Can I get honest about 'healing' for a moment?

I'm not the most prolific blogger. I used to think this made me in some way suck. But fuck that noise. When I can write, I do write. No one is waiting with baited breath to hear my latest personal discovery. So here I am, more than a year since my last entry. If you're still here with me great, if not - I get it.

@thugunicorn

So cool, now that we have that out of the way I can talk about why I came back to this blog today. 
I am a busy woman. Not as busy as I used to be, but busy.
I have a great job (OMG, do I!) that I love, I have two healthy and basically happy teenagers. My husband has a stable job, is an amazing partner - doing most of the heavy lifting with household tasks, loves me for me. My parents are alive and the damaged bond I've had with them for many years is in repair. I have a tribe of strong, independent, willful, kind, and just simply amazing women who I trust with the vulnerable parts of myself. I am healthy, despite living with chronic pain. I am loving and kind in a world that at present, tests my ability to remain so.
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I also live with depression, anxiety, and ADD. The effort to attempt to control these last few things about me has been overwhelming over the past 18 months.

Some shit happened over the last year and a half that has left me, well -- it's left me a New April. This April has some shit to work through. She is raw. She is tender. She is working really, really hard.

I'm here to call bull shit on healing.
Fuck you healing.
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I have never ever ever, in my whole life understood healing in the way I do today. 
I am working my ass off to be normal. This is an absolute slug fest (to borrow from the wonderfully insightful Brene Brown) and on any given day, I can't tell who is winning. 

My pain vs. April. 

I've long had this zen-ish picture in my head of healing. It lives there in pink and yellow. It  is soft and enveloping. Which by the way, is fucking garbage. Portions of days do exist on that plain, but most of it is busy work. Go here, do this. Go there, do that. Be Mom, be Wife, be Friend, be Daughter, be Employee. I function really well when I'm busy. Be all the things, do all the things. Hoping to fucking God, the Universe, SOMETHING that healing is happening along the way. 

I want so badly to play nice with healing. I want very much for the pink and yellow softness to sidle up next to me and lay it's head on my lap. I suppose then, I must surrender fully to it so that can happen.

If there is a healing Iron Man, I for sure am competing in it. I feel like I am in the swim portion and just cannot see the shore. Maybe I am swimming in circles? Because I feel no one around me. Despite my loving tribe, I feel deeply alone. I know I'm lagging behind. But I can't seem to find my way forward. There are days I feel like I am moving forward, as if there is a hint of shoreline. Then I have a bad day. Like today and feel disappointed in my progress. 

There is good news. This bad day isn't as bad as the last one I had. And that one was better than the one before that. So, I guess you could say I am making headway. It's hard not to beat myself up when I have a day like this. But I don't suppose healing is supposed to be linear. We are supposed to learn and you can't just rocket out of your bullshit and "be all better". You have to move through it, swim around it, tread water, and learn a new stroke to make your way forward.

I've hated the "Just keep swimming" quote from Finding Nemo. For years. Because to me it over simplified the struggle of being. Of persevering. It's so not simple. It's deeply complex and challenging. However I do have to keep swimming to keep going.
So.....April?

​Just.keep.swimming.