I’ve struggled with persistent anxiety and a few bouts of depression throughout the course of my story. And until today, I thought that my mental health was my story in a strange and silly way. I like to think that all of life is just a string of small moments—it’s one of the ways I keep the kind of anxious thoughts that wrap my belly into knots at bay. Small moments seem more manageable when you’re considering taking on the rest of your life. But now that I’m a seasoned anxious wreck, and actually working to help others untie the knots in their bellies and minds, I find myself telling people that the small things are actually the big things too. I mean if you kick the ice cube under the fridge every time one falls, you end up with a habit. You might have a puddle under your fridge eventually as well, but you definitely get a habit. And that’s how I came to define myself as my feelings. When all of the small, ordinary moments strung together looked almost exclusively anxious, depressed, or like some muddled combination of the two, I somehow convinced myself that the most accurate definition of my existence was my emotional experience of the here-and-now.
If I tallied the small moments where I saw myself as just a body and feelings, the string of multicolored emotion beads is probably a decade long. But one day, I looked up from my personal here-and-now, and I saw the way other people were naming the small moments of their stories. Some beautiful souls were eclipsed by what others thought of them, and their string looked like a long list of product reviews. There were a handful of glittery stars thrown in, but it wasn’t art. Or life. Some people had lost the wonder of themselves within a calculated action plan. Their strings were full of shiny trophies and ribbons, but they weren’t beautiful at all. My string of feelings wasn’t art either. Or life. So I began to reconsider.
It wasn’t a hairpin turn to change how I was telling myself the story of who I was. It was a reckoning that took me probably a thousand days—I’d guess at least a billion moments. Every moment would come with a feeling like always, but at some point I noticed that it would also come with truth, and these two things weren’t usually the same. The emotion would have something to say—I would listen, believe, and add it to my string. But in one small moment, I stopped and waited to put my bead on the string, and instead I dropped it in a jar.
My feelings get twisty, and sometimes they convince me that I’m not good enough, not actually loved, not really worth my own while (let alone anyone else’s). I’m okay, by the way. This is just what anxiety, depression, and general lulls in mental health can do to a person. For some of us, the waves are big. But at the one moment in my reckoning, I didn’t string the feeling into my story—I listened to it. I let it whisper to me that something felt a bit off-key in my here-and-now reality, but then I dropped it in the jar and waited for the whisper of truth. Sometimes you do have to wait for the truth to chime in, but it always does in the end. Truth whispered to me that my reality in that moment wasn’t perfect, but that I was still wildly and profoundly loved. So I wrapped a rose into my string to remind me. One moment, the little bead of feeling whispered to me that I should be afraid because failure would really hurt and it’d be easier to not take a risk like that; but truth came and whispered that I’m enough even when I do fail, and convinced me that risk is the only way to grow. So I put my fearful bead into my jar and made the jump. And I found one wild tree branch to tie into my story.
I kept listening to my feelings and to the whispers of the truth. It was anyone’s guess which one I’d listen to in any given moment, and sometimes it still is. But now, my story is a string of treasures. There’s a honeycomb and a knit cap and a golden piece of paper—pieces of truth that remind me who I am. My definition is no longer just a string of feelings, but rather a glorious work of art that shouts from the rooftops that I am worthy of love. It sings that I belong, even when I don’t feel like I do. It speaks the truth that the divine lives in the deepest parts of me, whether I’m convinced in every moment or not.
My mental health still moves with the wind. My belly still ties itself in knots, and there are still days when the darkness falls heavy and strong. But this is only one glass jar of beads on the string of my story. It is delicate and fragile and old and unique, but there is so much more than just this jar. These days, I listen a little more closely to the truth because it treats me like the person I’ve always wanted to become. I listen to the message that my emotions are desperately trying to send, but I only listen to the voice that knows. I am not my emotions, and they are not me. I am not my anxiety, and she is not me. I have the strength and courage and audacity to brave the deepest darkness of my own mental health, but the darkness does not overcome. I do. Because who I am is loved, and brave, and strong, and kind, and good, and filled with the divine, and anxious too.
