Please continue to keep sharing this website with your friends and family and help me share this story with people that could benefit from knowing they aren’t alone. Please consider helping aclottedjourney.com also, see below for details on that! Enjoy Part 18 of my story, Living with Conviction!

Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for all of your support!

Ending a vicious cycle in a depression filled mind is comparable to ending an addiction to anything in life. The jury will be out on your decision, “its so easy, all you have to do is this Alex”. The jury will commentate enough on your life that sometimes your mind will believe the hype that is the advice, and sometimes it is enough. But not always. One of the most interesting verdicts that will ever be decided on your journey in the trial of how your stars will align, is the amount of conviction you will decide to live with. When someone you love is addicted to a substance, that person has to decide what gain the pain of quitting will bring them. When someone you love is going through a vicious circle of depression and anxiety that person has to decide what gain the pain of working on the problem will give them. To some this may be a surprise, that someone could need convincing to keep moving forward. To some this may be all too real, that someone could know what life is like without experiencing this.

Ask for help. Not because you are weak. But because you want to remain strong.

Les Brown

We start this part of the story where we ended the last one, me laying on my couch for weeks trying to develop some type of way to sleep away my sorrows. Sadly, every time I woke up, the pain was still there. The anxiety was still overwhelming all of the receptors at my disposal in my brain. The sadness over the wave of depression that just hit my life was still there. The enemy was relentlessly watching me as I ran out of my motivational stores within the castle of my brain as it lay siege on my life. The enemy knew that the fire in my heart was at a weak point and they knew that it was only a matter of time before I would stay in that depression forever. They knew it was only a matter of time before they would tear down those castle walls and take up refuge for the long term.

Earlier on in my journey I would dedicate my mind to positive and motivational things and at that point that was enough. My brain would catch on to one of the outstanding philosophies that I would read and that was that.  I would latch on to one mantra and just keep repeating it in my head until that became how I lived. I became the meaning of that motivational rule. I lived the meaning and it got me through some of the darkest times in my life. But for some reason, this time it didn’t appear like my mind would go for it again. By no means am I trying to tell you that positive and motivational materials/teachings/attitudes/believing in yourself don’t work. I am saying they just may need help every now and then and that they aren’t always a standalone fix for what the problem is. They can be, just may not be always.

I decided that after days and weeks of not eating regularly, not moving regularly, and not wanting to breathe regularly, I needed help through this process. What I am about to say is one of the things that I am most ashamed of in my life, that I was afraid to tell someone I wasn’t alright. I was afraid to tell someone I thought something more was going on in my brain. I am a strong-willed person and I have always struggled not appearing confident in front of anyone, and at the time my mind was so feeble that it believed not being happy was not being strong. One of the absolute hardest things that I have ever done in my life was calling my doctor and asking for an appointment to deal with depression and anxiety that I had been having. I realize and am one of the strongest advocates now of being open about mental health but at the time I didn’t think the world would accept me for not being “OK” all of the time.

The only mistake you can make is not asking for help.

Sandeep Jauhar

I, because I am a clotted mess (I mean treasure), have many doctors that watch over my health in life. My doctors here at the clinic are very dedicated to helping me succeed in life and I am grateful, they’ve rooted for me to keep living more than I have at times. Although the doctors are diverse in the fields they are experts in, any one of them would have given me the answer that my general specialist gave me, “yes I would be happy to see you, we want to get this all figured out so you can keep telling me about all of the awesome adventures you go on” (my general specialist loves to talk about our shared passion for travel and I enjoy our talks more than he will ever know). I cannot stress enough how big of a difference it makes when you are paired with not only an excellent doctor, but also an environment of healing within a health system. No one will give up on you at a good health system. I always think about this query in my head with a passion when thinking about how I’d want myself or my loved ones treated at a facility. I didn’t give up hope because of the people around me. I didn’t give up hope because of the doctors around me. I want the health care team that looks after me or my loved ones to be relentless in providing good health and never give up on the possibility that I will enjoy more time with loved ones. I experienced and saw the bad implications that happened with my grandma while in the hospital towards the end of her life in a bad health system and I will never forget it. The moment that your team watching you gives up on you, the chances that you will give up on you increase exponentially. I know that many people have opinions on this, I just wanted to share mine and tell you some of the reasons that I am still here today.

The appointment was made, and the day was set. I decided that day that I was going to still have conviction in the decisions I made. I decided that day that I still had so many people to get through having an unknown blood condition for. I decided that day that I still had so many people to get through depression and anxiety for. I decided that day that I still had myself to get through all of those things for. I wanted to accomplish all that I could for my family and my loved ones. Everyone who believed in me up until that point, I owed it to them and to myself to do this.

Now I waited for that appointment, luckily it was a priority to my medical team, and they had me seen within a day or two. We will save the story of the appointment for next time, but I do have to say if you are suffering through something similar to this please know that you aren’t alone. Please know that you are only making the rest of your body and health suffer the longer you decide to not ask for help. I was so very concerned that the time that I already spent being anxious and sad had taken time off my life. I was concerned that I could make my blood disease progress in an expedited manner with all of the stress and cortisol release. I’m sad that it didn’t happen more speedily, but I am happy that I asked for help.

Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for all of your support!

Please consider helping A Clotted Journey keep moving forward!

I have loved writing on here so much that I can foresee myself doing this for a long time, I hope you will all continue to support me and help me spread my message! You can do this by first, subscribing below and to all of the social media accounts for brand new content right away. And then second, if you can, help the website in other ways! If you choose to donate to the page, I will donate a portion of the contribution (you tell me how much you’d like to be donated or I will just do 50%) to the American Society of Hematology and the remainder I will put towards helping the website. I have many plans coming up for aclottedjourney.com and I need your help to keep spreading my story and expanding the type of content I can bring to you. If you want to see if I need anything specific the link to my WISH LIST is here. Click HERE to make a difference!