Everything Changes

This is a truth of life that I’ve had extreme trouble understanding. After 4 years of therapy and a boatload of depression, I think I’m starting to get it. Until recently, whenever I felt down and bad about myself, I would feel so incredibly stuck in that state of mind and low, low mood. The story I lived with was helplessness, hopelessness, and brokenness. Every time my therapist or someone wiser than me encouraged me to look beyond my current suffering, I did not know what they meant, fundamentally. I wallowed in it. I trapped myself and didn’t even know it.

It happened rather suddenly. I take notes of my experiences in my phone and the first mention of internalizing this fact was on October 26th of 2024. Just one line. “I do feel it’s a little easier to feel like this is transient” (referring to a bad day and feeling rather empty). The next day, “I think I’m still getting like an actual sense of comfort that this won’t last” (again referring to a bad day). From then onwards, any time I think “everything is temporary/transient/etc.” I can feel that it’s true. I’m getting to a place of knowing it is true. And it feels amazing. This one thing has been very integral to my perspective of my life and of myself changing for the better.

Knowing both sides of this experience, feeling utterly unable to change my own mind versus how I feel now is humbling. I know if present me talked to past me there is a very high chance it would just bounce off and make no difference. I can say that spending less time on my computer, even by 30 minutes or an hour is a small piece of the formula, but still I don’t know exactly how this changed.

More importantly, I do know how meaningful and comforting this is to me. If I’m worried about an event or a task or a relationship, I trust this fact. It’s super corny, but in my experience “everything changes” changes everything. I am the exact opposite of trapped in my own mind. It’s so reassuring seeing the stresses of the day or the week and knowing it’ll shift, it’ll end. I’ve taken note of this so much lately. Life is richer, more enjoyable, and full of variety. It is 8am as of writing this. I woke up today around 630. There is a fluidity and flow in my mind that I’ve been missing my whole life. I can look at this morning and appreciate how different my thoughts and feelings are from just over an hour ago. On my life I never in a billion years could predict or expect to feel this way. It’s a transformation.

Yet, I can’t claim that this transformation is finished. All the years spent from a limited point of view still have their roots in me deep. I cultivated such thought patterns that perpetuated that state and they are slow to undo. And that is something I am not scared of. It’s wonderful! I trust my ability to see this process through, however long it takes. I know that if those thoughts and feelings come up, they’ll dissipate by the end of the day. If they come back, same shtick. Understanding the flux in all things is such a massive game changer, I cannot overstate it. Every day I’m free. Free from my stories, free from my fears. Not because they’re gone, but because they don’t last. Everything changes.