Right before I left for America, I went for an eye test. I'm long sighted so I already wore glasses for reading and writing and using the computer, but it had almost been two years since I had had my eyes checked so I thought I'd quickly update my prescription. Sure enough, the optician told me that I needed stronger glasses, so I chose frames that I liked and arranged to pick them up a few days later. When I got them home, I put them on to use my laptop in the living room and to my great surprise, it wasn't just the screen that was clearer, but the window further away, and the plants in the garden even further away. Before my test, I had known that I couldn't see my laptop clearly, but I hadn't realised how much of the world I had been seeing through blurry eyes. With my glasses on, everything was sharp, I could see the crisp edges of leaves and dimpled brick in high definition, and it was strange to think that I hadn't even realised what the world was supposed to look like, I had just accepted eye strain and fuzziness as the norm.
When I got to America, it was like putting on a brand new pair of glasses. Back home I had gotten so used to the mental murkiness of depression and anxiety that I accepted it as my new unfortunate reality, and it wasn't until recently that I realised how far from alright I actually was.
When I finished my course of CBT back in December, my therapist told me that she would refer me for a further course of treatment if I wanted her to and I, stubborn and proud, told her not to. I was doing so much better, I thought, I could leave my room and talk to people, I could go food shopping and not cry, I could get out of bed. But although I was doing better, I wasn't actually better, I wasn't actually myself.
And for some reason now I am in America I have risen out of the murkiness and internal maze and finally feel like Sarah again. The only way I can describe it is that I feel settled in my soul. I am not happy all the time or bouncing off the ceilings, I just feel comfortable in my own skin and life.
I could attribute this shift in mental state to a change environment, the distance between me and external pressures and opinions, the removal of the looming unknown of my year abroad, but I don't think any of these fully explain the shift. Just as there was no clear reason why I slipped from fully reasonable and functioning adult to neurotic, overthinking mess, there is no clear reason why I have now returned back to myself.
I feel incredibly grateful that my mental state has allowed me to fully experience my year abroad, that I am seeing this year with clarity. I am so grateful not to have to wade my way through the fog whilst stranded on this side of the Atlantic. I am happy that I can finally feel wholly happy once more. And it is not that my life is any better or happier here, but that I now have access to that happiness.
Whether I will slip back I do not know, but I do know that I have found my base again. I know that this is my normal, this is me at my best, this is me. And if I do find myself falling, I only hope that I can hold onto how I feel right now, that I can hold onto what it means to be myself.
I don't need to be content with my old, blurry glasses and I don't need to accept the mental mess as an unfortunate reality, I have a duty and a desire to drag myself to the opticians and demand new lenses. Because this world, when it is seen as it is supposed to be seen, is beautiful.
