How's that for an intro?

What a year, am I right?

Oh wait, it's only July. And we still have a long way to go. In that case, let's dive in, shall we?

I suppose it makes the most sense to start with the basics. Hi, my name is Elyse. I'm 32 years old and I live in Central Florida. Wait, that's too basic.

I've been going through the hardest period of my life, I'm in therapy weekly, and I've even enrolled in an online personal development "school" to work on me. Wait, that's too much. 

I guess the middle ground is to explain what I'm even doing here. Lately I've been toying with the idea to start a blog for really no other reason than to be very open and transparent about things that have been going on in my life in hopes that I can inspire others to take necessary steps in their life. That and to try, from my little corner of the world, to smash the stigma that still exists around mental health. It's 2020 and even though it's been a dumpster fire of a year, at this point, we should be beyond the stigma that taking care of your own mental health is a sign of weakness, or that it's a female thing, or that it wouldn't help anyway. But we'll circle back to all of that. 

For the sake of some kind of timeline, I'll start (for now) at the beginning of this year: 

• January 2nd: My house was broken into while I was at work and about $5,000 worth of my things were stolen, including a few sentimental items I will never get back.
• January 4th: The Buffalo Bills lost their wild card playoff game (Ok, so maybe this isn't nearly as devastating as everything else, but it still sucked, and I had a lot more of my emotions invested in it than I realized because of the break-in).
• January-March: Became increasingly frustrated with certain aspects of my job to the point that I was angry more often than not.
• Beginning of March: Found out that my place of employment would be closing for about two and a half weeks due to Coronavirus (Party time, we all thought. Ha!).
• End of March: Found out that my place of employment would be closed indefinitely, which was pretty damn terrifying. 
• Beginning of April: Found out that I would be officially furloughed (no longer paid, but still able to retain my position in the future) from my job and uncertainty kicked in. That and the frustration of knowing I'd have to deal with the Florida unemployment website nightmare. 
• April 25th: My boyfriend, who I had always been 100% sure of and knew I would marry, revealed that he was no longer sure of us, so we decided to take a month-long break.
• May 6th: I started therapy (Thank God), which is something I've been meaning to get back into for a long time.
• All of May: I was an absolute disaster, constantly dealing with a roller coaster of all my emotions and severely increased anxiety. 
• May 31: My boyfriend officially ended things with me, one week shy of our two-year anniversary. To call this devastating would be the understatement of the year for me.
• All of June: More of being an emotional wreck like during May, with the added bonus of my birthday at the end of the month, that I had absolutely no desire to celebrate.
• July (now): Still furloughed, still unsure about when an official return to work will happen. Oh and the federal allotment for unemployment ends in two weeks, which is the only thing keeping most of us in a decent spot.

To add to all the components above, I live alone, so I didn't even have a roommate/friend to spend any time with while having to stay inside as much as possible because of the virus. To be fair and transparent, I was still seeing my ex on the weekends in March and April (when we were still together) because I was incapable of having zero human interaction for that long. Part of that issue that I also now understand is that I didn't know how to love myself or enjoy being alone with myself, but that story will come up again later. 

Now for the disclaimers: Just because my timeline is a lot of bad and unfavorable things, does not mean that I don't have some wonderful people in my life or that every moment has been soul-crushing. My ex was absolutely incredible through the long weekend of the break-in aftermath and my workplace was super helpful in figuring out my schedule so I could do what I needed to do. I've had some really great friends check in on me at various times and I've been able to reconnect with so many friends over the past few months. I've had some good and fun experiences once it felt safe, at least a little bit, to go out into the world again. I have been able to use some of this unexpected downtime to try and live life a little bit more. Most importantly, this whole mess has led me back into therapy, which has led me into a whole world of discovering myself, my issues, my repressed emotions, my habits, my tendencies, my potential, my reality, my priorities, and my worthiness. It's overwhelming, but so necessary.

So that pretty much brings you up to speed to where I'm at in this current moment. It's a lot and it's been very difficult for me. The beauty of all this down time is how much I've been able to learn about myself. Had I not been away from work for four months, I wouldn't have gotten here. Had my ex not broken up with me, I wouldn't have gotten here. Had I not gone back to therapy, I wouldn't have gotten here. I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason. That doesn't mean negative or sad or anxious feelings get canceled out or that those feelings aren't valid, but in moments of clarity, I've been able to see the positives emerging from these situations. I just never realized how necessary it was for me to work on myself. 

The plan from here, over time, is to explain some of the things I learned or that I now understand in depth for anyone who might be curious, anyone who might be struggling, or anyone that just feels like they want to know more! Of course, as soon as you start to learn some life-changing things, you want to tell everyone. As soon as you have a different perspective, you try to explain the psychology to everyone. And what's been happening for me, I will now analyze almost every situation through this new understanding I have. It's a blessing and a curse...but mostly a blessing. 

Anyway, thanks for taking a few minutes to read about my messy, crazy year (so far). I'm looking forward to opening up more and hopefully helping a few of you along the way!