It's Not Your Lungs This Time, It's Your Heart That Holds Your Fate

Sometimes I stop and wonder how I get to these low, low points in my life and then realize they happen like they've always happened: gradually, then suddenly.

It's not that I don't realize I have so much to live for.

My life is filled with laughter, love, family, friends, fluffy kittens and My Drunk Kitchen. At the same time, though, it's filled with psychological turmoil, lonliness, anxiety, helplessness, lack of affordable healthcare and grapefruit.

I have a four year degree from a prestigious college, and after two months of unemployment, I now stand and scrub parts in a shop for eight hours a day. (Though on the bright side, I did just get a kind-of promotion, so I get to sit down and draw faces in epoxy glue all day--woo!)

It's not that I don't mind paying my dues--having a college degree isn't the same as it was twenty years ago, and most people don't land their dream jobs straightaway. Especially in this economy, and especially in Erie, where the unemployment rate is thirty percent.

I knew I wanted to take a year off before school because I wanted to be more psychologically well for graduate school, and I wasn't ready to be away from home so permanently yet. But being here feels like I'm drowning, like my brain slowly atrophies with every passing smiley or frowny face I draw in epoxy. I've told people that the reason I'm not taking a job with some non-profit in D.C. was because of healthcare reasons (read: lose healthcare benefits and DIE), but the truth is, I am just so overwhelmingly terrified of change that I can't ever see myself being successful in life.

And part (even most) of that is because of the PTSD.

But you know what? The real world doesn't give a fuck if I had a traumatic upbringing. My private loan companies don't give two shits that my anxiety gets so out of control sometimes that I down twenty milligrams of Valium just to make it through the day. When all is said and done, my past doesn't make any difference to anyone else but me--just my current actions matter.

Growing up is fucking hard and also stupid, but I've finally, FINALLY contacted a therapist that was recommended to me by my childhood psychologist, and I'm looking into treatment facilities for PTSD and hoping against all the hopes that my insurance will cover something like that.

I've come to realize that I can't hide behind the past, that I have to move on and become the person I'm going to be, because I think she's going to be pretty great. I just need some help to get by, and I need to learn how to ask for it when I need it.

I need to start being me again. Or finally.