This week my question is;
What is your mental state?
Are you happy 😃Are you neutral 🙂Are you worried 😧Or are you sad 😔
Sunday Poser # 306- How do you feel
I want to be honest with this one.
For me, it isn’t as simple as choosing one of those four faces.
I have lived with depression, anxiety and PTSD since I was very young. I take antidepressants, and I probably will for the rest of my life. I’ve made peace with that. They are simply part of taking care of myself.
Then came 2020.
My husband had started dialysis in January, and when Covid arrived and the world suddenly shut down, I was terrified.
I wasn’t particularly frightened for myself. I was frightened for him.
With his health already compromised, I was constantly worried about what would happen if he caught Covid. We isolated ourselves, as so many people did, but when the world eventually opened again, something in me didn’t open with it.
I developed social anxiety after the lockdowns.
And strangely enough, during that frightening and lonely period, one person who helped me enormously was Liam Payne.
His livestreams gave me something to look forward to. His humour made me laugh when there wasn’t much to laugh about, and his music gave me somewhere else to go in my head for a little while.
He probably never knew how much those silly, ordinary moments meant to people sitting behind screens around the world.
Then, on 29 June 2023, life threw another bomb at us.
My husband had a terrible accident. He suffered several heart attacks, and his condition was extremely serious.
After about a month, he came home.
We were told they didn’t think he would survive.
But he did. 💜
Our lives, however, changed completely.
He could no longer walk and became a wheelchair user, and I became not only his wife but also his caregiver.
There have been hospital visits, dialysis, operations, emergencies, sleepless nights, fear and exhaustion.
And then came October 2024.
Liam died.
The person whose humour and music had helped me through one of the darkest periods of my life was suddenly gone.
And yes, my world fell apart again.
Grief is strange. Sometimes we grieve people we’ve never met because what they gave us was real. They entered our lives at precisely the moment we needed something they unknowingly carried.
So, looking at those four little faces, which one am I?
😃 🙂 😧 😔
Honestly?
All of them.
But I think they forgot one.
🤣
Because if there is one thing that has carried me through an extraordinary amount of rubbish in this life, it is my sense of humour.
I laugh.
Sometimes at completely inappropriate moments. 😂
I make jokes when things go wrong. I find something ridiculous in situations that probably shouldn’t be funny at all.
It doesn’t mean the depression isn’t real.
It doesn’t mean the anxiety disappears.
It doesn’t mean I’m not grieving or worried.
It simply means that sadness and laughter are capable of living in the same person at the same time.
Humour has been one of my survival tools.
So has writing.
So has music.
I write poems and stories. I write songs. I sit with my piano. I sit with my coffee. I watch the stars. I love my family. I cry when I need to, and sometimes I laugh until I’m crying for an entirely different reason.
And occasionally I make a typo.
Then instead of correcting it like a sensible person, I somehow turn it into an EDM song about aliens and the calima.
Arena Negra + Area 51 = Arena 51. 👽🤣🎶
Because apparently that’s how my brain works.
I’ve learned that being happy doesn’t mean never being sad.
Being strong doesn’t mean never struggling.
And having depression doesn’t mean you spend every moment feeling depressed.
Mental health isn’t a straight line.
Some days I’m 😧.
Some days I’m 😔.
Some days I’m 🙂.
Some days I’m 😃.
And through an extraordinary number of them…
I’m also 🤣.
Maybe there isn’t an emoji that completely describes my mental state.
I’m a little bit bruised, a little bit tired, sometimes worried, sometimes sad, frequently ridiculous, still creating, still loving, still laughing and still finding reasons to keep going.
So perhaps my answer is simply:
I’m still here.
And more importantly…
I’m still laughing. 🤣💜
#SundayPoser
DJ Maggie in the house 🎧🎶
https://ditto.fm/arena-51-the-calima-conspiracy-original-mix
This is EDM music Electronic Dance Music . Songs drops October 2.
https://ditto.fm/arena-51-the-calima-conspiracy-alien-invasion-remix
💜
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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