Beyond Anxiety

When I started this blog, it was with the intention of documenting a journey.  I wanted to share my anxiety journey with others.  I figured that I was not the only person ever to have experienced this, yet I could not find any help or hope online.  I thought I could be some help and some hope. 

This blog was made to bless others, and really it has blessed me.  I've written about so many sides of anxiety - the anger, the depression, the self-doubt and the relapsing.  I know I am not alone in suffering from these things, and others know that they aren't alone either.

All that said, over the past week, I've been questioning this blog.  I've been questioning myself.  I've been realizing how much more I know now than when I first set foot on this path.  It starts with the title. 

Journeying Through Anxiety.

Here's what I've learned:  there is no through.  There is no through.  You don't 'get through' it.  There is not an exit door on the other side where you return to life as it was before.  There's no window that you finally reach, open wide and gulp in the fresh air and then step through, thinking, "Phew.  Glad THAT part of my life is over and done with."

I've done my best to keep all posts to this blog on the topic of anxiety.  This paints a very dismal picture of my life.  If you notice the dates of the posts - months between them - you will realize, it's a bad day here, a bad day there.  But for those who find my blog (are there any readers who have just landed here by chance?) and read every post all in a row, searching for a glimpse of a bright, happy, relaxed, non-emotional day...I don't think that those days have been recorded here.

I ended my family blog at the end of last year, but I've kept this one going because I'm a blogger.  I use blogs to vent and to share and to give out information to friends and family that I just don't feel is important enough to force on them verbally.  If it's written, people can choose not to read it, and I don't have to see them turning and walking away while I'm mid-sentence.  I've felt that the good and bad of the anxiety was important to share here.

Last night I decided that the good and bad of not anxiety is also important to share here.  Though I've realized that there will always be anxiety - waiting at the edges, in the shadows - I've also realized that there will also be not anxiety.  There will also be 'normal life' and day-to-day and functioning just fine through task and responsibility. 

Starting today, this blog will be about all that - the WHOLE picture.  And I am excited for the change!