She talked about when she had her children. She had both her kids in Florence, Italy, and there, at that time at least, there was no option for an epidural. The primary concern was not helping ease her pain but the birth of a baby. Her pain became peripheral, something that she would have to experience and go through but easing it was not the focus. The baby was the focus. She likened this to my depression. Everyone always wants to cure my depression but what if it's not curable? What if it's something I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life? Depression and anxiety isn't always something that can be fixed and cured. Sometimes it's a lifelong battle that you have to learn to deal with. If that's the case, it's more of making the depression and the anxiety my peripheral and living life my focus. The depression and anxiety may always be passengers of my airplane of life but they do not have to internally hijack my mind all the time. Learn to experience the pain of it all but not let it be the primary focus of my life. Make them peripheral, not the focus. If you make it out to be something to overcome and you don't overcome it, you just spiral deeper falling down the rabbit hole into a world of darker nothingness. Maybe, if you don't make it something to overcome and make it the peripheral, making living life the focus, something magical might happen instead.
Ever since the beginning of college, I've been battling mental health. Been on almost every medicine under the sun trying to be "cured" of it, trying to "overcome" it and so far I haven't. Which is perhaps why I've never really gotten better. Some times were better than others and when I look back on those times it was when I made my mental health situation the peripheral and made living my life the focus. Like when I first moved to Portland, I was happy because I was living my life. And you may say, well, change of scenery helped and new situation. But, no, at the time I moved to Portland, I was in the middle of a very bad relationship that had me very upset and depressed. And when I made the decision to move to NYC, I began living my life again, made living my life the focus despite having just ended a long standing relationship that really left me despaired. But in those times, the depression didn't get me down, I learned to live with it and through it because I made it the peripheral and not the focus. And being completely in despair over an ended relationship did not become my primary focus, living my life did which is why I made the decision to finally move to NYC like I had planned to do a long time ago. And that was a magical happening for me.
We got on the subject of Nelson Mandela and you're probably wondering what the hell that has to do with anything. Nelson Mandela relates to me in this way: the apartheid. Nelson Mandela not only literally broke down apartheid in his country, but while he was in prison, he broke down an apartheid in his mind; an apartheid of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice. My therapist looked at my life in much the same way. That maybe I need to find a way to break down the apartheid in my life; the life before I had my burn and the life I have now, who I was before I had the burn and who I am now. Maybe I need to break all that down and see it all as simply my life. No before and after the burn, just my life as it has turned out. The burn, the accident, is a part of my life. And who I was and who I am now is simply growth of myself and who I'm meant to be. Maybe breaking down this apartheid of my accident is the secret to finding peace; the peace I have longed for so desperately. It won't be easy, but maybe this is the key. I must break down my own apartheid and by doing so I will find my peace. Life doesn't always turn out as you planned, but sometimes, what happens instead is the good stuff.
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