Things Are Getting Better (But Please Still Send Chocolate)

Here I am, a few days post the horrible realisation that I may well be a 'tad' depressed (or at least significantly more so than usual).

My momentous decision is this. I'm staying on the medication. I am going back to the doctor to talk about maybe changing what I am on, and possibly even increase the dose.

I am not, and I state this with great certainty, going to start the whole eating disorder nonsense that I usually do when this process is in full flight. I'm not passing that nonsense about food onto my children, not after having lived this crap with my mother forever banging on about diets and instilling in me that I am a failure before I have even begun.

I am going to try to do a solid 20 minutes exercise every day, rather than an hour three times a week. Not just the usual running around I do every day, an extra 20 minutes, not only to hopefully boost my serotonin levels, but also to do something that is just for me.

I am still looking for work, but have decided, this time definitively, that I don't want to go back into law. I'm too nice for it. I want to work in education or social care, so I am applying for teaching assistant jobs for children with special educational needs, so I can see where I want to and am able to go from there.

I am speaking with professors about doing another phD, this time on an autism related area. I may choose not to do that, instead plumping for the PGCE to work with special children, or a social work degree.

I am even going to go and buy myself a pair of heels, not because I think that I should wear them (I have spent most of my life avoiding them as I am tall as it is), but because sometimes I think that I would like to wear them.

It has dawned on me, slowly peculated through, that I need to give myself permission to be depressed. I feed others the same statement all the time, about valuing themselves and giving themselves space to be them, and yet I deny myself the same rights. Why do I do it?

I do it because I don't think I am worth the air that I breathe. I do it because, over the years and decades, I have been the one that gets "sacrificed" each time - Karen will do this job for me, she doesn't mind doing extra. Karen won't mind if I cancel this, she'll be fine. Karen won't mind if I treat her like shit, she's used to it.

Here's the thing - I do mind. I really object to it. I just never say it out loud. By doing that, I've just bundled myself up into a ball of self hatred, with pitifully low self esteem. A doormat that everyone seems to think it is ok to abuse. It isn't, not any more.

This could be a ridiculously hard thing to achieve; a modicum of self respect, a bit of an ego, some self esteem. What if I applied just an ounce of that stubbornness I use to stay silent and ride out Lid's tantrums, a bit of the verbal dexterity I use to speak out for other people, or a smidgen of the determination that The Boy would speak, despite what we had been told?

It won't happen overnight. It will take weeks, months, years, maybe decades. There is so much damage to be undone, the worst of it by far is the damage I have inflicted on myself. Yes, there have been some desperately unpleasant things in my life, but who doesn't have their sad stories? Anyone who gets to thirty and isn't at least slightly scratched is not a person worth spending time with.

It is a terribly frightening idea, a Karen that likes herself. The possibilities are endless. Let's see.