When Life Takes an Unexpected Turn

A Letter for the Ones Who Stay Down

My Dear Lovelians,

If I am being perfectly honest, which I try to be as a rule of thumb, after the events of Easter Sunday, I thought my life would look a lot different than it does right now. I do have to mention, I have never been prouder of myself in the way I handled the whole situation. As a result, however, I thought I was on my way to firmly establishing the healthy mindsets I had been working on over the past few months. Up until this point, I firmly believed if I did everything right regarding mental health, whatever this looked like for me, I would never again revert to my old defaults, the unhealthy mindsets through which I viewed the world, and finally flourish as a normal, healthy human being should…uhm, the word unrealistic comes to mind. This is why I keep a journal. There’s just something about seeing my thoughts on paper in permanent black ink that help notify me to unrealistic and potentially damaging beliefs like this one, but for whatever reason, I didn’t catch this one until it was too late. Maybe I didn’t realize I believed this or wasn’t willing to admit I did. Whatever the case, believe this I did until I woke up the next three mornings seeing the world through the broken, cloudy lens I had been using before I sought help.

The sad thing is, I refused to face the hard truth: I can do all the right things and still fall. Life does not reward me in the way I think I deserve more often than I care to admit to myself. Normally when faced with setbacks, I dust myself off and try again. I think to myself This isn’t my blessing, but it’s coming. Now there’s really nothing horrendously wrong with this mentality because I do believe God sees how hard I try and will honor me for it. I guess the faulty bit happens when I picture what success looks like and refuse to accept anything else, which makes getting back up nearly impossible if Life takes an unexpected turn and doesn’t play out the way I want it to. When this occurs, I either have to amend my interpretation of success or stay down because this time, no matter how hard I tried, I could not climb over or walk around this disappointment.

This song has such beautiful lyrics. The album I listened to is called "The Field" by Kristene DiMarco.

It took me two weeks to finally admit I had mentally reverted back to my old, unhealthy defaults. It’s basically a wet, pitiful mess from here because I don’t handle disappointment well. I think I established a new level of pathetic sitting on my bed and crying into a bowl of ice cream while finishing an album my sister suggested, which was pretty timely because I found its melancholy mood rather soothing. I texted her about it when I finished, and we ended up listening to sad songs while texting the beautifully poetic lyrics back and forth. My older sister has this wonderful quality that allows her to be perfectly at ease feeling sad without being depressed. I never have to overexplain myself to her because sadness comes as easily to her as happiness. Therefore, it's okay to feel sad and not want to feel better immediately. She doesn’t try to “fix” me by making me feel something else.

So how about now? It’s been about a month since the events of Easter Sunday, so where am I right now? Have I healed? I forced myself to ask these questions because I noticed a decrease in emotional reactions the weeks following this moment. In other words, I haven’t really felt much of anything, which to be perfectly honest has been a lovely respite since so many aspects of life worry me on a daily basis. But now, not so much. My birthday is in a couple days, yet I still feel rather emotionally empty, which is not exactly healthy, especially since I have dedicated myself to living a full life. I mean, I think this is obvious, but just in case: Emotional deadness does not count as living. Does this mean everyone must express the emotions they feel? Of course not, just so long as they are felt because this plays a huge role in connecting to the world around us.

So, what happened to cause this shift from emotional cornflake to apathetic blob? Well… I have this rather unfortunate habit of filling my mind with distraction whenever I’m handed emotions I don’t want to deal with. In the meantime, I stick them in my back pocket and consider them “dealt with.” There’s a common misconception that time, in and of itself, heals wounds. This is…not correct. If left untreated, hurts and disappointments will become infected, and the spirit will become sick with bitterness, fear, or in my case, apathy.

It wasn’t until I pulled out these tiresome emotions from my pocket and analyzed them that I could diagnose my “infection.” I had come down with a rough case of Sisyphus Mentality. Is this an actual disease? I don’t think so. The only Sisyphus I know is the guy from Greek mythology I studied in philosophy class. For those of you who did not study him in school, Sisyphus was cursed by the gods to roll a stone up a mountain only to fail and watch it roll all the way back down just before reaching the top. He would do this again, and again, and again. For eternity. Yikes. Talk about depressing.

But if I’m going to be honest with myself, which I already established I would be, this was how I felt. Waking up those three mornings with foggy, broken eyes, I felt like Sisyphus watching his stone roll back down the mountain. And it scared me. I had put so much effort and time into understanding my brain and why I believe the things I do about myself, the world, God, you name it, I cannot express in words the devastation I felt in acknowledging my brain had reset itself to its old defaults. Still wrestle with it to be frank. The idea of starting again from square one…yeah, can’t think about that one for too long. However, a few notes: First, I have no idea what really happened, only that I see signs pointing to previous patterns of behavior. Second, I won’t really be starting from scratch because I still possess all the knowledge of everything I learned, enabling me to guide myself into a healthy state of being once more. It’s a gamechanger knowing what’s possible. Lastly and most importantly, I believe in a God who is purposeful in every action He takes or circumstance He allows. He will never condemn me to a life of futility. I am not Sisyphus; I am Olivia, and what I have done in the past and will do in the future matters. And I believe He will finish what He started in me that propelled me here in the first place.

In the end, who knows if I went backwards at all? Something I tell myself all the time is my perception of reality is not the same thing as truth. My emotions react to how I read a situation. That is all. I won’t know the truth until I see the full picture. What if it’s not about feeling good all the time but getting back up and continuing to face life doing everything I know to do? Perhaps next time life takes an unexpected turn, and there will be a next time (I was foolish to believe there wouldn’t be), I won’t fall so hard and wallow for a month afterwards.

Stay Curious,

Olivia

P.S. Sorry for another heavy post. Here’s a picture of a rough idea I had for fictional creature I asked my sister to digitally draw for my story.

Artist credit: Julia Hagan [IG: @julia.hagan.draws]