Inner Peace in Mental Health

I’ve had this strange feeling lately, a new feeling, one I don’t quite understand. I think it’s peace. Acceptance. Yes, maybe acceptance. I feel like I am just letting life come at me day by day. I’ve started painting. Watercolor. He keeps telling me I’m really good at it, and that feels… indescribable. Seen. Loved. Something. Everything.

I face a lot of frustrations on a daily basis. Work, kids, co-workers, boss. But, lately, they’ve all felt like nothing more than buzzing flies. Unimportant in the long term, in the scheme of things. Eventually they’ll be dead on a windowsill? (I’m a terrible person.)

I feel like I’m seeing the world with new eyes, clearly, for the first time. And like I’m seeing myself clearly for the first time. I’m seeing my worth, my value, and I’m learning to… I don’t know… wear it on the outside. I’m learning to take up space.

I’m learning how to let my boss’s dumbass, rude, sexist comments roll off me like water off a duck’s back. I can see, clearly, that the shit he says is about him and not me. It only displays his ignorance, his lack of empathy for other human beings, his narcissism. It’s become laughable, literally. I laughed out loud at him yesterday and today, just laughed and laughed. Pretty sure it left him a bit disconcerted. I refuse to take him seriously and that’s a major blow to his ego. Boo. Hoo.

This sense of inner peace is pervasive. I notice it over and over again, and am a little surprised every time. I am positive I’m having a manic episode and yet I am not getting mentally and emotionally worked up like I normally do, like I’ve been expecting for a couple of days now. No over-emotional outbursts. No random crying. No negative self-talk. What I have noticed is that I am experiencing the mental thing I think of as “inquiring minds want to know.” Except the only inquiring mind is mine, and all of the questions are designed to cause me emotional pain, to make me think of things I’d rather just not think of. What’s not happening is my standard reaction to those questions and thoughts. No anxiety around them. Like, oh, that’s a thing I just thought, or hmm, that’s a question I’d be curious to hear the answer to. I’m not having knee-jerk emotional reactions to my thoughts. I’m just having them and then going on about my business, whether it’s work or making dinner or watching a show or painting. I have been letting the things in my mind pass through, in a way. They’re all still there, but I’m not obsessing over them.

Super serious major progress. At least it feels like progress, anyway.

He apologized to me for a thing today and my immediate reaction was, “How funny, why would he apologize for that?” (Edit: It wasn’t actually an apology, which I somehow realized in the middle of the night while sleeping. He thanked me for being okay with something.) Because I don’t feel ignored, not in the slightest. I know that’s not what this is, of course it’s not, that’s ridiculous. I don’t feel ignored or neglected or loved less or… less. In any way. That was a huge realization for me. I crave him but I don’t require his immediate attention to know that I am loved, cherished, desired, respected, and appreciated. All of this has been made more than clear to me and I do not feel like I need constant reassurance of any of it. I am fully assured.

And that, my friends, is very likely the most profound change I have witnessed in myself in the past half a year, and I have witnessed many, many changes. I don’t feel the slightest bit insecure with this man. I have the knowledge that I am loved by him, I know it like I have never known another thing. It is an undeniable, immutable force. It is also my greatest treasure, that love.

Lastly, painting is amazingly therapeutic. Here’s a few I’ve done. I just started on Monday.

This last one was based on the image at the top of this article.

Last updated October 12, 2019