At some point somewhere in the past I said to myself a dangerous mantra that I think we’ve all told ourselves at one point or another. “Just a few more weeks until {x} and then it’ll all be good from there.” The {x} can literally be anything from a life event to a large purchase or an activity or gathering. It can be anything. The time window can be anything too. It can be one year, five years, ten years, or ten minutes. The length of time always counts down, unless it doesn’t. Sometimes the goalposts move on us. Sometimes they don’t.

But somewhere in the past I said to myself that very mantra. Then the day came where whatever activity or event transpired has came and went, and I was supposed to feel some kind of relief and be able to move on and feel happy or content or less anxious. The problem is that I don’t feel any different, and I’ve said that mantra more than a few times now. It’s been large projects at work. It’s been events or changes at work. It’s been vacations or time off or celebrations. The goal has came and went many times now, but never fulfilling that promise that things will be better than before. I don’t know why. I don’t understand why I feel no different, if I should feel different, or if I’m just misunderstanding something. I don’t know, I don’t get it. My anxiety progressively gets a little worse with every passing day, and it doesn’t “fluctuate” at all, it just slowly increases over time with no opposing trends in sight. I don’t know what’s going on, because those targets used to mean something. I know that mantra and I have known relief after it, and I feel tremendously broken right now as a result. I feel lost and broken and incapable of understanding this situation because it doesn’t seem to be rooted in anything. The most I get as a root cause is “DIAGNOSED WITH DEPRESSION LOL”. It’s hardly helpful. I think I need to stop counting down to things that I don’t fully know that will make me feel better. But at the same time it feels like a way of coping with the unstoppable advancing of time.

My kid sucks his snot in and every time I tell him to blow his nose, he fails miserably and continues sucking snot up into his face. I couldn’t facepalm any harder than I am right now. He’s killing me.

Blah.

First world problems, eh?