I Started A New Medication and Today Was a Good Day

Today has been a good day. It’s a day I dream about when thinking about improving my mental health. Even though I went to work at a job I ultimately am not passionate about nor want to continue for much longer, my mindset was totally different. I don’t know if it’s the new medication but I feel calm, present, energetic, and motivated. These are states of being that have been luxuries for me. I can’t help but have conflicting emotions. I am happy that I have found satisfaction in my state of being and have found peace of mind for today, but it saddens me that this feeling has eluded me for so much of my life. I have been in a mental prison, shackled to my insecurities, my fears, my past traumas, and my hypothetical futures.

Days like today I feel “normal” and by extension I feel cheated for all the days I have stumbled around lost in the maze of my mind. Life feels so obvious and intentional right now. Pausing to sit in the moment isn’t a tortured chore. How long I have suffered. How long I have been in the dark. I wonder about all of the different versions of myself that are out there. Versions that aren’t anxious, that are confident and assured. Versions that look at the future with excitement not fear. Versions who know how special they are. Today, it all seems so easy. My validation is running on autopilot and I just get to sit back without any expectation or obligation but to be present in this moment. I get to just be, and take pleasure in being.

I wish I had the secret formula to conjure this frame of mind every day, but I don’t. Truthfully, I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t say that it was any one thing or thought or action. It’s like I woke up tuned to a different frequency and the song of my life is naturally flowing with a soft melody instead of a dissonant wall of noise. It’s like I’ve skewed into an alternative timeline with a different version of myself, or some alien consciousness has possessed me during the night. It feels so foreign yet it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s like an excavation of my psyche, and the bedrock of my true self is now exposed. Perhaps this is the real me, or the version of me that I have always wanted to actualize and manifest. Maybe there is no real me, just an infinite wave of possibilities that collapse into a single state with each choice I make. Well, I have the choice now, to be free of expectation, of guilt and shame, of criticism, of a longing for some external end. Happiness and fulfillment are not reached for, they are embodied, conjured from within myself, and that is enough. Today has given me hope into my potential for feeling an innate sense of wholeness. Happiness can be as simple and automatic as breathing. And today I choose to breathe.