Turning 40 was a big deal to me. I was excited to turn 40. I have never shied away from aging; I've never feared getting older. I knew that I wanted to do something special for myself. I thought about what would be the best gift I could give myself for months prior to my big day. In the end, I knew that the only gift I could give myself was the gift of health.
I knew that trying to get emotionally, physically, and spiritually healthy would impact my life and the lives of those I love the most in dramatic ways. I also knew, quite well, that getting healthy would not be easy, would take me a long time, would have places in which I would stumble (sometimes time and time again). BUT I also felt very strongly that I deserved and was worthy of health.
In tackling my health I knew that could not focus on my physical health first. I have tried to do that so many times and have failed miserably each time. I knew that there was a reason for this, but I wasn't ready to deal with that reason head on. Now that I was turning 40 I knew that if I didn't deal with this issue it would begin to impact my physical health in ways I may not be able to correct as being an aging overweight woman could cause some serious health problems.
Thus began my journey towards mental health. At the end of May I began seeing a therapist, two to be precise. After undergoing two sessions worth of screenings, both suggested that I might need to consider taking medication to help get me on the right track. Now, I have known for a long time that I probably needed to be on medication, but I was afraid to do so. Medication was fine for other people, but people like me? We don't need medication. We just need to suck it up and try harder and be better. But in reality? This line of thinking was only making me feel worse and worse because I could not, no matter what I did, get unstuck in certain areas of my mental health. So, I agreed to try medication. After playing around with my dosage, I finally settled on a dose that works for me. I could not believe how much better I felt after my medication took effect. I felt like a living human being again. I felt like some stranger had taken over my body for the last few years and I was back. To be honest, it was also a little bit unsettling because where did I go for all of that time? Who took over my body?
I saw a therapist weekly for a month and then bi-weekly for a few more months. I still see one of my therapists every few months to make sure that my dosage is still correct and everything is going okay. The goal is to eventually wean myself off of medication under my doctor's supervision, but for now this is what I need. And I am okay with that.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about and working on my mental health. I am learning what my triggers are, what I need to sustain positive mental health, what I can do when I have a bad day, and so on. I am making steady progress. It certainly hasn't always been easy and I have definitely had setbacks, but I am in a much better place than I was 6 months ago. I think I will always be the type of person that needs to focus on where I am at mentally. This is just a part of who I am and that is okay.
For the second half of this year I am taking the time to focus on my physical health. I have played around with some things that work for me exercise wise and diet wise and I have decided to begin working on that aspect of my well-being at the beginning of the new year. There is no better way for me to be able to benchmark my success other than beginning on January 1st. I know that this is incredibly cliche, but I don't care. This is what I feel I need to do for myself, and so this is exactly what I will do.
As for the third part of this trifecta, my spiritual health, I am not sure where I am at. As many of you know, after Sarah's seizure in the woods last February, I lost faith in God. And while I have begun to read my bible again as well as some books by Christian authors, I am not sure how I feel about God. I have felt a calling to attend church, but I am not sure which kind (Catholic or Christian) and I am not sure which one. It really bothered me for a while after Sarah's seizure that my belief in God vanished. It was something I have always been able to rely on and the absence of my belief left a gaping hole in me. I am still not resolved on the issue, but at least I feel like searching for answers again. For a long while I didn't even feel the need to do that.
My whole health is a gift that I intend to keep working on for the rest of my life. For a long time, I put everyone else ahead of me, and in a lot of ways I still do, but I am taking baby steps in putting myself on equal care footing. My health is important to me, but it is also important to those I love. Gaining health is a promise I made to myself on May 7th - the day I turned 40. It is a promise I intend to keep.
