories in group and receive encouragement from people who knew exactly how hard it was to convince myself to do those things.
My next step was learning to face and manage my anxiety, and even without working at a job, the opportunity came. It was a day when I didn't go to therapy, I was sitting in my room working on things for HCT. I needed to get things done for the Play Selection Committee and the Publicity Committee and my show this summer. I don't even know how things like this happened, but all of a sudden I became conscious of the fact that I had about 8 tabs open on my browser and was continuously jumping back and forth between all of them as I tried to complete all my tasks, unable to focus on just one. My heart was racing as I sat there restless and overwhelmed. And then I shut my laptop. I shut my laptop, got up, and began tidying my room. Once I could pull the chair out from my desk, I cleaned my desk off and organized it, creating an actual place to work. After everything was cleaned up, I sat down at my desk and made a list of what I needed to do and prioritized it. As I tried to write the list, I had this moment of clarity when I realized I didn't really have all that much to do after all. I knocked the tasks off one after another without allowing myself to add anything else to the list. The first test of my new coping skills was a victory.
And the small victories continued. I would find myself laying in bed, tired, wanting to fall asleep in the middle of the day, and my conscious mind would spring to life and tell me to get up... and I listened to it. At some point, my microwave decided it didn't want to work anymore, which forced me to actually cook my food which made me more conscious about what I was eating. I began eating my bigger meals at lunch when I had more energy to cook and lighter meals at night which helped me sleep better. It's a pattern I've continued even though my microwave magically started working again. I use it to heat up leftovers and that's about it. For the first time basically in my entire life, I find myself wanting to exercise. Everyday, it got easier to do those things that had initially been so difficult. I even found that I was now able to sit and listen attentively in group rather than sitting there bouncing my leg and checking the clock.
In the midst of all of that, I put in a job application. Just the one. It took some time because it seemed an overwhelming task, but I did it, and it was actually a job that I felt excited to do. I waited and I waited and I didn't hear anything. I called to ask about my application, and the message on the voicemail said they wouldn't be returning any calls about applications due to the high volume. Well, great. If there were that many, there was probably no way I'd get a job. Over two weeks passed, and I hadn't heard a word, so I began looking for other possibilities. And the next day they called to give me a phone interview. Not even 30 minutes later, I received a second call asking me to come in for an in-person interview. I went in for the interview the next week and was offered the job on the spot, both of my interviewers telling me how impressed they had been with me.
Finally, validation had come. I was worth having a job that I would enjoy, a job where I would be able to use my education and my experiences to make a difference in people's lives. Someone else had seen the qualifications and worthiness that I had held onto for years and wanted me to work for them. I know the job won't, by any stretch of the imagination, be easy, but it will be the kind of challenging environment in which I thrive. It kind of makes me grateful I lost my job, that this entire journey happened, otherwise I might not have found it. Since that day, I feel like I have been walking around with a smile on my face and joy back in my heart.
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