Losing Yourself

The recent passing of the comedian Robin Williams caused me to re-evaluate the direction my life was taking. I personally have been living with depression and bipolar disorder for years. There have been ups and downs, but I have tried to keep things under control with my medications. The recent path of my life has been harder than in the past. Personal events have caused me to forge forward on my own, without a partner, raising two teenagers as a single parent. After hearing of Robin’s loss due to suicide, I began to look inward, assessing how I was responding to my own depression. I found that I was withdrawing, not facing my problems, but rather hiding from them. I was only living with the negativity around me and not finding any positivity or joy in the world. That was not the kind of life I wanted to live or the kind of life I wanted to share with my children.

I also realized that at my place of employment I was being discriminated against. Now this was not the usual kind of discrimination, but it was because I would not give the manager the fake adoration that others would give. Now I took that discrimination for a year not wanting to cause any trouble, but after my daughter began a summer student position at my job and began getting the same treatment because she was my daughter I knew things had to stop. I tried to be professional and called the manager aside, questioning the treatment. She called me very hurtful names and told me I barely did my job, among other hurtful things. I decided to take ownership of my rights and filed a complaint with our HR department. The situation was resolved, she apologized and end of story, I was finally allowed to transfer to the office nearest to my home, which I have been trying to do for two years. So because I took control of a negative situation, it turned out to benefit me in the end.

In my day to day life, I try to find someone good in each day. I have started following positive people on Instagram and Pinterest and vowed to post something positive or inspirational every day on my own Instagram to help others struggling out there. My own daughter has been struggling with her own depression and try to help keep her self-worth up and help her find her own solutions. Blogging has been missing from my life and I am going to try and find some more time to put that into my life. It’s an everyday struggle, but it’s a struggle that only a person with depression can make. No one else can do the work for them. They must do the work themselves.