Veladynee Amaren @Veladynee@awoo.space

A few years ago I was cripplingly depressed, going through a lot of turmoil, issues from abuse and a chronic perpetual liar. Anxiety abounded, gender issues I suppressed, made a mess of social life and all sorts of stuff and was generally a non-functional broken person. I did things for the sake of trying to bring myself happiness, or what I thought was happiness.

I bought a really nice muscle car in hopes that just having a thing would make me happy. It didn't. Nothing I did.... did. I found a relationship and clung to it hoping happiness could be found with others, morphed myself and my personality to fit others' ideals of a person instead of letting myself be myself. All because I thought happiness came from outside.

Today, I am happy. It is a general state I find myself in. Am I happy every day? No. Nobody is. Do I still have depression and anxiety? You bet your ass I do.

I began to learn to curtail my negative traits, with first getting control of narcissism followed by stamping out lying. I started to learn to manage anxiety and made a breakthrough there, with the help of a little green plant.

Where am I now? Anxious, suffer from bouts of depression but at least now I feel in control of it, and I am moving forward. But I can generally say, for the first time in my entire life at the ripe age of 30... I'm genuinely happy. And that's something worth celebrating.

This is more of a personal retrospective than anything else, but I guess the main takeaway here would be don't worry, you can do it. It'll take a long time, and the road is never easy and you'll never fully be over it, but you -can- do it, and always take a moment to look back and see how far you've already come. ^^

@Goldkin LET ME FEAST!

My anxiety and moodiness has been out of control the last few days since I started to cycle progesterone and I think I'm going to go back to consistency. It helped me feel better, and was leading to mood stability for months. Thankfully I haven't had any anxiety/depression spiral/crashes but I've been very very close a couple of times since starting the cycling.

Hormones are fun.

Huh, apparently I'm 179 this morning. Holy crap I've been doing good as far as weight loss goes.

Sweet, I have my medical card officially now in AZ. Got the piece of plastic in the mail today. ^^

@Soreth *Winghugs.* :(

Some days like today, anxiety can be really bad. The worry about everything going wrong at the last second, that perpetual voice in the back of your head whispering every little doubt, and its goal to derail every bit of progress you've made.

Just remember, it's all going to be okay, and every day you are further ahead than the previous day. Tell that voice to stuff it, you're better than it, and you -are- successful! ^^

I've learned something over the last 6 months that I think is one of the most important things I've admitted to myself.

I'm not okay, and that's okay.

It has oddly been the most empowering motivator for self improvement in my personal life these last few months moving forward.