This week, as I was driving to pick up some extra mid-week groceries, I used the time to think about why I was feeling sad and snacky that day, and how it tied into my longer-term sad feelings and snacky/bingy habits. My typical pattern is to trace my current habits and sadness back to losing my Mom to complications from cancer in late 2019, and the tactics I used to deal with it.

I ordered a lot of takeout, ate a lot of candy, smoked a lot of weed, and went out to bars A LOT,,, right up until the 2020 lockdown. When that happened, I drank at home, smoked more weed, ate even more takeout and candy, and binged a lot of TV and youtube. I felt like I wasn’t alone in this, obviously. The whole world kind of grieved with me, and stayed inside just like I did. A lot of us dug deep into our bag of unhealthy habits to cope with the shock of being forced to stay inside, and the uncertainty of what might happen next.

My story to myself has been that I dug deep into those habits to cope with losing my Mom and the shock of the pandemic, and the therapy, reflection, and healthy changes I am making are to heal the wound of sadness from losing my Mom. My hope is that as I heal that wound, I will be less dependent on binging TV, food, and other sources of instant gratification.

However, driving to the grocery store, I had the realization that I was sad before my Mom passed in 2019. I was binging Netflix and eating bags of candy well before I even started smoking weed back in 2014. I started to think more about this, and realized that my sadness might be rooted in my disappointment with how challenging making my childhood and college dreams real turned out to be. I thought that there would be a roadmap similar to school and college that I could follow directly to certain, predictable success. I allowed the uncertainty of the “real” world to stop me in my tracks, and instead of trying to pursue my dreams and possibly failing, I went into an autopilot mode, chasing short term pleasures and relying on occasional motivation to grow in order to create something or to get a better job.

I think letting myself down in this way was the deeper cause of my depression. I gave up the dreams that gave me hope and excitement and left my goals and my joy to luck and those occasional spurts of motivation.

I felt like if I can’t control and predict all of it, I don’t want to potentially”waste” the effort on a path that doesn’t lead to the success I want. I’ll just go with the flow, and comfort myself through the difficult parts, and effectively “fast-forward”, hoping that eventually things will just get more comfortable for me, and I’ll reach my goals because I’m a smart, charming, and loving person.

I feel that I can more effectively heal my depression and thereby change my relationships to snacking and watching TV and other things I do for pleasure if I give my dreams the loving attention, effort, and courage that I believe they deserve. If I stand up for myself… to myself.