Deepest fear.

Have you ever considered what your deepest fear is?

What most scares you...more than anything in the world...

Mine is failure.

And that is why depression was so easily able to clench its jaws around my mind and soul after I became pregnant.

I felt like a failure every time I breastfed at one point, which was every couple hours, because my little one got teeth early and it was so painful that I'd cry each time.

I felt like a failure for being unwed, and not wanting to marry his father, though I'd accepted his proposal.

I felt like a failure for being unhappy, but didn't know why I was so unhappy.

I felt like a failure for not losing weight quickly, because breastfeeding is supposed to be the fix.

I felt alone, because my relationship was failing before I was pregnant and hadn't gotten better and no one else I knew was pregnant/I was the black sheep for being unwed.

I felt like a failure for eating to cope, but I needed to eat more because he was breastfeeding, right!?

I felt like a failure for not being able to afford fancy things for him, because my friends on facebook had all the expensive crap. And let's be serious, it is the same stuff typically just branded different, but still.

I felt like a failure for him needing to have a minor surgery when he was 6 months old, because maybe I caused his little imperfection.

I felt like I wanted to die because my mind was such a dark place, and those thoughts made me feel like a failure as a person because I wanted to fail at continuing to live.

I felt so many things that are perceived negatively that the world inside my head was excruciatingly depressing, and becoming more suffocating each day.

The one shimmer of hope I had was that my child loved me...or at least he needed my boobs (which is like loving me as a food source, so whatever)...and his sweet face was the only reason I kept going.

Life is hard. There are things which are scary, like spiders or being alone or maybe even continuing to live, but if we find something that gives us hope it gets a little easier.
Find something that makes your soul smile, even if that never translates to your face. Find your thing or person or song or yoga pose or place on earth or whatever healthy thing you want, and hold it close. But know that people are not always reliable, and sometimes they come and go from our lives, even if we don't want them to, and you cannot hold them to a standard they don't hold themselves to. They don't have to love you because you love them. Remember to love yourself first, and be wholly yourself before you let others have pieces of you.

Then acknowledge those fears, recognize you can defeat them, and go kick some booty.

→forwardspero

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