I've been thinking a lot this week and talked to some professionals and some friends and I'm confused. My "breakdown" was over a year ago and although I know I was as low as I could ever have been without taking the exit, and everyone who was involved at the time tells me how bad I was, it's beginning to fade from my memory. I've been pretty much down all year, whilst getting oh-so-slowly "better". I'm functioning more and doing more and piecing my life back together again. From the outside I can sometimes seem fairly "normal". A stranger who met me on a good day wouldn't look twice. I can go a whole day, even two without crying. Even on bad days I'm told I look and sound so much better. Yet to me I'm far from OK/normal. I journey through miles of recovery and others see the distance I have travelled and are pleased for me. The problem is that I can only see that the "finishing post" still looks just as far away as it did last time I looked.
I keep hoping that one day I'll see that light shining brightly at the end of the tunnel, but I'm so stuck in my negative head that that it seems yet unachievable.
I've been told that I won't be the same person when this is through; my therapist says not to try to get back to the "old me" but to think in terms of the "new me". How do you know when you get there? Will I feel positive? Will I know I've arrived, or might it be that this existence is as good as it gets- the "new me" is a weakened damaged version of the old?