Month and a half in and already, while my feet may be firmly planted in my cow town, I have been moving mental mountains. I haven’t really been anywhere but I feel like it’s been not an Everest sized trek, maybe a trek to a smaller kind of craggy peak. I can see the top, I am just not there yet. Oh but the view, it’s going to be glorious.

I am going to state it here, there’s going to be a heap ton of metaphors in this one and maybe even some cliches – you can do it, it will be ok. It won’t be my best work but it’s going to be perhaps the most honest, painfully earnest (ugh, right?) one in a while. A gal like me fears earnest behavior, I cover up my uncomfortableness at that with a lot of goony behavior.

We can do this together.

For the last ten years, all my travel and movement has been a lot of great and amazing noise, wanderlust filled adventures – big trips to exotic destinations, with shots needed and long plane rides. Then, circumstances made me stay here in this town and when not, on the road to a job that hadn’t been fulfilling me in a long time. I am hesitant to speak on that part of my life much, except to state I work in a confusing place that was never supposed to be such a long thing, I was just doing it for a little while and then I kind of got stuck. I am not sure I have ever been able to write about it. It’s a lot of the best of times, the worst of times stuff. I’ll save it for another day except to say – I have been mired in work muck, life muck too.

Well, friends, family, people in China reading this blog, I am getting myself unstuck – think of that noise your shoe makes when you pry it out of the mud, like a loud smack. And when I go in, I go big. I said to someone I am quitting everything in 2018 but I was wrong. I am not quitting me. I am looking for her. The job will be morphed, re-formed, re-tooled – the end is in sight after such a long run. And so I have found my mountain, I have found my road up it, where there is one. It was pretty foggy for a long long time.

There’s so much in a person who falls in and out of depression that can take us off our road. For some, the constant movement of travel takes that edge off. Before you can connect, you’re on the move again. Shifting and dancing around the issues and globe. I see no shame in discussing the cloud of darkness, the haze of numbness once and for all. I have read some fairly inspiring posts, that may not be this one for all of you but I can at least explain my view and as this is my space, perhaps I am explaining it to myself at the same time. I know when I start thinking and writing about this topic, my fingers fly across the keys so my thoughts clearly want out.

I have heard all the metaphors (here come the cliches) – it’s like being in a house with no windows, you can’t protect yourself against the weather so it blows in and blows out with no control. I have heard of it as a boat in stormy and then calm sea, with a broken rudder. Both are good pictures of what it feels like sometimes. It’s never taken me down, but it’s taken me to my bloodied knees. I am not sure you lovely even keeled folks get how much of my energy can go to holding myself together, getting myself up, all while attempting to appear normal and capable. I don’t think people know how tough and fierce this makes parts of us in the depression chain gang. We can wield a pretty intense hammer on those rocks, in the hottest of life’s sun.

When I was younger, I would let it win – so many, so many times, I let it win. Pretty much most of my twenties, I was definitely living and making memories, as I was being chased down by something else. I can still pick out the pictures where my eyes look dull and the going through the motions days.

Good news, being over forty, maybe my fear of wasting time has gotten to me. I don’t do that anymore. Now when I feel the darkness lurking, I go into battle mode. I give up alcohol, I give up messy dramatic friends who normally are a sparkly addition to my day to day, not forever, just a time out, I go inward and I plan the attack back. I don’t even consider a life without this cycle of ok and not ok. I don’t crave the life that isn’t mine. Therapy, physical activity, friend and family love, medication, coping mechanisms – they all do work but be warned that the chemistry of depression is something no one on the other side can properly understand. You can think you finally fixed it, a little less of this, more of that but it changes, as I grow stronger here, I find new weaknesses and I have to go back to work. I am just so grateful that my form allows me to try and that my heart and mind agree on this task together. An aside here, don’t you dare pity me, don’t ever ever do that. I pity you for feeling that way as it’s going to speak to your fear more than it speaks to my perceived damage. Know I wouldn’t choose this life either but it’s mine so please don’t judge it. Judgement is crappy. Like a bird making her nest, I just weave this straw in with the rest.

2018. I don’t know where all this change will lead me but it won’t be where I have been. Every year a newer new me, newer new lessons. The universe likes to play a lot of games with all of us but I have cracked one major thing – the journey won’t change unless I do. I know, that lesson was just painfully right in front of my face. Did I hear it yelling over here? Did I see it? Yeah, not so much.

Did I mention my will of iron? Yeah, that will is pretty stubborn and owns a fantastic set of ear muffs and blinders.

This year, I’ll get back on some planes, but there won’t be a devil on my back chasing me. I go this time as me, unapologetically and complicated me to face that newer new world out there. It’s a crap shoot really – but from what I can see from these trees, the view from the top of this current mountain…. heaven on earth.

PS. Please, for those of you on top of my annoying proverbial mountain, let’s just not mention that there’s a bigger grander mountain behind it, that you can only see from up there, it won’t help me get out of these trees.

HAPPY 2018. Thanks for wading through the metaphors and cliches. Wishing you all the very best year.