About a month ago, I wrote about grief.
After publishing that piece, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I let all those heavy feelings off of my chest and onto a page, and I felt so much better… for a while.
I recently learned that the feeling of grief is not exclusive to loss – they are closely tied, but they are not synonymous. You can grieve the end of a relationship, a feeling you’ve been missing, or even a time period that you’re no longer in.
For a few months now, I’ve been grieving a part of myself that I haven’t seen in a while – not for a reason that makes much sense.
This is the longest I’ve gone without hitting a low point. After going years trying to anticipate how long I could go before things got bad again, I’m finally at a point where I don’t feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Since I moved in January, I’ve done everything within my power to get better, in every possible sense. By creating new habits, going to the gym, seeing a therapist, drinking in moderation – I’ve done exactly that. I’ve found myself telling friends of mine that “I feel like a completely different person.”
I spent years trying to feel like a different person – a happy, calm person.
Now that I am happier, it doesn’t feel like I thought it would.
Very few people know me well enough to understand how bad my depression got. Things as simple as brushing my teeth felt like a chore, I couldn’t stand being sober for more than a day at a time. I was constantly going through the motions, like I wasn’t really alive.
But I don’t feel like that anymore. I’m so much healthier now – I do things that are good for me, not because I feel like I have to, because they come naturally. My smile is genuine. I catch myself laughing more often. I’m just happier.
I worked so hard to become who I am now, to reach a state of stability. I recently told a friend of mine that I’ve gotten to a point where a bad day is just that – a bad day. It no longer means I’m entering a depressive episode. That is one of the favorite personal milestones I have experienced so far.
I like being this girl, the girl that smiles at herself in the mirror.
But I don’t recognize myself anymore.
Before I got better, I thought the reason people liked being around me is because I was unpredictable – and not in a good way.
I’ve always had this care-free personality that people are drawn to. I’m not trying to sound arrogant, but I was fun to be around. I would never turn down a good time no matter what it cost me in the long run. I couldn’t say no to going to the bar, any night of the week, and I’d often show up at home the next day in the same outfit as the night before without a single memory of what happened.
I’ll be the first to admit: I was crazy. Every weekend provided me with a new story to tell, typically not something worth being proud of. What I liked about being so unpredictable is that it kept me interesting.
Sunday mornings consisted of telling my friends what I did the night before (although some mornings, they had to tell me what I did). It always started with me telling them something like I dropped my phone in the lake, I made out with one of my classmates, I ended up at a strip club at 3:00 in the morning, I ran through the woods for hours and no one could find me, I puked outside of the bar in the bushes… you get the gist. I’m leaving out a LOT of details because some secrets are meant to be kept. The point I’m trying to make is that I was absolutely wild and saw no issue with it because whatever happened to me the night before, the story always ended with “and I still made it to work the next day.”
I am in no way discouraging people to have fun and do crazy things throughout their life. In fact, I think doing the kind of things you shouldn’t do every once in a while builds a lot of character.
Since I was such a high-functioning disaster, I didn’t realize that I had a problem. I wasn’t an angry drunk, or a sad drunk – I was fun and loud and spontaneous. And who doesn’t love a good time every once in a while?
Except my version of “every once in a while” was 4-6 times a week. I didn’t care where I woke up the next day, who I embarrassed myself in front of, or how I got home.
This might sound ridiculous, but I miss that side of myself. It was draining at times but more often than not, it was exhilarating. I was having so much fun it was hard to remember how sad I was. I was always down for anything, I had a lot of people I enjoyed spending time with, and now I’m just… boring.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really proud of the person I’ve become over the past few months. It took a lot of work for me to get to this point. But there are times that I miss the wild, spontaneous girl I was. The girl who was full of crazy stories, the girl who didn’t have a care in the world.
In this process of working on yourself, while you’re trying to become the best version of yourself you can be, there’s a piece that no one really tells you about.
Our culture has a tendency to force the idea of “self love” down people’s throats. While I think self love is important to an extent, the part no one tells you is that it is impossible to love everything about yourself.
When I was partying all the time, there was a big piece missing: I was broken inside. My time was spent working as many shifts as possible to distract myself from what I was feeling, attempting to fill a void with multiple substances, and kissing strangers for just the smallest hit of dopamine. I’ve done a lot of repair work, trying to make up for the time I spent damaging the little self-respect I had.
Now, I have a routine: I go to class, the gym, and my simple job. I spend the rest of my time with the two friends I have, and writing. That’s it. Now that I’m doing well, my life is boring. How ironic is that?
The time I’ve spent trying to find the missing piece of my life has taught me that there will always be a piece missing. At any point, you will either be lacking in your social life, love life, work life, mental health, physical health, or whatever aspect is keeping you from feeling fulfilled. However, having a “missing piece” does not take away from your wholeness as a person. We simply cannot have it all – and that is okay.
And frankly, I’ll take being “boring” over being a disaster. I didn’t realize how much I needed that shift, to become more responsible and start to grow up a little. The fun person I was is still in there, but she’s taking the back seat for a while. She may not be in charge anymore, but she left me with a hell of a lot of stories to tell.
Love always,
Kristin
love always, kristin 
Leave a comment