Hello.

Well, hello there, blogging community.

Nice to meet you.

You might be wondering what life-changing, sizzling contribution can a depression - struggling, self - doubting little old me bring. Well, that’s the same question I ask myself. But still, I decided to try.

So, the general idea is to track - and record on this blog - my own path to change of ways of life, and becoming a better person.

When any of us reads one of those self- help books, we might get the idea that being optimistic and positive-thinking is easy - you sit there, dwell on positive thoughts a bit, and - whoosh! - there you go - your dream career, car and/or lover is there in a sec. Well, it does not work that way. Or, at least, it does not work that way for me. Still, I do wish for a happy and fulfilled life. Maybe I sound like a poster girl for persistence in positive thinking and well… persistence itself, but, believe me, I’m not.

I doubt, I wallow in my grief sometimes, I hate getting up in the morning, I wish I could slap that fake tanned girl that listens to her pink, sequined MP3 player on the bus each morning because she just plain annoys me, I try to become somebody better and happier, who could contribute more to the well-being of this World… but I don’t know if it works.

So, this morning, after surfing the web trying to find a way how to practice the Attraction Law I read about in some books, I came across (some would way I attracted that) the success stories section, written by people who have successfully practiced the Attraction Law. A woman wrote that she had made a Visualization Folder on her computer, where she would save the photos of things she’d like to have, for example, a DSLR camera, or more money. After looking at some 20 dollar bills with specific design, she came across one of them and she concluded that the Attraction Law works for her. So I thought - why don’t I make a folder like that, except I don’t wish for material goods, but for genuine happiness, achievement, focus and success?

So I did.

I browsed the web, downloaded some photos of happy people, flowers, hands holding a goblet high up in the air, collages of positive words, and made my own Visualizations Folder. Then, I programmed my computer to show the photos from that folder on my desktop. I sat, and looked at them. And began feeling a change.

In order to describe that change, I must first describe how I felt for a very long period of time.

I have a university degree. Soon after I finished it, I found a job. Nothing could have worked better. Except that, after a year on the job, I stopped being happy. I started hating the job, the over-time… well, just about everything. I am not going to speak here about the specific reasons that led to that, but I can tell that I ended up miserable, ill, anxious and depressed. I struggled with crying spells almost every day for another year. I would go to the bathroom at the office, cry, then re-apply my makeup, slap a smile on my face and go on a if nothing ever happened, except that I was falling apart from the inside. Every day, I would return to my boyfriend and smother him to oblivion with my whining about how nothing works, how unhappy I am and how I hated it.

It all culminated one day when I decided I am not going to be  unhappy anymore.

Yes, it is a decision as well as a wish, and I strongly believe that. In order to get something, we must first decide what it is we need. And I need happiness.

Some would say: “Why don’t you seek professional help?” Well, I did that, too. By chance, I got a young female psychiatrist to whom I opened my heart and talked like some kind of machine. She listened to me, distracted by a couple of phone calls, and said that I am some kind of border case - not depressed, but not ok; not anxious, but not calm. She called what I had an adjustment disorder and recommended that I should come to therapy for a time period between and month and three months, every day, for five hours a day. She called it the Day Hospital.

Wait, what?! Day… HOSPITAL?!

Should I say that I didn’t like the idea at all? And here is the reason - since she said that I was not depressed or anxious, and she didn’t give me any kind of a diagnosis of that sort (she didn’t even prescribe any medications to me), then why would I need to go to HOSPITAL, and talk about my problems for five hours a day for at least a month to a group of people who are definitely sicker than me? Plus, I didn’t like the label of “hospital” - I have enough health issues already, and I am successfully solving them, and I do not need the label of another hospital, another white coat, more poking and probing only this time poking and probing my soul, instead of my organism - all in front of complete strangers. To cut a long story short, it seemed to me like a circulus vitiosus that I will have a very hard time getting out of.

So I refused. And there I was, home alone again, trying to think through my problems and solve them. I would occasionally fall apart in tears (again!) and it seemed to me that there is no way out the mess my life became. During all that time, I strongly wished I got better, and strongly wished to be happy.

I wanted to change my job, and so I did. Just like that. One Monday, I woke up, got out of bed, and as my bare feet touched the carpet in my bedroom I knew that was it. No more being miserable. I had made a decision.

I went to my boss and explained in detail how I felt. And thank God in Heaven, she understood. I really could not have wished for a better boss or a better reaction. So she let me go, and I found myself trying to use my free time to study and get some more qualifications.

However, I am aware that there are issues I have, and I decided to deal with them once and for all. So, here I am, writing this, in order to help myself, as well as others going through a similar situation.

Now, back to the change.

After months of stomach cramps, crying or trying to withhold tears, being alone in my room feeling like a complete failure for not enduring through my job, and at the same time telling everyone that I am isolated because I am studying (which, by the way, was only 15% true) I looked at the pictures I had downloaded, and the stomach cramp started to disappear. My gut relaxed and I almost started to feel… well, normal. And what a relief it was! I took an orange that was on my desk and smelled it. The refreshing, sharp smell of the fruit was like a fluid overwhelming my brain and bringing a positive vibe to my tired and tormented brain cells. And I can tell you that I almost forgot how it is to genuinely enjoy something like the smell of that orange.

I think I am starting to feel better.