Love letters from the IRS - All is well

Coming home yesterday I drove up to my mail box and rolled down the window in the pouring rain to get the mail. I spied the familiar envelope from my friends at the IRS and cringed just a little bit. I was surprised when I opened it and it a actually said thank you for your recent inquiry and stated that all is well.

If you have read my blog before you know during my depression I got my business unemployment taxes really screwed up and the the whole situation loomed over me for litterally years. I avoided the mailbox like I was expecting a mail bomb, really just the a emotional mail bomb.

When the worst part of the depression started to lift I started tentatively facing my worst fears. I slowly faced where my life had brought me and started fresh. No more resisting what is for what I wished it was. The worst part was that I didn't really want my old life back but I didn't really want the new life either. Stuck in emotional tug of war with the future and the past pulling equally.

I am thankful today for the life I have and am I sitting on the porch this morning healthy with no more of a clue where I am going than when I was depressed, I feel good. Before the depression I had never felt paralyzing fear. Sure I had been scared before but I always knew somewhere inside I would make it through. This time I didn't want to fight back and the darkness held me down for a long time.

I do feel like I should mention that the grief brought on early menopause for me. The symptoms mostly manifested emotionally all though at times I had severe flu like symptoms and all my joints ached it got so bad once I thought maybe I had bone cancer. It didn't help that everyone said I was too young for menopause. This distorted my emotional state not knowing what was grief and what was hormones and sometime a mixture of both.

I decided to wait out the storm in my usual stubborn way instead of using meds. Looking back maybe that wasn't the best choice but the worst is over now and my spirit is free to look at my life with a little objectivity. This blog helped to distract me from the darkest places.

I hear bits and pieces of my story in other blogs and conversations with women I know. Just the other day my sister said I think I have flu but I don't have a temperature. It is different for everyone and shouldn't be taken lightly. My next door neighbor said his second wife just up and left him during menopause and when it was over came back, but it was too late.

Final thoughts on this subject. In my life I have mostly unstoppable and my faith and the program has sustained through much worse than my current life situation. This knocked me down and kept me down for a long time. Random thoughts of checking out would float through my head without any real trigger. I knew it wasn't me and gave myself 24 hours to feel differently.

So if you love yourself or someone else who is experiencing this life change be patient, kind and loving. If you feel like your living with a stranger, you probably are. But it is worse if the stranger is the one looking back at you in the mirror. Either way, this too shall pass.