Blessed Illumination

God is good.
Wow.
GOD IS GOOD.
I haven't blogged in a while, mostly because I was focusing my writing energies into my fictional endeavors, and still am, but going forward I'm going to try to consistently exercise both.
I'm still very much struggling with my mental health. A couple months ago, my psychiatrist purported that I am bipolar. Though I suspected it for a long time, to have it confirmed slammed me pretty hard. I am not personally familiar with anyone who struggled with bipolar disorder, and so I was plagued with stigma and myth. My psychiatrist explained that it is a spectrum disorder and I had exhibited symptoms closer to the mild end of the spectrum rather than the extreme.
It explained many things in my life. She wanted to prescribe me a mood stabilizer, but immediately the alarms went off in my head. I absolutely did not want to add something new to my medication regimen. I asked about the side effects and they sounded terrible, so I rejected the prescription. Instead, I wanted to document my moods day by day to determine if I truly needed a mood stabilizer.
I am still on the fence about it.
Even though I may choose not to take medication, the diagnosis of bipolar disorder has been an aid in and of itself. I have begun research; I'm compiling a reading list. I have also drawn up a prototype mood meter or gauge for my documenting. Just this small step has already been a huge help in identifying my own feelings.

That said, I was beginning to feel that I was having an especially low day today. I was beginning to sink in the same old thoughts and ruminations that I'm stuck where I am in my life and I don't know how to get out of it or fix it. As I usually do when I feel like that, I simultaneously try to problem solve it and pray that God show me the way and give me the strength to follow it while accepting that I will probably feel utterly depressed for the foreseeable future.

I got the strong feeling to write out my feelings about the situation exactly. I hadn't realized that I  had been afraid to actually put into words the worst of how I'm feeling about my boyfriend and our situation. As I described my feelings, I was able to finally admit to myself what it was that I wanted. In my writing I unapologetically wrote out a plan. The clouds began to be parted. Light shone in the darkness. We've been seeing my therapist together and our next session is next week, and now I know exactly what I want out of it and what I need to say.
One of the things I need is my own car again. Thanks to my budgeting and working overtime, I have been able to get some saving started. Thanks to this focus and drive, I'm able to seriously look into it and budget for it.
This is all possible because I'm able to pick up more shifts.

All of this is possible because for the first time in a long time, any background anxiety about my job is virtually gone. Lately I haven't had the constant anxiety about going to work, people at work, events at work. I've been able to handle a lot of things that used to make me nervous, and because of that I can take almost everything in stride. My tolerance and patience has been multiplied because of the strength God has granted me.
I have what I need to do what I need to do to get where I need to go, or at least on my way to it.
Thanks to my recent diagnosis, I've been able to reflect on my emotions and reactions to them and this led to a realization that I have been unconsciously self-sabotaging on some level because I'm afraid of being successful and/or happy because I have been equating happiness with what I can now identify as mania.
Identifying the difference between happiness, or at least contentment, and mania is opening a door for me to finally change patterns in my life in a big way.
I have been pushing so hard and slowly building up to the organizational level and self-awareness to embark on this path that is now more clearly illuminated.
Something else that I learned this evening, or maybe I somehow already knew it and it was just reinforced enough to be brought into my conscious understanding; that when you're praying to God for an answer, really you just need the bravery to be honest enough with yourself to admit the answer you've been fearing.

GOD IS GOOD.

Tonight I was able to completely turn around my despair, and I am still basking in this blessed illumination.