Trying.

Sometimes, it's hard to separate what I feel inside me. The anxiety that had taken a seat on the back burner for so long is staring me in the eyes. I thought I had a handle on this. I thought once we passed the 1 year mark, life would be a little easier. It's not. Turns out, I think I've been lying to myself for so long that I was okay, that I was healing. I don't think I was doing any of those things. I think I was trying so hard to get back to normal, to get back to the way things were BEFORE. I kept trying to get back to how things were before, but that can't happen. Life will never be the way it was before June 18, 2015.

I think sometimes, we get so caught up with how things used to be that we forget to live our day to day lives in the now. We live so much in our memories of how things were and forget to make new memories.

I need to work on this.

;

Everyday for almost 6 months, I have drawn this semicolon on my wrist or my forearm. Some of you have asked me about it, others I'm sure have wondered but didn't want to ask. I have always been an anxious person, sometime I'm able to hide it, sometimes, there is no hiding it for anything. Within these last few months, my anxiety attacks have become more frequent (for obvious reasons) and overwhelming. When I look at my wrist and see the semicolon, it reminds me to pause, to take another breath, that I'm still here, my story is still being written. Drawing the semicolon each day is a way for me to take control of my anxiety, a way to decide every day that I'm not going to let my anxiety win.

"A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life.” Project Semicolon

When I posted the picture and the worlds above to my personal Facebook page yesterday, I didn't realize just how raw letting others know my struggles would be for me. Posting about my semicolon left me feeling raw and a little anxious. I'm not sure what made me finally address my semicolon in such a public forum, but I'm glad I did. I am thinking about getting the semicolon as a tattoo, but I'm not sure. Right now, drawing the semicolon has become part of my daily routine; I'm not ready to give that up. By drawing the semicolon each day, I promise myself that I'm not going to give up.