At least this time I have a good reason

Most of my earliest memories are of not being able to breathe. I had really severe asthma and had to use a dorky breathing device called a nebulizer for a couple of hours a day or I would have an asthma attack. Anytime I missed using the nebulizer or sometimes just because I was asleep I would have an attack and when I had an attack there was a solid chance I'd end up in the hospital. I actually ended up really liking the hospital. My mom was a health nut and we weren't allowed to watch TV so for a four-year-old it was pretty exciting to get to eat Froot Loops and watch Darkwing Duck.

I've never been a very good sleeper and I think it's because I learned to fear sleep early. Sometimes I would go to sleep and wake up in the middle of an attack. On nights that I didn't I would still have nightmares about not being able to breathe, about trying to walk up the seemingly endless stairs to the second floor of my childhood home and collapsing as the air left my lungs.

They say early childhood sets the tenor for how you go through life and if that's the case I guess I have a pretty good reason for having spent most of my life in fight or flight mode. It doesn't necessarily make it feel any better but I guess it's nice to think it's not just some inherent failing of my spirit or my genetics. Not that there haven't been plenty of those too.

My mom's parents and little sister died in a plane crash when she was 8. They left behind five kids. Again you have to ask about nature versus nurture here - that leaves a pretty big scar on anyone's psyche - but if there's anything genetic to mental illness I certainly have the family history for it. I'd like to have kids someday but I worry that that's selfish given that the baseline for my family seems to be enormous psychological pain. If this stuff is genetic it's maybe not great to roll the dice on creating another whole ass human being who has to do so much work just to feel okay.

Another early childhood memory is the first time I heard the word "pessimist" and said "oh that's what I am!" Thinking things are bad and that they are going to be bad has been a core part of my identity since I was old enough to form words. I wish things had shaken out differently but even after I got over the asthma things tended to happen in a way that never disabused me of that notion. Of course pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of cases but also a lot of bad shit happened to me that was entirely out of my control. I mean I was a kid how much control did I have over what happened to me anyway.

Anyway all of this is to try and paint a picture for you or for myself of why I have spent most of my life feeling bad. I have spent a lot of the past decade trying to do the work to unlearn being so negative and afraid all the time. I'm a lot less of a miserable bastard than I used to be, but nothing works all the time. It is very easy for me to find ways to be unhappy. I do my best to be positive but man there is so little about the world as it is that makes me feel like things will get better. And then I get lost in second-order negativity and start beating myself up for thinking the negative thoughts or being sad or whatever. Again, I know I need to forgive myself or accept things as they are or whatever and I try as hard as I can to do that but it's enormously difficult. I know that it is possible for things to be better than they are and that only makes me sadder. The act of accepting the world as it is feels impossible a lot of the time.

But that has been different since my mom died. For the most part right now I don't feel bad for feeling bad. It's a pretty nice change of pace when I can stop at "I feel bad and I'm allowed to because I'm grieving". Sometimes I wonder how much of how I feel right now is just more of the same and how much of it is new or different and I guess there's not really any way to be sure of it, but this is pain I'm allowed to feel. I hope I can hold on to that feeling and remember that a lot of the other pain in the grand scheme of things falls into the same category.

I described the last few months to my therapist as "nonconsensual exposure therapy" and while I cannot in good faith recommend having your mom die over the course of six weeks in front of you while you have to move her into a new apartment in a new state and coordinate every part of her care because you and your brother are all she has and sorry forgot where I was going with this. Right. I can't recommend it but I think it was good for me in some ways. I have learned I'm capable of more than I thought and in grieving her I have learned at least what it's like to be okay with the fact that I feel bad. A lot of depression is ultimately not so different from grief. I grieve the world I wish we had, the life I wish I could have, the things I want so badly to be but am not. I grieve for a little kid who couldn't breathe. And at least now I know I am capable of forgiving myself for that.