First, I want to say I have missed terribly blogging. I have missed the entire blogging community. I have missed the interactions and feedback. Most of all, I have missed the love and friendships. This is why I am telling Anxiety to go fuck itself.  Anxiety is what has been holding me back from posting anything that I have written or writing at all. Every-time I would sit at the keyboard, I would feel the sudden need to throw up. I kept thinking that I was a fool and that no one wanted to read this shit. I was wasting my time. Even with a steady increase in followers, I couldn’t convince myself otherwise. I just figured that eventually they would figure out that my writing was complete and utter BS. Crazy, Right? And it was. I was being crazy.

I had let my doubts and anxiety take completely over. I have had my fights with anxiety before. This is really nothing new for me except it began to seep all over the place. I had started avoiding my volunteering at our local non-profit cafe. I stopped writing in general. I had started as a Beachbody coach and completely lost momentum with that. I just came to a screeching halt. But that is how I handle things when I am completely overwhelmed. I become overwhelmed and just shut down completely. I become a hermit of sorts and let myself sink into depression.  I just sit on my coach and self-loathe. There were points where I would get on my laptop and tell myself that I will write again. Then I could feel the stress just creep up and swallow me whole. Thoughts would fill my head, ” It has months since you have published anything, who is going to read it now. You may write something but it will never get the attention that your other stuff did. The last thing you posted, you poured your heart into and it was barely looked at.” And like a fool, I just feed into all my negative thoughts. I was tired of faking it so I gave up.

I will admit that I saw it coming and I just let it happen on some level. I knew somethings I needed to do and I didn’t do it. I tend to feed (for lack of a better word) off of other people’s emotions. So for instance, if I have a friend on Facebook that is constantly negative or out of control with their emotions, it has an effect on me. Normally, I just block the person’s feed. However for some reason I didn’t. I just read post after post becoming frustrated and angry. Honestly, I can’t give a good reason why. This person has since unfriended me. ****Small disclaimer: I am not saying that you can’t be my friend if you have negative thoughts. I understand everyone has bad days and needs to vent. I just can’t handle constant negativity because it is easy for me to fall into it.****

I think another issue that fueled my fire was my subject matter. I was writing too much about dark stuff. When I write, I try hard to put the reader into the mind of someone with bipolar. I want the to be able to feel what depression and mania is.  To accomplish this, I have to put myself into this mindset. I guess you could say that I am a method writer. Unfortunately, there is the risk of falling down the rabbit hole. And I did. Matter of fact, I dove into it. I know that I should have mixed in other things but I just couldn’t. I have such a passion for this. I was also was afraid that I would lose followers if I was changing anything about the theme of my blog. I had myself convinced that I needed them. I am one for grand irrational fears. 🙂

I want to tell you that during my hiatus that I managed to get better. The answer is sorta. I still struggle with the anxiety everyday. I have been taking it one step at a time. I started volunteering again. My local MOPs group started up again so I have that once a month. I joined the local roller derby league which really helps a lot. I started drawing. I working on starting to work-out again. I am taking slow steps. I tend to run head first into things. I need to learn how to walk. I am going to start writing because I want this take off. I want to be a voice in the world. I am just going to start with baby steps. I am going to start mixing it up. If I lose followers, so be it. I am just going to do it one day at a time.