There was a time, several weeks ago when I hit my personal limit. It reminded me of a flight that I was on about 6 years ago from Denver to San Diego. As we approached San Diego we hit turbulence that the crew had not warned us was coming. For a moment it felt like the plane was going to fall straight down out of the sky. I felt the shock of the sudden drop, but then I just felt peace. If that plane really had dropped out of the sky, I would have quietly accepted my fate with peace in my heart and mind.

So flash forward, I am sitting in a town hall meeting at my place of employment. I place I have worked at for 13 years, in a few different roles. listening to the executive presentation about the state of the company and all of the great work going on within the walls of the organization served to remind me of how useless I have felt for a long time. I sat through the meeting, taking deep breaths and holding myself together until we were dismissed. Then I went back up to my desk, packed up my laptop and left. I went home and as I cried and wallowed in feeling bad for myself I entered that calm state. My plane wasn’t going down, but I knew that things would work out and I had to take care of my mind if I was to keep moving forward in this life. Since that day, I have been on leave, trying to do just that. It’s not as easy you might think, to be released from responsibility and given the opportunity to take a minute and heal and assess.

I have been listening to a ton of podcasts. Lots of Mel Robbins, who I am now obsessed with. And a lot of NPR shows. I believe it was Hidden Brain last week that had an episode about how we use words. The Episode touched on a lot of different studies, but what struck me, in an uncomfortable way, was that depressed individuals focus more on “I” words and tend to show an internal focus. Why this strikes me is that I have always said that being a mentally ill person includes an inherent amount of selfishness. It causes me to have a lot of feelings, about my feelings. I am sad and conflicted, so I focus on working through that to experience of joy of living in the now and having the energy to do all of the things that humans are expected to do every day – like, cook, clean and interact with others. All of that self focus causes me to miss out on focusing on those that I love. The ones I should be cooking and cleaning with/for and those that I should be interacting with. Selfish. I ignore texts because I just can’t answer. I don’t answer my phone when it rings.

The Calm is helping me see the problems within me. The next step needs to be making things better. I need to find a way to bring meaning back to my work. I need new work. I am running out of time when I need to get back to the four walls of my employers and the calm is going away. I wouldn’t be so terrible if the plane fell out of the sky.