So I'm at this weird place in my right now where my life isn't awful but really it is and I'm happy but I'm really not and I'm doing a lot but I also don't really do anything.
Confused?
Hey same.
In this post I want to discuss how to find happiness- or sometimes just not-as-miserableness -during the times in your life that just really suck.
So I have depression and PTSD amongst other physical and mental medical issues, which I'm not going to get into right now.
And I'm not going to go super into detail about everything that's been going on in my life right now because I don't need to for this particular post. But let me give you a brief rundown of my life as it is at this moment.
A few months ago I thought that I would have been happily married for three months by now. I was engaged to be married on March 11th to the man that I loved. I had rings, a gorgeous dress, wedding colors and flowers picked out, and wedding planning was under way.
But then in January my fiance was arrested for committing a felony of which I was the primary victim. He had hidden cameras in my bathroom, bedroom, and apparently in various other places when he knew that he could catch me changing or naked.
Needless to say my entire world came crashing down around me.
*From here on out I'm still going to refer to my ex-fiance as "my fiance" because it's easier to write than ex-fiance fifty million times.*
It's been almost exactly five months since that terrible night that all of this came to light and my fiance was whisked away to jail.
I think that it's fair for me to say that the last five months have been... rough. Don't you think so?
But let me tell you something. This is awful and I hate it and I cry a lot and I am struggling deeply with so many things right now. But I laugh and joke and am happy actually quite a lot of the time. A lot more than you would think.
Let me tell you how. I'll start off with some little things and then end with the biggest one.
First of all, I'm the kind of person that makes jokes when things are hard. It's a defense mechanism I guess, but it actually does help. If I can find something the slightest bit funny, or even morbidly humorous, then I snatch it up.
I have a friend that sent me funny memes and videos the week after the arrest because he didn't know what else to do and that honestly helped a ton. Because laughing helps. And it shows me that I'm still me underneath all of this sadness. So now when I'm super struggling, I'll look up funny videos and memes.
Second, I try to stay away from triggers.
I have this memory of a Young Women's leader telling us about a break-up or something that she had. She told us that when she got home, she put on the prettiest dress that she owned and turned on the saddest music that she could find and just had a complete meltdown. She was laughing at the memory by then because it sounds so silly, but we actually do things like that more than we may realize.
It used to be that when I was sad, I would listen to "On My Own" from Les Miserables or "Not That Girl" from Wicked.
Idiot.
The point isn't to make ourselves even more sad! We should be trying to overcome our obstacles. We should be trying to be happy!
I do admit that I listened to Quiet Uptown and Burn from Hamilton quite a bit at the beginning of all of this. My one roommate would always get concerned about me as soon as she heard me listening to either of those two songs.
But since then I have tried to be careful. I try to stay away from doing things that will make me think of my fiance or make me miss having a person or make me sad in any way.
I've asked friends to skip songs on the radio. I've also asked friends if we can watch something lighthearted for movie night. Which could be tricky because even some kids movies have been too sad for me at times. The new Beauty and the Beast is AMAZING. But it also makes me sob like a little baby, especially during the new songs.
I recently made myself a Spotify playlist entitled "Happy." Not all of the songs on there are upbeat and cheerful necessarily, but they're songs that I know are very unlikely to trigger my PTSD. Because when I'm riding my bike, I can't just skip a song if I need to, so I need a list that avoids those songs anyway.
And sometimes I can listen to my regular "Songs" list and be fine. But I've had to learn to recognize when I am emotionally able to handle it and when I'm just not.
I've also deleted some songs that have my fiance's name written all over them. I didn't realize that I still had Out of My League by Stephen Speaks on my phone still until it came on one day. That was our favorite song. (It's an adorable song, you should look it up. Just don't play it around me unless you want me to melt into a crying puddle). I deleted it from my songs altogether.
Some days I just listen to my Sunday playlist all day instead because I can't handle pretty much anything else without starting to cry.
I've also had to convince myself to let go of some things.
For example, my fiance got me a couple of shirts while he was up working in Alaska last summer and I LOVE them. I especially love this black one with the Northern Lights on it. And so I've had it in my suitcase for the last five months. I kept trying to convince myself that maybe (someday) I could wear it without thinking of my fiance, but I finally faced reality just this week and put it in my DI box. And then gave the box to my roommate to keep for me until she could take it to DI so that I wouldn't really be able to change my mind.
And I cried. Because I love that shirt. But I needed to let it go because it's a trigger. My wedding dress, rings, and the earrings that I got for the wedding are being stored at a friend's house for the moment for the same reason.
I think that you get it. Stay away from things that make you think specifically about your situation or that are just sad things in general.
Third, I love to help people. So even though I am at a very low point in my life, I am constantly looking for ways to help others. And I can't do much right now, but I can do more than you'd think. More than I thought that I could before I found myself in this situation.
The day after my fiance was arrested, I spent most of the day holed up at one of my best friend's apartments. But that evening I went over to my fiance's apartment to check up on his roommates and see how they were holding up (the shock on the one roommate's face when I told him that I wanted to check up on THEM was priceless). And I tried to make sure that my own roommates were doing okay. And then I met up with a singing group that he had been the director for so that I could tell them that they no longer had a director, but that I wanted to help in absolutely any way that I could.
My roommates told me to "stop worrying about everyone else! Worry about you! We're all so worried about you!" To which I replied "I don't know what ME needs, so just let me help everyone else. It makes me feel better." And it does.
It's been amazing to see the impact that I have been able to have on SO many people. This experience has placed me in a position where I have been able to touch the lives of an incredible number of people. Many of them complete strangers to me.
What I keep saying is that if anything good can come out of such a completely awful situation, then I absolutely want it to and I'm going to milk it for all it's worth.
You see, over the years I have prayed to be able to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. And well, this certainly isn't what I had in mind, but Heavenly Father has given me the opportunity to use my own traumatic situation to reach out to others who struggle. He has given me the opportunity to extend my helping hand farther, and to more people, than I ever could have before.
That, more than just about anything else, is what keeps me going.
I struggle to get to bed at a decent time or eat proper meals. I struggle to find the motivation to do much of anything. But this experience has given me even more of a drive than I already had to help others. And it has also given me a greater understanding of certain types of anguish that I have never before felt, which means that I can better relate to so many more people than I ever could before.
I now have a very unique perspective on a lot of things, as well as an unusual outreach at this time. And by golly I'm going to take advantage of that. Because my life is really hard right now- for SO many reasons -but that doesn't mean that I am useless. In many ways I feel useless, but in other ways, I can see that I have been enabled to do more than I ever could before.
Helping others, especially during the times when you don't even know how to help yourself, really is healing.
And last but not least, the biggest secret that I have to keeping going is to be grateful.
When all of life's problems are right up in your face, it can be so hard to see absolutely anything good in your life. But I promise that it's there. And there are more blessings than you could ever have imagined.
Because you see, Heavenly Father knows that we have to go through hard things, but that doesn't mean that He enjoys watching us go through them. It kills Him. So He'll do anything short of actually taking the obstacle away to help us to climb over it instead.
Let's look at my situation:
With my fiance all of a sudden in jail and everything that I thought that I knew all of a sudden a lie, I think that most people would say that there was nothing to be grateful for that night.
They would be wrong.
I was grateful that all of this came to light before I was married to the guy. I was grateful for the detective that gave me a hug when I asked for one because I was home alone when they came and told me that my fiance is the one that had hidden cameras in my apartment. I was grateful for my amazing, supportive roommates when they got back and I told them. I was grateful for my apartment manager's support. I was grateful to be in a place where I could easily ask for and receive a priesthood blessing. I was SO very grateful for my married friends that came to pick me up and let me stay the night even though they had no idea what was wrong, only that something was. I was grateful that I managed to sleep at all that night and that I didn't have nightmares (though I've had plenty since).
And then going beyond that night, I have been grateful for all of the millions of people that have reached out- and continue to reach out -to me over the last few months. I'm grateful for the virtual strangers who have held me while I've cried because all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by it all again. I'm grateful for my family for their love and support. I'm grateful for my old bosses who really, truly tried to work with me, even though I eventually had to be let go. I'm grateful for my friends who make sure that I eat sometimes, and the people who have bought me groceries. I'm grateful for the doctor that I've been working with. I'm grateful for the rides that I've been given. I'm grateful for my friends for not making me feel worse than I already did for leaving a game night after being there for only a few minutes because I simply couldn't handle it at the moment. I'm grateful for my guy friends who happily left their warm cozy beds at 11:30 at night because I just needed a boy hug.
I really believe that it is during our most difficult times that the blessings from the Lord are most apparent. But only if you're looking. I know people who wouldn't be acknowledging any of the blessings that I have.
But I'm not them. I have a tender mercies journal next to my bed and I have never had as much to write in it as I have during these last few months.
But let me tell you. I haven't always been like this. I've struggled with depression my entire life. I've been the person who turns a blind eye to all of the good things in life. And it's hard to change that mindset. It is hard to learn to see the good. But it is SO worth it. Because then there is hope in every situation. There is light in the deepest blackness.
As I've learned to see the blessings in my life, I have seen over and over and over again that everything really does work out in the end. It really, truly does. Because we have the most powerful Being on our side. The Almighty God is our Father and He loves us more than we could ever imagine and He wants the absolute best for us.
And so life sucks. And I cry lots. And I struggle with the smallest things sometimes. And this is not at all easy. And I'm miserable, but not always. Because I know for a fact that this isn't forever. I know for sure that everything will be okay. Because it always is in the end. Things will get better. They always do.
So I can be miserable and happy at the same time. I can have tears bubbling underneath but a genuine smile on my face and laughter in my eyes and on my lips all the same. And that's what really matters.
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