Today I woke up hurting. My brain seems to have decided to review past events and people in my life while I’ve been sleeping. I end up dreaming about them and often wake up in a frustrated, annoyed or upset mood. While it’s helpful to review these people and events that have affected me, it also dredges up memories and pain that I didn’t realize I still had. It’s causing me to rethink past situations, which is what I’m supposed to do, but I’d prefer to do so under my own power, not in my dreams.

This first occurrence of this was just a couple of days ago. My brain decided to review an event that occurred near the start of my depression. I woke up confused and a little annoyed because this wasn’t a walk down memory lane that I wanted to take. But after reviewing the event over the past couple of days and talking with one of the person who had been involved in the situation, I realized that this event was probably the crux to my depression. This event is the most likely to have been the start of my depression and now that I have this information, hopefully I can use it to get better.

The second occurrence happened just today. I woke up after only a few hours of sleep and was so distraught and hurt that I couldn’t fall back asleep. This time my brain decided to include an old friend from high school in my dream. Thinking over it, I hadn’t realized how hurt I was by the separation that occurred our senior year of high school. I realize that people lose touch, but we had been best friends and being a naive teenager, had thought that we would be friends forever. At this point, I can’t ask her what happened, or why and there isn’t a reason to. People fall apart just as easily as they fall together. We were friends at the time, it just hurts realizing how easily that friendship fell apart.

It’s easy to feel hurt by the situations in our lives especially when things don’t go the way we planned. But how we deal with that hurt, makes all the difference in the world. Do we allow ourselves to be crippled by that hurt even if it occurs years after the event or do we move on and allow that hurt to make us into better people? I believe that these situations and the people who have passed through my life have occurred and been there for a reason. They have helped create the person I am today. And while that person is a flawed human being, I am trying to bring what little good I can to the world and I am trying to be a better person. Everyone is flawed, but it’s how you deal and cope with the flaws that makes the difference.