...Plot twist; marriage doesn't solve your emotional issues.
There have been some very obvious and extreme life changes and transitions going on in my life in the past couple months.
It's amazed me the amount of people who have seen me after I got married and asked, "How IS it?!" as though marriage is this secret cult and once you get in everything changes and the masks are unveiled. Yes, there are some definite differences in comparison to what it's like to date someone long distance, but I've never experienced a more calm and peaceful partnership. With that being said....all my "problems" are NOT solved. Someone asked me, "What are you so anxious about? Shouldn't all that be over now that you have someone there to help you?"
I think a misconception about emotional turmoil is that all those waves and storms disappear with love. In the perfect world, sure, the Beatles were right; "all we need is love." But this world is far from perfection and a large crack in it is that emotional/mental struggles are perceived as easy fixes. That much like a cut, you can bandage it, prescribe a little meditation and POOF...no more anxiety. Love is the pillow of rest in my battle with anxiety and depression. Love makes it more tolerable, love slows down my brain, love comforts my mind during moments of worst case scenario movies. But love is not the root of my anxiety and because of that, love cannot fix my anxiety, it can only coat it in love ointment and allow time to go to work in its master field.
When I got married I knew that my emotional struggles with anxiety were not going to disappear and it's a little frustrating that a few people felt that it should have. Or that just because I struggle with anxiety that I'm not happy with my life. I promise you, if you were to ask ANYONE who has debilitating anxiety (the kind that sinks you into a daze mid-day and you obsess about things that don't even matter until they are replaced by alternate thoughts of things that don't matter) WHY they are anxious, they couldn't pinpoint just ONE thing that was causing it.
I'm aware that a lot of the reason why my brain works the way that it does is caused my childhood trauma. As a young woman in my twenties, I carried that trauma with me and never really slowed down long enough to allow myself to process the loss of a father in my life, the loss of security, and my need to be taken care of. Something happened to me on my 31st birthday at the beginning of this year. It was like I finally got the prescription I needed and I could finally see my emotional life clearly. I'm more aware of why I feel certain ways or why I behaved in certain ways when I was younger.
With all of this being said, not all problems are solved, but the emotional equations have become easier to understand. It's not always the easiest life to live when you're having mental warfare daily, but it's my life. I find solace in knowing that if I survived those wars so far, there has to be a greater purpose for me now. I'm extremely transparent, possibly to a fault, but I carry that "burden" with as much grace as I know is possible because somewhere out there, someone may stumble across my babbling and make sense of it and hopefully find a way to make sense of theirs as well.
Peace and Love.
