It is hard to imagine that I am being my true honest self from where I was a year ago. I was living in a lie, masking many symptoms in the outside world, but not doing what has been proven for decades to work. At this point a year ago, my world was crashing and while my supporters were gradually seeing my world collapse, I was living live in a grandiose light at full steam ahead.

It would not be long before I would find out that the destructive decision that I had made over two months before would be one of the worst things that I could have done. I still would not gotten the hint for a year since I last made that initial decision. Truth be told, it was six years of living in a lie where I was not adhering to my medication regimen for one reason or another. As much as I wanted to believe that I was OK, I honestly was not.

 The last two times I relapsed in a time, it was when things were at their worst. The most important moment was when I realized that the ride that I was on was nearing an end and I had to take seriously the advice that I was given and get back on the medicine, no matter what. If I needed to take time, it did not matter. The warning signs are there.

While my rationale was believing many things that I could not, I honestly never tried to find out if I could do the things that I wanted to do while medicated. So, I took the initiative to do what I needed to do and evaluate whether I could on my own. Eventually, I discovered that once I got on my medication regimen steadily for some time that I could do everything that I wanted to do and live the life as I wanted to live it.

It was just that I had to learn how to manage my life with my medication. It took being serious about the food and drinks that I had, being accountable and making sure that there were plans in place to ensure that I was well and adhered to what I needed to do to stay well. While I initially had mixed feelings about day services, my family and supports still feel that I needed them, and I eventually dealt with the feelings I had about it and let them go with understanding the new practices of how things are done there.

In fact, I realized that I needed to do so much more to keep my mind engaged and find the void that I needed to have so that I do not get in temptations ways where I could fall out of my medication regimen and keep my thoughts at bay. I am slowly working on that, and it is getting better each day. It is just like starting over.

As I start to learn how to manage things, it is understandable that I need to realize that it is going to take time, and I need to give myself grace for when things do not go the way that I expect them to go. Things always change and whether I like to hear that, it is something that just is in a world where there is such an expectation to be perfect. Life will go on and while there are some struggles in other realms of my life, it is important to realize that things are OK for me, and I am doing the best that I can to live life as I need and want to.