I am still feeling free and happy. Happy isn't a concept I have had a lot of experience with generally. I am content and sometimes peaceful but happy has always been pretty elusive. My mind doesn't even want to analyze why I am happy right now except maybe here on these pages. I feel as though I have been freed from myself. Life doesn't feel like a burden to me anymore just a moment to moment event.
I am busy with work and at home I have been just doing little projects that I have been thinking about a long time but could never get around to them. This is a side effect of depression I think. You are not necessarily sad but the things you do each day just to get through takes it all out of you.
People don't understand that washing dishes can feel like the first steps of a marathon. I have been cooking for the past few months on this diet. Actually going to the store weekly and buying fresh food and cooking for just me. I have never done that before.
I have always been a survivor and a caretaker of other people. The times when I was recovering I didn't think I deserved the same effort I gave to the other people in my life. Everyday was something you just made it through.
To care about yourself is to be selfish. I got that from my mother I think. She died February 15th 1974 after life had taken everything from her. The past few weeks I have been organizing the old family photo and in every picture she has the same fake smile except one. The picture was when she got some award in a high school business club for women.
She was an achiever from the beginning and the life of June Clever did not work for her. She worked until I was five and we moved to a suburb that our preacher built. All the women were full time moms and she conformed and got sick three years later.
We make choices to be what other people want us to be without even know what it is doing to us. We want to fall in line even if everything in our heart go against that. Sometimes people push us but I think it is more about our own view of what a nice or normal person looks like. We hear people say "what kind of person would do something like that to their family?" A desperately unhappy person is what I think.
We get trapped by our own need to belong even if we never feel we do belong. It is a risk to change our lives to better match who we really are and there is no guarantee that we will be happier or that everyone we love will be there with us in the end. No one wants change but we need it to keep the flow going.
My mother did a good job with the time she had with us. From what I remember she ran the family like it was a business. We had a lot of freedom and she taught us how to be self sufficient. She held us to high standards based on the Bible and those never wavered. Everything else was optional.
I wish I had really known her as a person instead of the snippets of memories I hold on to. I don't feel she was happy maybe she was mostly peaceful and content like I have been. I love you mom! If you can hear me.
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