Allow yourself good days

The nature of my mental illness is that I get highs and lows. I don’t have control over when they happen. Sometimes they correspond to good and bad things happening in my life, and the reaction is severely magnified, but sometimes they just come out of nowhere. But occasionally, very occasionally, I have a good day, or a good few hours. This isn’t a day where I am manically happy for no reason, this is a day where for a few hours my moods don’t swing. On a good day I get to be myself, in the comfort that for these hours, I seem to have some kind of control.

Good days can scare me because when you end up being the way you want to be, but knowing it won’t last more than a day and could go at any moment, it’s hard. The fear of losing it often takes away some of the joy of finally feeling free, the joy of getting a break.

So today I’m thinking about how important it is to allow yourself those good days. Enjoy them as if it may go on forever, not focusing on the inevitable change in mood. One reason I am scared of these days is that I worry people will see me be that normal and decide I don’t need their help anymore. I am, sadly, very dependent on my friends. I am incredibly lucky to have some amazing friends, and I would be lost without them. Another reason I struggle to accept good days is that I am so desperate for it to stay that way that I manage to push myself into being depressed about how rarely I get to feel that freedom.

My advice, to myself and other people, is that we need to learn to allow ourselves these days. Whether there is a reason for it or not, you do deserve this break, and you deserve to believe that it may last forever. Mental illness is not easy to handle, but if you manage to have a good day, don’t be scared of it. Let it recharge your batteries so that when you next have a bad day, you know what it is that you’re fighting for.