It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me well (or has even just met me a handful of times…or many even just one time) that I have a flair for the eccentric or overdramatic.
When I was just a small bean, my family would compare me to Sarah Bernhardt (an actress from the early 1900s) which would be my cue to tone down the theatrics.
Well, I didn’t quite listen.
I was an overdramatic child who grew up to be an overdramatic adult.
Tada!
So, when things are good, they’re great, they’re wonderful, they’re marvelous! Cue the Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire tap duet!
But when things are bad, jeez Louise are they BAD.
They’re abhorrent, they’re morose, they downright fucking suck.
And, the most entertaining part of dealing with a medley of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, is that even those seemingly insignificant inconveniences can rapidly snowball into a disastrous avalanche, under which I often find myself buried.
As the cliche goes, when it rains, it pours, and for me, the storms are Category 5 Evacuate Your Homes hurricanes.
Like I said, many of the things, individually, would be manageable, however, the Things always travel in packs, ready to corner me, and rip out my throat with their razor sharp Thing teeth (What’d I tell you? O. Ver. Dra. Ma. Tic.)
Every time the Things come after me, I revert to my cave, lick my wounds, and hibernate. In other words, I become a recluse.
I don’t go out. I don’t answer my phone. I don’t change out of my cozy pants.
Not the most productive solution to my problems, I know, but after a brutal attack of the Things, I have no desire to socialize with others and tell everyone the standard “I’m fine,” when I’m far from it.
My mama ain’t raise no liar.
Well, October 2016 was no exception. Life had been going too well. The Things could sense it and they were out for blood.They came at me from both ends.
This was when my boss decided I was suddenly not doing enough at work and I was stripped of my supervisor title AND when my at-the-time fairly consistent…boytoy (for lack of a better term )”broke up” with me, because an ex had come back in the picture.
Cool.
Great.
Awesome.
To the cave I retreated, tail between my legs.
The Things had gotten the best of me once again. I cancelled plans. I ignored calls. I cocooned myself in a pile of blankets hoping to eventually evolve into somethings or someone completely different. Maybe someone with a few less obsessive, over-analytical mental hangups.
That clearly didn’t happen, but something almost as good did.
When asked how I was doing, I stopped feigning stability. I straight up told those brave enough to ask that I felt like a garbage person, a pathetic little pile of refuse.
Trash. I felt like trash.
What good would it have done to tell those nearest and dearest to me that I was okay when I clearly wasn’t?
So I told them the truth. No, I’m not okay…but that was okay.
It wasn’t until I was honest about my depressive state that I actually started feeling better. Sharing how you actually feel instead of bottling everything up and isolating yourself until cataclysmic meltdown…works? WHO KNEW?!
You can’t start battling the bad Things until you openly acknowledge that the Things are, in fact, bad.
As for my upgrade to Rubbish Royalty…
My friends weren’t too keen on my reference to myself as a piece of garbage. So, in all of my spectacular, dejected glory, I made the declaration: “FINE, I’M NOT JUST A PIECE OF TRASH, I’M THE QUEEN OF TRASH! I’M THE TRASH QUEEN!”
And wouldn’t ya know, it stuck?
Leaning into the pile of putrescence worked for me. It became a persona that I adopted once I started (gasp) leaving the house again and rejoining my legion of equally trashy friends (which I say with the utmost love and respect).
And all of those degenerates (again, love and respect) do nothing but feed into my delusions of trash grandeur. Come on, how could I not love being addressed as Her Majesty when I walk into parties?
What’s the moral of this trashy tale?
Sometimes you won’t be okay. And that is okay.
Just do what you need to do to be okay, even if that means taking a little dumpster dive (for me, figuratively, but hey, I’m the Trash Queen, I won’t judge).
xo.
Melly Bean: Trash Queen 