THE AMUSED LIFE BLOG

My name is Anna and I live with and manage anxiety based depression. I have probably dealt with symptoms of it since I was 16 years old or from what I can remember. Sadly my memory is often spotty throughout my life. I find that a lot of that spottiness is around traumatic events that I have experienced. Sometimes it's related to increased symptoms of my illness or a "flare up" of the kind that causes the anxiety or depression or both to get to a level that I can manage. At this time in my life I find myself in a few existential quandries that make me feel like I am a huge ball of yarn completely tangled up so perhaps this year is where I begin trying to unravel the tangled mess that is me.  I've struggled my entire life with never feeling "good enough" and sometimes I'm unsure if that feeling is tied in tightly to my illness or just an additional learned script I have running through my brain. I've tied that feeling frequently to people's...

I love bread. Carbs are, in fact, my favorite food group. Beyond that, I believe in body-positivity and health-at-any-size. I don't want anyone in this world to buy into weight loss/exercise obsessions because they feel pressure from any external sources including family, friends, media, society and beyond. So understand that my decision to make some personal changes in my life is in no way because I feel un-loved, under-valued or most of all un-desirable. I love myself most days and the days that I'm angry or sad with myself are built around mental health struggles with depression and anxiety and are actually in no-way related to my feelings about my appearance or my sense of self worth. Alas, I'm 46 as I type this. My mother passed away suddenly at the young age of 58 for reasons I cannot 100% confirm because we didn't have an autopsy (a decision I wish now we had pursued), for multiple reasons.  I'm making some decisions to just focus on reducing my body size a b...