This time last year I was literally limping around on one foot. Not in school. Not working full time. No significant other to speak of. Not pursuing any art in particular. I was severely depressed, which probably wasn't helped by my investigation of French philosophy. My best friends had been abroad for three months, and I missed them.
By February not a lot had changed. Still in weekly counseling. I signed up for a six session drawing class. Each class was three hours long, and I learned the basics. It was a completely absorbing experience to be immersed in thought concerning how to draw a straight line, how to see in three dimensions, how to sharpen a pencil. I learned as well as I could, but when I wasn't in class I wanted to die. And I was taking an anti-depressant. My dreams were tortured with emotional turmoil. By the end of the month, I began educating myself about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and childhood emotional neglect. Pieces started falling into place in my mind explaining why I felt so horrible. The whole month I worked with my dad to fix up the room downstairs in our house. That action catalyzed my motivation to organize and rearrange the rest of the house as well.
March began with a date in Knoxville and a guy I met online. I thought we had hit it off, but I was busy doing the Knoxville Fashion Week. I began seeing a second counselor in addition to the first one I had been seeing for over a year. Every day was a struggle to get out of bed. March has been tough for five years because it is both the anniversary of Micah's birth and his death. He would have been 21 years old last year.
I also adopted a puppy of off Craig's List. I named him Earl Grey. He is a Chihuahua/Miniature Schnauzer/ Italian Greyhound mix. An odd little firecracker who is simultaneously a stringy ball of cuddly love. His presence got me out of the bed on many occasions when I would have otherwise just laid there indefinitely.
I initiated acupuncture and Adderall into my treatment regimen.
April was more of the same. More sadness. More mourning. More processing grief and trauma. Many afternoons spent at the dog park with Earl Grey trying to pass myself off as a contributing member of society rather than a homeless bum, with marginal success.
May commenced with Mother's Day at the flower shop, my cousins wedding in Kentucky, and concluded with a haircut that inspired me to sign up for cosmetology school. Also, more counseling, more acupuncture, more vitamins, and an increase in my anti-depressant medication dosage.
In June I hit the ground running with a job offer within a week of signing up for night classes at school. I began working five days a week and going to school three to four nights a week, in addition to juggling Earl Grey in between. Random strangers are surprisingly super sensitive to seeing a dog locked in a car when the temperature is over 70 degrees. (Earl Grey is fine.) My job as the senior secretary at the acupuncture clinic where I had been receiving treatment was fun. I looked forward to folding sheets and dust mopping the wood floors throughout the small house. I got to dress up regularly and do my makeup. I was never late. Plus I was able to afford my tuition, my health insurance, and putting Earl Grey in a doggy daycare once a week.
July was hot and dry. I had to stop seeing one of my counselors due to a conflict in scheduling, but I was still getting regular acupuncture treatments and seeing my other counselor consistently. My employers fed me lunch at the clinic, so I only had to think about two meals a day. Nevertheless, as the month wore on, I began to feel increasingly fatigued. The pace I was keeping was feeling less and less realistically sustainable. I cut all my hair off, attended a dear friend's wedding with a date I had not previously met, and helped do the makeup for a fashion show held at the Chattanooga Convention Center downtown. My life felt like it was falling through cracks between work and school. I missed my job working as Liz Lindstrom's personal assistant. I missed seeing the counselor I gave up sessions with to keep up my jam-packed schedule. I missed seeing my brother who had returned from South Africa after being gone for about nine months but who worked opposite hours of me so we were never home at the same time.
August was even hotter and drier than July. I was even more tired. The acupuncturist I worked for was becoming increasingly antagonistic toward me. He did would nitpick my work and give me a hard time for no particular reason. As the month dragged on I felt increasingly depressed. I was slipping into a habit of eating fast food after school and day dreaming about when I could fall asleep again.
With September came higher temperatures and tension between my boss and myself. It was confusing, but I focused on doing my job as well as I possibly could. But he was becoming intolerable. Stephen and Courtney were about to return to the States. My birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks. But I was exhausted - physically, emotionally, and mentally. And with that my job ended as quickly as it began. In a flourish of fucked up drama and passive aggressive communication, I was no longer the receptionist, and I felt a great weight was lifted off my whole self. I felt liberated and free to breathe again.
October opened with me returning to work for Liz. We are a dynamic team, and we have a lot of fun together. I had fall break from school, and began reluctantly checking out the dating scene in Chattanooga again. I felt more confident and approached the whole idea of dating with more hope and a healthier sense of personal boundaries. I even agreed to be a guy's girlfriend toward the end of of the month. We attended a few parties together and had a lot of fun.
November was much of the same. It passed rather quickly. I worked, went to school, and saw my then boyfriend on the weekends. He lived out of town about two hours away though. After spending Thanksgiving with him over a span of a few days, I realized we weren't a good match. I can honestly say it was the happiest I had been in a while, even still I was able to let the relationship go because I knew it wasn't headed where I wanted to go. I was relieved again after ending that relationship. I could breathe again, and I got busy searching out gifts for all my family members.
December wasn't that cold, not like one might expect. We all wondered if we would even need to wear coats on Christmas. My dad and I put up the minimum number of decorations. I was working and in school right up to the week of Christmas. Time was flying by at a rapid rate. Somewhere around mid-December I started talking with another guy from the Internet. I messaged him on a whim, not especially expecting him to reply. It came out through our conversation that he had not seen Napoleon Dynamite. In a moment I decided that should be remedied, and I could help. That was our first date. I ended the year in his arms, and we are really happy together.
I still experience depression. Still see an acupuncturist. Still take an anti-depressant. Still see a counselor. But I'm in school. I work. I sing. I have a dog. I'm even doing a bit of exercise. I live in a blue room, but that doesn't make me a fish. I'm excited to see what changes take place in 2017.
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