For the longest time I was miserable with my life. I found anything and everything to complain about. There was nothing that I found delightful. It seemed like everything was prone to having an issue. It didn’t matter who or what it was, I found fault with it. I often autistically masked how I felt about things. Still, there were a few people I felt safe venting my frustration to. Yes, everyone has their moments, but mine were constant and there never seemed a way out of it.

I have to say that part of this was due to the company I kept. It was also because of the situation I had to go through. It’s hard to believe that it will be three years next week. The decision was made to switch to shared ride transportation from program-based transportation. It was something that I did not want to do. At first, I held grudges about it. Then I began to see the benefits once it was fine-tuned. Later on, this became an independent way to commute. I started a month ahead of the deadline. This was a big start of me leaving the misery wagon to better pastures.

But it was not just that. I had to learn from my past experiences. I needed to do the hard work to improve my mental health. I also had to work on my outlook on life. I learned a lot from coming off my first relapse. Getting through my second relapse also taught me about how I was seeing things. I had to start to let the old baggage that I was carrying go. That has continued to get better as time has evolved, yet there are still fragments from time to time. It is still a work in progress, but aren’t we all a work in progress?

I do handle the situations that I was miserable about much better than I did in the past. There are many more challenging situations to deal with now than when things were starting to get better. The first set of changes was crucial. Because of those changes, the other ones became successful. There were some personal challenges in getting used to the way things are now. It shows me how resilient I am despite the many struggles I am up against in the world. I am reminded of this resilience time and time again.

I had to learn to stop being miserable about the things that I can’t change. I needed to learn how to do what was best for me. This helped make the situation better for me. I also learned how to cope and distract myself from the worst situations that I faced. I know that not everything is easy and that it takes time to get better with understanding things. I know that I have greatly improved over time. I hope to continue improving as I learn and grow more each day.

The way that I found myself out of my own misery was different. I had to look at things from a new perspective. I also had to work on myself a lot. This helped me see that I needed to improve myself and start thinking about things differently.