There is this prompt that does the rounds that tells you to blog using the alphabet as your guide. Each letter becomes a blog. I decided that as a challenge, this would be good to get me blogging every day.
X = xenization
Definition: To walk / travel / exist as a stranger
Yes, I went searching for words and this one is a new one for me, but I can so identify with it. To feel this way is to be like a stranger in a foreign country. Exactly how I feel when I am inside my head.
It is all fucking foreign. Hell, it’s my head, I should have some clue, but the reality is that my mental illness often changes the landscape. Things I thought I knew, or was comfortable with is no longer there or the shape has changed in ways I no longer know how to react to it.
There are moments when I feel like that at work, or with people I have known for years. Some days even my own home feels foreign.
This is the reality that many of us who live with depression face on a daily basis. The simple act of finding something you can connect with is sometimes like trying to navigate through a city as busy and intense as New York and you have never been off the farm in your life!
It is true that you don’t know what personal demons someone else faces, and you should be kind. You should also be kind to yourself. This is my biggest challenge – to be kind to myself. I know what demons lie in wait, and still I am the one who is the hardest. I pretend, sometimes, that I am this stranger in my head so that I can better ignore said demons. Doesn’t work for long but you get the idea!
It has been a very rough 6 months of 2019. More often than not this whole stranger idea has been my reality. I am working hard to place a plan in place for the balance of 2019 in order for me to stay as level as what I can. I know that the level changes daily but maintaining my balance is important.
It is one step at a time. One breath at a time. Soon it won’t be that feeling of xenization, but one of reasonable comfort and understanding. Well that is the aim in the next 6 months. One breath at a time.
Neuroses Undefined 