Okay yea, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I am still struggling... a lot. But I also lost my oldest sense of self.
I was always the happy, hopeful one. I was always optimistic. Now I can't even see myself having a reasonably bearable time anywhere in my future.
I just read a letter that I wrote to Ty for our last Christmas and even though I had just dove into the depression and Ty had said we were officially broken up - every word, emotion, topic, prediction, statement - everything in that letter was dripping in optimism. Ty was my hope for the world and my future, and I didn't know I had lost him 100% yet so I could still hold onto my sense of hope.
It's been 17 months since I knew that we were done. Let's call it 16 because I was in some crazy shock/denial for a while. Yet, I still have not returned to my base person. The person I was known to be, the person I knew myself to be; she hasn't returned and she is not really in sight either.
The hope I once has is gone. I don't know where it is. It's not lying dormant inside of me, and I know Ty didn't take it because he never really needed my emotional energy. I don't know where to get more, or how to restock.
I just want to feel like a whole person, and I don't. I have been trying to rebuild KTea as best I can. A lot of KTea got muddled up in the tidal wave that was Ty. Once the wave receded, a lot of what I had come to believe was myself was gone and I was left alone to rebuild. I couldn't just go back to what I had known before - a 16 year old, unknowing, immature, late bloomer of a kid. I had to just become this 18 year old girl in college with an identity. I had to spring into a body I wasn't familiar with. Someone I didn't and still don't know how to be.
I am an independent person. I am also social with an intimate group of people. I can socialize when I need to, but recently I feel myself avoiding new people more and more. I was pretty codependent with Ty, but I didn't know that I was defining the mature woman I was becoming as someone who depended on him for substance, for hope, for definition. When he left, I broke down as a person. I was already getting depressed when we were still together but at different schools. I was just sad to be apart from him. I actually felt like I was fine otherwise, it was just the separation from my best friend and how I defined myself that was eating at me.
Until I can fully separate myself from Ty, I will be depressed. Until I can redefine myself independently, I will be tethered to the person I had become through that relationship. And that tether has my optimism, drive, and happiness woven into it.
