Pumpkin!

Happy Halloween x3. =D

I've been (trying to) changing my life. In many ways. I started my therapy this summer. And as much as I was waiting for it and hoping it was gonna help, it's been stunning how much it has actually changed me, the way I think and act.

I've changed my diet. No more chocolate filled nights, no more pizzas. Rye bread, vegetables and fruits are my new friends. I've dropped 4 kg /almost 9 pounds during the past 5 weeks. I've started to exercise more. 

Work has been good too. I am actually feeling so good, that I might be able to start some kind of internship next spring, if all goes well. I've started going to this support group for people with anxiety disorder. In a weeks time I am gonna become an art teacher, we're starting an art class at work and I'm the teacher. I am so excited! and I am gonna take part in another art class too, that lasts for 5 weeks. Lots of new things to come.

I've been on a really thoughtful mood lately. I think about my life a lot. And what I want. That's pretty much an open thing. It feels like every time I think about the future, I have to go back to the past... to go forward. And I'm not yet so far that I could go forward, not really. I'm on my way there, finally, no longer stuck in one place, but not there yet. 

I have no idea what I'm gonna be doing. I know what I want, but that seems like a very distant dream. There are so many things I want, but so little things that I can actually do myself. Things just need to happen, or not happen, just have to wait and see... and that's what I'm really bad at, waiting.

 I read these old old journals last night, arranging old papers and started to see the "pattern" of my life. I can see where my anxiety disorder came from. I can see what caused it. It's funny, reading your life backwards and realize things you didn't see then. If only I could tell that young Anna what she should do, but since that's impossible... just got to live forward and try to do my best.

Every once in a while I think that, even though nothing has gone the way I planned or wanted in life, I just might be heading to the direction I was meant to go, all along. That all the things that have happened, didn't happen in vain, but they led me to the path I was supposed to go, but would have never found if something would have gone differently.

If my ex, 5 years ago, would have not come home after spending the night in jail, dropping his engagement ring to the table and ending the 10 year relationship, I might now be in a miserable marriage with a few kids, a pretty home (out in the countryside), a shiny car and a man who doesn't really love me.

If I had not gotten the nervous breakdown 4 years ago after working myself sick, I would never have had to struggle so hard just to stand on my own two feet and learn to appreciate life in a whole new way. I would have never found the real me.

And now, looking back, I know the drop would have come. One day. This was just the way it went. Maybe it was good it happened when it happened. In the end it was the perfect time. 

I'm a child raised in a home with an alcoholic. Children growing up in a home with an alcoholic grow up to be too meek, too shy and too kind to others. And a little screwed up. I got my first panic attack when I was 15, when my stepdad burst into my room breaking the lock of my door, calling me a whore, ready to beat up my mom. How can you just grow up into a normal person from that? When you are so scared that you hide in your closet, but have to be brave because you have to help your mom so he wont beat her to death. 

That leaves scars, no matter how much you want to think that it was all in the past, it's over now and you are an adult. You don't have to think about those things. Maybe you don't. But a human mind doesn't work like that. When it's all finally calm and quiet and you can sleep without waking up in the middle of the night to a scream that shatters all rest, sets your heart to pound and makes your muscles cramp, when it's all over, that's when the mind starts to work it out inside your head. And there are so many little things that can so easily set it all off again. A sound, a smell, a time of year, that brings it all back.

It's all in the past, but it's still part of you. You grew up with it. You learnt it. When home was not the safe place it's supposed to be to a child, but a place where you have to be ready to flee, to fight. Always ready. Never at ease. That's where the anxiety starts, that's where it was born. And when you're old enough, when your brain has processed the information long enough, maybe you can start to change your programming. Your brain has been programmed wrong and it has to be reset. It needs a little nervous breakdown to set things to a zero, where it can begin anew. ... Well, not completely, but that's where it starts.

That was 4 years ago. Then it was the year of the "all-my-memories-are-lost", the year I have no recollection of. I have no idea what I did. Maybe I did nothing. I laid in bed and stared ahead. That was enough. I was breathing. And after the first step the healing started. And it's not over. The process is like a rollercoaster. You go up, life is wonderful. And then you crash back down. And with the last of your strength you fight back up until it's not such a struggle just to keep your feel moving and you can smile again. Even laugh. Laughing is so good!

And then you suddenly realize you have dreams again. And you can laugh, not just with your mouth but with your eyes as well. Until you've been to the very bottom, you don't realize how precious even the tiniest good things can be.

When you can sleep without nightmares.

When you don't have to worry that someone is going to hit you.

When you can smile.

When you can go out and smell the fresh air and not cry.

When you can lift your hand without a struggle.

When your head feels like yours again.

When you know there is a future, not just hope so.

When you don't have to live in constant fear.

When you can admit that even when your beaten, broken and tossed aside, you are still special.

When you realize that you can control your own life.

Life. ♥