1 Year Ago: "You Are Not Alone"

Hello my love!

This weekend my cousin got MARRIED and I was the Matron of Honour! It was fabulous but very exhausting, and because of that, I've been a bit behind on blog work. I didn't want to leave you hanging today, so I decided to dig up a post from exactly 1 year ago to share with you all.

This was the first blog post I wrote that was a little bit more personal, and it started me down this crazy and wild blogging path in so many ways. To celebrate a year full of blogging, AND highlight some of my earlier work, I thought you might enjoy this today.

You Are Not Alone

Your heart begins to speed up. You hear yourself snapping at your loved one. You open the fridge to find something sweet. You scroll through memes to calm down. You try to cancel the plans. You avoid picking up the phone. You are anxious, and you know it. But you are not alone.

I'll repeat that: you are NOT alone.

I've been there: palms sweating, heart racing, voice shaking. Everything from panic attacks to a mild niggling feeling in the back of my head preventing me from truly feeling peace.

Anxiety knows no bounds: it can happen to anyone. Sometimes it creeps up during a stressful time in life, and sometimes it's triggered by traumatic events, or even a small thing that doesn't seem like a big deal at the time, but then, there you are having a panic attack at 8 in the morning. Yuck.

My niggling anxiety started when I was young but truly came to a head in college. I had always had four deep rooted fears: I feared what other people thought of me, I feared disappointing my parents, I feared losing friendships, and I feared failure.

And you know what happened to me in college? Everything I feared.

All of my greatest fears came true: I lost my good reputation, I disappointed my parents to the point of total breakdown, my friends became distant, and I FAILED. I failed hard at a lot of things, in college and after.

As my fears came true, I found myself drowning in anxiety. I couldn't answer calls from unknown numbers, I couldn't check my email, I found myself constantly cancelling or avoiding time with people I didn't know very well, and staying in more nights than going out. Even now, almost four years later, I feel like I'm finally breaking free from much of that fear.

I am learning, slowly but surely, that I am strong. But the thing is that I don't blame myself for reacting that way to what happened to me. It's natural to undergo emotional and psychological pain when our relationships break down, when we face rejection, or when we face failure.

It's normal. I went through it, and I know many of you are going through this as well.

Please remember this:

So what do you do when everything you feared happens?

You have a choice: you can give up on life, or you can fight back. For awhile I thought about giving up, but then I decided no: I'm going to live my God-given life and I'm going to fight. There will still be sunshine, joy, and much laughter in life, no matter what happens to us. Even if the things we've always feared come knocking at our door, God is still on the throne, and He is still more than able to do a good work in our lives.

It is worth it to choose life and to choose joy because that means we are choosing God.

And that's what I want to share with you all. I'm still here, and I'm still kicking! Probably more than I ever have before. I'm not perfect, and I still have bad days, but I have grown a lot, and can't wait to tell you all about it.

xoxo,

Cait