Marathon Man

Friday, December 5, 2014

Eighteen months ago the dissolution of my old life began.  It wasn’t something I was expecting.  I spent months simply coping with the psychic devastation I felt as I came to realize elements of my history from childhood were still haunting me.  This went on until the holiday season of 2013.  I then gradually began to transition into a new phase.  The new phase of my life was marked by the predominance of the question ‘What now?’  Many more months would pass before this phase would come to a natural conclusion.

I clearly see that I reached my current phase of renewal around the end of August.  It was at that time that I titrated down to a lower dosage of sertraline.  I have since been taking a dosage that typically has minimal therapeutic impact.  I suppose you could say I am on a mental health maintenance dosage now.  It wasn’t until this past summer that I began to feel the first subtle moments of hopefulness rising up in my awareness.  I gradually began to feel my capacity for dreaming a new and better life into being growing.

I am now in the thick of my first holiday season without clinical PTSD.  My grief is still with me each day.  But my life is so full of work and other activities that the grief doesn’t have the chance to unduly consume my attention.  I am growing more adept at walking that fine line between the two extremes of wallowing in my pain and sorrow and avoiding paying attention to it altogether.  Grief has its own rhythm.  I am learning it cannot be rushed.  Rushing the process of healing can catapult you backwards if you push too hard.

I sometimes feel I am running a marathon now.  I have two jobs, my ongoing psychotherapy, my gym regimen, social events, this blog and now the additional element of applying to a doctoral program in a state thousands of miles from where I now live.  I am determined to have an enjoyable, full and productive life.  I am certainly finding my way back to my full capacity to work and play.  And yet it is clear my full capacity prior to my current treatment was not utilizing my full potential.  I am only now beginning to really discover what my full potential might be.