Hold my beer and watch this!!

Thank you all for being patient with me as I figure out what and how to write again. Finding a writing voice is difficult, as is determining what I want to share about my life with the world at large. I have had a rough few weeks in regards to my mental health. Recently I read a really good blog post 21 Tips to Keeping Your Shit Together. This post is about depression, but I think it would be quite enlightening for anyone who knows or loves someone with depression or other mental illness. 

One of the greatest things I have realized after reading this is that 1) I have amazing friends who have helped me do all of those things. 2) I am already doing what I need to do to help myself. Whew! What a relief! I thought I must have been slacking in the pulling up your big girl panties department. Really I did. What does all of this mean when applied to the really real world? I can trust myself.

So many times I question my judgment. My decision making skills. My ability to manage money. Being a mother. Being a friend. Rice or quinoa for dinner. Can I ever get anything right?? Surely I can take a survey of my life and see that I don't always make the right decisions (ie the title of this post). But if I was to stop everything for a moment and somehow look at myself with an all knowing lens, what would I see? Is it possible that I have avoided many many more tragedies? Would I see that I am actually hitting the mark with an +80/-20 accuracy rather then the +20/-80 I have been giving myself credit for? I don't know, maybe I am a bigger fuck up then I even give myself credit for, but somehow I don't think that is the case. I think I am strong and competent. Even if I was to look at my physical life, I have done pretty well with what I have been given. If I look within I see an amazing force to be reckoned with. And you cant put a price tag on keeping your shit together! Or not shanking a bitch. 

I have been enjoying some guided meditations lately on Radical Acceptance. This is one of the core philosophies of DBT, a therapy that I am going through. Key points of this is mindfulness, non judgement, and acceptance. And I will be the first to tell you that living "in the moment" can really suck if you are depressed. For me there was a point where the scene in my mind changed. I realize I am not the dinner I am making. I am not my floors that need to me mopped. I am not my child. I am not even this bag of bones I carry around (that is getting a little deeper then I want to go in this blog, but you see the general direction shift). I am more then what I do or what I don't do. My heart, my soul, is just the way it is suppose to be right now. And I can take comfort in that amidst the floors that need mopping at the college application I haven't sent in.