If You See Me Happy

My social worker visited me the other day. It was a good day and I was in high spirits. Yet, when he asked how I had been doing the last two weeks, I felt the need to emphasise that I hadn't been doing too good, despite my appearance of being quite well. I was worried that he would think I was doing much better overall than I had been.


It also doesn't help that when I have these good days, I almost feel like a fraud, as if I'm just putting it all on. I start to think that I should be back in work by now because I have good days. I feel like a sponger, a waste of space, a drain on society.

I was talking all this through with a friend. She brought my attention to the amount of work I've been putting in to getting better over the last year. A year of hospitals, psychiatrists, books, writing, analysing, monitoring, testing, pushing.

What I've been failing to realise is that every good day has a year of work behind it. And that's only days when things are in my favour, such as it's sunny and I have nothing immediate to worry about. And that's only some of those days.

So maybe I need to go easier on myself, give myself a pat on the back more often. I'm getting there, not as quickly as I'd like, but I'm still getting there one day at a time.

Be a tree.

Joel x