i'm okay, it's okay

This week has been strange. For the longest time, I've been living in this sort of stretched out state of driving down a long road in the dark. Occasionally my headlights would flick on and it would be alright, but then I'd hit a pothole and they'd flick off again. I don't mean to be preemptive by saying this, but I'm okay right now.

I didn't even realize how awful everything was until very recently. See, for really pretty consistently for about a year to two years, with stretches of cheerfulness inbetween (I'm hesitant to be one of those self-diagnosing people and call the awful stuff Depression™ but if it wasn't it was friggin close) I had this mindset where even when I was feeling pretty good I knew it wouldn't last. I could feel this fog sort of hovering at the edge of everything I would do and say, just waiting to swoop back in and claim me. I would try and think it away with religion and Positive Thinking™ and all the tricks, but the deepest voice in my head felt like it was humoring me. "Alright, Kate, Imma let you pretend you're good at stuff and that you'll be successful one day and that people like you, but if it gets out of hand I gotchu, and It's gonna suck again. Watch out, son, you don't deserve happiness so it won't stay." I'm paraphrasing of course.

So you tell yourself that when you have relatively high energy you're okay, that you're overthinking it, being melodramatic and all the rest. You go about your life trying to figure out if this is the happiest you're supposed to be and if you're expecting too much. It doesn't feel like you're in some dark hole with everything conspiring against you, it just feels bland. Like, you're living life and you laugh sometimes and things are going pretty well and you're not always crying and popping pills or anything, so you must be fine. You're fine, get over it, you're being dramatic for attention, and even if you aren't, who says you deserve to be happier?

But for about a week I haven't had like any mood drops. I don't collapse when people aren't watching and I have the energy to hold conversations with people and accept compliments without retracting into my double chin and mumbling unintelligibly. I feel like my future might not suck after all. I don't have to remind myself to be positive and to smile when people look at me. It's super weird, and looking back on how I've been feeling for honestly about a year, I can confidently say I was not happy. I was not in a good place, and heck, maybe I'm still not. Maybe this is one of those temporary things that sticks around for a bit and then goes away again. I don't know. But I do know that even if it comes back, it'll just be another tunnel. I'll make it out somehow, somewhere, sometime.

So yeah, that's me right now. The Classic Hormonal Teenager™ who doesn't understand her emotions.

I've used the trademark symbol too much in this post, but I think I like it. I'll honestly probably start using it more often from now on.