You can't find peace avoiding life.

    Peace and serenity, that's what I'm supposed to be looking for on this trip, aren't I? How do you find it? How do you search for the pure bliss of happiness when I have no idea where to start looking. Currently eat-pray-loving my way through Europe on a quest to seek something worth saying "I'm genuinely happy." At 8am as the church bells ding in southern France I find my brain trying to catch up on the scramble of anxiety existing in the depts of my mind. Grief, my god is it a burden. It's like a toxin that slithers through your mind interrupting your life, how rude. You know, I've always read about the confession of depression or anxiety and for years and I've tried to pin point where it all started for me. "It's a myth, it doesn't exist," like the un-cultured figure I once was. To this day, I can't write about it. I've tried, or maybe the laziness doesn't want to regather all of the times I've felt some sort of sadness. We've all felt like the world was caving in and why does my story mean anymore than someone else's? We confess, we listen, and some us just watch as lives unfold. Vulnerability is strange today, we either share too much and pure rays of judgment are shot in our direction, or we hide from the chaos happening around us. Do you remember when Facebook first came out and posting "is sleeping," "just went to the store," "stealing the neighbours wifi lolol," was a trend? Where did the simpler times go? 

    In the past few months my life has changed drastically and curveball's swing in my direction daily. Ending a long term relationship will inevitably feel like you're grieving the loss of a loved one. Sadly, I was in a low place which it made it easy to "move on," or so I thought. My sadness turned into straight anger of how I lost myself trying to make someone else happy. I looked for comfort with alcohol and rule number one with a break up, don't do that. Not that I drank all the time, but definitely more than I was used to. I was searching for anything to heel the feeling of emotional neglect, depression, and suicide overpowering my brain. Nevertheless, this isn't going to be about the unstableness of my previous relationship but about why I am the way I am today and what got me here. Teaching myself to turn mental suffering into wellbeing. We all have our story, so here's mine. 

    So, back to the beginning when I moved to a small town in Alberta with my family. To put a long story short, I joined a youth group where I found a relationship with christianity, and my first ever boyfriend. I moved around a lot as a kid so I was never able to make those longterm connections most people do. Over the course of a year we were two ninth graders in love, but when high school started we ended things. Out of anger because he started dating my best friend a week after the breakup, I sought out to lose my virginity as quickly as I could. My naive brain thought sex was the way to find your soulmate not realizing that it would be something that defines your identity years down the road. I lost my virginity that year and my faith. 

    To some love is a drug, especially me. I fall quickly and hard and there's been a few people who have messed the connection between my heart and my brain along the way. Each love teaches me a lesson and over the years each lesson is like a brick that slowly builds a wall. This mentality also melted into friendships and if there was ever some sort of conflict I would run. As the years came around I realized that it's okay to cut people out of your life for your own stability but i never realized the burden that running could cause. Finding a happy medium of when to hold on and when to let go was the bane of my existence and lately I catch myself cutting more people off than I am letting in.  

    What is with this imperfect trait to be perfect? Society calls it a basic bitch but it's the farthest thing from perfection. Life throws you lemons and you can only dodge so many until one pegs you right in the head. I went through a stage of bulimia when I was younger and not that I would throw up after everything I ate, but after everything 'bad' I ate. My friends are beautiful and I wanted to fit in but the laziness told me working out and eating healthy was my last option. I love chicken strips way too much to give them up. I would justify it because the food I was eating was unhealthy but it turned into a problem when I realized the food going in and out was good for me. I don't know how I stopped, one day I just woke up and kept it all down. Strangely enough I started to love my body for all it's flaws regardless of what state I was in. 

    I've also done some garbage things to people and I would be a hypocrite if I couldn't recognize that. My mind remains foggy because of my own actions and each day I'm learning be better, but it sure is a patience game. I was bullied in junior high and when I moved away I told myself that I would never let people treat me like that again, hence becoming the asshole myself. If I didn't like you, I didn't like you and there was no turning back. It all changed when I was in university and watched the new Cinderella for the first time, don't worry I'm laughing too. The quote was "have courage, and be kind,' and all I could think was "damn, I'm an asshole." The most important thing to me is compassion yet I let it slip away so easily. I silently reopened my relationship with Christianity but not like it once was. I didn't pretend to speak in tongues or have a meaningless connection with god. I encouraged humility and fully opened my heart to things I was closed off to. I continue to struggle with my faith because I constantly wonder if I'm headed towards the right path. 

    Some people really have it together. I listen to TEDtalks daily and the majority of speakers struggled once upon a time and are now preaching on stage that they wrote eight books and climbed mount everest. What even is happiness? Is it travelling the world, finding love, wealth, faith, or is it as simple as spending moments with the people you care about most. Depression doesn't go away easily and if you've been there you know that. Sometimes it comes in waves and for me it makes me question the definition of pure happiness and why I'm not there. I'm not a doctor, a psychiatrist, or a preacher and the thoughts I have don't come from a text book or the internet yet the scramble turning in my head. Theres no information to pin point where it all started for me but I do know that it'll go away, and I'll be okay. Thanks to YouTube for teaching me how to deal with it. I continue to search for true everlasting peace and when I figure it out, I'll let you know.