365 Day Meme: day 23: a month/year of your life when you were happiest and why

I was very happy in my early childhood until I started Kindergarten (age 5-6). Though I was still quite happy then -- just not in school. I didn't really have anxiety and loved my parents, even if they were sometimes abusive. I spent a lot of time drawing and watching cartoons. I played outside and was very attached to the neighborhood children, whom I still miss. Even in elementary school I would look back on my past and thought of age 4 as the happiest time in my life.

I was also very happy (though hypomanic from the start of my bipolar) when I was 18 and started college. My first semester of college was wonderful. I finally could have friends, my father wasn't around to be afraid of or cause problems, I enjoyed the classes, I felt less ugly (I had a makeover of sorts), I had fun meeting the new people and forming friendships. I loved our dorm and watching anime. I liked the cafeteria food (as did Amber, but apparently we were almost the only ones!). My professors treated me as if I were really smart, which was an ego booster. The classes were too easy, but that didn't bother me I too much at first. It bothered me more when I started having an existential crisis in my second semester. As my mother said, on the phone with me, even if we were in poverty I would have had a positive outlook and been happy. I feel like that optimism is more my "true" self than these crippling anxiety problems I deal with now.

( 365 Day Meme )

I Want to Be More Optimistic About my Life

I really want to work on being more optimistic about my own life. I tend to be optimistic when it comes to other people and situations unrelated to me, but I worry over all things to do with me specifically. I try to prepare for the worst, though worrying doesn't usually prepare me for bad things to happen -- it just amplifies my feelings of helplessness when things do go wrong. Due to the overload I experience with autism, I may always feel overload in some situations (crowds, stores, large social situations, etc.) and I may feel awkward having to do small talk while not really knowing how to do it. Medications often helps those situations to some extent (Ritalin LA especially).

However, I have to control my more generalized anxiety with specific worries. Lately it has been a fear of my mother dying; I am still very reliant on her and, due to my disabilities, I probably will be until my mother is too sick or old to help. I hope to take care of her if she does get sick at some point and I would love to have her live with us in such a situation. I really don't want my mother to die... I'm very attached to her in many different ways. Worrying about the situation won't help any, though. People eventually die; it is an inevitability.

I want to enjoy life and appreciate living in the moment instead of obsessing about what happened or what could happen. My life is, overall, quite good. I am very fortunate in many ways and I do feel that way. I just worry about losing everything. I want to trust the universe in God. I can get through any difficulty. Sometimes there will be struggles, but I can still make the best of the situation, learn from it, continue loving and find happiness in all the little things going right. I want to learn to be more easy-going. I may always be a planner and a cautious person, but I can find ways to relax and be more accepting of reality, instead of always feeling like I have to fight reality.

5 Gratitudes

1. Finished reading The Mabinogion
2. Read more of Tsubasa
3. Michael buying me a mocha milkshake from Steak n' Shake
4. Watching Glee and Pretty Little Liars
5. My mother talking to me and calming me down about my fear of her dying