My Uprising

If there's any age that's most appropriate to have a quarter-life crisis, it would be 25. How 'bout that, I'm 25!!

This post isn't meant to be me boasting. It isn't meant to shine any pride I may have. But today is a very important day, and I have much to be happy and grateful about.

For a decade I fought anxiety and depression. I was struck in vicious circles and never-ending negative patterns that I couldn't recognize, patterns I believed would bring me optimal results and continued to bring me pain. I had faith in them so I kept feeding the patterns, like a gambler, hoping just one time, just ONE TIME it would work, nullifying all the times it didn't.

Comparably, I didn't have an awful upbringing. My teenage years were bright and so were my college years. But they were haunted by negative thought patterns and distortions. I had very close friends, friends who had similar patterns that I did, but my patterns started destroying relationships around the age of 16 and continued to do so up until very recently. And with each relationship they burned, they burned worse. I was a failure more and more each time.

I always saw myself as a good person. Someone who tried their best in everything that they did, someone who treated every human being with as much respect as I could muster, and for that I couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't like me, or worse, why the people I loved would turn on me.

Well, growing up has taught me at least two things. One: No matter what, there are going to be people that don't like you...they might even hate you. This applies to the people you want to like you. And two: The people you love might stop loving you one day.

I'm not going to list the throngs of hardships I've been through since college. But they hit me like bullets: relationship problems, financial problems, living problems, health problems, until I finally collapsed under the pressure several months ago and found myself living at my parent's with no money and the danger of developing agoraphobia due to post traumatic stress.

I truly thought things were over. No matter how many times my family, my friends, and my doctors told me this all would pass, I thought my life was over and there wasn't a whole lot to do to stop it. All I had worked for, all I had dreamed of...the love of the right woman, a family, children, great works of writing and film enjoyed by the masses, traveling and experiencing the world...I thought it was being stripped from me.

And now I'm here. Where is "here" you may ask...

For two years I struggled trying to find a job that would pay me enough to cover my bills. I was either unemployed or underemployed, working for psychos or serving coffee to psychos, 3000 miles away from the dreams I had left in Los Angeles, lost in a cloud of uncertainty. I was 24 without a direction, without any money, living with my parents, nothing to show, nothing to offer a woman...I truly hated myself. I couldn't move on from Firefly, and then OAOA came into my life only to replace Firefly with the same problem I had before. It was a glimmer of hope that ended up being a repeat nightmare.

Two months ago I developed debilitating symptoms that made every day a struggle. Every day they were the same, persistent, and showed no sign of letting up. OAOA wasn't there to comfort me, my friends didn't understand, and even though I had finally landed a temp job that was paying me enough money, I could hardly make it through the day and I was out at the doctor's so much that I feared my job, the only stability in my life, would leave me too, and then I'd truly be fucked. I didn't have the energy for another loss like that.

So here's why today is important. Today, I am no longer at temp. Today I become an official employee at Comcast, where I'll be getting paid more than I've ever been paid in my life, where I'll have benefits that I've never had, where I'll work in the biggest building in the city, and where I'll have the opportunity to create a career in the arena where my dreams lie. I stand up tall because through everything...through the nightmare that was OAOA, through my sickness, through the greatest economic recession of our time, through the mental warfare that life put me through, from standing at the bottom of the deepest, darkest hole I'd ever stood in, I reached up to the light and said "No, I'm not giving up."

And I succeeded. I have a wonderful job. I have a place of my own with wonderful roommates. My symptoms are subsiding. I feel secure without OAOA. I feel secure on my own. This blog itself has given me structure and motivation. I have regained faith in my dreams. I'm writing every day, I'm developing every day, and I'm growing every day.

I feel renewed. I feel rejuvenated. And I welcome the possibilities once more.

2010 started off as if it were the end. The rest of 2010 is just the beginning.

-Spontaneous K